Muskovites: Followers of Musk
Closeted: HIdden
@annaleen So, @pluralistic has been making the excellent point in his recent round of Chokepoint Capitalism interviews that there are things of value and merit which are not well served by framing in property and financial terms.
Children, as one example (he uses this).
It's not novel, but is jarringly discordant with much mainstream narrative.
Edit: Removed repetitive repetitititive phrasing, used better words.
@dredmorbius @annaleen @pluralistic @Tayhatmaker
Give us the link Doc. Do you expect us to find ourselves?
@n00b Hah.
Give me a sec, he's done a lot of podcasts, and I've listened to a bunch as well.
There's some discussion in the book (Chokepoint Capitalism), chapter 19, though not quite the same as he framed it in the interview.
I think this was either the New Books Network or Pitchfork Economics interviews:
PE: https://pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/chokepoint-capitalism-with-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/
@n00b OK, it's not the NBN interview.
Listening to Cory again, which really is a pleasure. What's striking me increasingly is that he combines a technical understanding, social and societal perspective, wordcraft, and an awareness of the importance of finding slogans and labels for complex ideas to communicate them to a large audience. That's ... rare.
The more so not doing so as a shill for wealth and power.
@n00b Might also have been Darts & Letters:
https://dartsandletters.ca/2022/12/12/ep70-chokepoint-capitalism-ft-cory-doctorow/
I've got that queued up for a re-listen as well.
@n00b So, for those following this saga ...
... Pitchfork Economics has a transcript, and doesn't include the bit:
https://pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/chokepoint-capitalism-with-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/
I'm leaning toward Darts & Letters. Give me another hour or so to confirm ;-)
Re-listening all the same, again, it's good stuff.
One passage particularly:
One of the things that I find myself talking to colleagues of mine who are anti-authoritarians about is this idea that the larger the firms are that the state wants to regulate, the larger the state has to be to sort of impedance match them. The IBM outspent the DOJ for 12 consecutive years from 1970 to 1982, bought more antitrust lawyers in the whole US government combined just for this one case that they were on, which meant that the state had to have an army of lawyers.
And if you are a small state anti-authoritarian, then you also need to be a small corporation person because otherwise you need a state that’s… The only way you deal with Baidu or Tencent is to be the CCP. A smaller, less muscular state isn’t going to be able to check that power.
(In link above.)
I will critique the notion that economics fails to address power at all, though the qualification of neoliberal economics failing to do so is valid.
But if you Actually Read Adam Smith, you'll stumble across this passage, early in The Wealth of Nations and in one of the first discussions of wealth:
"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.
That is, Smith actually gets this. Mind, I completed an undergraduate degree in economics without coming across this (though yes, Smith was an assigned text, though supplementary and not actually referenced to any extent in coursework or lectures).
But yes, Doctorow and Giblin are doing excellent work here.
Corporate concentration has strained the labor market for virtually all workers, but the resulting lack of competition has caused unique harm to the creative economy. Increasingly exploitative monopolies have rendered artists, authors, musicians, and other creative workers all but powerless. Novelist Cory Doctorow and intellectual property expert Rebecca Giblin discuss their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, which documents the increasing tensions between extractive corporations and creative laborers, and offers solutions to help fight back against the devaluation of creativity.
@n00b OK, not Darts & Letters either.
This may have been an older interview.
(I'm wishing AntennaPod had a notes/tags feature, because I'd have noted or tagged this if I could have.)
@dredmorbius @annaleen @pluralistic @Tayhatmaker
I fell like I gave you a job over christmas. And that makes me a bad person.
If you are still having fun I am enjoying all the things and will consume them as I can
But the running commentary is the best. Love you.
@n00b Hah!
No, really, my pleasure, and question-directed exploration of topics (and revisiting discussions or articles) is handy.
I'd be listening to pods anyway, it's just a matter of which ones.
@n00b OK, no podcast (yet), though I've at least found a highly similar statement.
2008 Guardian essay, "'Intellectual Property' is a silly euphemism":
But there's plenty of stuff out there that's valuable even though it's not property. For example, my daughter was born on February 3, 2008. She's not my property. But she's worth quite a lot to me. If you took her from me, the crime wouldn't be "theft". If you injured her, it wouldn't be "trespass to chattels". We have an entire vocabulary and set of legal concepts to deal with the value that a human life embodies.
What's more, even though she's not my property, I still have a legally recognised interest in my daughter. She's "mine" in some meaningful sense, but she also falls under the purview of many other entities - the governments of the UK and Canada, the NHS, child protection services, even her extended family - they can all lay a claim to some interest in the disposition, treatment and future of my daughter. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/intellectual.property
It's possible there was an interview near this time that I'd listened to lately (I've been hunting Cory appearances across my many, many subscriptions). I'll ping again if it turns up.
There's also a good discussion of property with @Rushkoff on Team Human, Ep. 131, "The Oligarchy's Operating System" (2019):
https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-131-cory-doctorow-the-oligarchys-operating-system/
@n00b And for the counterveiling argument:
"Distributing Children As Property: The Best Interest Of The Children Or The Best Interest Of The Parents?"
@coelliptic "Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things" is an excellent take on that.
(NB: the title is sardonic / sarcastic in the extreme.)
I saw an article in my dad’s morning newspaper about Prodigy. And I obviously wanted to read it immediately because I already felt this was an important, powerful thing that I loved. This ability to talk to other people and connect with them without cruelty or judgment.
The headline was: PRODIGY SAYS: STOP TALKING TO EACH OTHER AND START BUYING THINGS ...
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34101694
By Catherynne M. Valente (@catvalente)
@Tayhatmaker @annaleen @pluralistic
#CatherynneMValente #StopTalkingToEachOther #StartBuyingThings #SocialMedia #Prodigy
@annaleen A lesson I was very slow to learn from such folks was that arguing with them was absolutely pointless.
Or slightly more accurately: the most compelling arguments were using the tools beneficially. That might involve generating revenue, or not. But as it became clear that Free Software was 1) capable, 2) useful, 3) a foundation of viable activities, organisations, and businesses and 4) wasn't going away, the objections eventually fell.
I still trust Microsoft not at all, but it is now a participant in the FS/OSS world it once declared a cancer.
@Tayhatmaker @annaleen Just please keep at least a *little* suspicion, because you know they'll try shit. Japan's major instances, all owned by ... somebody, can that Happen Here?
https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/suspicious_chicken_despicable_me.gif
@not2b @mjfgates @Tayhatmaker @annaleen
If wonder how this might change when #tumblr joins the #fediverse, bringing along their 300 million active users. That's nearly 100x the current mastodon user base!!
@mshiltonj @not2b @mjfgates @Tayhatmaker @annaleen
Is there a plan for this to happen?
@cavyherd @not2b @mjfgates @Tayhatmaker @annaleen
The owner of the tumblr has said they're working on it.
@mjfgates @Tayhatmaker @annaleen
Oh absolutely. I have a big ghost in the back of my mind, rattling chains & wailing "There will be unanticipated (though probably obvious in retrospect) faaaaillurrre moooodesss" 👻
picking a server is almost exactly as fraught as picking a neighborhood to live in, only it's somewhat easier to move if/when you figure out that the neighbors aren't kind.
similarly, people with privilege can pretty safely just throw a dart at a map and come out okay; people with less privilege usually have to check with their own personal networks -- is it safe for me to be myself in this neighborhood? would the neighbors call the cops on me for walking my dog?
UX for Mastodon is substantially the same as Twitter, honestly, at least on the web.
and yes, all the problems about safety for marginalized people that I'm pointing to here are the same ones everybody would have jumping to, say, Post, or Hive -- except that you don't get a choice about neighborhoods; it's more like immigrating to a new _country_ .
Still gotta check your networks about whether you're safe, but moving out if it's not working is _much harder_ .
@trochee @annaleen @Tayhatmaker I should read up because I heard it was easier to pick-up and move on Mastodon (and keep the addresses of followers and let them link back).
Prompts me to want simply a distributed *address* system. Just give every citizen nationally, or persons globally, a range of IP addresses. (Here's where I get over my skis) Then have people use some sort of blockchain-assured index for swapping addresses.
<rant>Corps can pay their taxes if they want an IP address!</rant>
@alakest @annaleen @Tayhatmaker it *is* pretty easy to move! You just can't move your posts, only your followers.
I used to be [email protected] until I decided i didn't want to live in the District One of the mastodon network
Ah. A hassle to not be able to move posts, but, if they're intermingled with replies one didn't author, I can see how it's tricky.
@trochee @annaleen @Tayhatmaker
Ah. It's the post-moving. Gotcha.
I definitely don't think blockchain is some magic sauce to go on everything, just figured it'd be a way a system didn't get spammed with requests for address change by keeping a ledger of "over-requesters". I'm no expert so...<shrug>
@not2b Not just posts, but replies to those posts.
I've ... somewhat exploited this with my Really Bad Rickroll, which every once in a while gets re-boosted (admittedly, several times by me in). I'm spared the Notifications Storm that results ( a few thousand in the most recent instance).
But this means I'm also potentially missing responses to more substantive posts, and that gives me a sad.
@Guinnessy @Tayhatmaker @annaleen when i said "move is easy" i meant from one mastodon instance to another.
In this respect, Twitter (and Post, Hive, etc) are the polities within the Infomocracy that have refused to let their citizens change centenals or agitate to induce their centenal to change coalitions (cf Malka Older's book by the same name)
@Guinnessy @Tayhatmaker @annaleen
Tumblr offering ActivityPub, and major press setting up instances, may be the crack in the dam that turns those corporate polities into outsider states
Long live the new Republic, and long live the Resistance, even then!
Indeed! Do you know, by the way, if M Older has found her way over here yet?
My best takes on the Fediverse all owe something to INFOMOCRACY
Sandy
Annalee Newitz 🍜
Americanist4U
Rather Not
Joie Marie 🇺🇸🇺🇦❤️
taylor hatmaker
Doc Edward Morbius ⭕
John Mastodon
coelliptic
Daniel Solis
mjfgates
Joe ❌👑
Steven Hilton
Cavyherd
Richard
SallyTAB
Jeremy Kahn
Alakest
Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 🕐 CET
Dominique Julia
Paul Guinnessy
SpeakerToManagers
Irina
Gretchen Anderson
toxtethogrady
Karoli 
Bob Calhoun
Kashmir Hill