Today's links

All bets are off: Tearing up the rulebook doesn't end the games, it just gets rid of the rules.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2024
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.

A sepia-toned engraving of a 1920s labor riot, with charging cops, bombs, etc.

All bets are off (permalink)

When unions are outlawed, only outlaws will have unions. Unions don't owe their existence to labor laws that protect organizing activities. Rather, labor laws exist because once-illegal unions were formed in the teeth of violent suppression, and those unions demanded – and got – labor law.

Bosses have hated unions since the start, and they've really hated laws protecting workers. Dress this up in whatever self-serving rationale you want – "the freedom to contract," or "meritocracy" – it all cashes out to this: when workers bargain collectively, value that would otherwise go to investors and executives goes to the workers.

I'm not just talking about wages here, either. If an employer is forced – by a union, or by a labor law that only exists because of union militancy – to operate a safe workplace, they have to spend money on things like fire suppression, PPE, and paid breaks to avoid repetitive strain injuries. In the absence of some force that corrals bosses into providing these safety measures, they can use that money to pay themselves, and externalize the cost of on-the-job injuries to their workers.

The cost and price of a good or service is the tangible expression of power. It is a matter of politics, not economics. If consumer protection agencies demand that companies provide safe, well-manufactured goods, if there are prohibitions on price-fixing and profiteering, then value shifts from the corporation to its customers.

Now, if labor has few rights and consumers have many rights, then bosses can pass their consumer-side losses on to their workers. This is the Walmart story, the Amazon story: cheap goods paid for with low wages and dangerous working conditions. Likewise, if consumer rights are weak but labor rights are strong, then bosses can pass their costs onto their customers, continuing to take high profits by charging more. This is the story of local gig-work ordinances like NYC's, which guaranteed a minimum wage to delivery drivers – restaurateurs responded by demanding the right to add a surcharge to their bills:

https://table.skift.com/2018/06/22/nyc-surcharge-debate/

But if labor and consumer groups act in solidarity, then they can operate as a bloc and bosses and investors have to eat shit. Back in 2017, the pilots' union for American Airlines forced their bosses into a raise. Wall Street freaked out and tanked AA's stock. Analysts for big banks were outraged. Citi's Kevin Crissey summed up the situation perfectly, in a fuming memo: "This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers":

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/29/15471634/american-airlines-raise

Limiting the wealth of the investor class also limits their power, because money translates pretty directly into political power. This sets up a virtuous cycle: the less money the investor class has to spend on political projects, the more space there is for consumer- and labor-protection laws to be enacted and enforced. As labor and consumer law gets more stringent, the share of the national income going to people who make things, and people who use the things they make, goes up – and the share going to people who own things goes down.

Seen this way, it's obvious that prices and wages are a political matter, not an "economic" one. Orthodox economists maintain the pretense that they practice a kind of physics of money, discovering the "natural," "empirical" way that prices and wages move. They dress this up with mumbo-jumbo like the "efficient market hypothesis," "price discovery," "public choice," and that old favorite, "trickle-down theory." Strip away the doublespeak and it boils down to this: "Actually, your boss is right. He does deserve more of the value than you do":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/09/low-wage-100/#executive-excess

Even if you've been suckered by the lie that bosses have a legal "fiduciary duty" to maximize shareholder returns (this is a myth, by the way – no such law exists), it doesn't follow that customers or workers share that fiduciary duty. As a customer, you are not legally obliged to arrange your affairs to maximize the dividends paid by to investors in your corporate landlord or by the merchants you patronize. As a worker, you are under no legal obligation to consider shareholders' interests when you bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions.

The "fiduciary duty" lie is another instance of politics masquerading as economics: even if bosses bargain for as big a slice of the pie as they can get, the size of that slice is determined by the relative power of bosses, customers and workers.

This is why bosses hate unions. It's why the scab presidency of Donald Trump has waged all-out war on unions. Trump just effectively shuttered the National Labor Relations Board, unilaterally halting its enforcement actions and investigations. He also illegally fired one of the Democratic NLRB board members, leaving the agency with too few board members to take any new actions, meaning that no unions can be recognized – indeed, the NLRB can't do anything – for the foreseeable future:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5277103/nlrb-trump-wilcox-abruzzo-democrats-labor

Trump also fired the NLRB's outstanding General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was one of the stars of the Biden administration, who promulgated rules that decisively tilted the balance in favor of labor:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Trump is playing Grinch here – he's descended upon Whoville to take all the Christmas decorations, in the belief that these are the source of Christmas. But the Grinch was wrong (and so is Trump): Christmas was in the heart of the Whos, and the tinsel and baubles were the expression of that Christmas spirit. Likewise, labor rights come from labor organizing, not the other way around.

Labor rights were enshrined in federal law in 1935, with the National Labor Relations Act. Bosses hated – and hate – the NLRA. 12 years later, they passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which substantially gutted the NLRA. Most notably, Taft-Hartley bans "sympathy strikes" – when unions walk out in support of one another. Sympathy strikes are a hugely powerful way for workers to claim value away from bosses and investors, which is why bosses got rid of them.

But even then, bosses who were honest with themselves would admit that they preferred life under the NLRA to life before it. Remember: labor militancy created the NLRA, not the other way around. When workers didn't have the legal means to organize, they organized by illegal means. When they didn't have legal ways of striking, they struck illegally. The result was pitched battles, even bloodbaths, as cops beat and even killed labor organizers. Bosses hired thugs who committed mass murder – literally. In 1913, strikebreakers working for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company started a stampede during a union Christmas party that killed 73 people, including many copper miners' children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster

Workers didn't take this lying down. Violence was met with violence. Bombs went off outside factories and stately mansions. There was gunfire and arson. Bosses had to hire armed guards to escort them as they scurried between their estates and their fancy parties and their executive offices. The country was in a state of near-perpetual chaos.

The NLRA created a set of rules for labor/boss negotiations – rules that helped workers claim a bigger slice of the pie without blood in the streets. But the NLRA also had benefits for bosses: unions were obliged to play by its rules, if they wanted to reap its benefits. The NLRA didn't just put a ceiling over boss power – it also put a ceiling over worker militancy. Von Clausewitz says that "war is politics by other means," which implies that politics are war by other means. The alternative to politics isn't capitulation, it's war.

Trump has torn up the rules to the labor game, but that doesn't mean the game ends. That just means there are no rules.

The labor movement has many great organizer/writers, but few can match the incredible Jane McAlevey, who died of cancer last summer (rest in power). In her classic A Collective Bargain, McAlevey describes her organizer training, from a tradition that went back to the days before the National Labor Relations Act:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey was very clear that labor law owes its existence to union power, not the other way around. She explains very clearly that union organizers invented labor law after they invented unions, and that unions can (and indeed, must) exist separately from government agencies that are charged with protecting labor law. But she goes farther: in Collective Bargain, McAlevey describes how the 2019 LA Teachers' Strike didn't just win all the wage and benefits demands of the teachers, but also got the school district to promise to put a park or playground near every school in the system, and got a ban on ICE agents harassing parents at the school gates.

This wildly successful strike forged bonds among teachers, and between teachers and their communities. These teachers went on to run a political get-out-the-vote campaign in the 2020 elections and elected two Democratic reps to Congress and secured the Dems' majority. McAlevey contrasted the active way good unions involve workers as participants with the thin, anemic way that the Democratic Party engages with supporters – solely by asking them for money in a stream of frothing, clickbait text messages. As McAlevey wrote, "Workplace democracy is a training ground for true national democracy."

Militant labor doesn't just protect labor rights – it protects human rights. Remember: MLK, Jr was assassinated while campaigning for union janitors in Memphis. LA teachers ended ICE sweeps at the school gates. Librarian unions are leading the fight against book bans.

The good news is that public opinion has swung wildly in favor of unions over the past decade. More people want to join unions than at any time in generations. More people support unions that at any time in generations.

The bad news is that union leadership fucking suuuuuuuucks. As Hamilton Nolan writes, union bosses are sitting on vast, heretofore unseen warchests of cash, and they just experienced a four-year period of governmental support for unions unheard of since the Carter administration, and they did fuck all with that opportunity:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/confirmed-unions-squandered-the-biden

Big unions have effectively stopped trying to organize new workers, even when workers beg them for help forming a union. Union organizing budgets are so small as to be indistinguishable from zero. Despite the record number of workers who want to be in a union, the number of workers who are in a union actually fell during the Biden years.

Indeed, some union bosses actually campaigned for Trump, a notorious scab. Teamsters boss Sean O'Brien spoke at the fucking RNC, a political favor that Trump repaid by killing the NLRB and every labor enforcement action and investigation in the country. Nice one, O'Brien. See you in hell:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/teamster-union-trump/679513/

Union bosses squandered a historical opportunity to build countervailing power. Now, Trump's stormtroopers are rounding up workers with the goal of illegally deporting them. Fascism is on the rise. Labor and fascism are archenemies. Organized labor has always been the biggest threat to fascism, every time it has reared its head. That's why fascists target unions first. Union bosses cost us an organized force that could effectively defend our friends and neighbors from Trump's deportation stormtroopers:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-01-28-trumps-lawbreaking-also-aimed-at-workers/

Not every union boss is a scab like O'Brien. Shawn Fain, head of the UAW, won an historic strike against all three of the Big Three automakers, and made sure that the new contracts all ran out in 2028, and called on other unions to do the same, so that the country could have a general strike in 2028 without violating the Taft-Hartley Act (Fain was operating on the now-dead assumption that unions had to play by the rules):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/11/rip-jane-mcalevey/#organize

A general strike isn't just a strike for workers' rights. Under Trump, a general strike is a strike against Trumpism and all its horrors: kids in cages, forced birth, trans erasure, climate accelerationism – the whole fucking thing.

A general strike would build the worker power to occupy the Democratic Party and force it to stand up for the American people against oligarchy, rather than meekly capitulating to fascism (and fundraising), which is all they know how to do anymore:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs

But before we can occupy the Dems, we have to occupy the unions. We need union bosses who are committed to signing up every worker who wants workplace democracy, and unionizing every workplace in spite of the NLRB, not with its help. We need to go back to our roots, when there were no rules.

That's the world Trump made. We need to make him regret that decision.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Heritage Foundation ghostwriting federal policy, forgetting to scrub metadata https://old.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1ibbbh7/this_was_posted_about_opm_in_our_union_chat/m9hlrnj/ (h/t Some Guy)
How to Take Notes (& Why) https://garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/how-to-take-notes-and-why (h/t John Naughton)
ur fascism by umberto ecco https://wilwheaton.net/2025/01/ur-fascism-by-umberto-ecco/

A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Quicken disables the software you paid for to force paid upgrades https://memex.craphound.com/2005/01/29/quicken-disables-the-software-you-paid-for-to-force-paid-upgrades/

#20yrsago Amazon and Macmillan go to war: readers and writers are the civilian casualties https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/books/review/tool-for-thought.html

#20yrsago Katamari Damacy made from paper https://fccafe-fc2web-com.translate.goog/ptamacy.html?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en

#15yrsago Anvil! the Story of Anvil, a real-world Spinal Tap documentary that will have you laughing, crying and rocking out https://memex.craphound.com/2010/01/28/anvil-the-story-of-anvil-a-real-world-spinal-tap-documentary-that-will-have-you-laughing-crying-and-rocking-out/

#15yrsago Tesco store bans grocery-shopping in pyjamas https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8484116.stm

#10yrsago Canada’s spies surveil the whole world’s downloads https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cse-tracks-millions-of-downloads-daily-snowden-documents-1.2930120

#10yrsago United website breach let fliers see each others’ private data https://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/28/united-website-breach-let-fliers-see-each-others-private-data/

#10yrsago Greece’s new finance minister used to be Valve’s games economist https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/greeces-new-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-valves-former-steam-market-economist-1485336

#5yrsago The Catholic Church broke its promise to publish a list of “credibly accused” abuser priests, so Propublica did it for them https://www.propublica.org/article/catholic-leaders-promised-transparency-about-child-abuse-they-havent-delivered#175404

#5yrsago Ajit Pai promised that killing net neutrality would spur network investment, but instead Comcast cut spending by 10.5% https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/ajit-pai-promised-faster-broadband-expansion-comcast-cut-spending-instead/

#5yrsago The “ops lessons we all learn the hard way” https://www.netmeister.org/blog/ops-lessons.html

#5yrsago After ransomware took Baltimore hostage, Maryland introduces legislation that bans disclosing the bugs ransomware exploits https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/good-news-maryland-bill-would-make-ransomware-a-crime/

#5yrsago What happens when you steadily ramp up the speed at which you listen to podcasts https://onezero.medium.com/i-tried-listening-to-podcasts-at-3x-and-broke-my-brain-d8823edecb7c

#5yrsago “The Art of Computer Designing”: stark, beautiful black-and-white images from 1993 https://archive.org/details/satoArtOfComputerDesigning/page/119/mode/2up

#5yrsago “A piece of shit”: Government report on Wells Fargo corruption shows top executives’ direct complicity in millions of acts of fraud https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-27/wells-fargo-scandal

#5yrsago Remembering the Awhatukee House of the Future, a “shining home of dreams” that became a $3 tourist trap https://the-haunted-closet.blogspot.com/2020/01/awhatukee-house-of-future-1980-1984.html

#1yrago I assure you, an AI didn't write a terrible "George Carlin" routine https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, holding a mic.

Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14
https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels
Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow
Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18
https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing
Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989
Picks and Shovels at Another Story (Toronto), Feb 23
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259
Ursula Franklin Lecture (Toronto), Feb 24
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929
Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779
Picks and Shovels (Penn State), Feb 27
https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf
Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop (Doylestown, PA), Mar 1
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419
Picks and Shovels at Red Emma's (Baltimore), Mar 2
https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/
Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel (Richmond, VA), Mar 5
https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305
Picks and Shovels at First Light Books (Austin), Mar 10
https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1
Picks and Shovels at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Mar 13
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/
Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
https://cloudfest.link/
Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189
ABA Techshow (Chicago), Apr 3
https://www.techshow.com/
Morgenstern (Bloomington), Apr 4
https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow
Teardown 2025 (PDX), Jun 20-22
https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025
DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)

https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1014?autostart=false

Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley (How To Academy)
https://www.ivoox.com/en/novelist-and-activist-cory-doctorow-fear-and-audios-mp3_rf_138898836_1.html
A radical plan to fight U.S. tariffs and build an export industry jailbreaking consumer products from iPhones to tractors (CBC Day 6)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-14-day-6/clip/16123612-a-radical-plan-fight-u.s.-tariffs-build-export
Right to Repair with Karen Sandler (Software Freedom Conservancy):
https://videos.trom.tf/w/q1AAL629GYMFtN6nCy15WE

A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)

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#/.

A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)
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: The Weight of a Feather (The Weight of a Heart) https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/01/26/the-weight-of-a-…eight-of-a-heart/

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