Why Google, Apple & Big Tech Keep Making Everything Worse | Cory Doctorow and Trevor Noah

1. 0:00 – 2:00

   Elon Musk called Cory Doctorow "a scourge on humanity"

   1. TNTrevor Noah0:00

      [upbeat music] Is this why Elon Musk called you a scourge on humanity?

   2. CDCory Doctorow0:07

      He did call me a scourge on humanity.

   3. TNTrevor Noah0:09

      Oh.

   4. CDCory Doctorow0:09

      But it was because I told him that I thought it was a different thing.

   5. TNTrevor Noah0:12

      [laughs]

   6. CDCory Doctorow0:12

      He, he was like, uh, cre- so I'm a, my other life, I'm a science fiction novelist. Uh, and, uh, I write when I'm anxious. I wrote like nine books during lockdown.

   7. TNTrevor Noah0:20

      Wow.

   8. CDCory Doctorow0:20

      So I write books for all ages. I have a new middle grades book coming out next year. I, I mean, everything, picture books, tech criticism, everything. And, um, he was, uh, singing the praises of a writer who I knew a little, but qui- very much admired, a guy called Iain Banks, died very tragically of cancer, who was a utopian socialist.

   9. TNTrevor Noah0:39

      Okay.

   10. CDCory Doctorow0:39

       And he was like, "I consider myself a utopian socialist in the model of Iain Banks." And I was like, "Uh, no offense, but I knew Iain. He was an ardent trade unionist, and you're a union buster."

   11. TNTrevor Noah0:48

       Hmm.

   12. CDCory Doctorow0:48

       And he's like, "Well, in Iain Banks' novels, I didn't see any unions." And I'm like, "Yes, these novels are set 100,000 years in the future-

   13. TNTrevor Noah0:56

       [laughs]

   14. CDCory Doctorow0:56

       ... in which there are galactic brain artificial intelligences piloting spaceships the size of planets with 100 million, 100 billion people living on them." The fact that he didn't see a need for unions there-

   15. TNTrevor Noah1:07

       [laughs]

   16. CDCory Doctorow1:07

       ... tells you nothing about whether he thinks we need a union here. And he was like, "Well, if Iain Banks could have seen one of my Tesla factories, he would've seen that we don't need unions either." And I said, "Uh, again, no offense, I think there is a difference between traveling faster than the speed of light and eking out marginal gains-

   17. TNTrevor Noah1:23

       [laughs]

   18. CDCory Doctorow1:23

       ... in the production of electri- of electric vehicles."

   19. TNTrevor Noah1:24

       Damn. [laughs]

   20. CDCory Doctorow1:25

       And that is when he called me a scourge on humanity.

   21. TNTrevor Noah1:28

       Damn.

   22. CDCory Doctorow1:28

       So, but I wanted to pop the stack, 'cause this started with talking about-

   23. TNTrevor Noah1:31

       Did he block you after that?

   24. CDCory Doctorow1:32

       Yeah, he did. Yeah. [laughs]

   25. TNTrevor Noah1:33

       I'm always fascinated by that, that side of Elon.

   26. EUEugene1:35

       The blocking part?

   27. TNTrevor Noah1:36

       He's, he's like-

   28. CDCory Doctorow1:37

       He's a baby

   29. TNTrevor Noah1:37

       ... he is the, like, number one champion of free speech, and jokes, and opinions, and all this, until he doesn't have a rebuttal for you, and then he's like-

   30. EUEugene1:46

       Of course
2. 2:00 – 17:00

   What is "enshittification"?

   1. TNTrevor Noah2:09

      Cory, I'm, I'm glad you've come and joined us on the, on the podcast.

   2. CDCory Doctorow2:13

      It's mutual.

   3. TNTrevor Noah2:15

      But not for the reason you may think.

   4. CDCory Doctorow2:17

      I see.

   5. TNTrevor Noah2:17

      I have beef with you.

   6. CDCory Doctorow2:18

      Oh, no. What have I done?

   7. TNTrevor Noah2:20

      I'm pretty certain that I came up with the term shittification.

   8. CDCory Doctorow2:24

      Oh, dear.

   9. EUEugene2:25

      [laughs]

   10. TNTrevor Noah2:27

       And then all of a sudden in, like, 2022, I saw people saying enshittification.

   11. CDCory Doctorow2:32

       You see?

   12. TNTrevor Noah2:33

       Which I think is more grammatically con- correct.

   13. EUEugene2:35

       Mm.

   14. TNTrevor Noah2:35

       I just said, but I m- I know I said it. I know I said it, unless you Inceptioned me. I just remember saying to a friend of mine, I said, "Yo, I'm so sick and tired of the shittification of everything." And then they were like, "What do you mean?" And then I was like, "Everything's just becoming shittier and shittier. It's like they're making it shitty on purpose."

   15. EUEugene2:52

       I can see you coming up with that.

   16. CDCory Doctorow2:53

       Yeah.

   17. TNTrevor Noah2:53

       And then people were just like, "Yeah, whatever." And then you, like, came up with enshittification, and now the whole world is on it. And I, I feel like I've been wronged.

   18. CDCory Doctorow3:02

       Uh, you know, when it's railroad time, you get railroads.

   19. TNTrevor Noah3:05

       [laughs]

   20. CDCory Doctorow3:05

       When it's enshittification time, you get coinages pertaining to the general shittiness of everything.

   21. TNTrevor Noah3:09

       [laughs]

   22. CDCory Doctorow3:10

       So it's, I mean, we are just living in that mo- But seriously, uh, coinages are like this. So, uh, there are lots of coinages. You will find, um, simultaneous or near simultaneous coinages that appear to be completely distinct just because, uh, the idea's in the zeitgeist. And, you know, like, I've spent 25 years working on these issues, and I've come up with lots of words, and parables, and narratives, and all kinds of things.

   23. TNTrevor Noah3:37

       Yeah.

   24. CDCory Doctorow3:37

       And while I think the minor license to vulgarity is something that excites people, I also think that, like, in this moment, people are eager for, uh, a kind of atavistic way to talk about how they feel about their technology.

   25. TNTrevor Noah3:50

       More than ever.

   26. CDCory Doctorow3:51

       Yeah.

   27. TNTrevor Noah3:52

       You know, it's funny. It's, it's gone beyond technology.

   28. CDCory Doctorow3:54

       Sure.

   29. TNTrevor Noah3:55

       E- even when I was telling Eugene about this episode, I was like, "I'm so excited to talk to Cory because he has done for society what I think society has been pining to do for itself, but just sort of hasn't been able to piece together," and that is that, like, everyone everywhere feels like everything that we're getting and experiencing is becoming more and more shit.

   30. EUEugene4:16

       Hmm.
3. 17:00 – 22:00

   Why you don't really own your digital purchases

   1. TNTrevor Noah17:02

      It, it feels, it feels like it's so far down the road that it's everything now.

   2. CDCory Doctorow17:07

      Feels hopeless.

   3. TNTrevor Noah17:08

      Yeah. Yeah, because I, I, I think of the other day my brother texts me, and he goes, "Hey, man, I can't play any of my PlayStation games because it's telling me that the license of the game is not ..." But he was playing them, and then he wasn't playing. And then when we went down this rabbit hole trying to understand what had happened and how it had happened, there'd been some update that they had done.

   4. CDCory Doctorow17:29

      Uh-huh.

   5. TNTrevor Noah17:30

      But basically we realized that before you would buy a video game, take your money, you buy the video game.

   6. CDCory Doctorow17:37

      Take it home.

   7. TNTrevor Noah17:37

      The v- the video game is yours.

   8. CDCory Doctorow17:38

      Is yours.

   9. TNTrevor Noah17:39

      Yeah.

   10. CDCory Doctorow17:39

       Yeah.

   11. TNTrevor Noah17:39

       It is yours.

   12. CDCory Doctorow17:40

       Mm-hmm.

   13. TNTrevor Noah17:40

       You can loan it to a friend.

   14. CDCory Doctorow17:42

       Mm-hmm.

   15. TNTrevor Noah17:42

       You can sell it to, uh, GameStop or whoever.

   16. CDCory Doctorow17:46

       Mm-hmm.

   17. TNTrevor Noah17:47

       It is yours. Now what they say is, "No, you have bought a license to play the game from us."

   18. CDCory Doctorow17:55

       Until we change our minds. [laughs]

   19. TNTrevor Noah17:56

       Until we change our terms of service. What's crazy to me, though, is, like, they can just shut it off at any time.

   20. CDCory Doctorow18:04

       Yeah.

   21. TNTrevor Noah18:04

       And then you don't have it anymore. But I go, but we don't, as, as people, we don't have that power. I cannot change the terms of service-

   22. CDCory Doctorow18:11

       Yeah

   23. TNTrevor Noah18:11

       ... on the people that I was in a terms of service with.

   24. CDCory Doctorow18:13

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   25. TNTrevor Noah18:14

       You with me?

   26. CDCory Doctorow18:14

       Mm-hmm.

   27. TNTrevor Noah18:15

       So I, I can't go back to, you know, PlayStation or whoever and be like, "Yo, uh, remember how I gave you that $80 for that game? Yeah, my terms of service have changed."

   28. CDCory Doctorow18:25

       [laughs] You owe me 40 back.

   29. TNTrevor Noah18:27

       You owe me 40 back.

   30. CDCory Doctorow18:28

       [laughs]
4. 22:00 – 34:00

   Did Google intentionally make Search worse?

   1. CDCory Doctorow22:00

      are you stopping at 20%?" Right? Like, why don't we make the ads 100% more invasive? Get a 10% increase in our click-through. Doesn't matter if someone types, "How do I block ads in the app?"

   2. TNTrevor Noah22:09

      Because you can't block ads.

   3. CDCory Doctorow22:09

      'Cause it's a felony.

   4. TNTrevor Noah22:11

      You know that. Yeah.

   5. CDCory Doctorow22:11

      Yeah. So, you know, these enshittagenic policies, we can see how they, um... Then there's, like, a line from them to these choices made by product managers and people within firms. So one of them came out of one of the Google cases. So Google is a thrice convicted monopolist. They lost three federal antitrust cases [laughs] in one year. It was a great year for antitrust, bad year for Google. Uh, and in one of those cases... Well, in all those cases, you get all the memos published, like internally.

   6. TNTrevor Noah22:37

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

   7. CDCory Doctorow22:37

      DOJ makes them publish all their memos. And, and one of them, the search case, um, this great reporter, Ed Zitron, wrote about the, how Google got worse at search. And it happened in 2019. Their search market share, or their search, uh, revenue had, growth had stalled. Uh, and that was because they had 90% market share. So y- you don't grow your, from a 90% market share, right? Like-

   8. TNTrevor Noah23:00

      It's hard to now have those exponential jumps.

   9. CDCory Doctorow23:01

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. TNTrevor Noah23:02

       Yeah.

   11. CDCory Doctorow23:02

       I mean, you can raise a billion people to maturity and hope that they'll become your customers. That's a product called Google Classroom. It'll take a while to pay off. But in the meantime, they had this crisis, right? And so you see these two factions forming up, and one's led by this guy, Prabhakar Raghavan. He's an ex-McKinsey guy. He's an engineer, but, but a business guy, and he's in charge of revenue for Google Search. And his rival is this guy, Ben Gomes, who's, like, an old-school Googler who started building out their servers when it was, like, a computer under a desk and oversaw all of the, uh, data centers in the world, and is now in charge of Google Search, uh, technology.

   12. TNTrevor Noah23:34

       Okay.

   13. CDCory Doctorow23:34

       So Google Search revenue, Google Search technology. Prabhakar Raghavan's got a great idea. He says, "We can grow search revenue by making search worse, so you have to search more than once-

   14. TNTrevor Noah23:44

       Hmm

   15. CDCory Doctorow23:44

       ... so that, uh, we can show you more ads."

   16. TNTrevor Noah23:48

       You can't... No, Cory, you can't be serious.

   17. CDCory Doctorow23:49

       And, and he's like... And, and Ben Gomes is like, "But that's a terrible idea."

   18. TNTrevor Noah23:53

       No.

   19. CDCory Doctorow23:53

       "I didn't give my life to this company for this." And he's like, "But we spend more than $20 billion every year buying all the shelf space for search," right? We buy... Like, if there's a search box that you encounter in the wild, it's wired to Google servers. Doesn't matter what operating system, what hardware vendor, what browser-

   20. TNTrevor Noah24:12

       It all goes back to the same place

   21. CDCory Doctorow24:13

       ... it all goes to Google. So, like, why are we bribing Apple $20 billion a year not to enter the search market if we're not going to exploit the fact that no one can find any other search engine-

   22. TNTrevor Noah24:23

       Without us

   23. CDCory Doctorow24:24

       ... to, to make it worse?

   24. TNTrevor Noah24:25

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CDCory Doctorow24:25

       And so it's very easy to make it worse. There's, um... Things like query stemming, where if someone does a search for trousers, you run a parallel search for pants, then you merge the results. Uh, there's spell check, right? You ... Someone misspells a search term and you make a guess, and you just automatically fix it. Well, maybe you don't automatically fix it. Or even, like, context awareness, right? So, like, we're recording this r- right after the attempted shooting at the White House, uh, uh, Press Corps Dinner.

   26. TNTrevor Noah24:49

       Yeah.

   27. CDCory Doctorow24:49

       So if someone searches for that, well, you know that there's a news item about it, so you put those, those at the top rather than the generic best link for White House Press Corps Dinner.

   28. TNTrevor Noah24:56

       Right. Okay.

   29. CDCory Doctorow24:57

       Right? And, um, and you just turn that off, and now people have to search two or three times. And you have Ben Gomes going like, "Well, I didn't miss, you know, all those, like, Little League games of my kids to make the search worse. I believe in what we do here." And you have Prabhakar Raghavan basically saying, "Money talks and bullshit walks." And, you know, that ... I'm sure Prabhakar Raghavan was not the first person at Google to realize that if you made search worse, people would have to search more than once and make more money, but he was the first guy to win that argument.

   30. TNTrevor Noah25:24

       Mm.
5. 34:00 – 42:00

   Apple's 30% App Store tax

   1. CDCory Doctorow34:00

      can't... But, you know, generic newscaster Canadian accent, generic newscaster American accent, all the same. But, um, we had the world's most useless competition authority. So our competition bureau, in its entire history, had challenged three mergers. And that number may seem low, but the number of mergers they'd successfully challenged was zero.

   2. TNTrevor Noah34:17

      [laughs]

   3. CDCory Doctorow34:17

      And in 2024, Justin Trudeau whipped his caucus to pass the most muscular antitrust law, uh, with the most sweeping powers of any competition bureau in the world. And Justin Trudeau was not, like, a foe of corporate power, right? He was, like, his whole brand was sort of Pete Buttigieg style, like, kind of neoliberal, like, uh, d- m- you know, sort of McKinsey good hair.

   4. TNTrevor Noah34:38

      The, the status quo, but let's make it a little bit better.

   5. CDCory Doctorow34:40

      Yeah.

   6. TNTrevor Noah34:40

      Yeah.

   7. CDCory Doctorow34:40

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we get this out- out of Justin Trudeau, but we also got it in South Korea and in Singapore and in Japan and Australia, and also China.

   8. TNTrevor Noah34:49

      W- wait, what was happening?

   9. CDCory Doctorow34:51

      So different things in different countries. South Korea and Japan pursued antitrust cases against Apple for price fixing, uh, the, uh, in the App Store. So if you, if you, um, sell anything in an app, if you collect any money in an app-

   10. TNTrevor Noah35:03

       30% goes to Apple

   11. CDCory Doctorow35:04

       ... Apple requires you to use their payment processing.

   12. TNTrevor Noah35:06

       Yeah.

   13. CDCory Doctorow35:06

       They make $100 billion a year on that.

   14. TNTrevor Noah35:08

       Yeah.

   15. CDCory Doctorow35:08

       It is the most profitable line of business they're in. It's more profitable than anything else they do. It is pure profit. It's a 30% tax on the digital economy.

   16. TNTrevor Noah35:15

       Right.

   17. CDCory Doctorow35:16

       Right? Uh, and it's crazy. It's just like a, it's a shocking sum of money.

   18. TNTrevor Noah35:20

       Wait, but wait, wait. Let, let, let's, okay, let's delve into that, 'cause this, this is something that I've, um, I find myself grappling with. It's a tough one.

   19. CDCory Doctorow35:27

       Mm-hmm.

   20. TNTrevor Noah35:28

       On the one hand, I do think it's crazy that Apple charges you 30% of any revenue that is coming in from your app, that you're charging in the app-

   21. CDCory Doctorow35:37

       Mm-hmm

   22. TNTrevor Noah35:37

       ... specifically. On the other hand, I go, there was no App Store, there was no app ecosystem.

   23. CDCory Doctorow35:44

       Mm. True.

   24. TNTrevor Noah35:45

       There was no... They're making it... Have you tried to sign up for anything that's not in Apple? Ha ha ha, Eugene.

   25. CDCory Doctorow35:50

       Mm, life outside.

   26. TNTrevor Noah35:51

       Do you want to hate your life? [laughs] My man. Good luck paying. Good luck. It's, it's messy, it's hard. Good luck canceling, by the way.

   27. CDCory Doctorow35:59

       Mm-hmm.

   28. TNTrevor Noah35:59

       You try cancel a product that you didn't sign up through, like, Apple. Like, s- get some other service. 'Cause I've tried to, like, get out of the ecosystem.

   29. CDCory Doctorow36:08

       Uh-huh.

   30. TNTrevor Noah36:08

       And be like, "Nah, I'm gonna go sign up on the website myself," and I do my thing.
6. 42:00 – 58:00

   Why competition matters

   1. CDCory Doctorow42:00

      go to prison." Mm-hmm. Or get fined or whatever, right? And in fact, you talked about canceling. Under the Biden administration, Lina Khan created what was called the click to cancel rule, which told corporations- She's my hero. Ruins me too. Me too. God, I, I, I used to send her texts that said, um, "I can't tell you how disorienting it is to get out of bed in the morning and look at my phone and go, 'Oh my God, my government's great.'" [laughs] Yeah. It's like the weird- Lina Khan was ... Because, because you know what, you know what it felt like with Lina Khan? It felt like there was somebody in government doing what the government is supposed to. So here, here's how I- What does she do? Here's how I've seen it. So Lina Khan was fundamentally tasked with making sure that trade and competition were fair- Right ... in the United States. Yeah. Right? And this is something that people oftentimes obscure in these conversations. If you talked to billionaires and CEOs of corporations, all this, they would make Lina Khan seem like the devil, and they would oftentimes say, "You need to let business do what it does, and you know, you've got to be unrestrained and, because if you, if you restrain industry, it will not move in the direction" ... But this would be the equivalent of-

   2. TNTrevor Noah43:09

      Two fighters in the cage in UFC saying, "You gotta get the refs out of the cage, man"

   3. CDCory Doctorow43:14

      Right.

   4. TNTrevor Noah43:14

      Mm. "Get the refs out of the cage, and then just let the fighting be unrestrained, and then true fighting will emerge, and then you will know who the best fighter is." And it's like, yeah, that's true, but a lot of people might die. Mm-hmm.

   5. CDCory Doctorow43:25

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TNTrevor Noah43:26

      A lot of people might die. Mm. So the reason we have a referee, even at UFC, is because there is somebody who knows what the rules are. Mm-hmm.

   7. CDCory Doctorow43:35

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TNTrevor Noah43:35

      And their job is to f- enforce the rules to make sure that the spectators and the fighters in the cage- Mm ... are protected. To officiate. You- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you don't need to see anybody dying. Yeah. And you, too, don't need to die. Mm-hmm. And so even though you may not think it as one of the fighters, it's actually good for you. The- Mm. And this is, this is the thing people don't realize, is that having somebody who is competent at enforcing the trade and competition laws in a country is actually good for companies. You know why? When you are winning in a death match, you don't think someone should stop a death match. Yeah.

   9. CDCory Doctorow44:13

      Uh-huh.

   10. TNTrevor Noah44:13

       'Cause you're on top. But when you are losing- And when you're a company ... a death match- Mm-hmm

   11. CDCory Doctorow44:17

       It's 12-7

   12. TNTrevor Noah44:17

       ... you will pray to God- That someone ... that there was someone there to tap you out, someone there to go, "Hey, hey, you tapped. The fight is over." Mm.

   13. CDCory Doctorow44:24

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TNTrevor Noah44:25

       I've seen multiple major corporations who were once, like, m- you know, at the pinnacle, HP, et cetera, et cetera, you know, k- just absolutely killing it. They never want any enforcement. But when they fall down- Mm ... or when they're on the ascendancy, they'll point out constantly how they're being oppressed by other companies, how the competition is being stifled-

   15. CDCory Doctorow44:49

       Mm-hmm

   16. TNTrevor Noah44:49

       ... how they're being blocked out of doing certain things. Like, one of the most famous stories for me was, um, Virgin Cola.

   17. CDCory Doctorow44:55

       Uh-huh.

   18. TNTrevor Noah44:56

       Richard Branson was really a genius at making innovative and interesting companies-

   19. CDCory Doctorow45:01

       Mm-hmm

   20. TNTrevor Noah45:02

       ... that just created a new type of value where people didn't expect it. Virgin Airlines, you know, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin- Yeah ... you know, you know, the, the-

   21. CDCory Doctorow45:09

       Mm

   22. TNTrevor Noah45:09

       ... ship, et cetera. But a big one was Virgin Cola. One of the craziest things I learned about Virgin Cola was it was actually a product that people were starting to like more than Coca-Cola. No. I didn't know this. Mm-hmm.

   23. CDCory Doctorow45:21

       Mm-hmm.

   24. TNTrevor Noah45:22

       But it was pos- like, taste tests and, and it... and just in raw sales, it was doing this, it was doing this, it was doing this, it was just people were like, "We like the taste of this more than Coca-Cola." And then what did Coca-Cola do? They went out to all their distributors and all the people, and they said, "If you give this guy shelf space, we're gonna cut you off completely. And remember, right now, we're responsible for such a large amount of your revenue."

   25. CDCory Doctorow45:48

       Right.

   26. TNTrevor Noah45:48

       "So if you let this guy come into your places, if you give him a favorable shelf space- Mm-hmm ... if you even give him shelf space- The fridge.

   27. CDCory Doctorow45:55

       Yeah.

   28. TNTrevor Noah45:55

       Yeah ... we're gonna shut this shit down, and good luck to you not having any of our products."

   29. CDCory Doctorow46:00

       Sure.

   30. TNTrevor Noah46:01

       What can you do as a store? Yeah. You're a corner store, mom and pop store, supermarket. Yeah. Doesn't matter how big you are. Yeah. They're a huge part of your turnover. So- They've got a lot of products under their belt ... they've got too much product. Yeah, yeah. And so you go, "Sorry, Virgin." It's not worth it. "You're out." Yeah. And that's literally why Virgin Cola died. It wasn't badly anything. It wasn't... And so in that- Mm ... if you are the Virgin Cola, or if you are the anything in any field, you can think, when you're on top, you're always gonna be on top. But when that behemoth flips and they're coming after you, that's when you're gonna wish that there was enforcement. But it, by then it might be too late because now there might only be one company, and so now it just becomes an environment where competition cannot even begin to exist. Mm. Does that make sense?
7. 58:00 – 1:14:00

   Can consumers actually fight back?

   1. EUEugene58:00

      this conversation goes, I feel like the average consumer, I feel helpless.

   2. CDCory Doctorow58:03

      Mm.

   3. EUEugene58:03

      I feel like there's nothing much I can do, but there's one point that you made that actually piqued my interest when we were speaking about, um, boycotts in the township-

   4. CDCory Doctorow58:11

      Yeah

   5. EUEugene58:11

      ... during apartheid. I think it was the '70s and the '80s.

   6. CDCory Doctorow58:13

      Yeah.

   7. EUEugene58:14

      And there used to be another form of it called the stay away.

   8. CDCory Doctorow58:16

      Yeah.

   9. EUEugene58:17

      So in a stay away, you don't take public transport.

   10. CDCory Doctorow58:20

       Uh-huh.

   11. EUEugene58:20

       You don't go to the factories, you don't go-

   12. CDCory Doctorow58:23

       General strike

   13. EUEugene58:24

       ... general strike, yes.

   14. CDCory Doctorow58:25

       Yeah.

   15. EUEugene58:25

       But those two went together. And you were so right by saying that it doesn't mean people, just because they didn't buy washing powder, they didn't wash their clothes.

   16. CDCory Doctorow58:32

       Right.

   17. EUEugene58:33

       Just because they're on a stay away-

   18. CDCory Doctorow58:34

       Oh

   19. EUEugene58:34

       ... they couldn't move around. It was sort of organized for people to be able to get by, but for the corporation to feel the impact. And I feel like as time went on and as things happened, we as the consumers were made unaware accomplices by being shareholders in companies.

   20. CDCory Doctorow58:51

       Hmm.

   21. EUEugene58:52

       N-

   22. CDCory Doctorow58:53

       There's, yeah, I think there's something to that.

   23. EUEugene58:55

       Right?

   24. CDCory Doctorow58:55

       I do, I do think there's also just this neoliberal idea that, um, the best way to participate in politics is to vote with your wallet.

   25. EUEugene59:03

       Hmm.

   26. CDCory Doctorow59:03

       And, you know, billionaires love this idea 'cause their wallet's thicker than all of our wallets put together.

   27. EUEugene59:07

       Hmm.

   28. CDCory Doctorow59:08

       And so that's the one vote they can... There's like, whatever, 1,000 billionaires, right? But they can win every wallet vote. They can't win any other [laughs] kind of vote. So it's very convenient-

   29. EUEugene59:16

       Hmm

   30. CDCory Doctorow59:16

       ... that we've been told, you know, your consumption choices, that what you should really do if you're angry at Elon Musk, is agonize endlessly about whether you should have a Twitter account, right? [laughs] And not-
8. 1:14:00 – 1:31:00

   Seeds, farming and corporate control

   1. CDCory Doctorow1:14:00

      it was so infuriating to people that they demanded action from their political classes.

   2. TNTrevor Noah1:14:04

      Wow.

   3. EUEugene1:14:05

      Wow. There you go.

   4. CDCory Doctorow1:14:05

      And by 1912, we broke it up. Now, this is living memory, 1912. People who were alive in 1912 are dead now, but there are people today alive who worked under those people.

   5. TNTrevor Noah1:14:15

      Yeah.

   6. CDCory Doctorow1:14:15

      Right? And there are people alive who worked under those people. We, we're not reinventing the lost art of a fallen civilization here. No one's asking us to, like, figure out how to embalm a pharaoh or build, like, pyramids without power tools, right? This is stuff that we can do.

   7. TNTrevor Noah1:14:28

      Yeah.

   8. CDCory Doctorow1:14:29

      And the point about this political will is it is surging all over the world. We can't solve this as individuals, right?

   9. TNTrevor Noah1:14:34

      Mm.

   10. CDCory Doctorow1:14:34

       You're not gonna shop your way out of it. We can't solve it by fixing the problems of these people who have talked themselves into becoming these, like, ketamine-addled failures, right?

   11. TNTrevor Noah1:14:43

       [laughs]

   12. CDCory Doctorow1:14:43

       Uh, but we can fix it by fixing the policy environment, right?

   13. TNTrevor Noah1:14:47

       Yeah.

   14. CDCory Doctorow1:14:47

       The enshittagenic policies that create the enshittacy in the era in which everything turns to shit, we know what those policies were. We decided to stop enforcing antitrust laws, so companies formed cartels and monopolies and duopolies.

   15. TNTrevor Noah1:14:59

       Jesus.

   16. CDCory Doctorow1:14:59

       And then they influenced all of our other policies, so we got IP policies like the ones that make it illegal to repair or modify technology.

   17. TNTrevor Noah1:15:05

       Yeah.

   18. CDCory Doctorow1:15:05

       We got, um, other policies like the pharma policies that stopped South Africa from making antiretrovirals at the height of the AIDS crisis.

   19. TNTrevor Noah1:15:12

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CDCory Doctorow1:15:13

       We got the, the, the progeny of those, which stopped the Global South from making their own, um, mRNA vaccines at the-

   21. TNTrevor Noah1:15:17

       Mm-hmm

   22. CDCory Doctorow1:15:18

       ... height of the pandemic.

   23. TNTrevor Noah1:15:18

       We've got that with seeds as well.

   24. CDCory Doctorow1:15:20

       It's, Monsanto's doing that with seeds.

   25. TNTrevor Noah1:15:20

       That stopped people from growing food.

   26. CDCory Doctorow1:15:22

       Yeah.

   27. TNTrevor Noah1:15:23

       People that, that are experiencing famine around the world-

   28. CDCory Doctorow1:15:25

       Mm

   29. TNTrevor Noah1:15:25

       ... many of them cannot now plant seeds to grow food because the seeds have now been monopolized, which is one of the craziest concepts-

   30. CDCory Doctorow1:15:32

       By Monsanto Bear, yeah
9. 1:31:00 – 1:40:00

   Monopoly isn't just a board game

   1. CDCory Doctorow1:31:00

      blah, blah, blah. So this Georgist woman made this game called the landlord's game. It had two sets of rules. You played one, one cooperatively, one competitively to produce this pedagogical output. This traveling salesman played the game, stole it, sold it to Parker Brothers-

   2. TNTrevor Noah1:31:16

      Yo, you're lying.

   3. CDCory Doctorow1:31:17

      No, 100%.

   4. TNTrevor Noah1:31:17

      This is even better. This is even better

   5. CDCory Doctorow1:31:19

      ... 100%, and it was like-

   6. TNTrevor Noah1:31:20

      This is super Monopoly

   7. CDCory Doctorow1:31:21

      ... decades later that Parker Brothers finally admitted that this woman was the creator of, of the, the landlord's game, Monopoly.

   8. TNTrevor Noah1:31:28

      And?

   9. CDCory Doctorow1:31:28

      And she, the, I think either she or her descendants got a small amount of money, and, you know, she, there's, like, a small credit on the Parker Brothers website for her. That's it. At, at like, yes

   10. TNTrevor Noah1:31:38

       How can a game about screwing people over come from-

   11. CDCory Doctorow1:31:40

       Yeah, I know

   12. TNTrevor Noah1:31:41

       ... come from Screener Over? [laughs]

   13. CDCory Doctorow1:31:43

       A little on the nose. Yeah, yeah.

   14. TNTrevor Noah1:31:46

       Is there, is there, is there a, um, a system or a country or place you've seen right now that's like really just nailing this? Is, is there a beacon we can look to where we go like-

   15. CDCory Doctorow1:31:54

       No, I'll tell you what I'm hopeful about.

   16. TNTrevor Noah1:31:55

       Yeah

   17. CDCory Doctorow1:31:55

       I don't think there's anything that's nailing this, but I mentioned every country in the world adopted a law like the DMCA that bans r- modification, circumvention of-

   18. TNTrevor Noah1:32:04

       Yeah

   19. CDCory Doctorow1:32:04

       ... technology to modify it, and they did that because the US trade representative said, "If you don't do this, we're gonna hit you with tariffs."

   20. TNTrevor Noah1:32:09

       Right.

   21. CDCory Doctorow1:32:10

       Well, happy liberation day.

   22. TNTrevor Noah1:32:11

       Amazing.

   23. CDCory Doctorow1:32:12

       Right?

   24. TNTrevor Noah1:32:12

       The tariffs came in anyways now.

   25. CDCory Doctorow1:32:13

       And, and so now there's like this army of people out there. So you know Jeff Bezos when he started Amazon, he's infamous for this one saying. He would say, "Your margin is my opportunity," right? So you look at the margin that Apple has on payments or the margin that ink print- inkjet printers companies have. I mean, this is my favorite one. I know you say not everyone uses printers, but like-

   26. TNTrevor Noah1:32:30

       No, no

   27. CDCory Doctorow1:32:30

       ... ink-

   28. TNTrevor Noah1:32:30

       But I grew up with... Can I tell you something?

   29. CDCory Doctorow1:32:32

       Uh-huh.

   30. TNTrevor Noah1:32:32

       I'll tell you my story.
10. 1:40:00 – 1:52:51

    Is there any reason for hope?

    1. CDCory Doctorow1:40:00

       they provide you with the software.

    2. TNTrevor Noah1:40:01

       It would be the equivalent of having an architect or an engineer or whatever, somebody build your house and say, "We're not gonna give you the drawi-

    3. CDCory Doctorow1:40:09

       Right

    4. TNTrevor Noah1:40:09

       ... we're not gonna tell you anything about your house."

    5. CDCory Doctorow1:40:11

       Where the HVAC is, where the electrics are.

    6. TNTrevor Noah1:40:13

       You bought your house.

    7. CDCory Doctorow1:40:14

       Yeah.

    8. TNTrevor Noah1:40:14

       But they're like, "We will never tell you." And then you go, "But what if something goes wrong?" They're like, "Call us."

    9. CDCory Doctorow1:40:18

       Yeah, it's a trade secret. Yeah. So now you have this, like-

    10. TNTrevor Noah1:40:21

        So it's your house

    11. CDCory Doctorow1:40:21

        ... we are, like, closer to a transition to a much better internet than we've been in my whole career, my 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    12. TNTrevor Noah1:40:29

        Damn, that's amazing. Look at, now I'm optimistic.

    13. CDCory Doctorow1:40:31

        I, I don't mean it's, I don't mean, like, it's a slam dunk or whatever. And, and I would caution you off of optimism. I think optimism and pessimism-

    14. TNTrevor Noah1:40:37

        Aw.

    15. CDCory Doctorow1:40:37

        Wait, though. Wait.

    16. TNTrevor Noah1:40:38

        [laughs]

    17. CDCory Doctorow1:40:38

        'Cause I think there's, I think hope is good. I think optimism and pessimism are, are a waste of your time.

    18. TNTrevor Noah1:40:43

        Okay, okay.

    19. CDCory Doctorow1:40:43

        But optimism and pessimism are this kind of fatalistic belief that things are gonna get better or worse no matter what we do.

    20. TNTrevor Noah1:40:48

        Okay.

    21. CDCory Doctorow1:40:48

        Right? Hope is the belief that if you materially improve your circumstances, that you can ascend a gradient towards a world you want to live in. And as you attain that higher vantage point-

    22. TNTrevor Noah1:40:57

        Mm

    23. CDCory Doctorow1:40:57

        ... there's terrain that will be revealed to you that was occluded when you were down at this lower elevation.

    24. TNTrevor Noah1:41:02

        Okay, okay.

    25. CDCory Doctorow1:41:02

        And that from that point, we may be able to take the next step.

    26. TNTrevor Noah1:41:05

        Yeah.

    27. CDCory Doctorow1:41:05

        Right? And we don't know how far up the hill we can get. We can't see our way from A to Z. You know, I'm a novelist, right? So when I write, I can give you a clear, clean path with a, with, like, a steadily rising curve of dramatic tension and payoffs and stakes that get to a climax, and then, you know, Princess Leia gives everyone a medal, right? Like, that's how it works in fiction. But in the real world, it's messy.

    28. TNTrevor Noah1:41:26

        Yeah.

    29. CDCory Doctorow1:41:26

        You go up two steps, you go down one because you've reached a dead end. You do a traversal. You go up again. You get stuck there for a while. Then you find your way up again. But so long as there's a move you can make-

    30. TNTrevor Noah1:41:37

        Yeah

Episode duration: 1:52:52