Posted by Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/09/sloppy-steve/
https://pluralistic.net/?p=12398
Today's links
The Epstein class and collapse porn (permalink)
It's hard to talk about the Epstein class without thinking about "The Economy" – "The Economy" in the sense of a kind of mystical, free-floating entity whose health or sickness determines the outcomes for all the rest of us, whom we must make sacrifices to if we are to prosper.
As nebulous as "The Economy" is as an entity, there's an economic priesthood that claims it can measure and even alter the course of the economy using complex mathematics. We probably won't ever understand their methods, but we can at least follow an indicator or two, such as changes to GDP, an aggregated statistic that is deceptively precise, given that it subsumes any number of estimates, qualitative judgments and wild-ass guesses, which are all disguised behind an official statistic that is often published to three decimal places.
There's plenty to criticize about GDP: a healthy GDP doesn't necessarily mean that the average worker is better off. When your rent goes up, so does GDP. Same with your salary going down (provided this results in more spending by your boss). GDP isn't really a measure of the health of "The Economy" – it's a measure of the parts of "The Economy" that make rich people (that is, the Epstein class) better off.
But what if there was a way to make money from calamitous collapses in GDP? What if the wealthy didn't just win when "number go up," but also when "number eat shit?"
The latest batch of Epstein emails includes a particularly ghoulish exchange between Epstein and his business partner, the anti-democracy activist and billionaire Peter Thiel:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00824843.pdf
The email is dated 26 Jun 2016, right after Brexit, and in it, Epstein writes:
return to tribalism . counter to globalization. amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, as i said in your office. finding things on their way to collapse , was much easier than finding the next bargain
This is a perfect example of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism." It's been the norm since the crash of 2008, when bankers were made whole through public bailouts and mortgage holders were evicted by the millions to "foam the runway" for the banks:
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/
The crash of 2008 turned a lot of people's homes – their only substantial possessions – into "distressed assets" that were purchased at fire-sale prices by Wall Street investors, who turned around and rented those homes out to people who were now priced out of the housing market at rents that kept them too poor to ever afford a home, under slum conditions that crawled with insects and black mold:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/
Note here that economic collapse helps the Epstein class only if society has no social safety net. If Obama had supported homeowners instead of banks, there wouldn't have been a foreclosure crisis and thus there wouldn't have been any "distressed assets" flooding the market.
So it's no surprise that the Epstein class are also obsessed with austerity. Peter Mandelson (British Labour's "Prince of Darkness") is a close ally of Epstein's, and also a key figure in the crushing austerity agenda of Blair, Brown and Starmer. He's a machine for turning Parliamentary majorities into distressed assets at scale.
Same for Steve Bannon, another close Epstein ally, who boasts about his alliances with far-right figures who exalt the capital class and call for deregulation and the elimination of public services: Le Pen, Salvini, Farage. Combine that with Epstein and Thiel's gloating about "finding things on their way to collapse…much easier than finding the next bargain," and it starts to feel like these guys are even happier with "number eat shit" than they are with "number go up."
Trump is the undisputed king of the Epstein class, and he seems determined to drive "The Economy" over a cliff. Take his tariff program, modeled on the McKinley tariffs of 1890, which led to the Panic of 1893, a financial crisis that saw one in four American workers forced into unemployment and 15,000 businesses into bankruptcy (that's a lot of distressed assets!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893
Then there's Trump's mass deportation program, which will force lots of businesses (farms, restaurants, etc) into bankruptcy, creating another massive pool of distressed assets. Trump's given ICE $75b, while the DoJ Antitrust Division and FTC (which protect Americans from corporate scams) have seen their budgets take a real-terms cut. The majority of DoJ lawyers and FBI agents are working on immigration cases (against workers, not employers, mind!). The Antitrust Division has $275m to fight all of America's corporate crime:
https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/white-collar-crime-enforcement-in
I'm not saying that Trump is trying to induce another massive economic crash. I'm saying, rather, that within his coalition there is a substantial bloc of powerful, wealthy people who are on the hunt for "things on their way to collapse," and who are doubtless maneuvering to frustrate other Trump coalition members who are solely committed to "number go up."
Even the collapse of crypto creates lots of opportunities to "buy the dip." Not the dip in crypto (crypto's going to zero), but the dip in all the real things people bought with real money they got by borrowing against their shitcoins.
The thousand-plus children that Epstein lured to his island rape-camp were often "distressed assets" in their own right: Julie K Brown's groundbreaking reporting on Epstein for the Miami Herald described how he sought out children whose parents were poor, or neglectful, or both, on the grounds that those children would be "on their way to collapse," too.
The Epstein class's commitment to destroying "The Economy" makes sense when you understand that trashing civilization is "much easier than finding the next bargain." They want to buy the dip, so they're creating the dip.
They don't need the whole number to go up, just theirs. They know that inclusive economies are more prosperous for society as a whole, but it makes criminals and predators worse off. The New Deal kicked off a period of American economic growth never seen before or since, but the rich despised it, because a prosperous economy is one in which it gets harder and harder to find "things on their way to collapse," and thus nearly impossible to "find[] the next bargain."
(Image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Hey look at this (permalink)
Object permanence (permalink)
#25yrsago Yours is a very bad hotel https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/yours-is-a-very-bad-hotel/34583
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#20yrsago Canadian Red Cross wastes its money harassing video game makers https://web.archive.org/web/20060221020835/https://www.igniq.com/2006/02/canadian-red-cross-wants-its-logo-out.html
#20yrsago How Yahoo/AOL’s email tax will hurt free speech https://web.archive.org/web/20060213175705/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004398.php#004398
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#15yrsago Hamster-powered strandbeest walker https://crabfuartworks.blogspot.com/2011/02/hamster-powered-walker.html
#15yrsago Daytripper: wrenching existential graphic novel https://memex.craphound.com/2011/02/08/daytripper-wrenching-existential-graphic-novel/
#15yrsago Pactuator: a mechanical, hand-cranked Pac-Man https://upnotnorth.net/projects/pac-machina/pactuator/
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#15yrsago Mike Mignola talks setting and architecture https://www.bldgblog.com/2011/02/ruin-space-and-shadow-an-interview-with-mike-mignola/
#15yrsago BBC to delete 172 unarchived sites, geek saves them for $3.99 https://web.archive.org/web/20110210152012/https://bengoldacre.posterous.com/nerd-saves-entire-bbc-archive-for-399-you-can
#10yrsago Australia, the driest country on Earth, eliminates basic climate science research https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110-climate-scientist-jobs/
#10yrsago Copyright trolls who claimed to own “Happy Birthday” will pay $14M to their “customers” https://web.archive.org/web/20160210091717/http://consumerist.com/2016/02/09/happy-birthday-song-settlement-to-pay-out-14-million-to-people-who-paid-to-use-song/
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#10yrsago Association of German judges slams US-EU trade deal for its special corporate courts https://www.techdirt.com/2016/02/09/top-german-judges-tear-to-shreds-eus-proposed-tafta-ttip-investment-court-system/
#10yrsago A digital, 3D printed sundial whose precise holes cast a shadow displaying the current time https://www.mojoptix.com/fr/2015/10/12/ep-001-cadran-solaire-numerique/
#10yrsago Jughead is asexual https://www.themarysue.com/jughead-asexuality/
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#10yrsago How America’s presidents started cashing out https://web.archive.org/web/20160208210036/https://theintercept.com/2016/02/08/taxpayers-give-big-pensions-to-ex-presidents-precisely-so-they-dont-have-to-sell-out/
#10yrsago Bill criminalizing anal and oral sex passes Michigan Senate https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2016/02/michigan_senate_passes_bill_saying_sodomy_is_a_felony/
#10yrsago Hacker promises dump of data from 20K FBI and 9K DHS employees https://web.archive.org/web/20160208214013/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-plans-to-dump-alleged-details-of-20000-fbi-9000-dhs-employees
#10yrsago Blooks: functional objects disguised as books https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/30/blook-madness-inside-the-world-of-bogus-books
#10yrsago Indian regulator stands up for net neutrality, bans Facebook’s walled garden https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/facebooks-free-internet-app-banned-by-indias-new-net-neutrality-rule/
#10yrsago British spies want to be able to suck data out of US Internet giants https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-british-want-to-come-to-america–with-wiretap-orders-and-search-warrants/2016/02/04/b351ce9e-ca86-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html
#5yrsago Fleet Street calls out schtum Tories https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/09/permanent-record/#foia-uk
#5yrsago The ECB should forgive the debt it owes itself https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/09/permanent-record/#ecb
#5yrsago Favicons as undeletable tracking beacons https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/09/permanent-record/#supercookies
#5yrsago Snowden's young adult memoir https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/09/permanent-record/#ya-snowden
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
Recent appearances (permalink)
- "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
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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/
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"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
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
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"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, 2027
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"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 ( words today, total)
- "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.
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"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/09/sloppy-steve/
https://pluralistic.net/?p=12398
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