Let's ease into it with some whimsy: a #DeathMetal cover of #JohnCage's 4'33" from Dead Territory. Warning, once you hear them perform this banger, it'll be stuck in your head all day, especially in those quiet moments of reflection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEG4JiOqew

Those guys go *hard*. You know who else goes hard? *Billionaires*. Especially when they're bribing judges.

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The #ClarenceThomas/#SamuelAlito bribery scandal prompted the Supremes to proffer an entirely ornamental and toothless code of conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/17/red-team-black-robes/#security-theater

It takes a *lot* of work to create an accountability mechanism than the system that other federal judges answer to. The #JudicialConference oversees the rest of the federal bench, and it's far too flimsy to qualify as a paper tiger - maybe a toilet-paper kitten?

https://www.propublica.org/article/judicial-conference-scotus-federal-judges-ethics-rules

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Here's how weak the ethics code for non-SCOTUS federal judges is: 100 members of the US federal judiciary enjoyed 251 luxury junkets paid for by two billionaire-controlled dark money orgs:

https://www.levernews.com/billionaires-are-bankrolling-judges-luxury-travel/

The #AntoninScaliaLawSchool ("the finest in legal education") funneled money from its wealthy backers to judges on 152 occasions, paying for transport, meals and/or lodging. The #FederalistSociety did the same on at least 99 occasions.

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Gifts from these two orgs constitute 42% of all judicial disclosures from the entire judiciary. While some of these trips took judges to GMU's campus, the majority of these junkets were sited at tropical beauty-spots at fancy resorts.

No other organization does anything remotely similar and not every judge gets to enjoy Fedsoc and GMU hospitality - just the ones who produce rulings favorable to the organizations' backers.

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Oligarchy takes many forms, but it is a single project: the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few. This isn't an easy sell. The manifest problems of organizing our society to benefit a few wealthy people at the expense of the rest of us mean that the system's legitimacy is constantly crumbling and must be continuously shored up.

Take the US "health" system, unique on the world stage for how much it costs and how little it delivers.

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As with other American pathologies (like, say, internet access), US health care is more expensive and less effective than rivals (however, it is more *lucrative* than those systems).

And yet...the US health insurance system keeps finding new depths of sleaze to plumb. From #PatrickMRucker, #DorisBurke and #DavidArmstrong for #CapitolForum and @ProPublica: a deeply reported story of the worst doctors in America and their indispensable role for insurers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/malpractice-settlements-doctors-working-for-insurance-companies

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Doctors are overwhelmingly highly trained, ethical professionals who want to help their patients. But they are often thwarted by insurers, who deny their recommended treatments as unnecessary. When patients complain that corporate bean-counters are overriding their medical professionals' advice, the insurers insist that nothing of the sort is taking place.

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Your claims aren't being denied by an algorithm or an accountant - rather, they're being individually reviewed by another qualified MD, who's helping you avoid #AllopathicRisk by offering a second opinion and keeping you safe from unnecessary interventions.

It's true that insurance companies pay trained doctors to assess (and deny) claims - but *which* doctors do they employ?

Absolute fucking *butchers*.

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*Propublica* found that insurance companies are the preferred second act for MDs who have lost their medical licenses and their malpractice insurance after repeatedly, egregiously maiming and killing their patients. These doctors bumbled their way out of the ability to see patients, and now they get paid big bucks to *review 10,000 cases per year* and override the judgments of their competent, still-practicing peers.

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Only in America! These docs killed with scalpels and prescription pads, and now they get to continue to hurt the sick and injured with a DENIED rubber-stamp.

Oligarchy makes everything worse - even Twitter, a thing that was objectively *very bad* before it was acquired by a fool who found greater fools to bankroll his folly. An excellent package in *The @verge* lays out a timeline of bad-to-worse, leavened with some of the better moments:

https://www.theverge.com/c/23972308/twitter-x-death-tweets-history-elon-musk

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Musk didn't inaugurate Twitter's #enshittification, but he sure speedran it. The sudden platform collapse syndrome he brought to the hellsite prompted a mass exodus, with millions of ex-Twitterers landing on Mastodon. Of course, not all of them stayed on Mastodon, which is a totally normal pattern for platform growth:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/

Far more interesting are the people who *wanted* to leave Twitter, but didn't.

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Bootlicker economists will tell you that your continued presence on a platform you loathe is a "#RevealedPreference," As David Roth says, the job of a neoclassical economist is to come up with new ways to say, "Actually, your boss is right."

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