Books

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them

Democracy is about politics, not business, no?

showing the cover of his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The book’s central argument is that big tech is no longer our friend, as many of its billionaire owners have seized economic and political control and are steering the fate of the planet towards their own bizarre, apocalyptic visions.

And, of course, fascism worked the other way around. Business kept the imagery of independence but was, in fact, controlled by politics.

By extension, he says, Silicon Valley is fascist “because they have wholly aligned with a fascist movement. That’s their vehicle for gaining power.” Few could dispute this alignment after seeing the bosses of Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon and OpenAI line up behind Trump at his second inauguration, or Musk’s now shuttered “department of government efficiency” (Doge) being given free rein to conduct mass firings of federal employees, or Palantir’s AI-driven surveillance technology enabling deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ah. A nutter then. Ho well. How odd that he gets an outing in The Guardian.

The question now, he says, “is how we turn the momentum in our favour and against the billionaires. Because they have a plan to win. They think they’re going to succeed.” This could be a radicalising moment: “In fighting against billionaire power, we find the key to all of our problems. Every moment is an important opportunity to wake people up and to start to fight back.”

If not, he says, we’ll find ourselves in a situation where “we don’t have democracy, we don’t have an economy and we don’t have a future. If that doesn’t radicalise people, then we deserve what we’re going to get.”

Organise the Proletariat, Comrades. How did we know it was going to end with that?

In a study published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, 1,682 adults were asked to read one of six short stories, three of which were written by humans and three by ChatGPT. Each AI story had a similar theme to one of the human-authored works.

The team told participants whether their story was written by a human or AI, but this information was not always correct. The researchers then asked participants to rate how absorbing and engaging they found the story, and its quality.

Participants who read an AI-generated story rated it as more absorbing and of higher quality than those who read a story written by a human. However, participants gave higher ratings to stories they had been told were written by people.

AI is more competent than most. At most things too. It’s not – so far at least – better than the best.

Also note that the human preference still seems to be for the human production. Seems fair, given human desires etc.

The reason I wrote the book is that there’s an opportunity here: what’s collapsing is the post-industrial, colonialist, extractivist, growth-based system. If we tether ourselves to that system, we will go down with it, but if we start to distance ourselves, see what’s happening and refuse to take part in its worst excesses, the better chance we have. The way it’s going, the ultra-rich and the tech bros are going to take everything anyway. The market is going to collapse, the millionaire set will suddenly be without assets, and that’s when revolution happens.

This is not particularly new. Every generation has had such an anti-Cassandra.

Anyone who tries to tell you when and how collapse is going to happen, I wouldn’t believe them. We know that certain models are going to decline, but how that plays out will depend on how those things interact together, and also where you live.

Always the handwavey but it’s gonna be terrible, see?

we took individualism too far, capitalism no longer serves us

Sigh.

Not everyone has the capacity to comprehend all of this. Those of us who do,

Shut up, proles, and listen to the self-selected elite. So unusual, no?

Researchers have found that the two determinants of the speed and likelihood of collapse are basically levels of inequality and polarisation.

How fashionable.

We need to be going collectivist.

Shut up, proles.

Abject tossery from start to finish. But it will sell, obviously it will.

Rowan Williams:

I’m willing to be corrected – don’t want to cause a schism – but that does, I think, betray a certain ignorance of the Holy Screed. ‘Ee might know ‘is Matthew from his Mark but of the canon of Pelham G I’m not so sure. Bertie would misremember, no?

Other than that it’s a darn good review actually.

Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.

Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head.

Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

Earned her speakers’ fee right there.

Your highly-regarded commentator ‘Anon’ had some very nice things to say about my Grandad’s war memoirs. I’d like to discuss further, but adding comments to a now 3-day-old article may not be very effective. Could you let him (or possibly her, but I’m betting it’s him 😊) have my email address.

Drop me a line to “timworstallATgmail.com” and I can pass on the email addy…..

…came the Illuminati then the Trilateral Commission and the claim do jour is that it’s all The Jooos. This is obviously passe and won;t prodyuce a bestseller and social position for an ambitious leftie writer. Therefore:

I’ve spent the last four years researching private equity, and during that time I’ve been blown away by both the sheer scale of its involvement in our lives, and by what it reveals about how power and wealth now operate. A clue lies in its name: private equity deals in companies that are private. Unlike publicly listed companies, private equity-owned firms publish as little as possible about their activities and accounts, making it hard to follow the money and see how your childcare fees are spent, or whether a company is loss-making or not.

“The light of day is the best disinfectant,” the supreme court judge and liberal reformer Louis Brandeis once said. When information disappears, so does effective scrutiny. As a style of ownership, private equity resembles the opposite of democracy. It concentrates power among a small group of exceptionally wealthy dealmakers who reap the benefits of society’s failure to hold them accountable. It’s no surprise that Republicans have been pushing for legislation that would strengthen this industry’s grip over the US economy.

Therefore it’s all private equity’s fault. 300 page chewing over of this iniquity coming to a book shop near you real soon.

Hettie O’Brien is a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read, an assistant Opinion editor and the author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, published 9 April

See?

Anna Kilpatrick doesn’t have a bedroom. Or even a bed. The a 52-year-old content creator from East Sussex sleeps on a wide shelf in her hallway so that her two children, 21 and 18, can have their own rooms. And yet, she says, she has “enough”. She doesn’t hanker after a bigger house or shinier car. “Having fewer things is freedom,” she says. Kilpatrick, who shares such ideas with her 104K Instagram followers (@not.needing.new), is part of a small but growing community of “enough-luencers”. The concept is similar to deinfluencing – where content creators discourage followers from buying into trends – but is also about celebrating already having enough, and, crucially, feeling happier for it.

In her new book, Not Needing New: A Practical Guide to Finding the Joy of Enough, Kilpatrick lists the benefits of living with less: “An increased sense of calm, less anxiety through clutter, free time away from maintaining the home, a healthier bank balance and reduced debt, children who are learning how to manage delayed gratification.”

And if it is she’ll move to a larger flat. Which would be an interesting proof of the contention, no?

As I discovered while researching my new book, Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture, Edward’s relationship with clothing was as complex and intense as his passion for Wallis. Indeed, their shared obsession with style would become a lifelong expression of their peculiarities and peccadillos, as well as providing clues to their notorious pro-Nazi proclivities.

I mean, sure, fashion, but clothing is clothing after all. Still, book to sell etc.

In fact, Smith used the phrase “invisible hand” only once in The Wealth of Nations, to describe whether merchants invest their capital at home or abroad – and not, as Friedman claimed, as a general theory of markets.

This being of great interest as we mull taxing wealth. Will people invest at home or abroad if we tax the result of having invested at home more?

This seems entirely unremarkable to me:

Every year, the German Bookshop prize, awarded on behalf of the federal government’s commissioner for culture and the media, serves as a financial injection for more than 100 independent, owner-managed bookshops all over Germany. An independent jury selects the winners, based on criteria such as carefully curated literary selection and cultural events. Usually, the public doesn’t take much notice of the prize; its weight on the public purse is barely significant. But for small bookshops operating on narrow margins, the prize money of between €7,000 and €25,000 makes a tangible difference.

This year, for the first time, three bookshops disappeared from the jury’s list, according to an investigation by the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The ministry of culture deleted them, due to “information of relevance to the domestic intelligence agency”, it states. What kind of information? Nobody knows, not even Germany’s commissioner for culture himself, since the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) is not allowed to divulge it. A quick look at the three bookshops is telling: they are antifascist, they are proud of it and they are institutions in their communities.

If politics feeds money into something then which something gets money fed into it will be determined by politics.

Shrug.

There never will be – cannot be – non-political spending of money by politics. Which means by taxes. So, you attach to the State Teat then the milk you gain will be determined by politics.

Shrug.

It’s one of the grand joys of free markets – no politics.

Support your local authors.

Now a New York-based literary agent, Romero owns an Amazon Kindle, which is roughly the same size as a mass-market paperback but can store thousands of books rather than one. Still, she feels that something is being lost. “Whether it was the ink or the paper, they had a certain smell and it’s very nostalgic to me and many others.

“We’re definitely losing accessibility and that’s a huge thing right now, especially in this country, whether it’s libraries being defunded, book bannings happening, one person saying let’s get rid of 200 books because I don’t want my child to read diverse authors.

“At the same time when you’re looking, for example, at kid lit, a 14- or 15-year-old is not going to be able to buy maybe a $19.99 or $21.99 hardcover YA book, especially if they’re working a minimum-wage or babysitting job, so it becomes fully inaccessible whereas they could have just gone and picked something up like a mass-market paperback. That affordability was huge. It’s sad to see.”

As our own Bloke on M4 has been known to note, the Kindle – and the like – has massively increased availability.

$50 gets you access to more free stuff than you can read in a lifetime. Sure, much of it won’t be all that good. But then nor were many of the mass market paperbacks any good…..

Otto has an excellent idea:

July 26th 2008

“Met Scarlett J. yesterday while visiting her set. She thanked me for introducing her to Ottokring. She said he was “a stud” and “took me to heaven” but it could never be as he has his worldwide tech empire to manage 🙁 Besides, he has his own sex island, so I am told.
Mandy called, said he’d some boring doc from something called the Treasury for me. Yawnsville.”

A quickie book of the emails that should exist. Eppie himself would be a Pooterish character, taking responsibility for everything that happened. Advising Biden Jr to take art lessons say. Matching him up with Mondrian for lessons or summat. Etc etc.

The difficulty would be creating 300 such jokes to fill up a book. They’d all have to be of people famous now but around two decades back too. Ginnie asking, through Eppie, Monica for the details of the cigar trick as Bill has this strange request (it’s not actually lit when, is it? Or perhaps complaining that it was lit).

300 such jokes is a tall order. Think we can pull it off?

Writers’ retreats. Where you go off and work on that novel.

The Old Chapel in Llanfrynach is £487 for three nights. Urban Writers’ Retreat has rooms from £415 for three nights. Acorn Writing Retreats’ all-inclusive rates are £525 for three days, £675 for four (the Acorn Access Fund offers discounts for marginalised and low-income writers). Rewrite in East Sussex from £1,700 for five nights. Starcroft Farm cabins £320 for a two-night independent writing break and £750 for a four-night small-group retreat with coaching, massage and other extras (the writer was given one night’s stay for this article)

Ain’t that all sucking money off the deluded. 98% of writers will never make back even one three day stay from their book (I know, this, sorry). And an actual writer’s retreat is turn the phone off and hide in the attic.

Sheesh.

Longrider – who most around here will know – has you covered.

David Walliams has been dropped by his publisher following an investigation by The Telegraph into inappropriate behaviour towards young women.

I grasp the idea of attraction to publishing totty. Publishing is where the posh totty goes and it’s entirely possible to have a taste for posh totty. Fine.

But a rich man, a famous man (the second probably of more importance) with a known ability to be witty at least at times. He’s up to his kneecaps in poon anyway. Why chase those who work – even if indirectly – for you?

Seriously, attend a publishers’ party, drink half a glass of warm white wine and take one’s pick of the bodyslam of clunge voluntarily on offer. Groupies are not just for rock bands after all.

Why?

(No, I am not rich or famous enough for this to be true of me. But sufficiently fringe to such events to know this)

Peter Francis, a former Metropolitan Police Special Branch officer whose whistleblowing exposed the existence and practices of the Special Demonstration Squad, told an inquiry that he had visited a graveyard on instruction from a senior officer.
It was “standard practice” in the squad to use the identity of a dead child to create a plausible cover story, but different officers had different methods of identifying possible dead children, the undercover policing inquiry in central London heard. One senior officer advised Francis that he should visit a graveyard to look for dead children whose names and birth certificates he could use.

Yanis Varoufakis, the firebrand economist who rose to fame at the height of Greece’s debt drama, was not only egotistical but ultimately more interested in testing out his game theories on the nation than winning its battle to keep afloat.

So writes the former prime minister Alexis Tsipras in his newly released memoir, Ithaki, as the once radical leftwing leader, sparing no punches, seeks, 10 years later, to put the record straight.

“He was, in reality, more of a celebrity and less of an economist,” recalled the 51-year-old, who described handpicking the maverick as his finance minister because of his international reputation and “extremely attractive” skills as a public orator.

“I wanted to send the message of hard negotiation, but I underestimated the human factor. Very quickly, Varoufakis turned from being an asset into a negative protagonist. Not only could our potential allies not stand him, neither could his own colleagues.”

TBH I’ver never seen much in Varoufakis’ economic policies or ideas other than “to be against”. Everyone’s doing it all wrong but with that absence of any concrete ideas for doing it otherise.