[Plura-list] Boss politics antitrust

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/

Today's links

* Boss politics antitrust: Trump will use Xi Xinping's "anti-corruption" playbook.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019

* 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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📖 Boss politics antitrust

Xi Jinping inaugurated his second term with an anti-corruption purge that ran from 2012-2015, resulting in a massive turnover in the power structures of Chinese society.

At the time, people inside and outside of China believed that Xi was using the crackdown to target his political enemies and consolidate power. Certainly, that was the *effect* of the purge, which paved the way for reforms to Chinese law that have effectively allowed Xi to hold office for life.

In 2018, Peter Lorentzen (USF Econ) and Xi Lu (NUS Policy) published a paper that used clever empirical methods to get to the bottom of this question:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

Working from the extensive data-files published during the corruption trials of the purged officials, Lorentzen and Xi Liu were able to estimate the likelihood that an official had really been corrupt. They concluded that overwhelmingly, the anti-corruption purges *did* target corrupt officials, some of them very highly placed.

But when they considered the social graph of those defenestrated officials, they found that they came from blocs that were rivals of Xi Jinping and his circle, while officials who were loyal to Xi Jinping's were spared, even when they were corrupt.

In other words, Xi Jinping's anticorruption efforts targeted genuinely corrupt officials - but only if they supported Xi's rivals. Xi's own cronies were exempted from this. Xi *did* use the anticorruption effort to consolidate power, but that doesn't mean he prosecuted the innocent - rather, he selectively prosecuted the guilty.

Donald Trump will be America's next president. He campaigned against "elites" and won the support of Americans who were rightly furious at being ripped off and abused by big business. The Biden administration had done much to tackle this corruption, starting with July 2020's 72-point executive order creating a "whole of government" approach to fighting corporate power:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Trump will have to decide what to do about these efforts. It's easy to say that Trump will just kill them all and let giant, predatory corporations rip, but I think that's wrong. After all, the Google antitrust case that the DoJ just won *started* under the last Trump administration. Trump also blocked the absolutely terrible merger between Warner and AT&T.

I think it's safer to say that Trump will *selectively* target businesses for anticorruption enforcement - including antitrust - based on whether they oppose him or suck up to him. I think American business leaders know it, too, which is why every tech boss lined up to give Trump a public rim-job last week:

https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/i_wonder

Trump killed the AT&T-Time Warner merger to punish CNN. He went after Google to punish "woke" tech firms. That doesn't make AT&T, Time Warner or Google good. They're terrible monopolists and the US government *should* be making their lives miserable.

Trump will not need to falsify evidence against corporations that are disloyal to him. *All* of America's big businesses are cesspits of sleaze, fraud and predation. *Every* merger that is being teed up now for the coming four years is illegal under the antitrust laws that we stopped enforcing in the Reagan era and only dusted off again for four years under Biden. They're all guilty, which means that Trump will be able to bring a valid case against any of them.

This will create a trap for people who hate Trump but don't pay close attention to anticorruption cases. It's a trap that Trump sprung successfully in his first term, when he lashed out at the "intelligence community" - the brutal, corrupt, vicious, lawless American spy agencies that are the sworn enemies of working people and the the struggle for justice at home and abroad - and American liberals decided that the enemy of their enemy was their friend, and energetically sold one another James Comey votive candles:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Over the next four years, Trump will use antitrust and other corruption-taming regulations to selective punish crooked companies. He won't target them because they're crooked: he'll target them because they aren't sufficiently loyal to him.

If you let your hatred of Trump blind you to the crookedness of these companies, you lose and Trump wins. The reason Trump will find it easy to punish these companies is that they are all *guilty*. If you let yourself forget that, if you treat your enemy's enemy as your friend, then Trump will point at his political rivals and call them apologists for corruption and sleaze - and he'll be right.

It is possible for Trump to fight corruption corruptly. That's exactly what he'll do. But just because Trump hates these companies, it doesn't follow that we should love them.

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📖 Hey look at this

* Sculpture BM 414162522242621331 https://chrisbathgate.blogspot.com/2024/11/sculpture-bm-414162522242621331.html

* Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress [Full Show] 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p9gayNy5Rg (h/t Sal Fadhley)

* A cat lady's survival guide for the second Trump administration https://www.salon.com/2024/11/07/a-womens-survival-guide-for-the-second-administration/ (h/t Dan Savage)

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📖 This day in history

#15yrsago Labels may be losing money, but artists are making more than ever https://web.archive.org/web/20091115091151/http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/

#15yrsago Internet ghost-towns: the blocked IPs where the bad guys used to live https://web.archive.org/web/20110810225715/http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/11/a_year_later_a_look_back_at_mc.html

#10yrsago Stories are a fuggly hack https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

#10yrsago Ambulance takes comatose, insured woman to “wrong” hospital, drives her to bankruptcy, too https://web.archive.org/web/20141112070957/https://www.channel3000.com/news/woman-taken-to-wrong-hospital-faces-bankruptcy/29648000/

#10yrsago ISPs caught sabotaging their customers’ email encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/starttls-downgrade-attacks

#10yrsago Redskins owner sues Native Americans who testified on racism to Trademark Office https://www.techdirt.com/2014/11/11/redskins-decide-that-suing-offended-native-americans-should-really-help-their-case/

#10yrsago Peak indifference-to-surveillance https://memex.craphound.com/2014/11/12/peak-indifference-to-surveillance-2/

#5yrsago ​Twitter is awash in disinformation bots tweeting lies about the Kentucky gubernatorial election results https://web.archive.org/web/20191111073836/https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/newselection2020/close-election-in-kentucky-was-ripe-for-twitter-and-an-omen-for-2020/ar-BBWyujk

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📖 Upcoming appearances

* International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

* ACM Conext-2024 Workshop on the Decentralization of the Internet (Los Angeles), Dec 9
https://conferences.sigcomm.org/co-next/2024/#!/din

* IA et “merdification“ d’internet: peut-on envisager un nouveau web? (Remote), Dec 12
https://www.unige.ch/comprendre-le-numerique/conferences-publiques1/cycle-5-2024-2025/ia-et-merdification-dinternet-peut-envisager-un-nouveau-web/

* ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

* Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
https://cloudfest.link/

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📖 Recent appearances

* Enshittification Was a Choice (SOSS Fusion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSelmMUO0c

*  Maximum Iceland Scenario - Data Caps, 3rd Party Android Stores, Nuclear Amazon (This Week in Tech)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5MkCwktKz0

* Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (Digitalia)
https://digitalia.fm/744/

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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 for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Today's progress: 790 words (80230 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 FEB 2025

Latest podcast:
  Spill, part four (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/10/28/spill-part-four-a-little-brother-story/

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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