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Today's links

• A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance: A final thought for the yule.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Droidflake; Spy Skymall; Malthus is a dope; Happy Public Domain Day 2025.
• 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 perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance (permalink)

I'm about to sign off for the year – actually, I was ready to do it yesterday, but then I happened upon a brief piece of writing that was so perfect that I decided I'd do one more edition of Pluralistic for 2025.

The piece in question is John Lanchester's "For Every Winner A Loser," in the London Review of Books, in which Lanchester reviews two books about the finance sector: Gary Stevenson's The Trading Game and Rob Copeland's The Fund:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/john-lanchester/for-every-winner-a-loser

It's a long and fascinating piece and it's certainly left me wanting to read both books, but that's not what convinced me to do one more newsletter before going on break – rather, it was a brief passage in the essay's preamble, a passage that perfectly captures the total social uselessness of the finance sector as a whole.

Lanchester starts by stating that while we think of the role of the finance sector as "capital allocation" – that is, using investors' money to fund new businesses and expansions for existing business – that hasn't been important to finance for quite some time. Today, only 3% of bank activity consists of "lending to firms and individuals engaged in the production of goods and services."

The other 97% of finance is gambling. Here's how Stevenson breaks it down: say your farm grows mangoes. You need money before the mangoes are harvested, so you sell the future ownership of the harvest to a broker at $1/crate.

The broker immediately flips that interest in your harvest to a dealer who believes (on the basis of a rumor about bad weather) that mangoes will be scarce this year and is willing to pay $1.10/crate. Next, an international speculator (trading on the same rumor) buys the rights from the broker at $1.20/crate.

Now come the side bets: a "momentum trader" (who specializing in bets on market trends continuing) buys the rights to your crop for $1.30/crate. A contrarian trader (who bets against momentum traders) short-sells the momentum trader's bet at $1.20. More short sellers pile in and drive the price down to $1/crate.

Now, a new rumor circulates, about conditions being ripe for a bounteous mango harvest, so more short-sellers appear, and push the price to $0.90/crate. This tempts the original broker back in, and he buys your crop back at $1/crate.

That's when the harvest comes. You bring in the mangoes. They go to market, and fetch $1.10/crate.

This is finance – a welter of transactions, only one of which (selling your mangoes to people who eat them) involves the real economy. Everything else is "speculation on the movement of prices." The nine transactions that took place between your planting the crop and someone eating the mangoes are all zero sum – every trade has an evenly matched winner and loser, and when you sum them all up, they come out to zero. In other words, no value was created.

This is the finance sector. In a world where the real economy generates $105 trillion/year, the financial derivatives market adds up to $667 trillion/year. This is "the biggest business in the world" – and it's useless. It produces nothing. It adds no value.

If you work a job where you do something useful, you are on the losing side of this economy. All the real money is in this socially useless, no-value-creating, hypertrophied, metastasized finance sector. Every gain in finance is matched by a loss. It all amounts to – literally – nothing.

So that's what tempted me into one more blog post for the year – an absolutely perfect distillation of the uselessness of "the biggest business in the world," whose masters are the degenerate gamblers who buy and sell our politicians, set our policy, and control our lives. They're the ones enshittifying the internet, burning down the planet, and pushing Elon Musk towards trillionairedom.

It's their world, and we just live on it.

For now.

(Image: Sam Valadi, CC BY 2.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Meta Is Considering Charging Business Pages To Post Links https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-considering-charging-business-pages-to-post-links/808099/

• The original Mozilla "Dinosaur" logo artwork https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/the-original-mozilla-dinosaur-logo-artwork/

• A Local Self-Reliance Agenda for New York City: ILSR’s Memo to Mamdani https://ilsr.org/articles/memo-mamdani/

• Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/epic-celebrates-the-end-of-the-apple-tax-after-appeals-court-win-in-ios-payments-case/

• The Internet’s Tollbooth Operators https://prospect.org/2025/12/10/internets-tollbooth-operators-wu-review/

• Barnum's Law of CEOs https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/12/barnums-law-of-ceos.html

• Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer https://archive.ph/wE2U7#selection-3936.0-3936.1

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Star Wars droidflake https://twitpic.com/3guwfq

#15yrsago TSA misses enormous, loaded .40 calibre handgun in carry-on bag https://web.archive.org/web/20101217223617/https://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7848683

#15yrsago Brazilian TV clown elected to high office, passes literacy test https://web.archive.org/web/20111217233812/https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmbXSjCjZBZ4z8VUcAZFCyY_n6dA?docId=CNG.b7f4655178d3435c9a54db2e30817efb.381

#15yrsago My Internet problem: an abundance of choice https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/dec/17/internet-problem-choice-self-publishing

#10yrsago LEAKED: The secret catalog American law enforcement orders cellphone-spying gear from https://theintercept.com/2015/12/16/a-secret-catalogue-of-government-gear-for-spying-on-your-cellphone/#10yrsago

#10yrsago Putin: Give Sepp Blatter the Nobel; Trump should be president https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/17/sepp-blatter-fifa-putin-nobel-peace-prize

#10yrsago Star Wars medical merch from Scarfolk, the horror-town stuck in the 1970s https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2015/12/unreleased-star-wars-merchandise.html

#10yrsago Some countries learned from America’s copyright mistakes: TPP will undo that https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/how-tpp-perpetuates-mistakes-dmca

#10yrsago No evidence that San Bernardino shooters posted about jihad on Facebook https://web.archive.org/web/20151217003406/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/12/16/fbi-san-bernardino-attackers-didnt-show-public-support-for-jihad-on-social-media/

#10yrsago Exponential population growth and other unkillable science myths https://web.archive.org/web/20151217205215/http://www.nature.com/news/the-science-myths-that-will-not-die-1.19022

#10yrsago UK’s unaccountable crowdsourced blacklist to be crosslinked to facial recognition system https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/pre-crime-arrives-in-the-uk-better-make-sure-your-face-stays-off-the-crowdsourced-watch-list/

#1yrago Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/#roast-in-piss-sonny-bono

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
  https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html

• Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937

• Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
  https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Enshittification on The Last Show With David Cooper:
  https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767

• (Digital) Elbows Up (OCADU)
  https://vimeo.com/1146281673

• How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet (Capitalisn't)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34gkIvYiHxU

• Enshittification on The Daily Show
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE

• Enshittification with Four Ways to Change the World (Channel 4)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQaEeuuI3Q

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "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).

• "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.

• "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

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

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

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: John Naughton (https://memex.naughtons.org/).

Currently writing:

• "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.

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

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Earlier this week, Vanity Fair published a two-part story about the Trump regime’s “inner circle”, including extensive interviews with his chief of staff, who was openly critical of the people that she works with, from Trump on down. The story caused a stir and so did the photos that accompanied the piece, taken by Christopher Anderson.

The Washington Post interviewed Anderson about the photos. The interview is interesting throughout but Anderson’s answer to the final question is…I don’t even know how to describe it; read it for yourself:

Q: Were there moments that you missed? Anything that happened that’s on the cutting room floor?

A: I don’t think there’s anything I missed that I wish I’d gotten. I’ll give you a little anecdote: Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session. He asked me, “Should I smile or not smile?” and I said, “How would you want to be portrayed?” We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to me to shake my hand and say goodbye. And he says to me, “You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do, too.”

In some sort of bizarro version of our world, where people somehow aren’t themselves, Miller may have reflected on Anderson’s comment, may have thought about all the pain, anguish, and death caused by the exercise of his power, may have felt some regret, a chink in the armor that would grow over time, leading to a softening of his perspective and approach. But we live in the real world; Miller knows exactly what he’s doing and does not want to be kind. He wants to be unkind, to rip mother from child. I’m reminded of A.R. Moxon’s thoughts on hypocrisy:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

Kindness for me and not for thee.

Tags: A.R. Moxon · Christopher Anderson · Donald Trump · photography · politics · Stephen Miller

Why is President Trump, a man who barely knows how to use a laptop, taking such a big risk ramming through an AI policy that almost nobody, even in his own party, wants?

At Thursday’s Executive Order signing, Trump gave one big clue: he has come to believe (probably based on the self-interested whisperings from Silicon Valley investors who often lean on FOMO to China as a way to manipulate the government) that generative AI is a winner-take-all-race, a claim which he used in defending his unpopular end-run around congress, in which he aims to sue states that are trying to protect their citizens from downsides of AI that are not regulated at a Federal level. Axios captured the key quote:

Actually, we are not winning by a lot. But more importantly the generative AI race is not—and will not ever be—“winner take all”, any more than Coke’s long standing battle with Pepsi has been winner-take-all.

China makes cars; we make cars.

China builds highways; we build highways.

China makes software; we make software.

In domains like these, each country has its own share of the global market, with no overall winner.

I literally don’t see any plausible scenario in which either nation outright “wins” the generative AI race to the exclusion of the other.

Nothing China can realistically do (short of full out nuclear war) is going to stop companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon from serving generative AI on the cloud. Even if China undercuts those companies on price, the US could mandate for various sensitive purposes (military, medicine etc) that US agencies not use Chinese servers. (We do that for TikTok; we can certainly do it for our bombers and our hospitals.)

Conversely, nothing the United States can realistically do (short of full out nuclear war) is going to stop Chinese companies from serving generative AI on China-based cloud infrastructure. Even if US companies were to undercut Chinese companies on price, China could mandate for various sensitive purposes (military, medicine etc) that Chinese not use US infrastructure. (They have largely blocked Google and Meta for years.)

Importantly, since everybody is following the same playbook—ever more massive data, ever more massive servers, fed into ever-larger large language models—nobody has a real technical advantage here. Both countries have leveraged the other’s open source innovations.

Right now, as it happens, China is at most a few months behind; I expect the lead to be slight and to flip back and forth, with nobody retaining a sizeable a lead for long. (You can see the same dynamic within the American companies, where a lead never lasts for more than a few months). For all intents and purposes, the race is basically a tie – with both countries serving many of their own customers, using largely similar products. Coke and Pepsi are commodities; genAI models are, too. Building our AI policy around a fantasy that we are somehow going to crush China in LLM war (or vice versa!) is misguided.

§

Instead, part of the actual outcome over the next few years will be that both countries build a lot of generative AI infrastructure — quite possibly significantly more than they actually need.

Especially because of the speed at which chips like GPUs (a key component of that infrastructure) depreciate, it may be that the real winner is whichever country doesn’t overextend itself to the point of financial ruin, in a foolish effort to win a race that can’t be won.

All the more so if LLMs turn out to be a dud, or if LLMs are replaced by smaller, more efficient systems that don’t demand such immense amounts of infrastructure.

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P.S. I spoke to CNN briefly this morning on “the Wild West” that the White House seems to want for AI, and also had a long and engaging conversation with Kara Miller a few days earlier on “why society’s all-in-wager on large language models could be far riskier than we realize.” In a third interview with the Taylor Owen at the Globe and Mail I talk about how alternative approaches to AI might save us from a bubble.

P.P.S. Further evidence that times are changing:

The other day I experienced the inhuman assault on Christmas.

I was in a cafe, trying to work, counting on the familiar harmony of conversation and music.

But something was wrong. No one was talking, perhaps because the music was eerie. Since I was trying to focus, I didn’t immediately notice the problem. I just kept experiencing an irritation that kept me from concentrating on the paper in front of me.

And so I lifted my head from my notebook and listened. And was disturbed.

What seemed at first to be winter songs and Christmas carols were something else. The melodies were more or less correct -- recognizable as “Silent Night,” “The First Noël,” “Winter Wonderland.” But the voice was generically earnest, a bland baritone bellowing, straining, I felt, from nowhere to nowhere.

And the lyrics were wrong. Not just mistaken here or there, but wrong in a sort of patterned way. All of the specific references to the nativity were expunged, replaced with metaphysical blather (”oh and that sacred star... that sacred star!”).

And the human parts had gone missing as well. In “Winter Wonderland,” which is a love song, we should hear this nice couplet about a pair taking a walk:

In the meadow, we can build a snowman

And pretend that he is Parson Brown

In the song as I heard it in the café, that lyric became:

In the meadow we can find a snowman

And pretend that he is a nice old guy

That was then followed by some meaningless verbiage about dancing the night away, where “guy” is lamely rhymed with the sun being high. Again, the actual song:

In the meadow, we can build a snowman

And pretend that he is Parson Brown

He’ll say, “Are you married?” We’ll say, “No man,

But you can do the job when you’re in town.”

In these four lines we hear so much. The young couple are doing something together, and telling a story to each other about what they are doing. Parson Brown, inside the fantasy world we share, is a specific person with attributes, which we imagine by reference to the snowman. Their attitude to him is playful yet respectful. The lovers are not yet married but they want to be. They are outside the rules for the moment, acting out their love in public, but they understand the conventions and want to join them. The layers in these lines descend gently upon the listener, like snowfall in sunlight.

My mind was awaiting all that; the vacuum of “nice old guy” strained the neurons, or the soul.

I first heard “Winter Wonderland” about forty years after Richard Bernhard Smith died in 1935; fifty more years have passed since then. Behind that lyric is an actual man, inspired by snowfall in a park, who no doubt knew something about romance; a young man ill with tuberculosis, who would die months after writing the lyric; and then the song lives after him, preserving his own playful sense of how we might be together, passed on from those who sing to those who listen.

The art lives until it is killed. What, in this case, is killing the song? Killing Christmas? Killing civilization? It is a set of algorithms that we flatteringly call AI, or artificial intelligence. My guess would be that someone, somewhere, entered an instruction to generate winter and Christmas songs that avoided “controversial” subjects such as divine and human love. And so we get mush. In a reverse sublimation, the sacred becomes slop.

In our politics, we have the idea that Christmas has somehow been sullied by all the foreigners. But who are the true aliens in this Christmas story? The non-human entities. The example of the tortured winter song is just one of many. Basic cultural forms are weakened under the assault of algorithms designed to monopolize attention: classroom teaching; sharing of food, simple conversation; holiday ritual. Music.

People, of course, make money on this. A few people make a lot of money. And, in some notable cases. they are the very people who tell us that foreigners are destroying our civilization, are taking Christmas away from us, and all the rest. The people who profit from the culture-wrecking machines blame other people, who have nothing to do with it. And meanwhile those who actually sing the songs have trouble finding listeners.

“Winter Wonderland” is a light bit of music, with a subtle message about romance, one that requires some patience and some experience and a sense of humor. Any references there might be to the holiday itself are indirect and playful: the imaginary parson with the melting reproof, the wandering unmarried couple.

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” The carols bear a message about love, one that that no machine will understand, and that those who profit from the machine perhaps do not want us to understand. Love begins humbly, takes risks, recognizes the other, ends in pain, returns as song. And begins humbly again.

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