The entire IMLS budget over the next 10 years rounds to zero when compared to the US federal budget - and yet, by gutting it, DOGE is amputating significant parts of the country's systems that promote literacy; critical thinking; and universal access to networks, media and ideas. Put it that way, and it's not hard to see why they hate it so.

11/

Trying to figure out what Trump is up to is (deliberately) confusing, because Trump and Musk are pursuing a chaotic agenda that is designed to keep their foes off-balance:

wired.com/story/elon-musk-dona…

But as Hamilton Nolan writes, there's a way to cut through the chaos and make sense of it all. The problem is that there are a handful of billionaires who have so much money that when they choose chaos, we all have to live with it:

12/

> If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underl…

We actually have a body of law designed to prevent this from happening. It's called "antitrust" and 40 years ago, Carter followed the advice of some of history's dumbest economists who said that fighting monopolies made the economy "inefficient."

14/

The Underlying Problem

This is happening because some people are too rich.

^{Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)}

Every president since, up to - but not including - Biden, did even more to encourage monopolization and the immense riches it creates for a tiny number of greedy bastards.

But Biden changed that. Thanks to the "Unity Taskforce" that divided up the presidential appointments between the Democrats' corporate wing and the Warren/Sanders wing, Biden appointed some of the most committed, effective trustbusters we'd seen for generations:

pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/adm…

15/

After Trump's election, there was some room for hope that Trump's FTC would continue to pursue at least *some* of the anti-monopoly work of the Biden years. After all, there's a sizable faction within the MAGA movement that hates (some) monopolies:

pluralistic.net/2025/01/24/enf…

But last week, Trump claimed to have illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC: Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. I stan both of these commissioners, hard.

16/

When they were at the height of their powers in the Biden years, I had the incredible, disorienting experience of getting out of bed, checking the headlines, and feeling *very good* about what the government had just done.

Trump isn't legally allowed to fire Bedoya and Slaughter. Perhaps he's just picking this fight as part of his chaos agenda (see above).

17/

But there are some other pretty good theories about what this is setting up. In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller proposes that Trump is using this case as a wedge, trying to set a precedent that would let him fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell:

thebignewsletter.com/p/why-tru…

18/

Why Trump Tried to Fire Federal Trade Commission Democrats

Donald Trump picked a fight over firing officials at the Federal Trade Commission. If he wins, Federal Reserve independence is next. And an Amazon lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, may be involved.

^{Matt Stoller (BIG by Matt Stoller)}

But perhaps there's more to it. Stoller just had Commissioner Bedoya on Organized Money, the podcast he co-hosts with David Dayen, and Bedoya pointed out that if Trump can fire Democratic commissioners, he can also fire *Republican* commissioners. That means that if he cuts a shady deal with, say, Jeff Bezos, he can order the FTC to drop its case against Amazon and fire the Republicans on the commission if they don't frog when he jumps:

organizedmoney.fm/p/trumps-sho…

19/

Trump's Showdown at the FTC with Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya

David Dayen and Matt Stoller are joined by FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya to discuss the Trump Administration's attempt to oust him from his seat, and other currents in antitrust.

^{David Dayen (Organized Money)}

(By the way, Organized Money is a *fantastic* podcast, notwithstanding the fact that they put me on the show last week:)

audio.buzzsprout.com/6f5ly01qc…

The future that our plutocrat overlords are grasping for is indeed a terrible one. You can see its shape in the fantasies of "liberatarian exit" - the seasteads, free states, and other assorted attempts to build anarcho-capitalist lawless lands where you can sell yourself into slavery, or just sell your kidneys.

20/

The best nonfiction book on libertarian exit is Raymond Criab's 2022 "Adventure Capitalism," a brilliant, darkly hilarious and chilling history of every time a group of people have tried to found a nation based on elevating selfishness to a virtue:

pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/thi…

21/

If Craib's book is the best nonfiction volume on the subject of libertarian exit, then Naomi Kritzer's super 2023 novel *Liberty's Daughter* is the best *novel* about life in a libertopia - a young adult novel about a girl growing up in the hell that would be life with a Heinlein-type dad:

pluralistic.net/2023/11/21/pod…

22/

But now this canon has a third volume, a piece of *design* fiction from Atelier Van Lieshout called "Slave City," which specs out an arcology populated with 200,000 inhabitants whose "very rational, efficient and profitable" arrangements produce €7b/year in profit:

archdaily.com/30114/slave-city…

23/

Slave City / Atelier Van Lieshout

As if it was a mix in between Huxley | Orwell story, Atelier Van Lieshout from Rotterdam is developing this project since 2005. Just like in Brave...

^{Ethel Baraona Pohl (ArchDaily)}

This economic miracle is created by the residents' "voluntary" opt-in to a day consisting of 7h in an office, 7h toiling in the fields, 7h of sleep, and 3h for "leisure" (e.g. hanging out at "The Mall," a 24/7, 26-storey " boundless consumer paradise").

24/

Slaves who wish to better themselves can attend either Female Slave University or Male Slave University (no gender controversy in Slave City!), which run 24/7, with 7 hours of study, 7 hours of upkeep and maintenance on the facility, 7h of sleep, and, of course, 3h of "leisure."

25/

The field of design fiction is a weird and fertile one. In his traditional closing keynote for this year's SXSW Interactive festival, Bruce Sterling opens with a little potted history of the field since it was coined by Julian Bleeker:

bruces.medium.com/how-to-rebui…

Then Bruce moves on to his own latest design fiction project, an automated poetry machine called the Versificatore first described by Primo Levi in an odd piece of science fiction written for a newspaper.

26/

How to Rebuild an Imaginary Future (2025) - Bruce Sterling - Medium

Twenty years ago, here at South By Southwest, I was on a panel where the term “design fiction” was made public. Before Julian Bleecker invented and deployed that term, there were many things going on…

^{Bruce Sterling (Medium)}

The Versificatore was then adapted to the screen in 1971, for an episode of an Italian sf TV show based on Levi's fiction:

youtube.com/watch?v=tva-D_8b8-…

And now Sterling has built a Versificatore. The keynote is a sterlingian delight - as all of his SXSW closers are. It's a hymn to the value of "imaginary futures" and an instruction manual for recovering them. It could not be more timely.

27/

Primo Levi _ Il versificatore

Sostenete il lavoro culturale, accidentavvoi!☞ https://ko-fi.com/xaviervirdem***"Storie naturali", Torino: Einaudi, 1966 (Il Mondo, 17 maggio 1960)Voci: Raou...

^YouTube

Sterling's imaginary futures would be a good upbeat note to end this 'dump with, but I've got a *real* future that's just as inspiring to close us out with: the EU has found Apple guilty of monopolizing the interfaces to its devices and have ordered the company to open them up for interoperability, so that other manufacturers - European manufacturers! - can make fully interoperable gadgets that are first-class citizens of Apple's "ecosystem":

reuters.com/technology/apple-o…

28/

It's a good reminder that as America crumbles, there are still places left in the world with competent governments that want to help the people they represent thrive and prosper. As the Prophet Gibson tells us, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." Let's hope that the EU is living in America's future, and not the other way around.

29/

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in SAN DIEGO on MONDAY (Mar 24):

mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

And in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2:

exileinbookville.com/events/44…

More tour dates here:

martinhench.com

30/

Image:
TDelCoro
flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro…

CC BY-SA 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

eof/

Bloody Mary

Photo: TDelCoro The LINQ Hotel + Experience Las Vegas 6-22-2019

^Flickr