[Plura-list] The Big U; How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism Part 4

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Mon Apr 26 12:11:08 EDT 2021


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Next Thursday, I'm helping Bruce Sterling launch "Robot Artists & Black
Swans," a book of sf short stories in the Italian "fantascienza" mode,
at Austin's Book People!

https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-bruce-sterling-robot-artists-black-swans

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Today's links

* The Big U: America's elite educational institutions are as rich as
countries.

* How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism Part 4: The latest installment
of my podcast.

* This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🍪 The Big U

Writing in Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter, Sam Haselby makes the case
that US elite universities - the Ivies - are a cartel that uses its
monopoly to reproduce its monopoly, to the detriment of the rest of us.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/break-up-the-ivy-league-cartel

Mistrust of the Ivies is as old as the nation. They were founded by
members of the Puritan "elect" whose explicit project was to maintain
the rule of a minority over the majority, in a nation that was steadily
increasing its democratic, majoritarian governance.

These schools would produce "leaders" whose credentials would help them
secure the reins of power that they were divinely entitled to.

No less than Thomas Jefferson rebelled against this idea, founding the
University of Virginia "to counter what he saw as their anti-democratic
influence."

America's historical turning points have been accompanied by surges that
widened access to higher ed: the great land-grant colleges built after
the Civil War, and the Cold-War-driven investment in public ed that
incubated the Civil Rights movement.

Today, that tendency of widening access to higher ed is in retreat,
while the Puritans' vision of elite institutions for elite individuals
whose status entitles them to rule is on the rise in the Ivies, who
cloak themselves in the eugenicist doctrine of "meritocracy."

Even as smaller educational institutions lurch toward destruction -
shedding 650,000 jobs during the pandemic, relying on non-tenure-track,
brutally exploited adjuncts for 75% of their workforce - the Ivies have
only grown richer.

The 20 richest schools in America hold endowments worth $311 billion,
helped along by tax-favored treatment that benefits wealthy benefactors
who bulk up these vast fortunes that go to benefit the children of their
ultra-wealthy friends and colleagues.

Even as the US has plummeted in the UN's Human Development Index, its
top universities grew in wealth and status, while becoming less
accessible: Harvard's acceptance rate was 80% in 1940, 20% in 1970, and
3.4% in 2021.

This selectivity isn't the result of higher standards; rather, it's the
result of a more expensive, exclusive winnowing system that sees more
admissions from kids of the richest 1% than of kids from the poorest 60%.

The wealth and privilege reproduce themselves. Professors' families are
34% richer than the average US family, and PhDs are 50 times more likely
to have a parent with a PhD than the average American.

"American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged
system conferring a series of 'merits' on ambitious children of highly
educated and prosperous families."

The Ivies epitomize the disastrous, shifting base of the Democratic
Party, from representing working people and racialized, low-waged
workers to representing "socially liberal," highly educated wealthy elites.

80% of Harvard grads in the mid-Twentieth were Republicans; today 70% of
people with graduate degrees vote Democrat.

77.6% of Harvard profs call themselves "left-leaning" while only 2.9%
call themselves "conservative."

But what does it mean to be a "left-leaning" institution that
preferentially hires and admits only the wealthiest people in the
country? If Harvard is "a hedge fund with an educational arm," can it
really be "left-leaning?"

The class that Harvard reproduces is Thomas Piketty's "Brahmin Left" -
highly educated high earners who - Haselby reminds us - are the same
people that the populist right labels "woke capital."

But just because the right deplores a group of people, that's not a good
reason for the left to cheer them on. The consultant class of
McKinsey-trained, finance-oriented "progressives" do not seek to build a
world of broadly shared power and personal self-determination.

Rather, they seek to replace the system in which 150 white men run the
world with a "fairer" one that replaces half of those white men with
women and people of color.

The technocratic, meritocratic vision sees low-waged, abused workers as
having settled to their natural level, in accord with their capacity for
self-governance. They need paternalistic protection, not a say in their
jobs.

In this view, if Amazon warehouse workers are being maimed by repetitive
stress injuries, the answer isn't unionization and workplace democracy -
it's an algorithm that task-switches them so they can evenly distribute
their musculoskeletal loads.

Haselby calls the Ivies "natural refuges for leftists or progressives in
an oligarchy" that are nevertheless "poor environments for democracy or
democratic thinking."

A progressive Yale would be one that ended its policy of denying
dorm-space to front-line workers battling the pandemic. A progressive
Columbia isn't one that allocates $5m for two professorships to study
"democracy" - it's one that recognizes its grad students' union.

High-quality public education is a prerequisite for a true democracy.
Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal have sponsored legislation to make
university free for families earning $125k or less per year, with a
focus on state schools and community colleges.

https://jayapal.house.gov/2021/04/21/college-for-all/

With hundreds of thousands of academics thrown out of work, there's
never been a better time to reimagine widespread access to high-quality
education, separated from winner-take-all institutions who recirculate
the wealth of elite philanthropists to their children.

We have to get past the bizarre resistance from people who suffered
under the old system and insist that everyone else endure the same - "I
lived with crushing student debt for 40 years, why shouldn't you?" is
pure spite.

Haselby: "The regional divide we're seeing, with a few gilded cities and
their educational castles, must be broken to have a free self-governing
people. That means making education work not just for an elect, but for
everyone."

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🍪 How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism Part 4

This week on my podcast, the fourth part of a seven (?) part serialized
reading of my 2020 One Zero book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM,
a book arguing that monopoly – not AI-based brainwashing – is the real
way that tech controls our behavior.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

The book is available in paperback:

https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907

and DRM-free ebook :

https://sowl.co/bm2F7c

and my local bookseller, Dark Delicacies, has signed stock that I'll
drop by and personalize for you!

https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html

Here's the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/nonficbooks/destroy/2021/04/26/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-part-04/

And here's part one:

https://craphound.com/nonficbooks/destroy/2021/04/05/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-part-01/

And part two:

https://craphound.com/nonficbooks/destroy/2021/04/12/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-part-02/

And part three:

https://craphound.com/nonficbooks/destroy/2021/04/19/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-part-03/

And here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet
Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_386/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_386_-_How_To_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism_04.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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🍪 This day in history

#20yrsago EFF releases its Public Music License
https://web.archive.org/web/20020211110253/https://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/20010421_eff_oal_pr.html

#15yrsago Major Canadian artists reject suing fans and DRMing CDs
http://www.musiccreators.ca/

#15yrsago Frank Zappa’s anti-censorship letter
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mudshark/117551768/in/set-72057594090059726/

#15yrsago RIP Jane Jacobs, urban activist
https://web.archive.org/web/20061009063708/http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=fe1de18f-6b6e-473d-b0cb-0cc422dcf661&k=25935

#10yrsago Russian corruption: crooked officials steal
multi-billion-dollar company, $230M tax refund, then murder campaigning
lawyer
https://web.archive.org/web/20110426045152/https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/20/russia_s_crime_of_the_century?page=full

#5yrsago Bellwether: Connie Willis’s classic, hilarious novel about the
science of trendiness
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/26/bellwether-connie-williss-classic-hilarious-novel-about-the-science-of-trendiness/

#5yrsago Mitsubishi’s dieselgate: cheating since 1991
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mitsubishi-cheated-fuel-economy-tests-since-1991/#ftag=CAD590a51e

#5yrsago EFF to FDA: the DMCA turns medical implants into time-bombs
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/pacemakers-and-piracy-why-dmca-has-no-business-medical-implants

#5yrsago Fantasy accounting: how the biggest companies in America turn
real losses into paper profits
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/business/fantasy-math-is-helping-companies-spin-losses-into-profits.html

#5yrsago A Burglar’s Guide to the City: burglary as architectural
criticism
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/25/a-burglars-guide-to-the-city-burglary-as-architectural-criticism/

#1yrago Send Pics: ripping, brutal, amazing novel about teens,
sextortion, revenge and justice
https://memex.craphound.com/2020/04/21/send-pics-ripping-brutal-amazing-novel-about-teens-sextortion-revenge-and-justice/

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🍪 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about pipeline protests.  RESEARCH PHASE

* A short story about consumer data co-ops.  PLANNING

* A Little Brother short story about remote invigilation.  PLANNING

* A nonfiction book about excessive buyer-power in the arts, co-written
with Rebecca Giblin, "The Shakedown."  FINAL EDITS

* A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause."  FINISHED

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues."  FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
https://craphound.com/news/2021/03/28/past-performance-is-not-indicative-of-future-results/

Upcoming appearances:

* Book launch for Bruce Sterling's Robot Artists & Black Swans (Book
People), Apr 27,
https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-bruce-sterling-robot-artists-black-swans

* Seize the Means of Computation, Ryerson Centre for Free Expression,
May 19,
https://cfe.ryerson.ca/events/how-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-seize-means-computation

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the
basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion
Guy" DeVilla

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