Pluralistic: Everybody pees (15 Sep 2026)

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-16)

• The universal biological need to pee highlights the “billionaire solipsism” of figures like Jeff Bezos, who, despite experiencing the same aging bladder issues, deny Amazon’s “reverse centaur” workers the right to basic bathroom breaks.
• Doctorow argues that dealing with people as “mass statistical abstractions” and inflicting pain for wealth leads the rich and powerful to view others as “phantasms” or “balky, shitty chatbots,” making them unable to empathize with real human suffering.
• This solipsism manifests in Amazon’s severe penalties for drivers who take pee breaks, leading to roads lined with urine bottles and even Oobah Butler’s “bitter lemon energy drinks” made from driver piss becoming an Amazon bestseller.
• The true crisis of oligarchy is not just power transfer, but that attaining oligarch status is incompatible with viewing other people as real, making it a “conscience-eroding occupational hazard” that leads to a “declaration of war on humanity itself.”