❌

Normal view

Received — 11 September 2026 ⏭

Pluralistic: Inefficiency is bad, actually (11 Sep 2026)

✇Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
By: Cory Doctorow
11 September 2026 at 16:55


Today's links


A foil bowl of red jello on a red tablecloth, next to a shining spoon. Submerged in the jello is an elaborate watch movement.

Inefficiency is bad, actually (permalink)

The most reliable way to lose a political battle is to let your adversary define the terms. For example, if you're an artist and you let your boss define the fight over AI, he'll make it all about "IP" (not labor) and ask you to help secure a victory that will make him richer and you poorer:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/02/scrape-scrope-scrap/

If we want to win these important battles, we can't let our adversaries define them. That's the blunder we made 50 years ago, when we let the neoclassical economists redefine the problem of monopolies. Before the Carter era, the monopoly fight was about power. Monopolies had to be fought because wealth concentration would create "autocrats of trade," so powerful as to be beyond the reach of any regulator, any union, any competitor. Even if a company achieved its monopoly by being the best in the world – by making the best products at the best prices while paying the best wages – its power still needed blunting, lest it change its mind and start charging more, reducing quality, and paying less:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

The Chicago School economists who were catapulted to dominance by Reagan, Thatcher, et al won this debate by changing the frame. They insisted (as neoclassicals love to do) that economics is no mere social science, obsessed with squishy, qualitative matters like "power." Rather, economics was a natural science, like physics, in which everything important could be crystallized (which is to say, reduced) to an equation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences#Creation_and_funding

Economists call these equations "models," and they are famously impenetrable…unless you've had extensive training in economics. Once everything important about the economy was captured by abstruse equations, ordinary people's "feelings" about being squeezed, coerced, corralled or cheated were no longer germane:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/#harmful-dominance

Thus, competition enforcement was transformed: no longer was it an inquiry into the power that a company wielded or might amass through a merger. Rather, every competition question was a matter of solving an equation that would tell you whether the result would be "efficient":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/jitters/#brittleness

This framing was tactically brilliant. Once an economist pronounces a merger to be "efficient," everyone who opposes that merger can be dismissed as campaigning for an inefficient world. Who wants to live in an inefficient world?

But "efficiency" isn't a freestanding concept. A Martian observing the Earth through a powerful telescope could not tell you when a long line at the grocery store was "efficient" (because the wages saved by understaffing exceeded the lost business from customers who noped out and abandoned their shopping cart) and when it was "inefficient" (because the mom whose wait made her miss administering her kid's insulin ended up spending thousands on an emergency room visit).

In practice, an economist's "efficiency" is indistinguishable from "brittleness" and often crosses over into "cheating." The most "efficient" companies in the world have made an art out of locking in their customers, making it so hard to switch to a rival that customers tolerate declining quality, service and affordability:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/06/hotels-california/#the-eagles-were-optimists

During the pandemic, the "efficiency" of long supply-chains, low inventory, and bare-bones staffing was revealed as a form of societal immunocompromise, the annihilation of everything we need to survive when the status quo collapses, so that disaster always becomes calamity:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/01/factories-to-condos-pipeline/#stuff-not-money

Speaking this week on the Capitalisn't podcast, the heterodox economist Mariana Mazzucato unpacks her new book The Common Good Economy, and how its thesis reframes "efficiency" as a productivity question:

https://capitalisnt.com/episodes/can-capitalism-serve-the-common-good-ft-mariana-mazzucato-EODamLKT

Mazzucato describes how the economic fetish for efficiency and growth lacks specificity. Organizing a society around "growth" leads to a financialized economy, in which firms post growth by selling off the things they need to survive:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

It leads to an enshittification economy, where firms "grow" by making their products worse, as when Google adds five more ads to every Youtube video and makes search worse so you'll have to keep refining your queries, loading fresh ads every time:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

As with "efficiency," there's nothing wrong with "growth" (indeed, "de-growth" is a terrible slogan and a giant self-own for the climate movement). To smash gouging landlords, we need to grow the supply of housing stock, but if we flatten this to mean "number (of new condos) go up," we'll end up with a city full of half-built buy-to-rent condos that no one wants to pay for, much less live in:

https://www.mpamag.com/ca/mortgage-industry/market-updates/toronto-condo-buyers-abandon-units-worth-less-than-they-paid/524217

We need "growth" of batteries, solar panels, sea-walls, heat-pumps, insulation and recycling plants. We need "growth" of controlled burns, medical services, and gender-affirming care. We need "growth" of federated social media and non-American alternatives to productivity software.

This is where framing the debate is so important. We have to take back terms like "productivity," so it means "making things that we need more of," not "making more things." Governments can use taxation, procurement and regulation to coerce, convince, or woo private firms into producing these things – and governments can produce them directly.

The biggest barrier to a productive, resilient economy is corporate power. Smashing their power and building our own has to be our alpha and omega. We can't afford to spend our time arguing about whether a monopolist is "efficient." Efficiency does not render concentrated wealth and power safe for human civilization.

Once we reclaim productivity as "more of the things we want," we'll make it clear that replacing civil servants with AI chatbots is a loser policy. Mark Carney wants to fire tens of thousands of Canadian civil servants and replace them with defective LLMs on the grounds that these will cost less:

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/04/prime-minister-carney-launches-ai-all-canadas-new-national-artificial

But they will deliver less, too. The only thing public sector chatbots truly deliver is cynicism about the ability of the state to achieve anything:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600

After generations in which the private sector has been allowed to degrade into an extractive, hostage-taking, enshittifying, planet-torching existential risk, we need the public to believe that states can deliver excellence. What's more, any politician who oversees the delivery of excellence will be beloved by the public, who will reward that politician by backing the kind of wildly ambitious program we desperately need:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

As Mark Carney so eloquently said at Davos, as frightening as it is to have Trump "rupture" the old order, we should all be able to agree that the old order sucked and seize this opportunity to build something new and better:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/forum-institutional/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

I believe in Carneyism with all my heart – I just wish Carney did:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/30/rupture/#deeds-not-words

For all Carney's talk of a rupture and a better new world, his two signature strategies (besides replacing the civil service with chatbots) are retaliatory tariffs and importing Chinese EVs. Neither of these addresses Canada's resiliency and productivity deficits. If the retaliatory tariffs work, Canada goes back to getting its cars from America. If the China deal works, Canada swaps its USA risk for a China risk.

If Carney was actually interested in Carneyism, he'd use retaliatory tariffs and Chinese EVs to buy time while committing massive investment for building Canada's industrial capacity to manufacture the things that give other countries dangerous leverage. The problem with the old order was that it created a brittle system where one maniac elevated to a position of power could shatter everyone's peace and prosperity. The answer to that is not "a different maniac." It's also not two maniacs.

To be truly productive and efficient, Canada needs a competent, well-resourced civil service, not chatbots. It needs the capacity to build things that it can't afford to do without. Carney's failure to embrace Carneyism while insisting that he is delivering efficiency and growth is as clear an example of the risks of letting your enemies set the terms of the debate as you could ask for.

(Image: Martell, CC BY-SA 3.0; Horacio Cambeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0; modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Tell Canada to Reject Anti-Technology Bans https://web.archive.org/web/20010917020803/https://www.eff.org/alerts/20010907_eff_canada_cpdci_alert.html

#25yrsago Making Light on 9/11 https://web.archive.org/web/20010917012109/http://www.panix.com/~pnh/makinglight.html

#25yrsago Twin Towers survivor registry https://web.archive.org/web/20010914220549/https://www.shunn.net/okay/

#25yrsago Blame encryption for 9/11 https://web.archive.org/web/20010917024851/http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm

#20yrsago Lawbot: open expert system for legal “advice” https://web.archive.org/web/20061103200129/https://www.lawunderground.org/PortalCSVS/DesktopDefault.aspx

#20yrsago USPTO encloses 10MB of porn with trademark rejection https://web.archive.org/web/20061005074505/https://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0911061uspto1.html

#20yrsago German Pirate Party founded https://web.archive.org/web/20061011142613/http://www.piratenpartei-deutschland.de/index.php?id=50

#20yrsago Starbucks co-produces movie, then sells DVD https://web.archive.org/web/20060322021155/http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06013/637176.stm

#20yrsago How Hollywood’s MP in Canada financed her campaign https://web.archive.org/web/20061010121752/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1428/125/

#20yrsago Jimmy Wales to Beijing: Wikipedia won’t censor https://web.archive.org/web/20061004173945/http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1869074,00.html

#20yrsago Chumby chairman interview: squeezable, open bean-bag computer https://wifinetnews.com/archives/2006/09/podcast_21_chumbys_chairman_steve_tomlin.html

#15yrsago Judge: copyright troll showed “staggering chutzpah” in sending its own subpoenas to ISPs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/09/judge-sanctions-copyright-troll-attorney

#10yrsago Why Facebook’s “It’s too hard” excuse for Vietnam war photo takedown is bullshit https://web.archive.org/web/20160914214543/http://tinyletter.com/danhon/letters/s3e27-it-s-difficult

#10yrsago A socialist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, which used to be accompanied by Nazi salutes https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rules-about-how-to-address-us-flag-came-about-because-no-one-wanted-to-look-like-a-nazi-180960100/?no-ist

#1yrago Hate the player AND the game https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence

#1yrago Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


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

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 507 (14417 total).

  • "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Received — 25 August 2026 ⏭

Pluralistic: How Canada can help Americans and defeat America (23 Aug 2026)

✇Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
By: Cory Doctorow
24 August 2026 at 23:29


Today's links

  • How Canada can help Americans and defeat America: True Carneyism has never been tried.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: Brazil v AIDS drug patents; TSA v gel-bras; After the Siege (Russian); Names are hard; Layton's last message; Hospital bill secrets; "The Unraveling"; Friction cannot be reduced, only redistributed; Free Kevin; EFF v Barney; MP3tunes; "Ghosts With Shit jobs"; Ikea as dystopian design-fiction; Torturing "young conservatives"; Roald Dahl body yeast ale; Prisoners die of heat; Privacy v antitrust; The internet is boring (2001); TSA v explosive water; Internet Archive x 9/11; Peter Thiel x litigation financing startup; Universities v unions.
  • Upcoming appearances: Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
  • 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 Canadian flag, its elements replaced with circuit boards. In the foreground, a bent-double, exhausted Uncle Sam trudges over rocky terrain, shlepping a giant sack on his back. Centered in the maple leaf is the word SORRY.

How Canada can help Americans and defeat America (permalink)

As Canada is learning (the hard way), the "art" of all of Trump's deals can be summed up in a single word: "renege":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/22/table-flipper/#graveyard-of-indispensable-nations

In 2020, Donald Trump ripped up NAFTA, a trade deal that conferred a huge advantage to the USA at Canada's expense, and replaced it with CUSMA, a trade deal that was even more advantageous to America, and even worse for Canada. In 2024, after being elected for the second time, Trump publicly railed against CUSMA using the exact same language he'd used to decry NAFTA, branding it "a very bad deal" that needed to be shredded and renegotiated.

To that end, Trump declared sweeping tariffs on Canada's exports, thereby raising the costs Americans paid for many everyday goods, because while Canada does not ship a lot of finished products to the US, it is a key supplier of parts and materials, all of which were made instantly more expensive thanks to the Trump tariffs. Trump went on to insist that Canada should annex itself to the US, becoming the "51st State." His operatives openly meddled in Canadian separatist movements, backing the "Wexit" partisans who want to separate the oil-rich, boom/bust-plagued province of Alberta from Canada.

CUSMA was negotiated by Justin Trudeau's government, and Trump II's tariff war landed on Trudeau's successor, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, billed as a technocratic safe pair of hands who could be relied upon for sober, effective leadership.

Much to everyone's surprise, Carney – the epitome of a "Davos Man" – responded to the Trump tariffs by traveling to Davos and giving a fiery speech denouncing Trump and declaring a "rupture" that left the old world order dead:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/forum-institutional/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

Carney promised that Canada would go "elbows up" against America, with retaliatory tariffs, blockades and boycotts of key US exports. Cutting off this stream of goods would have the same effect on Canadians that Trump's tariffs had on Americans: raising prices. Unlike their American cousins, Canadians were far more tolerant of this increase in their cost of living, because, unlike Americans, Canadians believed the narrative that they were sacrificing for the good of their country against an existential threat from a fractious neighbour. Americans were far less willing to believe that Canada was somehow cheating the US or flooding the country with fentanyl.

"Elbows up" is largely a war of symbols, in which Canadians take pride in mastering the minute differences between "Product of Canada," "Made in Canada," "Assembled in Canada," and "Designed in Canada" so they can seek out maximal Canadianness in their consumption choices. There's even a kind of twisted honour in committing yourself to drinking Wayne Gretzky's shitty rye in preference to delicious American bourbon, a way to affirm your love of country with each astringent, metallic swallow.

When the trade war was confined to symbolic terrain, Carney's elbows remained reliably elevated. But outside the realm of symbols, Carney's elbows wilted.

Take the Digital Services tax, a plan to charge America's tax-evading tech giants a 3% levy to make up for the untaxed profits they keep by pretending to be Irish. So long as Trump's tech giants can dodge their tax obligations, they can always outcompete Canada's tech sector, who are expected to pay 38% federal and provincial tax.

American tech companies are closely allied with the Trump regime: they financed his campaign, conduct domestic and international surveillance for him, provide the software to administer his ethnic cleansing, and restrict access to software that helps Americans evade the armed secret police he sent into the streets to kidnap and disappear his enemies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

Trump repaid his tech giants by threatening Carney with still more tariffs unless he canceled the Digital Service Act, and Carney capitulated. Meanwhile, Carney raced to enact a plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with AI chatbots running American software on American chips:

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/04/prime-minister-carney-launches-ai-all-canadas-new-national-artificial

Canada's federal and provincial ministries are all entirely dependent on American cloud software, most notably Microsoft's Office 365, a package that Trump has fashioned into a geopolitical weapon, ordering Microsoft to shut down foreign officials who thwarted his plans, denying them access to all their data and cutting off their ability to communicate with the outside world:

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3

In other words, Canada is already terribly vulnerable to American cyberwarfare. Trump's tech companies don't have to hack into Canada's digital infrastructure to shut it down: they already control it. But – incredibly – Carney found a way to make this situation even worse, turning over key aspects of the digital back-end of Canada's military to Palantir, the tech company most closely aligned with Trump, whose CEO openly boasts that his company was founded to kill America's political enemies:

https://thedeepdive.ca/canada-military-palantir-license-deal/

Carney's symbolic gestures – memorable speeches and minor changes to consumption habits – are second to none. But when it comes to building a strong country that is resilient against the attacks we can all foresee (not least because Trump has repeatedly told us he intends to launch them), Carney himself becomes Carneyism's fiercest opponent:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/30/rupture/#deeds-not-words

It's not just the attacks that are foreseeable, alas. Trump can always be relied upon – to break his word. Carney repeatedly caved to Trump, and in response, Trump has hit Canada with massive new tariffs – 50%! Remember: the "art" of every Trump deal is renege:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/what-to-know-about-trumps-50-tariffs-on-canadian-goods-that-just-went-into-effect

Trump can also be relied upon to circle back to his fixations and obsessions. Decades ago, someone showed Trump a Mercator projection map of the Earth and he became obsessed with "yuge" Greenland, to the point where he is prepared to dissolve Nato and go to war with Europe to steal it from Denmark:

https://archive.is/3Q8nj

By the same token, Trump has long been publicly obsessed with the Gilded Age president William McKinley, who enacted sweeping tariffs at a time when the US economy was rapidly growing, a fact that lodged in Trump's brain and led him to believe that tariffs are a surefire growth-hack that will let him eliminate taxes on the wealthy without shutting down the country:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/business/trump-william-mckinley-tariffs/

Trump will still be obsessing about these idées fixes when he draws his last breath, gasping out "Greenland…tariffs" as he tumbles from his golden toilet, forehead and coronary arteries bulging from the strain of trying to pass a half-digested Big Mac with only a viscous paste of rectal mucus and Diet Coke to lubricate that final, unyielding bolus.

The fact that Trump is immune to learning from his mistakes (because that would require admitting that he made a mistake) does not bind Canada to do the same. Quite the contrary: Trump's inability to learn or reason means that if Canada engages in novel retaliatory tactics, it stands a good chance of flummoxing the Mad King, leaving him flat-footed and lumbering while it dekes him out and swarms past him.

Lucky for Canada, Trump's incontinent belligerence has opened up a large and diverse territory of novel tactics for conducting both geopolitical and economic policy. As November Kelly says, "Trump inherited a poker game rigged in his favour but he flipped over the table anyway because he resents having to pretend to play." The systems that Trump has dismantled as unfair to the US were, in fact, sources of tremendous advantage to America.

Take those tech companies that have fused so tightly with the Trump regime. These companies operate global monopolies that allow them to extract vast sums and even vaster troves of sensitive data from billions of people around the world. Having attained total economic dominance and total technical lock-in, these companies have embarked on a program of enshittification, squeezing their customers and suppliers for even more data and even more money:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

Under normal market conditions, the decay of these American platforms would invite competitors from around the world. The fact that Apple and Google extract 30% of every dollar spent in their app stores would bring forth new app stores who were willing to give better deals to app makers and app users. The fact that HP charges $10,000/gallon for the coloured water in its printers would invite competitors who were willing to take a mere 100,000% margin on ink.

The fact that Meta and Google and Microsoft and Apple spy on you with your devices and software and use that data to target you, manipulate you and overcharge you – and to train their AIs to steal from you even more efficiently – would create demand for privacy blockers, jailbreakers, and other "adversarial interoperability" tools that force your technology to work for you, even if the manufacturer wishes it were otherwise:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/01/redistribution-vs-predistribution/#elbows-up-eurostack

But we don't have "normal market conditions." For more than a quarter of a century, the US Trade Representative has demanded that all of America's trading partners – including Canada – enact "anti-circumvention" laws that make it a crime to alter how a digital device works unless the original (usually American) manufacturer consents.

In other words, it's illegal for some Waterloo grads to tap ambitious RIM millionaires for the seed capital to start a company that helps Canadians install Canadian app stores on their Canadian phones so when they buy things from other Canadians, all the money stays in Canada, without a 30% "app tax" being siphoned off by either Google or Apple.

That's right: in 2012, Canada passed a law that lets American companies use Canada's courts to destroy Canadian companies that help Canadian technology users get more out of their own property. This law – the Copyright Modernization Act – was wildly unpopular from the start. A federal consultation drew over 6,000 opposing comments, and only 53 comments in support of the bill. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper whipped the vote among his Conservative MPs and passed it, because he judged that tariff-free access to America's markets to be a price worth paying:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Trump's tariffs prove that this was a bad bargain. By voluntarily gluing its technological elbows to its sides, Canada made itself easy pickings for America's tech giants, who wiped out Canada's tech sector while making Canada geopolitically and economically dependent on – and vulnerable to – the US and its tech companies. Canada is long overdue for a reckoning with this blunder.

The best time to have made Canada digitally sovereign would have been before an American president announced his intention to annex Canada and began explicitly deploying America's tech companies to attack his geopolitical adversaries.

The second-best time is now.

By repealing Bill C-11 and legalizing reverse-engineering and modification of digital technology with consent of its users and in accordance with privacy, consumer and labour rights, Canada will gain a devastating counter to Trump's tariffs.

Not only will legalizing jailbreaking let Canadians get more out of their own property, it will turn America's tech trillions into Canada's tech billions – while making Canada digitally sovereign by facilitating the uncoupling of Canadian ministries, corporations, households, and devices from America's cloud. This is how Canada removes the digital kill switch it handed to America, a kill switch that can shut down its tractors, phones, and governments.

This is the best possible moment for such a move. To incubate a successful tech sector, you need a) an innovative product; b) skilled technologists; and c) capital. Thanks to Trump, Canada has all three.

First: innovative ideas. Thanks to the prohibition on modifying America's defective tech exports, there is a whole orchard of low-hanging fruit for product designers to pick from: an app that aggregates all of your streaming services into one place and lets you record shows to watch later, even if the service deletes them; reliable tools for using generic ink and independent app stores; new firmware for tractors and cars that facilitates independent repair and unlock subscription features, and, of course, privacy- and ad-blockers of all description. These are truly disruptive products, striking at the maddening antifeatures installed at the insistence of sclerotic, extractive tech bosses. Move fast and break their things!

Next: talent. Who will do that fast moving? Again, we can thank Trump for giving Canada an army of skilled technologists who have fled Silicon Valley one step ahead of an ICE chud who wanted to black-bag them and deport them to Liberia (or a Salvadoran slave-labor camp). Trump is creating the largest wave of reverse brain-drain in history, as everyone ambitious and smart realizes that their lifelong US tech work dream is a nightmare. If Canada can't get enough talent to harvest that orchard of low-hanging fruit from its returning Canadians, it need only open its borders to the skilled technologists of all nations who are racing out of America as fast as they can go.

Finally, money. The AI bubble collapse is imminent. The forces of capital are desperate for promising, high-return investment opportunities that aren't grossly overvalued, overhyped and underperforming AI companies. Even if you can find a company like that in America, it's increasingly apparent that to make that business a success, you will need to buy more $TRUMP coins than your rivals, lest Trump direct his agencies to destroy your fledgling business.

And here's the kicker: turning America's trillions into Canada's billions, moving fast and breaking America's tech-kings, fixing the defects in America's extractive tech exports? It's all good for Americans. Sure, cratering the share-price of America's Big Tech companies will be bad for America's retirement savers, but the median American worker only has $955 saved for retirement:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

Most Americans are far more exposed to the predatory conduct of US tech companies than they are to the share price of those companies. That's because Americans are the beta-testers for every ripoff and surveillance tool that Silicon Valley produces. Long before those tools get to Canada or find their way around the world, they are making Americans poorer and worse off.

Remember: Canada is America's second largest trading partner. Americans are really good at buying things from Canada – even when those things aren't allowed in America. Trump wasn't entirely wrong when he accused Canada of flooding America with drugs – but the drugs Canada sends to America aren't fentanyl and oxy. Canada sends America insulin and other cheap pharmaceuticals that cost 10-100x more in Ripoff America than they do in Canada. If Americans can figure out how to buy cheap generic meds from Canadians over the US Postal Service, they will be able to buy disenshittification tools from Canadians over the internet.

Selling Americans products that make their lives better is much better politics than boycotting American products that make Canadians' lives better. No politician can pursue a strategy of higher prices and lower living standards forever – not even if you've got a lot of "elbows up" rhetoric you can use to convince Canadians that they're doing their duty to the nation by paying more for everything. Paying more for everything to punish Americans is like punching yourself in the face as hard as you can and hoping the downstairs neighbours say "ouch."

When Canadians swap delicious American bourbon for Wayne Gretzky's shitty rye, they punish corn farmers in states that begin and end with a vowel – farmers who have nothing to do with Canada's problems. By swapping disenshittification for tariffs, Canadians can go back to drinking delicious bourbon, and make money from that farmer by selling him the jailbreaks he needs to fix his tractor without paying the John Deere tax of $200+ that the company charges after you do your own repair to send someone to the farm to type an unlock code into your console.

A lot of Very Serious Grown Up Canadians have told me that they think Carney should confine his response to Trump to toothless symbolic gestures, lest they make Trump mad. Trump is always mad. He gets mad at symbolic gestures. He gets mad if you point out that Ronald Reagan thought tariffs were stupid:

https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-raises-tariffs-canada-10-after-reagan-ad/story?id=126866712

Freeing Americans from the tyranny of their own tech companies has the power to create a partisan army of American Canada weebs who will fight for Canada when – not if – Trump gets mad at Canada. That's the best defense Canada can have – common cause and solidarity with the people of America, who share a common enemy in Trump, the least popular president in history, who is looting billions and letting his cronies destroy Americas' lives.

That's some real elbows up stuff. True Carneyism has never been tried – especially by Carney. It's long past time someone gave it a go.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Kevin Mitnick is out of prison https://web.archive.org/web/20010000000000*/https://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/story/0,23008,3343816,00.html

#25yrsago Brazil to nationalize AIDS drug patents https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/08/22/aids.drug/index.html

#25yrsago Copyright your DNA https://web.archive.org/web/20010827170510/http://www.cosmiverse.com/science08230102.html

#25yrsago The internet is boring now https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/us/exploration-of-world-wide-web-tilts-from-eclectic-to-mudane.html

#20yrsago TSA busts “explosive water” that turns out to be cosmetics https://web.archive.org/web/20060822123448/http://www.kxma.com/getARticle.asp?ArticleId=35223

#20yrsago Windows Media DRM cracked, no one cares https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/cmusings/2006/08/25/#a1889

#20yrsago Canadian music label puts fans and artists first https://web.archive.org/web/20060830211418/http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/nettwerk_pr.html

#20yrsago After the Siege in Russian https://craphound.com/Cory_Doctorow_-_After_the_Siege_Russian.html

#20yrsago Victory in War on Moisture: Gel-bras once again safe! https://web.archive.org/web/20060820185006/http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm

#20yrsago EFF sues Barney the humorless, copyright maximalist dinosaur https://web.archive.org/web/20060813093642/http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_08.php#004884

#15yrsago MP3tunes verdict: music lockers are legal https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/mp3tunes-victory-music-lockers-is-good

#15yrsago Lolita on Wikipedia: 2,300 edits later https://web.archive.org/web/20111008072145/http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/case-history-of-a-wikipedia-page-nabokov’s-lolita

#15yrsago SF mockumentary: ‘Ghosts With Shit Jobs’ — China looks at westerners with awful jobs https://ghostswithshitjobs.com/

#15yrsago Information consumes attention: focus in the age of abundant stimulus https://web.archive.org/web/20111113004501/http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/56793/

#15yrsago Jack Layton’s final public words: “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear.” https://web.archive.org/web/20110829050308/http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01310/Jack_Layton_s_lett_1310744a.pdf

#15yrsago Getting people’s names right in software design: a LOT harder than it looks https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/why-im-not-on-google-plus.html

#15yrsago Internet Archive’s cache of 24/7 TV footage from 9/11 and beyond https://archive.org/details/911

#10yrsago Peter Thiel & Y Combinator fund a “litigation financing” startup to make money off other peoples’ lawsuits https://gizmodo.com/a-startup-backed-by-peter-thiel-makes-bankrolling-civil-1785707590

#10yrsago Universities fought unionization’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ using identical arguments https://crookedtimber.org/2016/08/25/great-minds-think-alike/

#10yrsago 5 years after Texas GOP’s attack on women’s reproductive health, TX leads developed world in maternal mortality https://web.archive.org/web/20160820212602/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding

#10yrsago You didn’t find a meteorite https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/

#10yrsago Young Conservatives’ “leadership seminar” featured food & water deprivation, sexist epithets, physical abuse https://web.archive.org/web/20160824145226/https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/08/23/ontario-tories-apologize-to-party-activists-after-controversial-youth-seminar.html

#10yrsago The 2017 Ikea Catalog considered as dystopian urban microapartment futurism https://web.archive.org/web/20160817154440/https://www.fastcodesign.com/3062854/ikeas-2017-catalog-is-a-terrifying-glimpse-into-the-tiny-apartments-of-the-future

#10yrsago Singapore will disconnect entire civil service from the internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/24/singapore-to-cut-off-public-servants-from-the-internet

#10yrsago They’re making a Twits ale from Roald Dahl’s body-yeast https://web.archive.org/web/20160817154531/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/beer-to-be-made-from-yeast-swabbed-from-roald-dahls-writing-chair-a7195721.html

#10yrsago As America’s temperatures soar, prisoners are dropping dead https://web.archive.org/web/20160825000426/https://theintercept.com/2016/08/24/deadly-heat-in-u-s-prisons-is-killing-inmates-and-spawning-lawsuits/

#5yrsago Are privacy and antitrust on a collision course? https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/24/illegitimate-greatness/#peanut-butter-in-my-antitrust

#5yrsago What kind of emergency is our emergency? https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/23/dont-wanna-spoil-the-surprise/#monocausotaxophilia

#5yrsago The secrets of hospital bills https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/23/dont-wanna-spoil-the-surprise/#surprise

#5yrsago Belarusian dictator pwned by "cyber-partisans" https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/25/taxes-are-for-the-little-stores/#cyber-partisans

#5yrsago Big Box stores' other shoe drops https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/25/taxes-are-for-the-little-stores/#metastatic-parasites

#5yrsago The Unraveling https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/23/dont-wanna-spoil-the-surprise/#the-two-genders

#1yrago Friction cannot be reduced, it can only be redistributed https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/23/become-unoptimizable/#downward-redistribution

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


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

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 557 (9258 total).

  • "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Received — 30 May 2026 ⏭

Pluralistic: Carneyism without Carney (30 May 2026)

✇Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
By: Cory Doctorow
30 May 2026 at 11:31


Today's links

  • Carneyism without Carney: Eh?
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: Replacing pharma patents with bounties; USTR v cheap leukemia meds; Plutocrats x wealth segregation; Anonymous Analytics; Scott Walker sells off donors; Anonymization v metadata; Probably; Amazon warehouse workers are the future of Amazon coders; Warcraft eggs; Brainwashing school; People who don't know The Onion is satire; "Company Town"; America is a scam.
  • Upcoming appearances: London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh, South Bend.
  • 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 turn-of-the-century Main Street, USA. Over the horizon looms a giant Canadian flag, made out of circuitry. In the foreground is a pixelboard sign reading 'U.S. BORDER CLOSED.' In the foreground looms a giant lumberjack, about to swing his axe into the sign.

Carneyism without Carney (permalink)

The "Third Way" in liberal politics involves saying things that working people love, but doing things that sociopathic plutocrats love. It works …right up until voters notice that you're not doing the things. That realisation breeds cynicism and fury and paves the way for fascist strongmen.

It's really ugly, and no one does it uglier than Canada's Liberal Party. Remember that time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched with Greta Thunberg to protest Canada's shitty, planet-wrecking climate policies?

https://globalnews.ca/news/5959371/election-campaign-climate-march/

Gee, Justin – it sure would be great if you could have a word with the fella who decided to bail out America's doomed tar sands pipeline and vowed to pump and torch 173,000,000,000 barrels of Canadian oil:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-country-173-billion-barrels-203807530.html

Trudeau's "Third Way" eventually proved so unpopular that he opened the door to an authoritarian takeover of Canada by an otherwise totally unelectable, Trump-aligned far-right maniac. The only thing that saved Canada from a fate dumber than Trump was Trump himself, who wouldn't stop promising to make Canada the 51st state, an idea that was even more repellent to Canadians than five more years of Third Way bullshit:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pierre-poilievre-joe-rogan-podcast-143318576.html

And boy did Canadians find a Third Way bullshitter to move into 24 Sussex Drive: Mark Carney, an austerity-crazed central banker who will endorse incredibly progressive policies…provided he never has to do any of them. When it comes to championing working Canadians while royally screwing them, Carney is the only Canadian politician capable of out-Trudeauing Trudeau.

But we shouldn't reject Carneyism due to the mere fact that Carney refuses to deliver Carneyism. The problem with Carneyism isn't Carneyism itself – the problem with Carneyism is Mark Carney.

Take Carney's policy promise to charge US tech giants a 3% tax, a move that would defeat their incredibly clever gambit of pretending to be Irish and thus not owing any tax, anywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/17/erin-lets-go/#circumvention-haven

That was a good policy! So was Carney's "elbows up" policy of sticking it to America in retaliation for Trump's flagrant violation of CUSMA, the free trade agreement negotiated by (checks notes) one Donald J Trump:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/trump-carney-meeting-canada-tariffs-trade

Unfortunately, Mark Carney didn't get the memo from (checks notes) Mark Carney, and the very instant Trump arranged his face into his trademarked confused scowl, Carney dropped the tax, apologising profusely:

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/06/canada-rescinds-digital-services-tax-to-advance-broader-trade-negotiations-with-the-united-states.html

In the last days of the Trudeau government, the Liberals passed a bill that transformed Canada's Competition Bureau from the weakest antitrust regulator in the world into one of the strongest (on paper, at least):

https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/how-we-foster-competition/education-and-outreach/guide-june-2024-amendments-competition-act

It's impossible to overstate how useless the Competition Bureau was before this bill passed. In its entire history, the Bureau had only challenged three mergers, and had never successfully challenged a merger. Canada's do-nothing competition enforcers allowed the country to be captured by Made-in-Canada oligarchs whose ripoffs and abuses would make the Hudson's Bay Company blush:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/05/ted-rogers-is-a-dope/#galen-weston-is-even-worse

If Canada was ever going to be a real country (and not just two monopolists and a mining company in a trenchcoat) it needed a serious competition enforcer. Nominally, it has one, thanks to the 2024 Competition Act. The only problem was Carney, who made sweeping real-terms cuts to the Bureau's funding. Thanks to Carney, Canada has a Competition Bureau with all the powers it needs to save Canada from its oligarchs – but it can't afford to do any of that stuff.

Monopolists rip Canadians off like crazy. We even have a guy who mistook Les Miz for an HBR case-study, and embarked upon the country's worst-ever price-fixing campaign, gouging the country on bread prices:

https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/the-bread-price-fixing-scandal-is

You don't have to be a monopolist to steal from Canadians. Ripping off Canadians is the game everyone can play! Consumer protection agencies are incredible value for money, saving the public hundreds for every dollar that we spend on them. Guess who just eliminated Canada's consumer protection agency?

https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/carney-government-slashes-consumer

Oh, to be a scammer in Mark Carney's Canada! Whatever Galen Weston doesn't steal is yours for the taking!

But again, the problem isn't Carneyism – the problem is Carney. Carneyism is great. Carneyism gave us that remarkable speech at Davos, where Mark Carney declared a "rupture" in the US-dominated global system of trade and politics, promising a future of "minilateralism" in which "middle powers" like Canada band together for mutual prosperity:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

If only Mark Carney had been there to hear those stirring words! He might have understood what a fucking insane idea it is to turn over Canada's military to Palantir, the company that, more than any other, has fused itself with the Trump regime's domestic program of ethnic cleansing and its international program of extraterritorial aggression:

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadas-deal-with-us-data-giant-palantir-is-legitimate-defence-minister-says/article_e49b9c32-8f76-466c-86ed-36a4110ba45a.html

Carneyism isn't merely a rejection of the old international order. Domestically, Carneyism promises technocratic excellence, skilled leadership that delivers first-class services for the Canadian people. This is a great pitch! It got Mamdani elected, and Mamdani's sincere pursuit of governmental excellence thrills New Yorkers in new ways every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

Here, too, Carneyism is entirely sound – the problem is Carney's vicious anti-Carneyism and his plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with AI chatbots. It's not just that chatbots are terrible substitutes for skilled public officials, they're also controlled by US corporations that are entirely beholden to the Trump regime:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-artificial-intelligence-strategy-9.7213733

Unlike Mark Carney, I support Carneyism. Carneyism promises protection for Canadians, from monopolists and mad emperors, petty thieves and potholes. But Carney himself ardently opposes these policies. This will only get worse when the AI bubble pops and vaporises a third of the US stock market, spreading contagion to global capital markets. That will be Carney's cue to roll out his favourite go-to tactic: austerity.

We cannot afford this. Austerity is how we lose the country. Austerity – more than any other force – drives working people into the arms of fascists:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/12/always-great/#our-nhs

The thing is, Mark Carney has shown his political opponents how to beat him: just embrace Carneyism. The things Carney says are incredibly popular. Now we just need to elect someone who'll do them.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago World of Warcraft Easter eggs https://web.archive.org/web/20060614223838/http://www.wow-europe.com/en/contests/noblegarden/winners.html

#15yrsago Bernie Sanders introduces anti-pharma-patent bill, aims to replace drug monopolies with prizes https://web.archive.org/web/20110528053922/http://keionline.org/node/1147

#15yrsago Life at a brainwashing “school for troubled teens” https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/hk0xy/a_gay_teen_describes_her_experience_at_a_utah/

#15yrsago Facebook updates from people who don’t know The Onion is a humor site https://literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com/

#10yrsago Untangling the Web: the NSA’s supremely weird, florid guide to the Internet https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/27/nsas-guide-to-internet-is-weirdest-thing-youll-read-today/

#10yrsago Company Town: Madeline Ashby’s tale of sex and Singularity cults is a locked-door mystery at sea https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/28/company-town-madeline-ashbys-tale-of-sex-and-singularity-cults-is-a-locked-door-mystery-at-sea/

#10yrago US trade rep threatens Colombia’s peace process over legal plan to offer cheap leukemia meds https://web.archive.org/web/20160725174757/https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/05/26/bernie-sanders-novartis-patent/

#10yrsago Security researcher discovers glaring problem with patient data system, FBI stages armed dawn raid https://dailydot.com/politics/justin-shafer-fbi-raid

#10yrsago Wealthy families are most responsible for American wealth segregation https://web.archive.org/web/20160530195842/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/10/the-incredible-impact-of-rich-parents-fighting-to-live-by-the-very-best-schools/

#10yrsago Someone just snuck warrantless email access into the Senate’s secret intelligence bill https://web.archive.org/web/20160526201753/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/26/secret-text-in-senate-bill-would-give-fbi-warrantless-access-to-email-records/

#10yrsago Wells Fargo, who preyed on black borrowers, sponsors Black Lives Matter luncheon https://web.archive.org/web/20160527184755/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/27/wells-fargo-sponsorship-of-black-lives-matter-panel-draws-scorn/

#10yrsago Anonymous Analytics: self-proclaimed Anon “faction” that tanks companies through stock reports https://web.archive.org/web/20160527155031/https://news.softpedia.com/news/anonymous-hackers-turned-stock-analysts-are-targeting-us-chinese-corporations-504495.shtml

#10yrsago Scott Walker, saddled with $1.2m debt from failed presidential bid, pawns his own donors https://ghanasoccernet.com/uk/2016/05/24/scott-walker-rents-out-donor-list-to-pay-campaign-debt/

#10yrsago Study shows detailed, compromising inferences can be readily made with metadata https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1508081113

#10yrsago EFF fights order to remove public records documents detailing Seattle’s smart-meters https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/may/26/court-grants-temporary-restraining-order-forcing-r/

#5yrsago Probably https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

#1yrago AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war

#1yrago America is a scam https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/28/cheaters-ever-prosper/#caveat-america

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


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

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

❌