FTA:
Ever since The Yes Men in the aughts, I’ve thought of LLCs more like a competitive non-human species, that is also trying to gobble up the resources needed by humans - clean air, clean water, etc. This is an interesting take on how LLCs might see us.
The LLCs (and the accelerationist techbro billionaires), may see any future “culling” of humanity by whatever means (war, pestilence, etc) as more like an antibiotic, killing off unwanted bacteria.
LLCs have allowed a lot of sole proprietor businesses to function with some of the legal protections and tax benefits of large companies. Almost all of them remain single-owner/employee, or at most add one or two other employees over time. Blaming the category isn’t helpful. It’s how it’s used – or rather, abused – that makes the poison.
Thank you for saying that. I was thinking something similar as I wrote my bit, but I didn’t have your clarity.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/16/weaponized-administrative-incompetence/#kill-all-the-lawyers
Far from than figuring out how to do terrible things without technically violating the law, Trump II is a lawless administration, prepared to violate laws, procedures, norms, and the US Constitution.
There are plenty of people of all political persuasions who respect the law, institutions, procedures, courts, and yes, even norms. Many of these people identify as conservatives – a movement with a long history of insisting that it is the home of rule-followers. Trump is the enemy of anyone who values these intangibles.
For Trump, these things are stupid games played by the weak.
Indeed. My wife’s bakery is structured as an LLC. I don’t think she would fall under “techbro billionaire.” Or if she does, she is hiding it really well.
Ladies and gentlepersons, I give you Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (nee Facebook), an accused monopolist who cannot keep his big dumb fucking mouth shut.
Another great take on the crumbling edifice that is Meta and Zuck’s big flapping, dumb mouth. I wouldn’t mind watching him testify to see if it’s as toe curling as Bill Gates’ antitrust deposition which sent fear in to the hearts of the shareholders.
Just finished Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which gives a ruthless depiction of many of Zuck’s decisions and inability to control how he interacts with people when it really matters.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/19/gotcha/#known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer
It’s bad enough when companies do this to us, be they Big Tech, health insurers or airlines. But when the government takes these grifters’ side over yours – when grifters take over the government – hold onto your wallets
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/21/trumpflation/#andrew-ferguson
Pricing consultants are advising their clients against charging “tariff surcharges,” noting that customers will expect these to go away when (if) the tariffs end. Instead, they advise businesses to raise prices in expectation of “faster, lasting implementation of price increases”
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/22/vinges-bastards/#cyberpunk-is-a-warning-not-a-suggestion
Book review:
In their modern incarnation, these ideas largely originate in science fiction novels. That is to say, they were made up and popularized by people like me, the vast majority of whom made no pretense of being able to predict the future or even realistically describe a path from the present to the future they were presenting. Science fiction is something between a card trick and a consensual con game, where the writer shows you just enough detail to make you think that the rest of it must be lurking somewhere in the wings. No one in sf has ever explained how consciousness uploading could possibly work, and neither have any of the advocates for consciousness uploading – the difference is that (most of) the sf writers know they’re just making stuff up.
Currently reading! I had to put it down for a book group reading another book. Looking forward to picking it up again!
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf
Book review:
But Wynn-Williams was a lot closer to three of the key personalities in Facebook’s upper echelon than anyone in my orbit: Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan, who was elevated to VP of Global Policy after the Trump II election. I already harbor an atavistic loathing of these three based on their public statements and conduct, but the events Wynn-Williams reveals from their private lives make these three out to be beyond despicable. There’s Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he’s a manbaby who can’t lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they’re flying in his private jet. There’s Sandberg, who demands the right to buy a kidney for her child from someone in Mexico, should that child ever need a kidney.
Then there’s Kaplan, who is such an extraordinarily stupid and awful oaf that it’s hard to pick out just one example, but I’ll try. At one point, Wynn-Williams gets Zuck a chance to address the UN General Assembly. As is his wont, Zuck refuses to be briefed before he takes the dais (he’s repeatedly described as unwilling to consider any briefing note longer than a single text message). When he gets to the mic, he spontaneously promises that Facebook will provide internet access to refugees all over the world. Various teams at Facebook then race around, trying to figure out whether this is something the company is actually doing, and once they realize Zuck was just bullshitting, set about trying to figure out how to do it. They get some way down this path when Kaplan intervenes to insist that giving away free internet to refugees is a bad idea, and that instead, they should sell internet access to refugees. Facebookers dutifully throw themselves into this absurd project, which dies when Kaplan fires off an email stating that he’s just realized that refugees don’t have any money. The project dies.
I’ve read the book. She is very clearly whitewashing her own actions and choices, but the detail with which she names names, publishes emails in full, etc. makes it seem that she must be speaking truth about the above three (and some others) or she’d be sued into oblivion.
If it’s at least 80% accurate, then yes, these are horrific individuals in ways that are much more damaging on a large scale than I for one had truly understood.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times
… if you allow some fraud, you will also allow through a lot of non -fraudulent business that would otherwise trip your fraud meter. Or, put it another way, the only way to prevent all fraud is to chase away a large proportion of your customers, whose transactions are in some way abnormal or unexpected.
(Shivers) That’s right out of “The Futurist Manifesto”:
We will glorify war - the world’s only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the
destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-others
… Sergey Brin just told his workers that they should be aiming for a “sweet spot” of 60 hours/week. Brin returned to Google to oversee its sweaty and desperate “pivot to AI,” and like so many tech execs, he’s been trumpeting the increased productivity that chatbots will deliver for coders. But a coder who picks up their fired colleagues’ work load by pulling 60-hour work-weeks isn’t “more productive,” they’re more exploited .