Replying to Avatar Cory Doctorow

Take the campaign against #JunkFees, which have ticketmastered every part of your life with "fees" for things like "paying your rent by check" and "*not* paying your rent by check":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen

There is no broad constituency for junk fees. Scam artists (including scam artists in the C-suites of Fortune 100 companies) love them, sure, but junk fees make everyone else furious.

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What's a plutocrat to do? Well, it turns out that culture war bullshit can make right wingers point (metaphorical) guns at their own junk - all plutocrats need to do is put the word out that getting rid of junk fees is "#woke" and low-information right-wing thumbsuckers will *demand* the right to be charged junk fees.

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Here's an example: one especially pernicious form of junk fee is the "#SwipeFees" that credit-card companies charge merchants. In an increasingly cashless age, these companies - dominated by the #Visa/#Mastercard duopoly - have figured out how to scrape 3-5% out of *every single retail transaction in the entire fucking economy*.

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