Replying to Avatar Cory Doctorow

It's not solely that the usurers want to cheat you - it's that they can make more money if they don't pay for meticulous record-keeping, and if that means that they sometimes cheat us, that's our problem, not theirs.

While this is very obvious in the usury sector, it's also true of other kinds of massive mergers that create unfathomnably vast conglomerates.

11/
Avatar
Cory Doctorow 2y ago

The "curse of bigness" is real, but who gets cursed is a matter of power, and big companies have a *lot* more power.

The chaos, in other words, is a feature and not a bug. It provides cover for contract-violating conduct, up to and including wage-theft. Remember when Disney/Marvel stole money from beloved science fiction giant #AlanDeanFoster, whose original #StarWars novelization was hugely influential on #GeorgeLucas, who changed the movie to match Foster's ideas?

12/

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
Cory Doctorow 2y ago

Disney claimed that when it acquired #Lucasfilm, it only acquired its *assets*, but not its *liabilities*. That meant that while it continued to hold Foster's license to publish his novel, they were not bound by an obligation to *pay* Foster for this license, since that liability was retained by the (now defunct) original company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/30/disney-still-must-pay/#pay-the-writer

13/