Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth: From each according his ability (to pay).

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11473847…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-06-24 13:02:53

Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges customers different sums based on inferences about their willingness to pay. But when a firm sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're valuing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/pri…

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Pluralistic: Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth (24 Jun 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}

Hey look at this

* The Stark Fist of Removal (1982) in book form with many new extras subgenius.com/scatalog/books.h…

* Scrambled Eggs and Paralyzed Policy: Breaking Up Consummated Mergers and Dominant Firms papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… (h/t Matt Stoller)

* The McMansionization of the White House, or: Regional Car Dealership Rococo: a treatise patreon.com/posts/mcmansioniza…

* SnapNotSell snapnotsell.netlify.app

* Engineered Estrangement bylinesupplement.com/p/enginee…

4/

#20yrsago Notes from fight to turn WIPO into a humanitarian agency web.archive.org/web/2005090307…

#20yrsago Software patents are bad for coders like literary patents would be for writers web.archive.org/web/2005062202…

#20yrsago WIPO Development Agenda meeting docs photographed and posted web.archive.org/web/2005112709…

#20yrsago Dear Kansas: Why stop at “Intelligent Design?” What about Spaghetti Monsters? web.archive.org/web/2005062601…

5/

#15yrsago Blacksad: hardboiled detective fiction about anthropomorphic animals (no, really) memex.craphound.com/2010/06/21…

#15yrsago White House guts bill that would rein in CEO salaries; you can stop them aaronsw.com/weblog/proxyreform

#15yrsago New Apple terms allow them to collect and share your “precise, real-time location” web.archive.org/web/2010062216…

#10yrsago Doctoral dissertation in graphic novel form spinweaveandcut.com/unflatteni…

6/

#10yrsago EU set to kill street photography medium.com/vantage/freedom-of-…

#5yrsago The politicization of K-pop stans pluralistic.net/2020/06/21/sta…

#5yrsago Yahoo is a deadbeat billionaire zombie pluralistic.net/2020/06/21/sta…

#1yrago Neither the devil you know nor the devil you don't pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off…

7/

Yesterday's threads: The case for a Canadian wealth tax; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11473337…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-06-23 15:27:20

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: The case for a Canadian wealth tax; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/06/23/bil…

#Pluralistic

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Pluralistic: The case for a Canadian wealth tax (23 Jun 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}

My last nationally bestselling novel was "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench.

us.macmillan.com/books/9781250…

Signed copies from Chevalier's Books:

chevaliersbooks.com/product-pa…

--

My latest nonfiction book is "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" from Verso Books:

seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Signed copies available from Book Soup:

booksoup.com/book/978180429124…

Both are national bestsellers!

9/

The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Hardcover) | Book Soup

A USA TODAY BESTSELLERWinner of the 2024 Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity"An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s …

^{www.booksoup.com}

My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

craphound.com/shop/

10/

Upcoming appearances:

* #London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
howtoacademy.com/events/cory-d…

* #Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-…

* #Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 4
uk.coop/events-and-training/ev…

* Virtual: ORG at 20: in conversation with Maria Farrell, Jul 16
openrightsgroup.org/events/org…

* #DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8
politics-prose.com/cory-doctor…

11/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #SanFrancisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
app.gopassage.com/events/docto…

* #NewOrleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
contraflowscifi.org/

* #SanFrancisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
app.gopassage.com/events/docto…

12/

Recent appearances:

* If We Had a Choice, Would We Invent Social Media Again? (The Agenda/TVO)
youtube.com/watch?v=KJw38uIcmE…

* Forward Kentucky
youtube.com/watch?v=LpMxBBMBkZ…

* Democrats Abroad
creators.spotify.com/pod/profi…

13/

You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/pri…

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14/

I'm at the end of my 24-city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*!

Catch me in #LONDON with RILEY QUINN from #TRASHFUTURE on July 1:

howtoacademy.com/events/cory-d…

And in #MANCHESTER at Blackwell's Bookshop on July 2:

eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-…

eof/

"The path to saving the world and our species arguably lies through strengthening other countries to resist American psychos and protect the planet from the consequences of their brainwormed leadership"

Well Said Sir!