[Plura-list] Corporate Bullshit

Mon Aug 19 11:02:38 EDT 2024

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/

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I'm coming to Burning Man! On Tuesday (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "Disenshittify or Die!" at Palenque Norte (7&E). On Wednesday (Aug 28) at noon, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at Liminal Labs (830&C).

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Today's links

* Corporate Bullshit: From manumission to minimum wages, it's always the same nonsense.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

* Recent appearances: Where I've been.

* Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Colophon: All the rest.

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🏖 Corporate Bullshit

*Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America* is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:

https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht

I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the *The American Prospect*; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have *gigantic* backlog of reading):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever *anything* that might cause industry to behave even *slightly* less destructively is proposed. What's more, *we keep falling for it*. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses - and their well-paid Renfields - dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.

It's a four-stage plan:

I. First, insist that there is no problem.

Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary *and* they're caused by sunspots *and* they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).

II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.

An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is *actually* an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people

III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.

Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.

IV. This is socialism.

Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").

Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.

We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs

First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

Or the oil CEOs who boasted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave them cover to just *screw* us at the pump:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#soak-the-rich

There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose *sole purpose* is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

To rents:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy

Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists *lost their minds* and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would *destroy the economy*:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-millennial-economist-who-took-on-the-world/

You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can *assure you*, Kamala Harris is *not* a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1824580470052725055

The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it - for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys - we can vaccinate ourselves against it.

Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics - that is, *doing stuff* - rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/seeing-like-a-matt

*Corporate Bullshit* is a brisk and bracing read - I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday - and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it *does* make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.

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🏖 Hey look at this

* Public Ownership of Public Goods https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-ownership-of-public-goods

*  Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-secret-ap3-militia-american-patriots-three-percent (h/t Jesse Eisinger)

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🏖 This day in history

#15yrsago How free ebooks are good for well-known and obscure writers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/aug/18/free-ebooks-cory-doctorow

#10yrsago Here’s all the stuff the Pentagon has sold to local law enforcement – cheap! https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/aug/15/we-have-pentagon-1033-program-data/

#10yrsago Monopolists are perfectly impedence-matched with bureaucrats https://timharford.com/2014/08/monopoly-is-a-bureaucrats-friend-but-a-democrats-foe/

#10yrsago Videoing police violence is the new “See something, say something” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/16/fergusons-citizen-journalists-video

#10yrsago Fictional products don’t violate trademark laws https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/15/software-company-loses-trademark-case-against-batman-over-fictional-software/

#5yrsago Towards a better practice of online news-corrections https://newscollab.org/2019/08/15/bringing-news-corrections-further-into-the-digital-age/

#5yrsago The case for allowing children to vote https://crookedtimber.org/2019/08/17/give-children-the-vote/

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🏖 Upcoming appearances

* Disenshittify or die! (Burning Man, Palenque Norte, 7&E), Aug 27, 13h

* Talking caterpillar Q&A (Burning Man, Liminal Labs, 830&C), Aug 28, 12h

* Albacon (Albany/remote), Sep 13-15
https://albacon.org/2024/

* TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/

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🏖 Recent appearances

* HC4US
https://soundcloud.com/hc4us/081224-cory-doctorow-a-canadian-british-science-fiction-author-activist-and-journalist

* Tech Rights & The Future of Privacy (Synthetic Minds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD5iAV1YmO4

* Enzittification with Ed Zitron & Brian Merchant
https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/enzittification-with-cory-doctorow-brian-merchant

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🏖 Latest books

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "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?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (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/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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🏖 Upcoming books

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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🏖 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Today's progress:  words ( words total).

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast:
  AI's productivity theater https://craphound.com/news/2024/08/04/ais-productivity-theater/

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is 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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