Friends,
Many of you have asked for a video that sets out simply and clearly how wealth inequality in the United States spiraled out of control, why it’s a huge problem, and what we can (and must) do about it. So here goes:
If you found this useful, please share it!
The "Serenity Prayer" (Serenity to accept things I can't change/Courage to change the things I can/Wisdom to know the difference) is usually cited as pop psychology or addiction recovery advice, but I think there's a place for it in policymaking.
Take the EU's fight against US Big Tech. During the Biden years, the EU's tech policy matured into something serious and ambitious, culminating in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), a pair of big, muscular policies that would curb Big Tech's most abusive conduct. The EU's ambition didn't occur in a vacuum: it was part of a global wave of antitrust fervor whose top agenda item was reining in tech:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting
In this fight, the EU had important partners all over the world. For example, South Korea and Japan used the facts uncovered through EU enforcement action against Google and Apple to pursue similar cases:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all
But the EU's most important partner in its fight against American Big Tech was America. Biden's trustbusters – Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter, Tim Wu, et al – were every bit as serious about Big Tech power as anyone in the EU. After all, the American public are always the first victims of any new tech scam, and America is the only country with a large, affluent population who lack modern, comprehensive consumer privacy protection, making Americans highly prized prey for tech companies:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf
With America and the EU on the same side of the tech fight, the world had a fighting chance. Tech knew this, which is why Big Tech backed Trump hard during the 2024 election and aggressively curried his favor after he won. From the tech barons who paid $1m each to sit behind Trump on the inaugural dais to the millions tech companies donated to Trump's Epstein Ballroom at the White House, tech has made it clear that it supports anything Trump wants to do, provided he shields Big Tech from any attempt to limit their ability to spy on and steal from Americans and the world.
Even before he took office, Trump made it clear how he would reward tech's loyalty: weeks before the inauguration, Trump went to Davos and threatened the EU with reprisals if they enforced the DSA or DMA against his tech companies:
Trump wasted no time leaning on US trading partners on behalf of Big Tech. He bullied Canadian PM Mark Carney into dropping his plan to tax US tech companies. Big Tech uses a variety of tax-cheating gambits to evade taxation around the world, making it impossible for (tax-paying) domestic companies to compete:
Trump also got UK PM Keir Starmer to drop his plan to tax tech:
And he got the EU to roll back its plan to regulate AI:
https://fortune.com/2025/11/07/eu-ai-act-weaken-regulation-delay-big-tech-trump-government/
None of the governments that caved to Trump got anything in return. As I've written:
Give Trump everything he asks for and he'll demand more. Deny Trump anything and he'll demand more. Sign a contract with Trump and he'll break it. Send Trump an invoice and he'll stiff you. For Trump, "the art of the deal" can be summed up in one word: renege.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/22/table-flipper/#graveyard-of-indispensable-nations
Case in point: after the EU surrendered to Trump on AI regulation, Trump announced that a on ban EU officials who had worked on the Digital Services Act from traveling to the USA:
Then, after the EU made more concessions to Trump, he announced a ban on even more EU officials:
Trump ordered his tech giants to dig through EU officials' private correspondence so he can figure out who to ban next:
Trump's tech companies got the memo. When the EU ordered Apple to follow the law, Apple told the EU to fuck off:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma
After all, Apple is a key partner in the Trump administration's mass deportations. Apple blocked an iPhone app that warns Apple customers if they're about to be kidnapped or murdered by ICE. Trump needs Apple, just as much as Apple needs Trump:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply
Despite this, the EU keeps trying to enforce its laws against Trump's companies. Last week, the Commission announced a $1b fine against Google for violating the Digital Services Act with conduct that cost Europeans many billions:
In other words, Google wasn't even being ordered to disgorge all the money it stole, just some of it. Remember, a fine is a price: the EU's fine here will only make this kind of cheating slightly less profitable.
Nevertheless, Trump responded immediately by threatening the EU with many billions more in tariffs if they continue to attempt to enforce the law against one of his companies:
Trump, the European Commission and Google all know this is about more than one $1b fine. The DSA and DMA both provide for steeply rising fines and other penalties for repeat offenders, and Google clearly has no plan to end its very profitable European crime-spree. Trump's threats aren't a bid to kill this enforcement – Trump wants to kill all enforcement.
Retaliatory tariffs aren't the only weapon Trump has at his disposal. If the EU (or any other country) levies a serious fine against Google, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, or any of Trump's other tech companies, Trump can order US banks not to turn over those fines, even after the EU sends them a court order for the money. If a bank defies Trump, he can threaten to yank its charter. Or he could just run the same swindle he pulled on Tiktok: stealing the whole company and selling it to one of his buddies, who will run it the way Trump wants.
The reality is that without America's assistance, the EU has precious little hope of forcing American companies to do things they don't want to do. In terms of the Serenity Prayer, this is "a thing they cannot change."
The Serenity Prayer doesn't stop with "things you can't change." The next line seeks "the courage to change the things I can." The EU has no control over Google's conduct, but it has total control over its own conduct.
Specifically, the EU could get rid of the laws that ban European companies from modifying US tech exports. The EU adopted the Copyright Directive in 2001. Article 6 of the EUCD makes it a crime to reverse-engineer and modify a device without the manufacturer's permission. This law was adopted under pressure from the US Trade Representative, who threatened the EU with tariffs on its exports unless it adopted an "anticircumvention rule" that banned EU technologists from making products that let Europeans prevent US tech companies from stealing their money and data":
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
This law is still in force in the EU, despite the fact that Trump (predictably) reneged on the US side of the bargain, hitting the EU with massive tariffs and even threatening to steal part of Denmark.
Article 6 of the Copyright Directive is the reason European tech companies can't jailbreak America's apps, whether that's to get its government and corporate data off of US platforms:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate
Or to modify American social media apps to respect EU privacy laws:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
The EU can't control what Apple or Google do. But the EU can absolutely decide whether Trump's companies can use Europe's courts to destroy European companies that defend the privacy and economic integrity of the European people.
If the EU kills off Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, they can use European companies to bring Google and Apple's defective tech exports into compliance with European law. Unlike Trump's companies, those companies can be forced to pay their taxes and respect their users' privacy, labor and consumer rights.
That's the Serenity Prayer's "wisdom to know the difference."
Imagine a World in Which Microsoft Sold Cars the Way It Sells Software https://www.thesling.org/imagine-a-world-in-which-microsoft-sold-cars-the-way-it-sells-software/
Tesla swapped a solar owner’s lease contract for the Book of Enoch https://electrek.co/2026/07/23/tesla-solar-lease-contract-book-of-enoch/
Canadian legislator reads out apparent LLM response in floor speech https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/canadian-legislator-reads-out-apparent-llm-response-in-floor-speech/
The Resistance Liberal Lawyers Helping Trump Take Over the Media https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-resistance-liberal-lawyers-helping
#25yrsago Chilling Effects https://web.archive.org/web/20010801172448/http://eon.law.harvard.edu/chill/
#25yrsago 13-year-old hacker's book deal: “The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking" https://web.archive.org/web/20011102164905/http://www.vnunet.com/News/1124279
#20yrsago France’s new copyright law slaughters kills use and open source https://web.archive.org/web/20060812223624/http://soufron.typhon.net/spip.php?article150
#20yrsago Billy Bragg gets MySpace’s terms of service changed https://web.archive.org/web/20100809150257/http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34570397&blogID=137856388&MyToken=626131d4-c695-42ba-867b-754b9e2bfeaa
#15yrsago Buy an Old West town in South Dakota for $0.8M https://web.archive.org/web/20110728012824/https://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/07/27/south.dakota.town.sale/index.html
#15yrsago Glenn Beck compares murdered Norway campers to “Hitler Youth” https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/top-of-the-ticket/story/2011-07-25/opinion-glenn-beck-hits-new-low-compares-norway-victims-to-hitler-youth
#15yrsago 3 Little Pigs rendered into Papua New Guinea pidgin https://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200709/r184705_686227.mp3
#15yrsago Why they call the Tories “the nasty party” https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/28/tory-lib-dems-clash-on-policy
#15yrsago US ISP/copyright deal: a one-sided private law for corporations, without public interest https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/graduated-response-deal-what-if-users-had-been
#15yrsago Copyright extortionist ripped off his competitor’s threatening material https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-lawyers-rip-off-work-from-competitor-110727/
#15yrsago Karl Schroeder: Science fiction versus structured study of the future, sf as aspiration https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/beyond-prediction.html
#15yrsago Norwegian PM refuses to let terrorist attacks drive his country to intolerance and paranoid “security” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28norway.html?_r=1
#15yrsago Man with camera in park who fled angry parent sought by police (turns out he was taking pix of his grandson) https://web.archive.org/web/20110829052009/https://pixiq.com/article/man-photographing-grandkid-in-park-deemed-suspicious
#10yrsago Laurie Penny at the DNC: “Dissent will not be tolerated. Protest will not be permitted.” https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/bad-moon-rising-8cd348df50e9#.9lhcixjn1
#10yrsago The Ice Bucket Challenge did not fund a breakthrough in ALS treatment https://web.archive.org/web/20160914225439/http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2016/07/ice-bucket-challenge-breakthrough-experts-pour-cold-water-superficial-reporting/
#10yrsago Silicon Valley banks offer tech giants’ new hires 100% mortgages on 24 hours’ notice https://web.archive.org/web/20160727095557/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-27/zero-down-on-a-2-million-house-is-no-problem-in-silicon-valley
#10yrsago Patent fighters attack the crown jewels of three of America’s worst patent trolls https://web.archive.org/web/20160727191625/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/patent-defense-group-seeks-to-knock-out-top-three-trolls-of-2015/
#10yrsago Censorship company drops bogus lawsuit against researchers who outed them https://citizenlab.ca/research-interest/
#10yrsago Photographer sues Getty Images for $1B because they’re charging for pix she donated to LoC https://hyperallergic.com/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/
#10yrsago First-ever Michelin star for street food awarded to Singaporean hawker stalls https://web.archive.org/web/20160723174014/http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-food-hawkers-michelin-star-idUKKCN1021XA
#10yrsago Highest-paid CEOs generate lowest shareholder returns https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/91a7f92b-d4ba-4d29-ae5f-8022f9bb944d
#10yrsago Olympics to companies: mentioning “Olympics” in social media is a trademark violation #https://web.archive.org/web/20160727075209/https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/17120510/united-states-olympic-committee-battle-athletes-companies-sponsor-not-olympics
#10yrsago Pro-tar-sands activists say dirty Canadian oil is better because “lesbians are hot” https://www.joeydevilla.com/2016/07/26/this-ill-advised-hot-lesbians-ad-promoting-canadian-vs-saudi-oil-is-real-and-not-a-parody-by-the-onion/
#5yrsago The infosec apocalypse is nigh https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas
#1yrago How twiddling enshittifies your brain https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/program/
Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/
London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
Will AI ever come alive, and what happens if it does? (BBC News)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzk4o3fPZZE
Waarom jij straks het hulpje van AI bent (VPRO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOnvR2fs8CA
Talk Tech Bock (Vera Linß)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFjGvQoBgc
How To Think About AI Before It’s Too Late (This Is Hell)
https://thisishell.com/episodes/1919
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
"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
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
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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Friends,
I want to start today with a warning about “charitable giving” and end with a primer on wealth inequality. The two are closely related, as I’ll explain.
We’re on the cusp of the biggest gusher of “charitable giving” in history. Beware.
We tend to think of “charitable giving” as unambiguously good because we equate “charities” with organizations that help the poor and equate “giving” with generosity. But both assumptions are wrong.
In fact, the “giving” is actually a giant tax loophole that provides the super-rich a means of dramatically cutting their tax bills while quietly funding their own priorities.
And “charities” under the tax code include elite universities, fancy opera houses, cultural palaces frequented only by the richest of the rich, and nonprofit “think tanks” devoted to right-wing causes.
The problem is that every dollar of “charitable giving” means substantially fewer dollars paid in taxes, because donors deduct their “charitable giving” from their taxable incomes. This tax loophole is especially big and lucrative for the super-rich.
According to the Institute for Policy Studies, up to 74 cents of every dollar donated to charity would have been paid as taxes. In 2022 alone, charitable giving resulted in $73 billion in lost tax revenue.
Here’s the thing. Taxes finance public goods such as public education, scientific research, roads and bridges, nutrition and healthcare for lower-income Americans, and clean water and clean air.
But the “charitable” tax deduction taken by the super-rich finances things that the super-rich want, such as Ivy League universities and culture palaces.
This means a lot of “charitable giving” results in more money for organizations that cater to or do the bidding of the rich, and less for things we all need. Behind the facade of “charitable giving” is a profoundly anti-democratic tax loophole that allows the super-wealthy to effectively substitute their priorities for what would otherwise be public priorities.
Which brings me to the upcoming gusher of “charitable giving” — the consequence of the AI boom and the largest IPOs in history.
Thousands of people with shares of Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and other AI-related companies have seen, or soon will see, the value of their shares soar into the stratosphere. That means gigantic capital gains.
You don’t need a degree in high finance to understand that these capital gains could also result in big tax payments. If you sell, say, $10 million worth of stock, you could easily face a tax bill exceeding $3.5 million.
Unless you reduce that tax bill through your “charitable giving.”
Hence, the upcoming gusher in charitable giving. According to some estimates, it could be more than $100 billion a year.
Consider: The seven founders of Anthropic, which is expected to have an enormous IPO as soon as this fall, have each pledged to give away 80 percent of their wealth, which is estimated to be about $90 billion. Anthropic also has a philanthropic matching program, which would mean another $60 billion in funds earmarked for giving. Nan Ransohoff, who heads public goods at the payment processor Stripe, estimates that these will generate between $37 billion and $100 billion to charities annually.
Add in the newly rich created by SpaceX, whose IPO has spawned an estimated 4,400 millionaires (and some 400 employees now worth more than $100 million), as well as OpenAI’s IPO, which is likely to create as many more millionaires and multimillionaires, and you’re talking really big money — and huge incentives for making tax-deductible “charitable contributions.”
Don’t get me wrong. I consider the nonprofit sector of the economy enormously important. I just don’t want the nation’s priorities to be set by the moneyed interests. Their massive political donations already give them extraordinary power.
One reform would be to limit the definition of “charities” — that is, the sort of contributions that warrant tax deductions — to places and institutions that actually serve the poor.
Another reform would be to reduce the tax deduction for “charitable contributions” and increase the capital gains tax rate on very high incomes. (At the very least, raise the capital gains tax rate to match the tax rate on ordinary income.)
And by all means let’s get rid of the “stepped-up-basis-at-death” tax rule, which now allows families to escape all capital gains by leaving appreciated assets to their heirs. For example, consider someone who got OpenAI stock for almost nothing and watched its value explode, and then contributed enough of it to charity to allow her to make a nice living off it without paying any capital gains taxes. She gave the remaining shares to her children when she died. The kids can then sell those shares for what they’re worth at the time of her death — say, hundreds of millions of dollars — yet pay zero capital gains on it.
These three reforms are, or should be, no-brainers. There’s simply no economic or political justification for allowing the super-rich — even the nouveau AI riche — to get giant tax breaks by financing things they prioritize.
Granted, reforms like these don’t stand a chance under Trump or his lapdogs in Congress. (And, sad to say, too many Democrats are also dependent on campaign donations from the moneyed interests.) But these are high on my list for what must be done.
PS: That basic primer on wealth inequality in the U.S. that I mentioned at the start of this post is a video I’ll post this afternoon on this page. In it, I discuss why wealth inequality has gotten utterly out of control, why that’s a huge and growing problem for America, and what must be done about it.
Friends,
Please submit your caption in the Comments section and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.
Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.
Winners:
“I really wish they wouldn’t dump sewage into the ocean.”
(Congratulations, Don Gerber.)
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(Congratulations, Allison Ellis.)
Runners-up:
“Oh we are DEFINITELY gonna make America great again. 1...2...3...”
(Congratulations, Carol Nylen.)
“We have to be careful, parasites can cause diarrhea!”
(Congratulations, Russwin Francisco.)
“You take the first bite--he smells bad to me.”
(Congratulations, Donald Hodgins.)
“There’s no meat. He’s just full of hot air!!”
(Congratulations, Jane A Malecki.)
“Taking a bite out of crime.”
(Congratulations, Kathleen Sommers Naiditch.)
“Let’s bite him in the mid-terms.”
(Congratulations, Mark Van Horne.)
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(Congratulations, NatteringNayBob.)
“I heard he has no taste.”
(Congratulations, Patricia Sachs Chess.)
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(Congratulations, Gregory Cameron.)
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