#estate 21

[ying-doodles]

have you noticed all the heart shaped ahoges? another small detail I love adding every time- <3

also honourable mention goes to both the flat (sad/mad) and surprised ahoges:

(if you recognize where all of these came from then um... wow, you've either spam liked all my art in one go or have been here for too long,, either way, that's wild- O-o")

[massimoognibene]

Bel tempo, ha detto il meteo. Bel tempo un cazzo.

[elenascrive]

Un punto di forza dell’Estate?

La leggerezza in assoluto

che può arrivare a permettere di tutto,

perfino quello di trasformare

la Realtà in Sogno

e viceversa.

Gli Animi si distendono

ed ogni cosa diventa possibile o quasi…

Buongiorno e Buona estate! ☀️🌊

@elenascrive

[princeofcyberpunk]

josh and his classic ceilings

[stellaubriaca]

Un estate ancora lunga

Dopo dieci lunghi anni di assenza da Tumblr, ecco qui che ritorno più saggia (?) e meno distrutta (non ci credo nemmeno io) di prima. Avrei tanto voluto creare il primo post per inaugurare il blog, il primo giorno che l'ho creato (il 21 giugno) ma ancora non avevo molte idee. Stranamente, mi piaceva celebrare l'arrivo dell'estate 2024 ritornando qui. Stanotte è così fresca... e io mi sento tanto rimbambita. Un saluto a chi ha letto fin qui.

[househuntingscotland]

2 bedroom flat for sale on Bedford Street, Glasgow

Asking price: £179,000

[21enclave-villasforsale]

Which investment is booming these days, gold investment or real estate?

I can provide you with some general information up until my last knowledge update in June 2024 Both gold and real estate can be considered investment options, but their performance can vary depending on various factors, including economic conditions, market trends, and investor preferences. Historically, gold has been considered a safe haven investment during times of economic uncertainty or inflationary pressures. It has traditionally acted as a hedge against inflation and currency fluctuations.

On the other hand, real estate can offer potential long-term appreciation and income through rental properties. Real estate investments can be influenced by factors such as location, supply and demand dynamics, interest rates, and overall economic conditions.

To determine which investment is currently booming, you would need to research the latest market trends, consult financial experts, and analyze relevant data. It’s worth noting that investment performance can vary over time, and what may be booming now might not necessarily be the case in the future.

I would suggest investing in vacation rentals that is currently a best & trending option for real estate investment. Many destinations near Maharashtra are becoming a hub of vacation rentals. I mean if you are confused about gold & real estate investment then I would suggest exploring vacation rentals in real estate investment. I will suggest that you explore places like Karjat, Alibaug, Dapoli.

Pushpam Group is a real estate company based in Pune & they have developed two excellent properties in Karjat, Alibuag and Dapoli. Both are resort home investment projects that are specialized in innovative investment options. For Karjat you can go for Pushpam Sanskruti, they are launching townhouse villa project-21 Enclave. This is only 21 villas project, providing premium villas with private pools and many amenities with no maintenance charges also give rental income.

It consists of 2 & 3 BHK villas with townhouse style architecture. Along with this it also consists of lavish amenities like swimming pool, spa, banquet hall, party area, club house, organic farming and many more. Hence explore these property to get a good financial decision on property investment.

Instead of investing in gold ornaments, now you can choose to invest in gold bonds. But I would suggest one such property that could be extremely beneficial from an investment point of view.

[centurytwentyone]

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[respectissexy]

If you are not on Twitter but are interested in what's going on with Elon Musk's Twitter, never fear, I am back as your Twitter Correspondent.

So, on Thursday, 4/20, Elon removed all the "legacy verified" blue checks. That means that if you are, say, Taylor Swift or the Pope, and you have a blue checkmark because you have proven you identity and want to avoid being impersonated, that check mark went away unless you paid the $8 to subscribe to Twitter Blue.

The assumption was clearly that, despite all their blustering, when push came to shove the power users would nut up and pay for it, if only to avoid their fans being scammed using their likeness.

That didn't happen. As of 4/21, only weirdo Elon stans had blue checks. Those stans immediately got mad, because they had intended to purchase access to an exclusive club, and all the cool kids left as soon as they arrived.

To make matters worse for Elon, several influential shitposters began posting about #BlockTheBlue, a movement to block all paid Twitter bluechecks, and some even released scripts that would automatically block all bluecheck accounts for you.

However, some people retained their blue checks who swore they hadn't paid for them -- in particular, Stephen King and LeBron James, who had tweeted that they would refuse to pay.

Elon admitted that he had paid for these users' blue checks out of his own pocket. Is he trolling? Is it a weird simp move? Hard to say.

Now, as of 4/22, a whole mess of famous people have bluechecks who aren't paying for them. This seems to be a move to confound the automated Block The Blue scripts. Lil Nas X is tweeting angrily about how he doesn't want his blue check. People are speculating that a new policy has been silently rolled out to automatically assign a blue check to every user with over 1 million followers. Several people have pointed out that this amounts to false endorsement, i.e. implying falsely that a notable person uses or endorses your product without their permission, which is a crime. Blue checks have been posthumously assigned to Anthony Bourdain and Terry Pratchett, whose estates my money is on to be the ones to actually sue.

dril, famous shitposter and Block The Blue promoter, keeps being assigned a blue check as an apparent punishment for crossing Elon, but you can lose your blue check by changing your display name. (It seems really wild to tie the blue check to the display name and not use the username, but it became necessary after the era where all those legacy verified folks unleashed their inner Jaboukie and changed their display names to Elon Musk. As recently as last month a legacy verified user with 100k followers got banned for impersonating JK Rowling apologizing to trans people.) So dril just keeps changing his display name every time they bluecheck him. Elon and dril have been engaged in this game of cat and mouse all day. The "Elon bans dril and we all throw trash at him like New Yorkers defending spiderman" meme will probably come to fruition today or tomorrow.

[centuryjm21]

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[gabe-sanders]

(via Beacon 21 Real Estate Market Report October 2023)

Beacon 21 Real Estate Market Report October 2023

[garzmax]

[shiplessoceans]

Moments in House MD that made me absolutely feral as an O.G fan that watched it as it aired back in the naughties, shipping House/Wilson hardcore and not realising I was queer:

1. Wilson loudly reciting a poem to House as he enters the hospital lobby which contains the line: "His manly chest, his stubbled jaw, everything about him leaves me raw.'

2. The look on Wilson's face when a random clinic patient gives House advice about his date with Cameron.

"Do her....or you're gay."

*cue Wilson looking to the side like...wait a minute...*

3. House: "They were not Prada! you wouldn't know Prada if it stepped on your scrotum."

4. Wilson: "House I believe you're a romantic, you didn't just believe him, you believed IN him! Wanna come over tonight, watch old movies and cry?"

5. House (yelling across a crowded lobby to Wilson): "How long can you go without sex?"

6. The look on Wilson's face when he gets a masseuse for House (!) and she massages his hand, causing him to begin moaning orgasmically.

7. Stacey: "What are you hiding?"

House: "I'm gay... Oh that's not what you meant! But it does explain a lot thought. No girlfriend, always with Wilson..."

8. House watching Wilson sleep on the couch in his apartment, then quietly erasing a voicemail from a real estate agent saying Wilson's apartment application for a new place went through.

9. Wilson, explaining his infidelity during his previous marriage, to Cameron when she's feeling awful because she considered cheating on her husband while he was dying:

"Well my wife wasn't dying, she wasn't even sick. But I met someone who made me feel...funny. Good. And I... didn't wanna let that feeling go."

The lack of pronoun haunts me to this day.

10. Gay male patient harassing House and questioning why he won't treat him:

Patient: "Because you're a closet case?" (Eyeing House and Wilson who have just emerged from House's apartment)

Wilson: "Uh...we're not...together..."

House: "He is so self-loathing."

11. House nearly kills himself to attempt to prove there is no afterlife, Wilson waits over his bedside and then calls him an idiot and orders him extra pain medication. House's response is:

"I love you."

12. House: "Big romantic weekend in the Poconos could change everything."

13. Wilson refusing to participate in a board vote to oust House from the hospital and consequently losing him job for House. Wilson's furious with him over being put in that position but forgives House easily.

14. Wilson (speaking to House about dating a woman eerily similar to House): "Why not? Why not date you? It's perfect! We've known each other for years, we put up with all kinds of crap from each other and we keep coming back. We're a couple!"

House: "Are we still speaking metaphorically?"

15. (Less than a minute later when House keeps trying to convince Wilson he and Amber are a bad idea).

Wilson: "Wait a minute, every time I agree with you, you come up with a new argument. What are you trying to avoid?"

House: *Stares at Wilson with the most meaningful eye contact to ever eye contact*

Wilson: "Oh! Well if you'd looked at me with those flashing eyes before I was involved (clicks tongue)."

16. To Wilson's new girlfriend in a threatening, 'stay away from my man' voice:

House: "Give him back his sweatshirt... Pit stains don't become you."

17. House: "This isn't just about the sex! You like her personality! You like that she's conniving. You like that she can humiliate someone if it serves..."

*tense pause*

House: "Oh my god. You're sleeping with me."

*flees restaurant*

18. House: "I have really gotta get you laid. If I have to plough that furrow myself, so be it."

19. Wilson: "I have a headache."

House: "We don't have to have sex, sometimes it's nice just to cuddle and talk."

20. (To a bellboy at a hotel House is staying at, while gesturing to Wilson)

House: "After he and I have sex, I'm gonna slit his throat and disembowel him in the bathtub."

21. House going to interview all of Wilson's ex wives to figure out how best to break him and Cuddy up when they aren't even dating. The look on his face when Bonnie explains how good at sex Wilson is? Priceless.

22. House: "Probably my deep and very unconscious desire to get Wilson into my bedroom."

22. House: "If you're coming back because you're attracted to the shine of my neediness. I'd be fine with that."

23. House borrowing money off Wilson in increasing amounts to test the limits of their friendship. He later admits to Wilson that: "Maybe I don't want to push this til it breaks".

24. House being convinced the male CIA agent who approaches him in season 4 is a stripper and sitting on a bench saying:

House: "You wanna close that door?"

CIA agent: "Why?"

House: "Well I assume you're gonna drop trou at some point during the dance, I don't see why I should share."

25. Wilson: "I want a threesome"

House: "Shouldn't we try a twosome first?"

26. All of that episode where House is talking to Dr Nolan and says Wilson is not a consolation prize. Legit became convinced halfway through that this was going to be House realising he's in love with Wilson and wants to keep living with him.

27. House hiring a P.I. to stalk Wilson after they've had a falling out to see if he misses him. The P.I. clocks this immediately and treats the case like that of a scorned lover needing to know if the other party is pining and if theres anything that can make him come back.

28. Wilson proposing to House in a restaurant to throw a wrench in his plans to date their neighbour.

29. Wilson got mad that Cuddy hurt House. So he bought her dream apartment out from under her in sheer spite and moved into said apartment with House.

30. Wilson being indecisive and unable to buy furniture for himself because of a flimsy sense of self and an inability to figure out who he is and what he wants. House teases him about this and challenges him to buy one peice of furniture that says something about who Wilson is.

The peice of furniture Wilson buys?

A piano organ for House.

31. House: "You were thinking about Wilson while were were having sex? That's cool so was I."

32. Wilson: "If things go wrong, I just want you to know..."

House: "If you're gonna say that you've always been secretly gay for me? Everyone just kind of assumed it."

33. Cameron: "Where do you put the cane?"

House: (referring to Wilson) "If he buys me dinner he can find out."

34. That gay as fuck ending, fuck I'll never be over it.

[sketsagriya]

Uniknya Desain Rumah Tipe 21 dengan Plafon Tinggi: Loft Ruang Tidur dan Ruang Keluarga Terbuka

Saat ini, desain rumah tipe 21 sedang menjadi tren di kalangan masyarakat. Namun, ada satu desain unik yang sedang menarik perhatian para pencinta desain rumah, yaitu desain rumah tipe 21 dengan plafon tinggi. Plafon yang tinggi ini tidak hanya membuat rumah terlihat lebih luas dan lapang, tapi juga dapat digunakan sebagai ruang vertikal yang unik. Dengan plafon tinggi ini, Anda dapat menciptakan…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting “Capitalists Hate Capitalism”

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

This week on my podcast, I read "Capitalists Hate Capitalism," my latest column for Locus Magazine:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

What do I mean by "capitalists hate capitalism?" It all comes down to the difference between "profits" and "rents." A capitalist takes capital (money, or the things you can buy with it) and combines it with employees' labor, and generates profits (the capitalist's share) and wages (the workers' share).

Rents, meanwhile, come from owning an asset that capitalists need to generate profits. For example, a landlord who rents a storefront to a coffee shop extracts rent from the capitalist who owns the coffee shop. Meanwhile, the capitalist who owns the cafe extracts profits from the baristas' labor.

Capitalists' founding philosophers like Adam Smith hated rents. Worse: rents were the most important source of income at the time of capitalism's founding. Feudal lords owned great swathes of land, and there were armies of serfs who were bound to that land – it was illegal for them to leave it. The serfs owed rent to lords, and so they worked the land in order grow crops and raise livestock that they handed over the to lord as rent for the land they weren't allowed to leave.

Capitalists, meanwhile, wanted to turn that land into grazing territory for sheep as a source of wool for the "dark, Satanic mills" of the industrial revolution. They wanted the serfs to be kicked off their land so that they would become "free labor" that could be hired to work in those factories.

For the founders of capitalism, a "free market" wasn't free from regulation, it was free from rents, and "free labor" came from workers who were free to leave the estates where they were born – but also free to starve unless they took a job with the capitalists.

For capitalism's philosophers, free markets and free labor weren't just a source of profits, they were also a source of virtue. Capitalists – unlike lords – had to worry about competition from one another. They had to make better goods at lower prices, lest their customers take their business elsewhere; and they had to offer higher pay and better conditions, lest their "free labor" take a job elsewhere.

This means that capitalists are haunted by the fear of losing everything, and that fear acts as a goad, driving them to find ways to make everything better for everyone: better, cheaper products that benefit shoppers; and better-paid, safer jobs that benefit workers. For Smith, capitalism is alchemy, a philosopher's stone that transforms the base metal of greed into the gold of public spiritedness.

By contrast, rentiers are insulated from competition. Their workers are bound to the land, and must toil to pay the rent no matter whether they are treated well or abused. The rent rolls in reliably, without the lord having to invest in new, better ways to bring in the harvest. It's a good life (for the lord).

Think of that coffee-shop again: if a better cafe opens across the street, the owner can lose it all, as their customers and workers switch allegiance. But for the landlord, the failure of his capitalist tenant is a feature, not a bug. Once the cafe goes bust, the landlord gets a newly vacant storefront on the same block as the hot new coffee shop that can be rented out at even higher rates to another capitalist who tries his luck.

The industrial revolution wasn't just the triumph of automation over craft processes, nor the triumph of factory owners over weavers. It was also the triumph of profits over rents. The transformation of hereditary estates worked by serfs into part of the supply chain for textile mills was attended by – and contributed to – the political ascendancy of capitalists over rentiers.

Now, obviously, capitalism didn't end rents – just as feudalism didn't require the total absence of profits. Under feudalism, capitalists still extracted profits from capital and labor; and under capitalism, rentiers still extracted rents from assets that capitalists and workers paid them to use.

The difference comes in the way that conflicts between profits and rents were resolved. Feudalism is a system where rents triumph over profits, and capitalism is a system where profits triumph over rents.

It's conflict that tells you what really matters. You love your family, but they drive you crazy. If you side with your family over your friends – even when your friends might be right and your family's probably wrong – then you value your family more than your friends. That doesn't mean you don't value your friends – it means that you value them less than your family.

Conflict is a reliable way to know whether or not you're a leftist. As Steven Brust says, the way to distinguish a leftist is to ask "What's more important, human rights, or property rights?" If you answer "Property rights are human right," you're not a leftist. Leftists don't necessarily oppose all property rights – they just think they're less important than human rights.

Think of conflicts between property rights and human rights: the grocer who deliberately renders leftover food inedible before putting it in the dumpster to ensure that hungry people can't eat it, or the landlord who keeps an apartment empty while a homeless person freezes to death on its doorstep. You don't have to say "No one can own food or a home" to say, "in these cases, property rights are interfering with human rights, so they should be overridden." For leftists property rights can be a means to human rights (like revolutionary land reformers who give peasants title to the lands they work), but where property rights interfere with human rights, they are set aside.

In his 2023 book Technofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis claims that capitalism has given way to a new feudalism – that capitalism was a transitional phase between feudalism…and feudalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Varoufakis's point isn't that capitalists have gone extinct. Rather, it's that today, conflicts between capital and assets – between rents and profits – reliably end with a victory of rent over profit.

Think of Amazon: the "everything store" appears to be a vast bazaar, a flea-market whose stalls are all operated by independent capitalists who decide what to sell, how to price it, and then compete to tempt shoppers. In reality, though, the whole system is owned by a single feudalist, who extracts 51% from every dollar those merchants take in, and decides who can sell, and what they can sell, and at what price, and whether anyone can even see it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Or consider the patent trolls of the Eastern District of Texas. These "companies" are invisible and produce nothing. They consist solely of a serviced mailbox in a dusty, uninhabited office-building, and an overbroad patent (say, a patent on "tapping on a screen with your finger") issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office. These companies extract hundreds of millions of dollars from Apple, Google, Samsung for violating these patents. In other words, the government steps in and takes vast profits generated through productive activity by companies that make phones, and turns that money over as rent paid to unproductive companies whose sole "product" is lawsuits. It's the triumph of rent over profit.

Capitalists hate capitalism. All capitalists would rather extract rents than profits, because rents are insulated from competition. The merchants who sell on Jeff Bezos's Amazon (or open a cafe in a landlord's storefront, or license a foolish smartphone patent) bear all the risk. The landlords – of Amazon, the storefront, or the patent – get paid whether or not that risk pays off.

This is why Google, Apple and Samsung also have vast digital estates that they rent out to capitalists – everything from app stores to patent portfolios. They would much rather be in the business of renting things out to capitalists than competing with capitalists.

Hence that famous Adam Smith quote: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." This is literally what Google and Meta do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

And it's what Apple and Google do:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion

Why compete with one another when you can collude, like feudal lords with adjacent estates who trust one another to return any serf they catch trying to sneak away in the dead of night?

Because of course, it's not just "free markets" that have been captured by rents ("Competition is for losers" -P. Thiel) – it's also "free labor." For years, the largest tech and entertainment companies in America illegally colluded on a "no poach" agreement not to hire one-anothers' employees:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/apple-google-other-silicon-valley-tech-giants-ordered-to-pay-415m-in-no-poaching-suit/

These companies were bitter competitors – as were these sectors. Even as Big Content was lobbying for farcical copyright law expansions and vowing to capture Big Tech, all these companies on both sides were able to set aside their differences and collude to bind their free workers to their estates and end the "wasteful competition" to secure their labor.

Of course, this is even more pronounced at the bottom of the labor market, where noncompete "agreements" are the norm. The median American worker bound by a noncompete is a fast-food worker whose employer can wield the power of the state to prevent that worker from leaving behind the Wendy's cash-register to make $0.25/hour more at the McDonald's fry trap across the street:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Employers defend this as necessary to secure their investment in training their workers and to ensure the integrity of their trade secrets. But why should their investments be protected? Capitalism is about risk, and the fear that accompanies risk – fear that drives capitalists to innovate, which creates the public benefit that is the moral justification for capitalism.

Capitalists hate capitalism. They don't want free labor – they want labor bound to the land. Capitalists benefit from free labor: if you have a better company, you can tempt away the best workers and cause your inferior rival to fail. But feudalists benefit from un-free labor, from tricks like "bondage fees" that force workers to pay in order to quit their jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#doorman-building

Companies like Petsmart use "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) to keep low-waged workers from leaving for better employers. Petsmart says it costs $5,500 to train a pet-groomer, and if that worker is fired, laid off, or quits less than two years, they have to pay that amount to Petsmart:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Now, Petsmart is full of shit here. The "four-week training course" Petsmart claims is worth $5,500 actually only lasts for three weeks. What's more, the "training" consists of sweeping the floor and doing other low-level chores for three weeks, without pay.

But even if Petsmart were to give $5,500 worth of training to every pet-groomer, this would still be bullshit. Why should the worker bear the risk of Petsmart making a bad investment in their training? Under capitalism, risks justify rewards. Petsmart's argument for charging $50 to groom your dog and paying the groomer $15 for the job is that they took $35 worth of risk. But some of that risk is being borne by the worker – they're the ones footing the bill for the training.

For Petsmart – as for all feudalists – a worker (with all the attendant risks) can be turned into an asset, something that isn't subject to competition. Petsmart doesn't have to retain workers through superior pay and conditions – they can use the state's contract-enforcement mechanism instead.

Capitalists hate capitalism, but they love feudalism. Sure, they dress this up by claiming that governmental de-risking spurs investment: "Who would pay to train a pet-groomer if that worker could walk out the next day and shave dogs for some competing shop?"

But this is obvious nonsense. Think of Silicon Valley: high tech is the most "IP-intensive" of all industries, the sector that has had to compete most fiercely for skilled labor. And yet, Silicon Valley is in California, where noncompetes are illegal. Every single successful Silicon Valley company has thrived in an environment in which their skilled workers can walk out the door at any time and take a job with a rival company.

There's no indication that the risk of free labor prevents investment. Think of AI, the biggest investment bubble in human history. All the major AI companies are in jurisdictions where noncompetes are illegal. Anthropic – OpenAI's most serious competitor – was founded by a sister/brother team who quit senior roles at OpenAI and founded a direct competitor. No one can claim with a straight face that OpenAI is now unable to raise capital on favorable terms.

What's more, when OpenAI founder Sam Altman was forced out by his board, Microsoft offered to hire him – and 700 other OpenAI personnel – to found an OpenAI competitor. When Altman returned to the company, Microsoft invested more money in OpenAI, despite their intimate understanding that anyone could hire away the company's founder and all of its top technical staff at any time.

The idea that the departure of the Burger King trade secrets locked up in its workers' heads constitute more of a risk to the ability to operate a hamburger restaurant than the departure of the entire technical staff of OpenAI is obvious nonsense. Noncompetes aren't a way to make it possible to run a business – they're a way to make it easy to run a business, by eliminating competition and pushing the risk onto employees.

Because capitalists hate capitalism. And who can blame them? Who wouldn't prefer a life with less risk to one where you have to constantly look over your shoulder for competitors who've found a way to make a superior offer to your customers and workers?

This is why businesses are so excited about securing "IP" – that is, a government-backed right to control your workers, customers, competitors or critics:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

The argument for every IP right expansion is the same: "Who would invest in creating something new without the assurance that some­one else wouldn’t copy and improve on it and put them out of business?"

That was the argument raised five years ago, during the (mercifully brief) mania for genre writers seeking trademarks on common tropes. There was the romance writer who got a trademark on the word "cocky" in book titles:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17566276/cockygate-amazon-kindle-unlimited-algorithm-self-published-romance-novel-cabal

And the fantasy writer who wanted a trademark on "dragon slayer" in fantasy novel titles:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/14/son-of-cocky-a-writer-is-trying-to-trademark-dragon-slayer-for-fantasy-novels/

Who subsequently sought a trademark on any book cover featuring a person holding a weapon:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/07/19/trademark-troll-who-claims-to-own-dragon-slayer-now-wants-exclusive-rights-to-book-covers-where-someone-is-holding-a-weapon/

For these would-be rentiers, the logic was the same: "Why would I write a book about a dragon-slayer if I could lose readers to someone else who writes a book about dragon-slayers?"

In these cases, the USPTO denied or rescinded its trademarks. Profits triumphed over rents. But increasingly, rents are triumphing over profits, and rent-extraction is celebrated as "smart business," while profits are for suckers, only slightly preferable to "wages" (the worst way to get paid under both capitalism and feudalism).

That's what's behind all the talk about "passive income" – that's just a euphemism for "rent." It's what Douglas Rushkoff is referring to in Survival of the Richest when he talks about the wealthy wanting to "go meta":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don't drive a cab – go meta and buy a medallion. Don't buy a medallion, go meta and found Uber. Don't found Uber, go meta and invest in Uber. Don't invest in Uber, go meta and buy options on Uber stock. Don't buy Uber stock options, go meta and buy derivatives of options on Uber stock.

"Going meta" means distancing yourself from capitalism – from income derived from profits, from competition, from risk – and cozying up to feudalism.

Capitalists have always hated capitalism. The owners of the dark Satanic mills wanted peasants turned off the land and converted into "free labor" – but they also kidnapped Napoleonic war-orphans and indentured them to ten-year terms of service, which was all you could get out of a child's body before it was ruined for further work:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

When Varoufakis says we've entered a new feudal age, he doesn't mean that we've abolished capitalism. He means that – for the first time in centuries – when rents go to war against profits – the rents almost always emerge victorious.

Here's the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/04/14/capitalists-hate-capitalism/

Here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_465/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_465_-_Capitalists_Hate_Capitalism.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah