I actually ordered this book because I’ve been noodling on writing something something about how the Agile manifesto destroyed software, and I was aware of this book, so I wanted to see if the author touched on it.
Oh, but no.
Here are the biggest reasons, according to Doctorow, about why everything has gone to pot:
- The breakdown of government regulation
- The weakness of labor unions
- Elon Musk
- Donald Trump
Doctorow’s focus is fairly narrow–he’s got a mad-on for the big tech platforms, formerly known as FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google). No, wait; Netflix doesn’t piss him off, so maybe it’s MAAAX if you use their current names and throw in X. When he talks about consolidation, he does mention poultry producers, and he mentions healthcare consolidation, but, man, does he focus on big tech mostly. He’s a former bigwig with the Electronics Frontier Foundation, so that’s his experience, I guess.
And his solutions are:
- More government regulation. Not the bad kind, like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but the good kind, like the stuff the EU uses to extract money from American companies. And regulation to ensure safe spaces, nonharrassment, censorship, etc. And not by Congress, oh, no! Sometimes the Republicans control it. The rule should come from the executive agencies which will remain in place even when the political tide shifts.
- Tech workers should throw their wooden shoes into their companies’ processes when they, the employees, don’t like them. Or whatever the political cause they have, probably, since we’ve seen that happen in the past, but it’s not cited in the book (nor here, because I’m not a paid public intellectual, man).
- Unions. Which will bring prices down and quality up through wishful thinking.
Yeah, basically, that’s it. Break up the monopolies, I guess. He mentions Mastadon, which was briefly talked about as an alternative to Twitter after the devil Elon Musk took it over. The book was perhaps written to early to mention Bluesky instead. But it doesn’t seem that Musk ruined Twitter except renaming it “X.” I guess we should be thankful he did not create an unpronounceable glyph.
You can tell he’s real, man, because he swears in the text (and the book title!). And he wears his politics on his sleeve–calling people who voted for Trump cultists, etc., which really means the book is targetted to his side of the political aisle (his biggest fans!), so it’s not convincing. And because he’s describing a real problem, but has all the wrong answers to it (well, mostly the wrong answers), I wished that I had ordered the book in paperback so I could beat the hell out of it.
I mean, you get similar messaging from Substacks like Your Brain on Money, even down to the policy solutions, but without the political invective that prevents discussion and conversation.
I mean, one could argue, and were I public intellectual who made money from his glib fingertips instead of a backwater blogger who pays for the privilege of writing book reports nobody reads. However, since we’re both here (me and the cat), let’s look at some of the things that have also contributed to us old people saying things were better in the old days:
- Government regulation in every domain has made things worse. Whether it’s mandates for what health insurance has to cover or improved safety/efficiency in cars, lightbulbs, appliances, and seemingly everything you can buy.
- He does mention rent-seeking, and somehow he thinks more regulation will fix things–but large organizations that get the government to regulate industries by requiring credentials or licensing make it harder for people to become cosmeticians, sellers of real estate, and more.
- The aforementioned Agile Manifesto which had its heart in a right place but which lead to minimum viable products as final product and to rationalizing technical and business failures whose consequences are not only felt by the businesses but by the users who might have come to depend upon them.
- Importing large numbers of people and tech workers from non-Western countries whose mores and ideals do not necessarily match Western thoughts of quality or fair play, especially in the tech field, might lead to lesser outcomes.
- Changes in generational mindset, from the effects of having phones from toddlerhood to changes in the “education” system.
- The long-term impact of putting “diversity” on the same level, or higher than, competence in hiring.
Etc., etc.
Unions and government regulations aren’t going to fix it. If it is to be fixed, it will likely take a long time and a cultural shift which I’m not sure is possible any more.
(Oh, and I would be remiss not to self-referentially post other mentions on this blog: I read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom in 2019 and thought it was okay, and apparently, in 2010, a proto-clanker thought that I write like Doctorow.)
Oh, and another thing: I came up with the he is a Canadian who does not like hockey as a perjorative to apply to Doctorow, but apparently, he has become a British citizen (according to Wikipedia), and I’m pretty sure he mentions getting US citizenship in the book (and later says, “As a Canadian, I….”). So make of that what you will. Still, I’m going to use that to denigrate Canadians with whom I disagree in the future. “You have forgotten the face of your father” is the only thing I remember from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.
And! I’ve been kind of putting of going to the eye doctor because I think this time I really will need glasses for distances, and I’m afraid wearing glasses will make me look like a public intellectual of a certain type. Although, hopefully, a public intellectual who can do finger pushups like Bruce Lee. But not one-finger pushups because I do not have kung fu hands.
