Pluralistic: Surveillance vs guillotines (11 Aug 2026)

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• Cory Doctorow argues that Edward Snowden’s revelations about global surveillance and Thomas Piketty’s analysis of wealth inequality (r > g) are two aspects of the same phenomenon: extreme wealth accumulation by “orifice lottery winners” leads to political instability, which is then managed by ever-increasing, technologically advanced surveillance and “guard labor.”
• Piketty’s “r > g” principle demonstrates how inherited capital outpaces productive work, exemplified by Liliane Bettencourt accumulating more wealth than Bill Gates during his entrepreneurial phase. Doctorow labels these beneficiaries “billionaire dilettantes” whose ideological projects (e.g., Gates’s impact on public health/education, Musk’s dismantling of the administrative state) act as “weapons of mass destruction” that destabilize society.
• The digital revolution has yielded a massive “productivity dividend” in surveillance, making it vastly cheaper and more efficient to spy on populations (e.g., NSA vs. Stasi). This enables the “orifice class” to sustain an unjust system and continue “stealing, cheating, and maiming” without addressing the underlying causes of instability, as seen in the “enshittification of the American state” during the Trump years.
• This self-reinforcing cycle of misrule and repression, fueled by AI and privatized “guard labor” (e.g., Palantir, Flock Safety, robocops), creates a “doomed society.” Doctorow warns that the cheapest way to avoid “guillotines” is through redistributive policies and democratic legitimacy, rather than relying on increasingly destabilizing surveillance and force.