Douglas Adams wrote, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
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The ideology of economism - which says that market outcomes are the *only* way to govern a society - cashes out to "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." If we interfere with mergers, or labor practices, or commercial conduct, we "distort the market," which is literally *going against nature*:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse
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That's why Trump dismantled the consumer protection agencies, the antitrust agencies, the labor protection agencies, the environmental protection agencies. When someone in power cheats the system, that's not a crime, no matter how many people they rob, maim or kill. As Trump told us on the debate stage in 2016, that kind of cheating "makes me smart":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth
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That's why Trump dismantled the consumer protection agencies, the antitrust agencies, the labor protection agencies, the environmental protection agencies. When someone in power cheats the system, that's not a crime, no matter how many people they rob, maim or kill. As Trump told us on the debate stage in 2016, that kind of cheating "makes me smart":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth
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That's why Elon Musk (almost) got to force every pension saver in America to bail out his money-incinerating AI business and his failed social media takeover - because the rules that protect everyday investors are "for the little people." Musk's mistake was trying to get a bunch of billionaires to hold the bag, too. The one form of systemic violence our society *will not tolerate* is trillionaire-on-billionaire violence:
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That's why Elon Musk (almost) got to force every pension saver in America to bail out his money-incinerating AI business and his failed social media takeover - because the rules that protect everyday investors are "for the little people." Musk's mistake was trying to get a bunch of billionaires to hold the bag, too. The one form of systemic violence our society *will not tolerate* is trillionaire-on-billionaire violence:
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The world has moved on. 50 years of neoliberal rule has weakened and snapped the beams - the rule of law, consumer and labor rights, civil rights - that radiated from our Dark Tower - antitrust law, which blocked the emergence of the "autocrats of trade." The people who besieged these beams had the same motives as the Crimson King and John Farson and the Man in Black: they were willing to pay any price for a world free from consequences for people like them.
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The world has moved on. 50 years of neoliberal rule has weakened and snapped the beams - the rule of law, consumer and labor rights, civil rights - that radiated from our Dark Tower - antitrust law, which blocked the emergence of the "autocrats of trade." The people who besieged these beams had the same motives as the Crimson King and John Farson and the Man in Black: they were willing to pay any price for a world free from consequences for people like them.
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They knew they were born to rule, and that the rules were "for the little people," that breaking those rules "made them smart."
They wanted "bossism." Or, as rendered in the original Afrikaans, "baasskap," which means, "the social, political and economic domination of South Africa by its minority white population":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baasskap
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They knew they were born to rule, and that the rules were "for the little people," that breaking those rules "made them smart."
They wanted "bossism." Or, as rendered in the original Afrikaans, "baasskap," which means, "the social, political and economic domination of South Africa by its minority white population":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baasskap
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Not for nothing, baasskap is the foundation of Muskism, the ideology that Elon Musk epitomizes, even if he can't articulate it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/21/torment-nexusism/#marching-to-pretoria
In "The Utopia of Rules," the late David Graeber described how neoliberal deregulation produced exactly the kind of state that we were warned we'd get under communism.
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Not for nothing, baasskap is the foundation of Muskism, the ideology that Elon Musk epitomizes, even if he can't articulate it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/21/torment-nexusism/#marching-to-pretoria
In "The Utopia of Rules," the late David Graeber described how neoliberal deregulation produced exactly the kind of state that we were warned we'd get under communism.
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Thanks to monopolies, all the stores were the same and they all sold the same goods. Thanks to the dismantling of labor protection and unions, no one had enough money to get by. Thanks to elite impunity, we were ruled by monsters who committed crimes in the open and thrived as a result. Thanks to unchecked greed, we paid everything we had for healthcare, only to be denied treatment when we needed it.
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Thanks to monopolies, all the stores were the same and they all sold the same goods. Thanks to the dismantling of labor protection and unions, no one had enough money to get by. Thanks to elite impunity, we were ruled by monsters who committed crimes in the open and thrived as a result. Thanks to unchecked greed, we paid everything we had for healthcare, only to be denied treatment when we needed it.
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Thanks to the dismantling of the welfare state, more and more of us had to wait in long lines to fill out absurdly long forms in triplicate. Thanks to the intrinsic instability of such a terrible system, more and more of us ended up in prison, and protest became more and more illegal:
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Thanks to the dismantling of the welfare state, more and more of us had to wait in long lines to fill out absurdly long forms in triplicate. Thanks to the intrinsic instability of such a terrible system, more and more of us ended up in prison, and protest became more and more illegal:
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Graeber pointed out that the rise of the web made it seductively easy for people in authority to force us to fill in forms. When analog bureaucracies impose paperwork costs on us, they also impose paperwork costs *on themselves*, because processing and filing those forms requires substantial effort, even if filling in those forms requires even more effort from us.
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Graeber pointed out that the rise of the web made it seductively easy for people in authority to force us to fill in forms. When analog bureaucracies impose paperwork costs on us, they also impose paperwork costs *on themselves*, because processing and filing those forms requires substantial effort, even if filling in those forms requires even more effort from us.
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When it comes to *virtual* paperwork, the asymmetry is even more pronounced. Sure, it takes some admin to set up an online form and write the scripts to process its outputs, but that's a one-off. The form-giver can perform a very little admin and still impose a giant, repeated admin burden on the rest of us.
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When it comes to *virtual* paperwork, the asymmetry is even more pronounced. Sure, it takes some admin to set up an online form and write the scripts to process its outputs, but that's a one-off. The form-giver can perform a very little admin and still impose a giant, repeated admin burden on the rest of us.
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AI has only made this worse. Now, thanks to vibe coding, everyone can produce a form and its associated processing and analytics back-end with prompts, which creates a grave moral hazard. The kinds of activities that I used to fill in a single short form to accomplish now requires ten lengthy forms, created by different people in the same organization, all asking for variations on the same information. Through AI, we have democratized bureaucracy. It's Kafka-as-a-service.
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AI has only made this worse. Now, thanks to vibe coding, everyone can produce a form and its associated processing and analytics back-end with prompts, which creates a grave moral hazard. The kinds of activities that I used to fill in a single short form to accomplish now requires ten lengthy forms, created by different people in the same organization, all asking for variations on the same information. Through AI, we have democratized bureaucracy. It's Kafka-as-a-service.
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What's more, when you're dealing with a monopoly, you have no choice but to complete whatever paperwork they throw at you. And when the vibe-coded back-end scripts shit the bed and lose or misinterpret your data, you have no choice but to endure an infinite telephone hold queue (if you're lucky) or get shunted to a customer service bot (if you're unlucky):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/11/sorry-to-bother-you/#we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to
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What's more, when you're dealing with a monopoly, you have no choice but to complete whatever paperwork they throw at you. And when the vibe-coded back-end scripts shit the bed and lose or misinterpret your data, you have no choice but to endure an infinite telephone hold queue (if you're lucky) or get shunted to a customer service bot (if you're unlucky):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/11/sorry-to-bother-you/#we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to
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It's entirely possible to build webforms that are thoughtful, fast, respectful of our time, and well-processed. The problem is that fielding these forms requires that the form-giver undertake some intensive, moderately expensive work (once), while skipping this step merely requires that we all perform intensive, time-consuming work (over and over and over again):
https://mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/
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It's entirely possible to build webforms that are thoughtful, fast, respectful of our time, and well-processed. The problem is that fielding these forms requires that the form-giver undertake some intensive, moderately expensive work (once), while skipping this step merely requires that we all perform intensive, time-consuming work (over and over and over again):
https://mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/
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This is how we end up with government forms that require you to list every trip you have ever taken to the USA, since your infancy, with every flight number, which you can only get help with by talking to a chatbot that emails you an out-of-date PDF no matter what question you ask of it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600
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This is how we end up with government forms that require you to list every trip you have ever taken to the USA, since your infancy, with every flight number, which you can only get help with by talking to a chatbot that emails you an out-of-date PDF no matter what question you ask of it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600
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This is how we end up with massive customer service queues, long lines at tills, and no one at the gate to answer your questions when your flight is canceled. Understaffing is a form of enshittification, one that shifts value from shoppers to owners, and shifts consequences from owners to workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/22/nobodys-home/#squeeze-that-hog
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This is how we end up with massive customer service queues, long lines at tills, and no one at the gate to answer your questions when your flight is canceled. Understaffing is a form of enshittification, one that shifts value from shoppers to owners, and shifts consequences from owners to workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/22/nobodys-home/#squeeze-that-hog
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This is how we end up with broken machines that no one can fix. Firing workers and replacing them with chatbots or contractors means incinerating their process knowledge - the precious, inchoate, unrecorded understanding that keeps everything working:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/process-knowledge-vs-bosses/#wash-dishes-cut-wood
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This is how we end up with broken machines that no one can fix. Firing workers and replacing them with chatbots or contractors means incinerating their process knowledge - the precious, inchoate, unrecorded understanding that keeps everything working:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/process-knowledge-vs-bosses/#wash-dishes-cut-wood
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This is how companies that make products we love suddenly decide to wreck those products: when the only consequences for shitty products is angry customers with nowhere to go and no one to vent their rage upon except workers who have no labor rights and can't afford to quit, why *not* do a mafia bust-out for every business?
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
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This is how companies that make products we love suddenly decide to wreck those products: when the only consequences for shitty products is angry customers with nowhere to go and no one to vent their rage upon except workers who have no labor rights and can't afford to quit, why *not* do a mafia bust-out for every business?
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
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The world has moved on. Nothing works. Everything costs too much. No one can help. No one knows how to fix anything. The beams were broken by the Crimson King and his economism-crazed minions. The Dark Tower might fall.
So what consumer advice do I have for people who are angry about this? I don't have *any* consumer advice, I'm afraid. You can't shop your way out of a monopoly. Once again, shopping *is not politics*.
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The world has moved on. Nothing works. Everything costs too much. No one can help. No one knows how to fix anything. The beams were broken by the Crimson King and his economism-crazed minions. The Dark Tower might fall.
So what consumer advice do I have for people who are angry about this? I don't have *any* consumer advice, I'm afraid. You can't shop your way out of a monopoly. Once again, shopping *is not politics*.
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What I have for you is *political* advice. To restore the beams and beat back entropy again, we need a better *system*, not more virtuous individuals. If you feel - as I do - that "the world has moved on," then to wrench it back, you will have to join a *polity*. Support activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital rights group I've been at for the past 25 years:
https://supporters.eff.org/donate/join-eff
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What I have for you is *political* advice. To restore the beams and beat back entropy again, we need a better *system*, not more virtuous individuals. If you feel - as I do - that "the world has moved on," then to wrench it back, you will have to join a *polity*. Support activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital rights group I've been at for the past 25 years:
https://supporters.eff.org/donate/join-eff
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Join a union. If there's no union at your jobsite, start a union. If you work in tech, you start this process by talking to techsolidarity.org and the techworkerscoalition.org. In the UK, get in touch with United Tech and Allied Workers:
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Join a union. If there's no union at your jobsite, start a union. If you work in tech, you start this process by talking to techsolidarity.org and the techworkerscoalition.org. In the UK, get in touch with United Tech and Allied Workers:
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Get involved in party politics. Find a political party whose local organization supports your values (even if the national version of that party sucks) and then work with your fellow grassroots activists to drag or replace the party leaders.
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