Even if rich people were no more likely to believe stupid shit than you or me, it'd still be a problem.
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Sure, if one of those planes ever catches fire, every other plane is gonna go boom, and everyone in the terminal is toast, but my sofa-to-gate time is like *15 minutes*.
Best of all, Burbank is a Southwest hub. When we moved here a decade ago, this was *great*. Southwest, after all, has free bag-check, open seating, a great app, friendly crews, and a generous policy for canceling or changing reservations.
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If you fly in the US, you know what's coming next. In 2024, a hedge fund called Elliott Investment Management acquired an 11% stake in SWA, forced a boardroom coup that saw it replace five of the company's six directors, and then instituted a top to bottom change in airline policies. The company eliminated *literally everything* that Southwest fliers loved about the airline, from the free bags to the open seating:
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If you fly in the US, you know what's coming next. In 2024, a hedge fund called Elliott Investment Management acquired an 11% stake in SWA, forced a boardroom coup that saw it replace five of the company's six directors, and then instituted a top to bottom change in airline policies. The company eliminated *literally everything* that Southwest fliers loved about the airline, from the free bags to the open seating:
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The airline went from being the *least* enshittified airline in America to the *most*. Southwest is now worse than Spirit airlines - no, really. Southwest doesn't just merely charge for seat selection, but if you refuse to pay for seat selection, *they preferentially place you in a middle seat even on a half-empty flight*, as a way of pressuring you to pay the sky-high junk fee for seat selection:
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The airline went from being the *least* enshittified airline in America to the *most*. Southwest is now worse than Spirit airlines - no, really. Southwest doesn't just merely charge for seat selection, but if you refuse to pay for seat selection, *they preferentially place you in a middle seat even on a half-empty flight*, as a way of pressuring you to pay the sky-high junk fee for seat selection:
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Obviously, passengers who are given middle seats (and the passengers around them, who paid for window or aisle seats) don't like this, so they try to change seats. So SWA now makes its flight attendants order passengers not to switch seats, and they've resorted to making up nonsense about "weight balancing":
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Obviously, passengers who are given middle seats (and the passengers around them, who paid for window or aisle seats) don't like this, so they try to change seats. So SWA now makes its flight attendants order passengers not to switch seats, and they've resorted to making up nonsense about "weight balancing":
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Even without junk fees, SWA's fares are now higher than their rivals. I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow to host EFF executive director Cindy Cohn's book launch at City Lights:
Normally, I would have just booked a SWA flight from Burbank to SFO or Oakland (which gets less fog and is more reliable). But the SWA fare - even without junk fees - was higher than a United ticket out of the same airport, even including a checked bag, seat selection, etc.
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Even without junk fees, SWA's fares are now higher than their rivals. I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow to host EFF executive director Cindy Cohn's book launch at City Lights:
Normally, I would have just booked a SWA flight from Burbank to SFO or Oakland (which gets less fog and is more reliable). But the SWA fare - even without junk fees - was higher than a United ticket out of the same airport, even including a checked bag, seat selection, etc.
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Southwest is *genuinely* worse than Spirit now: not only does it have worse policies (forcing occupancy of middle seats!), and more frustrated, angrier flight crew (flight attendants are palpably sick of arguing with passengers), but SWA is now more expensive than United!
All of this is the fault of *one billionaire*: Elliott Investment Management CEO Peter Singer, one of America's most guillotineable plutes.
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Southwest is *genuinely* worse than Spirit now: not only does it have worse policies (forcing occupancy of middle seats!), and more frustrated, angrier flight crew (flight attendants are palpably sick of arguing with passengers), but SWA is now more expensive than United!
All of this is the fault of *one billionaire*: Elliott Investment Management CEO Peter Singer, one of America's most guillotineable plutes.
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This one guy *personally* enshittified Southwest Airlines, along with many other businesses in America and abroad. Because of this *one guy*, millions of people are made miserable *every single day*. Singer flogged off his shares and made a tidy profit. He's long gone. But SWA will never recover, and every day until its collapse, millions of passengers and flight attendants will have a shitty day because of this *one guy*:
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This one guy *personally* enshittified Southwest Airlines, along with many other businesses in America and abroad. Because of this *one guy*, millions of people are made miserable *every single day*. Singer flogged off his shares and made a tidy profit. He's long gone. But SWA will never recover, and every day until its collapse, millions of passengers and flight attendants will have a shitty day because of this *one guy*:
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Even if Peter Singer were no more prone to ethical missteps than you or me, the fact that he is morbidly wealthy means that his ethical blind spots leave behind a trail of wreckage that rivals a *comet*. And of course, being as rich as Peter Singer inflicts a lasting neurological injury that makes you incapable of understanding how wrong you are, which means that Peter Singer is *doubly* dangerous.
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Even if Peter Singer were no more prone to ethical missteps than you or me, the fact that he is morbidly wealthy means that his ethical blind spots leave behind a trail of wreckage that rivals a *comet*. And of course, being as rich as Peter Singer inflicts a lasting neurological injury that makes you incapable of understanding how wrong you are, which means that Peter Singer is *doubly* dangerous.
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Billionaires aren't just a danger when they're trying to make money, either. One of the arguments in favor of billionaires is that sometimes, the "good" billionaires take up charitable causes. But even here, billionaires can cause sweeping harm. Take Bill Gates, whose charitable projects include waging war on the public education system, seeking to replace public schools with charter schools.
Gates has no background in education, but he spent millions on this project.
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Billionaires aren't just a danger when they're trying to make money, either. One of the arguments in favor of billionaires is that sometimes, the "good" billionaires take up charitable causes. But even here, billionaires can cause sweeping harm. Take Bill Gates, whose charitable projects include waging war on the public education system, seeking to replace public schools with charter schools.
Gates has no background in education, but he spent millions on this project.
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He is one of the main reasons that poor communities around the country have been pressured to shutter their public schools and replace them with weakly regulated, extractive charters:
AP Exclusive: Billionaires fuel US charter schools movement
SEATTLE (AP) — Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.
AP News (apnews.com)
This was a catastrophe. A single billionaire dilettante's cherished stupidity wrecked the educational chances of a generation of kids:
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He is one of the main reasons that poor communities around the country have been pressured to shutter their public schools and replace them with weakly regulated, extractive charters:
AP Exclusive: Billionaires fuel US charter schools movement
SEATTLE (AP) — Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.
AP News (apnews.com)
This was a catastrophe. A single billionaire dilettante's cherished stupidity wrecked the educational chances of a generation of kids:
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Gates was a prep-school kid, so it's weird for him to have forceful views about a public education system he never experienced. In reality, it's not so much that Gates has forceful views about *schools* - rather, he has forceful views about *teachers' unions*, which he wishes to see abolished. Gates is one of America's most vicious union-busters:
Teamsters Union and Allies Protest Bill Gates and Cambridge Union Society
(CAMBRIDGE, UK) – Two members of the Teamsters Union, which represents U.S. refuse collectors at Republic Services, America’s second-largest rubbish disposal corporation, protested Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the Cambridge Union Society yesterday. They were joined by supporters from Unite the Union, which represents refuse collectors in Cambridge and across Great Britain.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (teamster.org)
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Gates was a prep-school kid, so it's weird for him to have forceful views about a public education system he never experienced. In reality, it's not so much that Gates has forceful views about *schools* - rather, he has forceful views about *teachers' unions*, which he wishes to see abolished. Gates is one of America's most vicious union-busters:
Teamsters Union and Allies Protest Bill Gates and Cambridge Union Society
(CAMBRIDGE, UK) – Two members of the Teamsters Union, which represents U.S. refuse collectors at Republic Services, America’s second-largest rubbish disposal corporation, protested Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the Cambridge Union Society yesterday. They were joined by supporters from Unite the Union, which represents refuse collectors in Cambridge and across Great Britain.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (teamster.org)
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Gates's ideology permeates *all* of his charitable work. We all know about Gates's work on public health, but less well known is the role that Gates has played in blocking poor countries from exercising their rights under the WTO to override drug patents in times of emergency. In the 2000s, the Gates Foundation blocked South Africa from procuring the anti-retroviral AIDS drugs it was entitled to under the WTO's TRIPS agreement.
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Gates's ideology permeates *all* of his charitable work. We all know about Gates's work on public health, but less well known is the role that Gates has played in blocking poor countries from exercising their rights under the WTO to override drug patents in times of emergency. In the 2000s, the Gates Foundation blocked South Africa from procuring the anti-retroviral AIDS drugs it was entitled to under the WTO's TRIPS agreement.
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The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs. And during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, Gates *personally* intervened to kill the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and to get Oxford to renege on its promise to make an open-source vaccine:
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The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs. And during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, Gates *personally* intervened to kill the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and to get Oxford to renege on its promise to make an open-source vaccine:
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It's not that Gates is insincere in his desire to improve public health outcomes - it's that his desire to improve public health conflicts with his extreme ideology of maximum intellectual property regimes. Gates simply opposes open science and compulsory licenses on scientific patents, even when that kills millions of people (as it did in South Africa). Gates's morbid wealth magnifies his cherished stupidities into weapons of mass destruction.
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It's not that Gates is insincere in his desire to improve public health outcomes - it's that his desire to improve public health conflicts with his extreme ideology of maximum intellectual property regimes. Gates simply opposes open science and compulsory licenses on scientific patents, even when that kills millions of people (as it did in South Africa). Gates's morbid wealth magnifies his cherished stupidities into weapons of mass destruction.
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Gates is back in the news these days because of his membership in the Epstein class. Epstein is the poster child for the ways that wealth is a force-multiplier for bad ideas. We can't separate Epstein's sexual predation from his wealth. Epstein spun elaborate junk-science theories to justify raping children, becoming mired in that most rich-guy coded of quagmires, eugenics:
Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples ignited a furor in the Harvard lab of George Church
Researcher threatened to quit over special treatment for a 'bad person' who had steered donations to George Church's Personal Genome Project.
STAT (www.statnews.com)
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Gates is back in the news these days because of his membership in the Epstein class. Epstein is the poster child for the ways that wealth is a force-multiplier for bad ideas. We can't separate Epstein's sexual predation from his wealth. Epstein spun elaborate junk-science theories to justify raping children, becoming mired in that most rich-guy coded of quagmires, eugenics:
Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples ignited a furor in the Harvard lab of George Church
Researcher threatened to quit over special treatment for a 'bad person' who had steered donations to George Church's Personal Genome Project.
STAT (www.statnews.com)
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Epstein openly discussed his plans to seed the planet with his DNA, reportedly telling one scientist that he planned to fill his ranch with young trafficked girls and to keep 20 of them pregnant with his children at all times:
We still don't know where Epstein's wealth came from, but we know that he was a central node in a network of *vast* riches, much of which he directed to his weird scientific projects.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Epstein openly discussed his plans to seed the planet with his DNA, reportedly telling one scientist that he planned to fill his ranch with young trafficked girls and to keep 20 of them pregnant with his children at all times:
We still don't know where Epstein's wealth came from, but we know that he was a central node in a network of *vast* riches, much of which he directed to his weird scientific projects.
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The network also protected him from consequences for his prolific child-rape project, which had more than 1,000 survivors.
In embracing eugenics junk science, Epstein was ahead of the curve. Today, eugenics is all the rage, reviving an idea that went out of fashion shortly after the Fordlandia era. After all, Henry Ford didn't just build a city where his word was law - he also bought up media companies to promote his ideas of racial superiority:
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The problem isn't whether rich people believe stupid shit; it's the fact that when a rich person believes something stupid, that belief can turn into torment for dozens, thousands, or millions of people.
Here's a historical example that I think about a *lot*. In 1928, Henry Ford got worried about the rubber supply chain.
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@pluralistic I mean, it's arguably what killed the Roman empire. Rich Romans got fancy indoor plumbing, made of lead for easy maintenance. The lead leeches onto the water, giving them a strange line on their gums and a tendency to believe idiotic nonsense.
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The network also protected him from consequences for his prolific child-rape project, which had more than 1,000 survivors.
In embracing eugenics junk science, Epstein was ahead of the curve. Today, eugenics is all the rage, reviving an idea that went out of fashion shortly after the Fordlandia era. After all, Henry Ford didn't just build a city where his word was law - he also bought up media companies to promote his ideas of racial superiority:
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Despite being too cringe to make it onto Epstein island, Elon Musk is the standard bearer for the dangers of billionaireism:
Like Henry Ford, he craves company towns where his word is law:
Elon Musk Got His SpaceX Company Town. Will He Soon Regret It?
The explosive early days of Starbase, Texas, are revealing of the new powers—and bureaucratic headaches—the new city gives the aerospace industry leader.
Texas Monthly (www.texasmonthly.com)
Like Ford, he buys up media companies and then uses them to push his batshit ideas about racial superiority:
Eugenics isn't dead—it's thriving in tech
A new book takes on the throughline from the rise of 20th-century eugenics to Silicon Valley.
Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com)
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Despite being too cringe to make it onto Epstein island, Elon Musk is the standard bearer for the dangers of billionaireism:
Like Henry Ford, he craves company towns where his word is law:
Elon Musk Got His SpaceX Company Town. Will He Soon Regret It?
The explosive early days of Starbase, Texas, are revealing of the new powers—and bureaucratic headaches—the new city gives the aerospace industry leader.
Texas Monthly (www.texasmonthly.com)
Like Ford, he buys up media companies and then uses them to push his batshit ideas about racial superiority:
Eugenics isn't dead—it's thriving in tech
A new book takes on the throughline from the rise of 20th-century eugenics to Silicon Valley.
Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com)
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Like Peter Singer, he is a master enshittifier who never met a junk fee he didn't fall in love with:
Musk says Twitter will charge $8 a month for account verification after criticism for $19.99 plan | CNN Business
After facing criticism for his plan to charge Twitter users $19.99 a month to get or keep a verified account, Elon Musk has a counteroffer.
CNN (edition.cnn.com)
And like Epstein, he wants to seed the human race with his babies, and has built a secret compound in the desert he plans to fill with women he has impregnated:
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Like Peter Singer, he is a master enshittifier who never met a junk fee he didn't fall in love with:
Musk says Twitter will charge $8 a month for account verification after criticism for $19.99 plan | CNN Business
After facing criticism for his plan to charge Twitter users $19.99 a month to get or keep a verified account, Elon Musk has a counteroffer.
CNN (edition.cnn.com)
And like Epstein, he wants to seed the human race with his babies, and has built a secret compound in the desert he plans to fill with women he has impregnated:
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Billionaires and their lickspittles will tell you that all of this is wrong: the market selects "capital allocators" by executing a vast, distributed computer program whose logic gates are every producer and consumer in The Economy (TM), and whose data are trillions of otherwise uncomputable buy and sell decisions.
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