By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026Fundamentally, Piketty argues that the cheapest way to stop people from building a guillotine on your lawn is to build hospitals and schools; this is cheaper than paying for guards and prisons to lock up would-be guillotine builders. 43/ 1427130
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026Today's AI debates swirl around whether AI can *truly* make us more productive - that is, if chatbots will allow one person to do the work of two, or three, or four - or 100. But when it comes to surveillance, the digital revolution unquestionably produced a *massive* productivity dividend. 44/ 315610
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026Consider the spying apparatus of the former East Germany ("the GDR") widely considered the most surveilled society in human history. When the Berlin Wall collapsed, there were about 16m people in the country. 45/ 11274
M Brown @mbrown007.bsky.social · 11/08/2026Yeah, I suspect that surveillance was the primary objective of the AI putscht. Generals in the US military have stated a 'need' to have the capacity to surveil every citizen of the US at any given point of time (paraphrasing from headlines). 140
Eugene Hetzel @eugenehetzel.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Soccer fields prevent more crime than SWAT tanks every time. 0354
