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Pluralistic: Why aren't AI companies competing directly with their customers? (13 Jul 2026)
Today's links
- Why aren't AI companies competing directly with their customers? Why sell picks and shovels if you've already struck gold?
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Pro-logging Lorax; Anti-DRM picture book; Whose cops did America train? Day on a Device; Theresa May x Fresh Prince; Ratfucking Corbyn supporters; Infosec v W3C DRM; Remix Public Enemy; Hungary's Cold War cartoons; America is unpaving its roads; Olympic overruns are world champions; Vivendi lobbyist is now UN copyright boss; Boris's racism; Facebook's insider stalkers; Semantic drift, ethical drift.
- Upcoming appearances: Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
- 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.
Why aren't AI companies competing directly with their customers? (permalink)
"I often wonder what the Vintners buy/One half so precious as the Goods they sell" -The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
I first encountered that quote from someone extolling the virtues of bookstores, and it stuck with me, because for most of my childhood, every bookstore visit ended with me broke and wishing I'd had three times as much to spend.
As a larval hyperlexic, I just didn't understand what a bookseller could possibly buy with my money that was better than the books they already had? Of course, then I became a bookseller and discovered that Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit") applies to a bookstore's wares as much as it does to anything else. I also acquired a monthly rent obligation and discovered just how important money could be.
Nevertheless, Omar Khayyám's question stuck with me, especially when I fell down a years-long rabbit-hole of learning about scams and the finance sector (but I repeat myself). Every get-rich-quick schemer will tell you that they've found the infinite money hack, which they will sell to you for a remarkably reasonable sum. Likewise, every stock picker claims they can outperform a simple low-load index fund, and all they ask of you is a few hundred basis points in exchange for multiplying your wealth beyond the dreams of Creosote. Neither one has a good answer to Khayyám's question: if you can make all the money with your amazing system, why do you need my money?
This is a question that needs to be forcefully put to AI hucksters. In their more expansive moments, the Altmans and Amodeis of the world will tell you that they're planning to teach the word-guessing program so many words that it will wake up and become god. DOGE's broccoli-haired brownshirts laughed in the faces of the NIH lifers who begged them not to vaporize their long-running cancer research projects: "General AI is around the corner and it's going to cure cancer. Cancer research is a waste of money!"
Which all raises the question: if you've truly incubated a foetal demiurge in your "AI lab," why are you offering to sell it to me? What do the AI hucksters buy/One half so precious as the Gods they sell?"
Of course, they might answer, "We need your money now so we can make god later." That's why they want your boss to fire you and replace you with their chatbots and split your wages with your former employer. But this just raises the same question: if you have a chatbot that can do a doctor's job, why sell it to a hospital? Why not just open your own hospital? If you've got a chatbot that can do a tax accountant's job, why sell it to a tax-prep service? Why not just open a tax-prep service? If you've got a chatbot that can teach my kids, why sell it to my local school district? Why not just open a school?
If the chatbot can do the job, and if the chatbot costs less than the worker who does the job today, then the chatbot company can profitably sell services more cheaply than anyone who presently employs that worker, because the chatbot company already owns the chatbot. If you were really on a glide path to creating an all-powerful deity and just needed cash to keep the venture going until the cancer-curing word-guesser awoke from its long slumber, then wouldn't you want as much cash as possible? Why would you voluntarily split the take with some sucky, washed, non-god-generating business from before 2022?
I think the only reason this question doesn't come up more frequently is that we're stewing in what Douglas Rushkoff calls the "go meta" economy, in which the most respectable and smartest business to operate must be as many abstraction layers away from real work as possible. Don't drive a taxi, own a medallion that you rent to the cab driver. Don't own a medallion, start a "rideshare" company. Don't start a rideshare company, invest in a rideshare company. Don't invest in a rideshare company, buy options to invest in a rideshare company:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn
The inverse relationship between doing something useful and making money is deeply ingrained in our economic wisdom. Take the world of online grifters, who don't just peddle get-rich-quick PDFs, they also peddle tools to generate get-rich-quick PDFs, as well as tools to steal other "wealth influencers'" insta videos and deepfake yourself into their pretend private jets:
https://www.404media.co/how-i-bought-a-private-jet-by-selling-10-subscriptions-to-404-media/
The scam economy boasts a bewildering array of ancillary services, like a $150/month service that lets you produce fake screenshots showing vast monthly income on other scam services (November Kelly calls this "The world's most expensive 'inspect element'"):
https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture/posts/faux-high-level-163443872
It's an old truism that in a gold rush, the only people who come out ahead are the people selling the picks and shovels. But that's not true – there's even more money to be made wholesaling picks and shovels to the retailers who operate the frontier mercantiles. Go meta!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alaskan_Gold_Mining_Supplies_(1897)_(ADVERT_277).jpeg
Today's economy is dominated by pick-and-shovel wholesalers. America is a gerontocracy drowning in MBAs, while there's no one to do eldercare:
So it's not surprising that we don't ask why these AI god-botherers need our stupid money while they're immanentizing the eschaton. Why would they operate a hospital if they could go meta and sell the doctorbots to the MBAs running the hospital?
Hey look at this (permalink)
- Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Deride “Headline-Seeking” Damages Sought By State AGs In Social Media Safety Suit: “Untethered From Reality” https://deadline.com/2026/07/social-media-lawsuit-damages-zuckerberg-1236977447/
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Zohran Mamdani's retro wristwatch is a Casio classic https://boingboing.net/2026/07/08/zohran-mamdanis-retro-wristwatch-is-a-casio-classic.html
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B.O.B. (Birds Over Big Bird) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAXO7SXK0Pc
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A referendum for another development model https://thomaspiketty.wordpress.com/2026/06/23/a-referendum-for-social-justice/
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Introducing the Gap Map v0.1 https://www.currentai.org/blogs/introducing-the-gap-map-v0-1
Object permanence (permalink)
#25yrsago Pro-lumber industry spoof of The Lorax https://web.archive.org/web/20010721042828/http://www.forestcouncil.org/news/articles/truax1.htm
#25yrsago Remixable vocal tracks from the next Public Enemy release https://web.archive.org/web/20010813195140/http://www.slamjamz.com/slamnews.php?article=7
#20yrsago Wikipedia creates RSS for its posts https://web.archive.org/web/20060718103013/http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/07/wikipedia_entir.html
#20yrsago Anti-DRM picture-book https://web.archive.org/web/20060721095740/https://dustrunners.blogspot.com/2006/07/pig-and-box.html
#10yrsago The US has spent $122B training foreign cops and soldiers in 150+ countries, but isn’t sure who https://web.archive.org/web/20160713145824/https://theintercept.com/2016/07/13/training/
#10yrsago German free school teaches without grades, timetables or lesson plans https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down
#10yrsago For the first time, a federal judge has thrown out police surveillance evidence from a “Stingray” device https://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/federal-judge-throws-out-evidence-gathered-with-stingray-cell-phone-tracker/
#10yrsago Day on a Device: art made by screenshotting a multitasker’s screen with each context-switch https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12170526/multitasking-phone-laptop-pierre-buttin-art
#10yrsago Remarkably Normal: the true stories of abortion in America https://web.archive.org/web/20160810092901/http://jezebel.com/the-vagina-monologues-but-for-abortion-1783289270/amp
#10yrsago Theresa May performs the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv7Jd94bnOI
#10yrsago UK Labour’s dirty trick excludes 130,000 members from leadership vote https://web.archive.org/web/20160712225142/http://www.itv.com/news/2016-07-12/corbyn-opponents-try-to-fix-vote/
#10yrsago Security researchers: the W3C’s DRM needs to be thoroughly audited https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/call-security-community-w3cs-drm-must-be-investigated
#10yrsago Help Doctors Without Borders fill in the geodata blanks for vulnerable communities https://missingmaps.org/blog/2016/07/14/mapswipe/
#10yrsago Sign a book of congratulations for America’s new Librarian of Congress https://web.archive.org/web/20160718023555/https://action.everylibrary.org/congratulate_carla_hayden_today
#10yrsago Hungary’s Cold War cartoons were weird and awesome https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/14/the-fascinating-world-of-cold-war-era-hungarian-cartoons/
#10yrsago The ACLU has a roadmap for defeating President Donald Trump’s signature initiatives https://web.archive.org/web/20160715131734/https://action.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pages/trumpmemos.pdf
#10yrsago America’s infrastructure debt is so bad that towns are unpaving roads they can’t afford to fix https://web.archive.org/web/20160713170836/https://www.wired.com/2016/07/cash-strapped-towns-un-paving-roads-cant-afford-fix/
#10yrsago It’s official: the Olympics result in the worst budget overruns of any megaproject https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2804554
#10yrsago Vivendi lobbyist appointed to run copyright for UN agency https://web.archive.org/web/20160717052135/http://keionline.org/node/2614
#10yrsago The long, racist history of Brexiteer Boris Johnson, the new UK Foreign Secretary https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36792746
#5yrsago Facebook employees stalk users https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/14/who-watches-the-zuckmen/#pecksniffs
#5yrsago Semantic drift versus ethical drift https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/14/pole-star/#gnus-not-utilitarian
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- 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/cory-doctorow/ -
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/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Who Owns Your Tractor? (Growing the Future)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU9eBPUZBI4 -
You Bought it, They Break It (What Now? with Trevor Noah)
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-ir36t-2f4a1ac6 -
Can AI be Saved From Capitalism? (Everyday Anarchism)
https://www.everydayanarchism.com/192-can-ai-be-saved-from-capitalism-cory-doctorow/ -
Lawfare Daily
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1KIwaYRs1g -
How to Think About AI (Organized Money)
https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-to-think-about-ai-with-cory-doctorow
Latest books (permalink)
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/ -
"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
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"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).
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"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).
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"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).
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"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).
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"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.
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"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)
- "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
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"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Colophon (permalink)
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.
- A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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