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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.

The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.

Reagan ordered his antitrust cops to stop enforcing Robinson-Patman, which was a huge giveaway to big business. Of course, that's not how Reagan framed it: He called Robinson-Patman a declaration of "war on low prices," because it prevented big companies from using their buying power to squeeze huge discounts. Reagan's court sorcerers/economists asserted that if Walmart could get goods at lower prices, they would sell goods at lower prices.

Which was true…up to a point. Because preferential discounting (offering better discounts to bigger customers) creates a structural advantage over smaller businesses, it meant that big box stores would eventually eliminate virtually all of their smaller competitors. That's exactly what happened: downtowns withered, suburban big boxes grew. Spending that would have formerly stayed in the community was whisked away to corporate headquarters. These corporate HQs were inevitably located in "onshore-offshore" tax haven states, meaning they were barely taxed at the state level. That left plenty of money in these big companies' coffers to spend on funny accountants who'd help them avoid federal taxes, too. That's another structural advantage the big box stores had over the mom-and-pops: not only did they get their inventory at below-cost discounts, they didn't have to pay tax on the profits, either.

MBA programs actually teach this as a strategy to pursue: they usually refer to Amazon's "flywheel" where lower prices bring in more customers which allows them to demand even lower prices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek

You might have heard about rural and inner-city "food deserts," where all the independent grocery stores have shuttered, leaving behind nothing but dollar stores? These are the direct product of the decision not to enforce Robinson-Patman. Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff (working at a dollar store is incredibly dangerous, thanks to low staffing levels that make them easy targets for armed robbers). Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in "cheater" sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Writing in The American Prospect, Max M Miller and Bryce Tuttle1 – a current and a former staffer for FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya – write about the long shadow cast by Reagan's decision to put Robinson-Patman in mothballs:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-13-stopping-excessive-market-power-monopoly/

They tell the story of Robinson-Patman's origins in 1936, when A&P was using preferential discounts to destroy the independent grocery sector and endanger the American food system. A&P didn't just demand preferential discounts from its suppliers; it also charged them a fortune to be displayed on its shelves, an early version of Amazon's $38b/year payola system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They point out that Robinson-Patman didn't really need to be enacted; America already had an antitrust law that banned this conduct: section 2 of the the Clayton Act, which was passed in 1914. But for decades, the US courts refused to interpret the Clayton Act according to its plain meaning, with judges tying themselves in knots to insist that the law couldn't possibly mean what it said. Robinson-Patman was one of a series of antitrust laws that Congress passed in a bid to explain in words so small even federal judges could understand them that the purpose of American antitrust law was to keep corporations weak:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Both the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman reject the argument that it's OK to let monopolies form and come to dominate critical sectors of the American economy based on the theoretical possibility that this will lead to lower prices. They reject this idea first as a legal matter. We don't let giant corporations victimize small businesses and their suppliers just because that might help someone else.

Beyond this, there's the realpolitik of monopoly. Yes, companies could pass lower costs on to customers, but will they? Look at Amazon: the company takes $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar that its sellers earn, and requires them to offer their lowest price on Amazon. No one has a 45-51% margin, so every seller jacks up their prices on Amazon, but you don't notice it, because Amazon forces them to jack up prices everywhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

The Robinson-Patman Act did important work, and its absence led to many of the horribles we're living through today. This week on his Peoples & Things podcast, Lee Vinsel talked with Benjamin Waterhouse about his new book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America:

https://athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthings/2024/08/12/78-benjamin-c-waterhouse-on-one-day-ill-work-for-myself-the-dream-and-delusion-that-conquered-america/

Towards the end of the discussion, Vinsel and Waterhouse turn to Robinson-Patman, its author, Wright Patman, and the politics of small business in America. They point out – correctly – that Wright Patman was something of a creep, a "Dixiecrat" (southern Democrat) who was either an ideological segregationist or someone who didn't mind supporting segregation irrespective of his beliefs.

That's a valid critique of Wright Patman, but it's got little bearing on the substance and history of the law that bears his name, the Robinson-Patman Act. Vinsel and Waterhouse get into that as well, and while they made some good points that I wholeheartedly agreed with, I fiercely disagree with the conclusion they drew from these points.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers' rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.

But while this is all true, that doesn't make Robinson-Patman a reactionary law, or bad for workers. The point of protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large firms is to maintain an American economy where business can't trump workers or government. Large companies are literally ungovernable: they have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.

As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally hated small business. They recount a notorious and telling anaecdote about the editor of the Chamber of Commerce magazine asking his boss if he could include coverage of small businesses, given the many small business owners who belonged to the Chamber, only to be told, "Over my dead body." Why did – why does – big business hate small business so much? Because small businesses wreck the game. If they are included in hearings, notices of inquiry, or just given a vote on what the Chamber of Commerce will lobby for with their membership dollars, they will ask for things that break with the big business lobbying consensus.

That's why we should like small business. Not because small business owners are incapable of being petty tyrants, but because whatever else, they will be petty. They won't be able to hire million-dollar-a-month union-busting law-firms, they won't be able to bribe Congress to pass favorable laws, they can't capture their regulators with juicy offers of sweet jobs after their government service ends.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out that many large firms emerged during the era in which Robinson-Patman was in force, but that misunderstands the purpose of Robinson-Patman: it wasn't designed to prevent any large businesses from emerging. There are some capital-intensive sectors (say, chip fabrication) where the minimum size for doing anything is pretty damned big.

As Miller and Tuttle write:

The goal of RPA was not to create a permanent Jeffersonian agrarian republic of exclusively small businesses. It was to preserve a diverse economy of big and small businesses. Congress recognized that the needs of communities and people—whether in their role as consumers, business owners, or workers—are varied and diverse. A handful of large chains would never be able to meet all those needs in every community, especially if they are granted pricing power.

The fight against monopoly is only secondarily a fight between small businesses and giant ones. It's foundationally a fight about whether corporations should have so much power that they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

#pluralistic #Robinson-Patman Act #ftc #alvaro bedoya #monopoly #monopsony #main street #too big to jail #too big to care #impunity #regulatory capture #prices #the american prospect #Max M Miller #Bryce Tuttle #a and p #wright patman

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dcxdpdabbles · 1 month

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DCxDP fanfic Idea: Marriage trap the Office supplier!

Danny had developed an appreciation for office supplies. He didn't know where it came from; just that one day, as he was cleaning his parents' office, he noticed their invoices and Order forms were out of order, so he chose to organize the binders.

It was just to make things easier to find the information when Tax season came around, but he found a strange joy in locating the correct stamps to mark each form.

Approved with a little thumbs up.

E-mailed with a flying envelope.

Entered with a little arrow.

Scanned with a picture of a scanning machine. Completed with a little check mark. Even the Cancelled and its accompanying x-out circle made him feel giggly.

Before long, Danny went hunting from some dividers and was excited to assign colors to certain tasks. He even made sure to separate everything by the order in which it was completed. By the time he was done, he realized he had no more use for his stamps, so he chose to go about the rest of the office.

He did not sleep that night. The next morning, the Fentons woke to their office lab in its best state since they had moved in. Everything had a place, and everything was neat and tidy with Danny happily explaining his organization system- all written down and marked on colorful legal pads he found shoved in a box.

Since then, Danny would excitably talk about the newest pen, sticky note, paperclips, or paper clamps he had found. Often, they were in strange shapes- "Look, Dad, these are sticky notes shaped like toast inside a Toaster holder!"- and no one could tell why it bought him such joy.

Even desk organizers excited him, often seen changing up his things every once in a while with new highlighters or traveling pens. His two best friends were often spotted walking behind Danny at any store within a fifty-mile radius of Amity Park that sold office supplies.

But that meant no one was surprised when Danny eagerly announced he would work in an office until he had enough money to open his own stationery store. What was surprising was that Danny somehow managed to find a job at Wayne Enterprise right out of high school as an office admin assistant.

A high-ranked one. He was the right-hand man to Bruce Wayne himself, working as a personal assistant then anyhting else.

It was clear across state lines no one knows how Danny even managed to land an interview since Mr. Wayne asked for at least a bachelor in office management to even apply or that Danny seemed unworried about living in a crime-infested city working for the man that was target a lot due to his wealth.

Danny only talked about all the superb brands of pens and notepads he would get with his new salary.

What was more shocking was how efficant Danny was at his job. He breezed through his work like a pro, getting Mr. Wayne on time every time (no one knows how) and cheerfully gaining the approval of the board.

Danny often stepped in for Mr. Wayne, Mr. Wayne-Drake or Mr. Fox, quietly becoming known as "Third-in-Comand" at WE despite the fact everyone knew him as "just the admin assistant"

He was also known for being very excited to show his desk to the office, covered in cute or interesting supplies from around the world. He spent hours schooling through websites and making wishlists of things he wanted to buy and try out.

Danny Fenton was a gift among the staff. He ran the office like a smoothly oiled machine, employing new systems and communication means that errors rarely happened in different departments.

WE genuinely feared the day he would leave the company to open that store. They tried to bride him by offering to pay his entire college career and make him a head of any department he wanted, or even officially give him Mr. Wayne's PA position but Danny insisted he wanted to open his store someday.

A plan was hatched by a low-level intern who had personally seen Danny take minutes with an invisible-ink pen and black light at his interview, only to witness the man fight for his right to have a paid internship and full benefits.

He mentioned how convient it was that Danny was close to every member of the Waynes. Yes. Bruce Wayne made it clear he would not be adopting the boy seeing as he was too old for that but what if....they ensured Danny stayed with WE if they made it the family bussiness?

Danny could still be a Wayne. They just had to get him to marry into the family, and WE could keep the embodiment of an office employee forever.

His idea spread through the company like wild fire, and not long, every single person who's checks were signed by Bruce Wayne was gunning for a chance to give Danny and a Wayne a wedding.

(Unknown to them, Danny is the hero Phantom, who, upon learning Batman's ID, instantly asked to work for him in an office setting because he wanted to open a stationery shop one day. Feeling blackmailed, Bruce allowed it, thinking he would catch Danny lacking, only to....find out the kid genuinely loved his job? And was good at it?

His kids are close to him as fellow vigilantes and are unaware of the WE employee's goal.

Danny just really likes Office Supplies. It might have something to do with his Ghost Obsession changing, or it's a Specail interest. He doesn't really care for the reason)

#dcxdpdabbles #dcxdp crossover #Danny is just vibing #The Bats too #Told through the WE employee's pov #They don't want to lose the only guy that answers his emails quickly #Or gets all the approvals done within the hour #He's so good at his job\#Marriage trap the office supplier!#Part 1

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seat-safety-switch · 1 year

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Police officers could solve real problems. They could be out there feeding hot soup to the unhoused, making sure that hazardous garbage is kept away from daycares, or doing something about all these birds that keep shitting on my car. Instead of those productive things, Officer Bringdown is here, on the side of the road, spending my tax money to hand me a ticket for more of my money.

Or at least he would be, if he could figure out how to work his dorky little ticket printer. You see, I have an ace up my sleeve. Not only is my car old, and difficult to place, but I’ve made certain modifications to the vehicle that render its legal state “complicated.” My shark of an attorney, Max, brags about the bear trap of intermingled kit-car laws and year-of-manufacture exclusions that have led to this vehicle being one hundred percent approved-of by the government, in any condition I dictate, whether they meant to or not.

“Uhh, how do you spell ‘Duesenberg’ again?” the cop asks, betraying his lack of education in the classics. I spell it out for him, and explain again that the replica registration exception of December 1986 means that a 1921 Model J does not need to have operational turn signals or a functional speedometer.

“How is this a replica of a 1921 car? It says Plymouth on the hood.” he asks me suspiciously, behind mirrored aviator shades. I am familiar with this shift in conversation. I see now that he has fallen into the first legal pit without complaint. I was hoping for a more worthy opponent.

“Officer, has the state rendered upon you an encyclopedic knowledge and unimpeachable legal authority of what a 1921 Duesenberg Model J consists and does not consist of?” I ask him, reading off a sheet that has been provided by my attorney, who would really rather that I shut the fuck up entirely, but who I know secretly thrills at the chance to end another state trooper’s career in the court of law in which he is akin to a walking god. Dude has groupies.

The cop demurs, tries to change the subject, save some face. “What’s that smell?” he asks.

“Hydrazine.”

#best of

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qqueenofhades · 2 months

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oh god is biden dropping out? i don't know what happens then

Jesus effing Christ.

Few thoughts:

The billionaire Democratic donors got their way, apparently. All I saw was that the big-dollar donors were secretly putting pressure on the rank-and-file Democratic elected officials (i.e. House and Senate) to denounce Biden or not get any more money, and other shameful backroom maneuvering to knife Biden. I will refrain (lol, no I won't) from speculating that billionaires of any political stripe feel threatened by Biden's increasingly progressive tax/wealth redistribution policies, and saw their chance after the bad debate performance to knife him. Because until further notice, I'm going to think that was the biggest factor.

I don't know if there's an actual health condition that made Biden agree it was the best time (in fucking July) to step down, but if this was an issue, there needed to be planning last year, at the earliest, to prepare for a new successor. I don't know what's going on. This is a clusterfuck on many, many levels.

However: it is true that this does change things and not necessarily only for the worse, as long as Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee and this stupid Democrats In Disarray nonsense, which is giving the media exactly what they want, is put to a fucking end. If Harris is also swept aside and the billionaire donors try to install their preferred "Centrist!!!" candidate (lol Manchin or some shit) with an equally antidemocratic closed-door Star Chamber convention, then yes, we're fucked. Because the Congressional Black Caucus and African American voters saw exactly what the rich white man billionaires were trying to do by torching Biden and then Harris, and they are not going to play ball with some Magical White Man replacement.

If Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee (and to the best of my knowledge Biden has endorsed her), then she has a chance of reinvigorating the race. There were a lot of Americans who did not want either Biden or Trump. I suspect they were fucking braindead, but so be it. Harris has apparently polled pretty and increasingly well in recent days (in some cases actually better than Biden) and again, there is no remotely small-d democratic alternative to her. The billionaire donors already trashed the duly elected (by the primary process) Democratic nominee. If they do the same to Harris, then yes. We will have Trump and there won't be any more democracy in this country on either side, because the Republican big-bucks donors will gleefully pick up where the Democratic big-bucks donors left off.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The message needs to be "Harris is Joe's successor, she is younger and already has four years of experience and is the only candidate." Anything else is a fucking gift from god to the Republicans, once more getting trashed after Trump's terrible RNC speech. Maybe she can then pick Whitmer or Shapiro (both popular and effective Democratic governors of swing states, MI and PA respectively) as a running mate, but the nominee has to be Kamala. There is no other fucking choice. This is already enough of a mess.

If that can happen, and the fucking donors can refrain from fucking it up, then... okay. It's not great, but it does change things. It makes the ticket younger. It makes it historic (first Black female president beating Trump would be amazing). It could reach people disenchanted with the current two-old-white-guys setup.

This is an incredible sacrifice on Biden's part and I only wish that I could believe he did it voluntarily, rather than being forced out by a small class of rich people worrying about his policies getting too progressive.

I wish him only the best and I recognize this decision was taken under extreme pressure. If we then lose to Trump, I hope everyone who forced Biden out burns in hell.

I was a diehard Biden supporter not because I loved the guy personally, but because he was the only choice for preserving democracy in America. The essential stakes of the election have not changed, even if the billionaires just knifed us in the fucking back, possibly to nobody's surprise, because R or D, they are not our friends.

Kamala is the only choice. I will now have to defend her as hard as I did for Biden. She needs to beat Trump. There is nothing else to it. If you think she can't, then you need to work at helping her do that. There is already enough calamity and doom. We do not have a choice. We cannot lose sight of what is at stake here.

Kamala Harris/Whitmer and/or Shapiro and/or Buttigieg 2024.

The end.

#rionsanura #ask #politics for ts #jesus fucking christ #fucking hell #we don't live in a democracy any more either way #but we can still prevent trump #we cannot forget that #we cannot do anything else #kamala harris 2024 #i guess this is how it goes now #fuck i'm going back to bed

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batboyblog · 2 months

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #27

July 12-19 2024

President Biden announced the cancellation of $1.2 billion dollars worth of student loan debt. This will cancel the debt of 35,000 public service workers, such as teachers, nurses, and firefighters. This brings the total number of people who've had their student debt relived under the Biden Administration to 4.8 million or one out of every ten people with student loan debt, for a total of $168.5 billion in debt forgiven. This came after the Supreme Court threw out an earlier more wide ranging student debt relief plan forcing the administration to undertake a slower more piecemeal process for forgiving debt. President Biden announced a new plan in the spring that will hopefully be finalized by fall that will forgive an additional 30 million people's student loan debt.

President Biden announced actions to lower housing coasts, make more housing available and called on Congress to prevent rent hikes. President Biden's plan calls for landlords who raise the rent by more than 5% a year to face losing major important tax befits, the average rent has gone up by 21% since 2021. The President has also instructed the federal government, the largest land owner in the country, to examine how unused property can be used for housing. The Bureau of Land Management plans on building 15,000 affordable housing units on public land in southern Nevada, the USPS is examining 8,500 unused properties across America to be repurposed for housing, HHS is finalizing a new rule to make it easier to use federal property to house the homeless, and the Administration is calling on state, local, and tribal governments to use their own unused property for housing, which could create approximately 1.9 million units nationwide.

The Department of Transportation announced $5 billion to replace or restore major bridges across the country. The money will go to 13 significant bridges in 16 states. Some bridges are suffering from years of neglect others are nearly 100 years old and no longer fit for modern demands. Some of the projects include the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River which connects Portland Oregon to Vancouver Washington, replacing the Sagamore Bridge which connects Cape Cod to the mainland built in 1933, replacing the I- 83 South Bridge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Cape Fear Memorial Bridge Replacement Project in Wilmington, North Carolina, among others.

President Biden signed an Executive Order aimed at boosting Latino college attendance. The order established the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity through Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are defined as colleges with 25% or above Hispanic/Latino enrollment, currently 55% of Hispanic college students are enrolled in an HSI. The initiative seeks to stream line the relationship between the federal government and HSIs to allow them to more easily take advantage of federal programs and expand their reach to better serve students and boost Hispanic enrollment nationwide.

HUD announced $325 million in grants for housing and community development in 7 cities. the cities in Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Nevada, New York and New Jersey, have collectively pledged to develop over 6,500 new mixed-income units, including the one-for-one replacement of 2,677 severely distressed public housing units. The 7 collectively will invest $2.65 billion in additional resources within the Choice Neighborhood area – so that every $1 in HUD funds will generate $8.65 in additional resources.

President Biden took extensive new actions on immigration. On June 18th The President announced a new policy that would allow the foreign born spouses and step children of American citizens who don't have legal status to apply for it without having to leave the country, this would effect about half a million spouses and 50,000 children. This week Biden announced that people can start applying on August 19, 2024. Also in June President Biden announced an easing of Visa rules that will allow Dreamers, Americans brought to the country as children without legal status, to finally get work visas to give them legal status and a path way to citizenship. This week the Biden Administration announced a new rule to expand the federal TRIO program to cover Dreamers. TRIO is a program that aims to support low income students and those who would be the first in their families to go to college transition from high school to college, the change would support 50,000 more students each year. The Administration also plans to double the number of free immigration lawyers available to those going through immigration court.

The EPA announced $160 million in grants to support Clean U.S. Manufacturing of Steel and Other Construction Materials. The EPA estimates that the manufacturing of construction materials, such as concrete, asphalt, steel, and glass, accounts for 15% of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA is supporting 38 projects aimed at measuring and combatting the environmental impact of construction materials.

The US announced $203 million in humanitarian assistance for the people of Sudan. Sudan's out of control civil war has caused the largest refugee crisis in the world with 11 million Sudanese having fled their homes in the face of violence. The war is also causing the gravest food crisis in the world, with a record setting 25 million people facing acute food insecurity, and fears that nearly a million will face famine in the next months. This aid brings the total aid the US has given Sudan since September 2023 to $1.6 billion, making America the single largest donor to Sudan.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put forward a new rule that would better regulate popular paycheck advance products. 2/3rds of workers are payed every two weeks or once a month and since 2020 the number of short term loans that allow employees to receive their paycheck days before it’s scheduled to hit their account has grown by 90%. the CFPB says that many of these programs are decided with employers not employees and millions of Americans are paying fees they didn't know about before signing up. The new rule would require lenders to tell costumers up front about any and all fees and charges, as well as cracking down on deceptive "tipping" options.

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rabbits-of-negative-euphoria · 2 years

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if there were time and enough trigger warnings, I would describe in detail for you the real life consequences of lenient/negligent sentencing—the horrors that activist judges have inflicted on the poorest women and children in their districts, but instead I’ll just ask you to pray for the family of a young mother and child in my hometown, who were both killed by a man with multiple dropped felony charges (one being 2nd-degree murder) as he tried to flee from police

#i will never not be angry at dropped cases. I will never not be angry at thieves getting probation.#I will never not be angry at violent offenders and murderers getting plea deals. that’s not justice. and it kills people.#it kills babies.#mobile #x #respublica #justice system #and let’s talk about drugs for once. just because you only smoked marijuana doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend a night or seven in the slammer #THATS where our taxes should be going. put it all into a few years of REALLY STRONG policing and soon crime will start dropping #nothing makes me feel safer than seeing the police patrolling my neighborhood. it is not a nice neighborhood. i’m grateful they care #because in my hometown they don’t care. black lives matter but not black victims. only black wifebeaters and kid-killers.#who cares about the wives and kids #and the teenage daughters who continue the cycle because the only men in their lives they could compare a mate to…#…should’ve been imprisoned ten times over but the DAs don’t care about that. they care about getting money from out-of-state politicians #anyways.#I’ll probably talk abt this again. working with CPS is what made me a capital punishment advocate.#not just supporter — advocate.

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101maverick · 3 months

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Hi! Saw your newest post, so thought I might as well try to help with your writers block :)

How about headcanons of the bat boys dating a broke reader? Alternatively, batboys x bimbo!reader?

Hope this helps you get out of your slump, enjoy the rest of your day and take your time if you ain't up for it :]

A/n: Tysm for the request! Hope you enjoy :)

Dick Grayson

Being resident in Bludhaven, he's financially independent and certainly not rich. He refuses to depend on Bruce.

This means he hasn't got any trust fund money to give you, but he'd definitely help you out any way he can

He'd buy you practical gifts as well as normal ones whenever he's got the chance, and if you're living together the way you divide the living costs would definitely be proportional to your spending power

Dick isn't rich but he's not broke either: the average annual salary for cops in the us is roughly $66.000, but he owns the two-bedroom apartment you live in so the only thing you guys need to pay is taxes and bills, no rent to worry about. You're also not at home for most of the day, seeing as he works as a cop and you have your own job that takes up a good chunk of your day, so the electricity bill isn't very high.

I personally think Reader would not enjoy not having to pay for anything seeing as the money comes out of Dick's own pocket, so she'd at the very least insist on paying for groceries and helping out more in the house with laundry, dishes, cleaning et cetera, to even out the responsibilities as much as possible

He'd support you as much as possible if you're getting a degree, he'd be like your own personal cheerleader, and after you get it he'd organise this huge surprise graduation party for you and then help you get a job in the field of your degree

like if you became a lawyer he'd hook you up with some judges/attorneys he knows aren't corrupt and get you a job in their law firm (paid intern of course, after having worked so hard you want to make it yourself in the world)

I think you two would have tons of fun at the thrift! You wouldn't feel bad about him insisting to spend his money, and you would have the best time just perusing the racks and laughing at all the insane stuff you find plus trying on some genuinely nice clothes

One thing he splurges on though is making sure you have a state-of-the-art home gym, in fact that is why he buys your building's basement and equips it with every work-out machine under the sun plus a trapeze and equipment to practice a ton of other dynamic sports of the sort

————————————

Jason Todd

He's a crime lord so it's safe to say this dude is filthy rich

He obviously doesn't show it though and apart from having a lot of it as an emergency fund for when he needs to defend himself in gang wars I believe he anonymously donates the rest to charities

I go with the canon of Jason being catholic so I believe he gives to the Church, but it could obviously be something else like one of the many Wayne foundations (cause as much as he holds a grudge against his father he knows he's obviously not corrupt and actually helps people)

apart from this he definitely still has a lot of money

He'd refuse to see you struggle financially

He's been through that, he knows how awful it is and does not hear no for an answer when he goes to hand you insane amounts of cash

If you live together then he makes sure to get a nice apartment in the respectable parts of town, blending in with the rest of the neighbourhood to make sure the location is safe and as untraceable as possible

He handles everything and refuses to even let you pay for groceries, insisting that you concentrate on your studies and not worry about having to sustain yourself

To him you guys being a team means that you hold each other up any way you can, and you already support him immensely just by being by his side and loving him, so to him this is just doing his part and supporting you (on top of loving you like crazy of course)

One thing he'd do is make sure your house has enough space to host an insane amount of books though

On this topic I think he'd absolutely spoil you with book hauls, just taking you to every book store you can find and buying piles and piles of books

I'm talking those beautiful gold-leaf covered editions of centuries-old classics, and it doesn't matter if you already have the stories per-se in your library cause it's the edition that matters in this case, ya know?

Like sometimes you want to feel regal and distinguished reading the gold-lined hardcover Commedia, sometimes you want to feel quirky with your penguin edition Jane Eyre, other times you just want to embrace your inner sewer rat and read Macbeth from the shitty mass-produced paperbacks and Jason acknowledges and embraces it

————————————

Tim Drake

Tim, like Jason, is also filthy rich, in virtue of being the owner of Drake Industries and the representative C.E.O. for Bruce at Wayne Enterprises

You'd both live in his Nest, and given the horrendous amount of electricity it consumes it's all already paid for by his company so no need to worry about that

He would only accept "payment" for everything he does for you in the form of you making sure he goes to sleep at decent amounts of time when he's elbow-deep in a case (and tons of love, obviously)

Like Jason, he'd just hands you wads of cash

EXCEPT! He does it for the most mundane stuff. Timothy Jackson Drake is a nepo baby, no way around that. Sure, while he spent his time stalking Batman and Robin through the rougher parts of Gotham he learnt street-safety 101, but he always carried anything he needed for those nightly strolls in his backpack, and he never really learned the real value of money. "$2.70 for a small bottle of water? Sounds reasonable!" is his thought process to this day.

You two would often have these moments of 'culture shock', with Tim slowly discovering how much things should cost every time you two go out to run errands together and you discovering about the insane things the rich buy and do just because Tim decided to recount some childhood stories/told you about some stuff socialites did ad a gala

Since I think Tim's love language is quality time I think he'd take you on these absurd trips whenever possible, that to you are to absurd places but to him it's a very normal trip because "my parents always went there twice a year? It's an extremely normal vacation spot?" Meanwhile it's the Maldives or a private island in Greece or something

This being Tim you also HAVE to have a state-of-the-art phone, with tons of features you will never need to use since you're a civilian but it makes him more at ease, knowing that if the need arises you have the ability to disarm a bomb with the click of a button on your display

————————————

Damian Wayne-Al Ghul

Oh he'd absolutely refuse to have you living anywhere but a castle

It'd take convincing for him to have you living in anything less than a penthouse in the diamond district

He's not against the idea of you working, but he doesn't think that it's necessary for you to slave away at a minimum-wage job while you could be spending all your time in luxury while studying for your degree

After you get your degree he'd help you find a job at one of the most important places for your specialisation, pulling the needed strings just to make sure your resume isn't overlooked (nothing more, he's of the idea that his partner should be strong, plus he believes you to be extremely capable and so thinks that pulling strings to get you the job would be a disservice and an offence to you)

Absolutely spoils you with gifts, and by that I mean: clothes, jewellery, if you like cars he'll buy you a carpark, anything you look at for more than two seconds he'll buy

Damian's way of showing love is through gestures, so you rejecting his gifts would hurt him and he'd take it to mean that you are rejecting him/are unsatisfied with him

Like with Tim, you both would have "Culture shocks" over stuff like the worth of money, lifestyle and stuff like that

Because Damian is basically a royal (or at the very least was raised like one, I don't know what's happened to the LoA in current canon) I think he'd lowkey try to get you an armed guard for when you need to go out as a sign of love lol

"Damian I've been feeling watched while going out as of late" "Don't worry Beloved, that's just the armed guard" "Oh ok-I'm sorry what?!"

Things like anniversaries, birthdays and big events are celebrated in the most lavish settings but in a private way still, like he'll absolutely spoil you and take you to visit this super famous castle for your birthday, matter of fact he'll rent it out for the occasion

For real he does this because when you're alone he can be himself and he loves doing that when you're both experiencing something that makes you happy-- But! Those are head canons for another time hehe >:)

————————————

Bruce Wayne

I believe he's the only one in the bat family who knows the worth of money while having being rich his entire life (ya know, having to use all the disguises he does and going undercover as a normal person a lot of the time)

He definitely offers you a job at Wayne Enterprises, and if you accept he agrees to keeping your relationship under wraps so that no one will start saying that you 'sleep with him for the job'

On that topic if the relationship ever goes public and people start saying that, he will fire them without hesitation

And if it's business partners joking with him about it, he won't stop dealing with them for the sole purpose of covertly crippling their reputation so badly they'll have no choice but to sell their companies to him

You obviously live with him at the Manor, and he insists that everything be paid for by himself only (ya know, richest man in New Jersey and probably the world soooo....)

Bruce is really bad with his emotions, he tends to really repress them whenever he deems them something he's not 'worthy' of feeling or whenever he perceives he has failed at something or failed someone, so the mere fact he confessed his feelings towards you and that he doesn't shun your love is a huge step forward for him. This doesn't mean that he's good at expressing his emotions when he doesn't repress them though, especially not with words.

This is why his main love languages are gift-giving and acts of service, because he shows his love through actions.

Gift-giving as an important love language for him happens because he's very busy both during the day and the night, so sometimes your schedules just don't align or he even has to go off-world with the Justice League and stuff, so he 'makes up' those missed acts of service with lavish gifts

Usually this could be seen as 'throwing money at the problem and hoping it fixes itself' but the thing is that Bruce's gifts are pretty much always spontaneous. He's out and about in his public persona or patrolling as batman, and he sees a storefront with something that reminds him of you or that he thinks you would like. The next logical step is obviously buying it for you as soon as possible and getting it to the manor. Because Bruce is really bad at showing it but the people he loves are always at the forefront of his mind (when he's not being an asshole and repressing his emotions as if the fate of humankind depended on his ability to give his family the cold shoulder and communicating only in grunts and sighs)

———————————— A/n: this was so fun! I love writing head canons because there is no pressure with story flow and how much description and feeling you're putting into it, it's very similar to sharing your thoughts with a friend and that's what endears the format to me so much :) Hope you enjoyed! If you like my work, please consider reblogging and checking out my other works through the master list in my pinned post<3 Love you all🩷

Total word count: 2009

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reasonsforhope · 6 months

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Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

#united states #flint michigan #michigan #cash aid #basic income #poverty #poverty relief #child poverty #mothers #pregnancy #prenatalcare #healthcare #healthcare access #public health #child development #good news #hope

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lovecried · 1 month

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˚˖𓍢ִ໋˚ THE CLEANER-UPPER!

a highly-regarded murder cleaner is assigned a job at a hotel. unfortunately, when housekeeping walks in, it breaks bakugo's streak and ability to make a clean getaway.

( fic demographics. ) boku no hero academia, bakugo katsuki, dark content (violence) & sexually mature | minors, ageless & blank blogs: do not interact & 7000 words.

╰┈➤ murder cleaner!bakugo, housekeeper!reader ( afab & she/they pronouns ), mentions of murder, dead bodies & blood. smut: rough sex, bondage with a belt, anal play, fingering, degredation, spanking, etc.

( author's note. ) this fic is based on a mobile game ive been playing recently, nobodies: murder cleaner. it's so fun and was an interesting concept i wanted to turn it into a fan fic uwu.

Bakugo has always been thorough with everything he does, living his life in a pristine manner that his friends often teased him for. Everything he has and owns has to be placed in their designated areas or his mind will start racing and it’s as though he’s a ticking time bomb. It’s a problem that he has, but he’s made it work in his favor. Especially in his line of business.

When Bakugo’s asked what he does for work, he’s honest. He’s a cleaner. Typically, people won’t question him further. They might ask what a guy of his size and caliber is doing working a small job like that. He’s gone to a well-established university and earned a high-GPA that his academic peers are envious of. Why is he wasting such talent on a dead-end job? Surely, there are other professions and careers he could go in.

And with further elaboration, Bakugo goes into a little bit more detail, saying that he works for a private company and that he gets paid by the rich to clean up. Then, by seeing the type of stuff he’s able to afford, they can come to some sort of understanding of why he does it. A paycheck is a paycheck and does he really need a job that’s mentally taxing? They learn to dismiss further questioning, even if they’re not satisfied with the course of life in which Bakugo’s decided, and let him be. He’s got a roof over his head and is able to come home to a full fridge. He’s obviously not struggling like they have to.

But the majority of the time, that’s a stranger’s outlook on his life. People that are more dear to him have come to grow suspicious. Are the rich really that willing to pay him that much money just to clean their homes? Do they really just throw their money away just like that?

His parents, specifically his mother, have inquired plenty of times about his job. She had asked for full reports about the business he works in and Bakugo’s been willing to share. Giving his mother a business card, pamphlets and flyers, his tax information when she further insisted. And through conducting her own research, everything has checked out. Her son is indeed a cleaner. A well-paid cleaner that’s able to live in a nice luxury apartment by himself, owning a car that’s better than her own, and doesn’t have to come back to his parents for anything financial wise.

He doesn’t have to worry about a thing, and while that should make Mitsuki happy, it doesn’t. She’s proud that her son has a job and is able to support himself and doesn’t need to depend on her or her husband for anything, but she feels as if she’s not needed— not wanted anymore. He rarely calls and when he does, he makes sure to make it worthwhile, always stating how his job has kept him and away from the phone. When Mitsuki tries to make unexpected visits, he’s never home— peeking through the windows, his apartment barely looks lived in.

The more and more she thinks about it, Mitsuki realizes that this isn’t normal. Days at a time he would be absent and when he’s back it’s only for a day or two until he’s back on his feet. It’s exhausting to watch, and it surely must be twice as exhausting for Bakugo to keep working such strenuous hours. She’d try to get him to quit, seeing purple starting to form under his eyes. That’s not like her son— that’s not like Bakugo to not get at least eight hours of sleep every night. However, he’s always quick to protest, giving her every reason in the book not to. And he’d always end it that he actually loves his job and loves what he does— that it’s his outlet.

And with that reasoning only is why Mitsuki hasn’t dragged her son’s ass back home and forced him to quit already. Her boy is happy.

—

MISSION REPORT:

Asset #1080, last night Q-100’s logistics expert Shinsou Hitoshi used a known alias to check in to the Escenica hotel in Buenos Aires. Turns out that was the last mistake he ever made.

Our operative had to act fast to catch him in his room, so you may well have a bigger mess than usual on your hands.

Housekeeping will begin making rounds any time now. Make sure there’s nothing for them to find.

Disposing of the mission report right as the plane lands, Bakugo lets out an exhausted sigh. He pulls out his airpods case as he stands to his feet, plopping the small buds into his ears and hearing the habitual chime of it connecting to his device. Swerving past the private flight attendant, his footsteps are as quiet as a mouse, something that used to be unlikely before working in this field. He puts on his playlist, he always plays it when heading to a new job— it oddly relaxes him.

Heading to the black Lexus that’s sitting there waiting for him, he opens the door and hops in, not having to say a word as he’s been driven right where he needs to be. Being introduced to this line of business, Bakugo never thought he’d be someone who’d become insensitive to the sight of death and the thought of it all. However, being led through the first job and oddly finding it satisfying, he slides through every gig with ease and always concludes it a piece of cake when his agent comes to collect a completed mission report.

People think that what he’s doing isn’t challenging, always giving him looks when he tells them he’s a cleaner, thinking that what he’s doing is a waste of talent. However, he finds it to be his perfect calling, finally finding something that silences that constant creak inside his head.

When the Lexus comes to a final stop, Bakugo doesn’t bother with a farewell, more like a thankful grunt and nod before exiting the vehicle and watching as the automated doors open for him. It’s awfully quiet for a hotel, he thinks the moment he steps in. It’s close to the holidays. Shouldn't it be a little bit more crowded?

He’s not trying to wish for a difficult procedure tonight, but he finds the silence odd. However, he finds himself grateful the moment he passes a door with the body splayed out on the bed with the bed sheets covered in blood. Rushing in, he curses, “shit.”

I know they had to act fast, but couldn’t they have used some of their senses if they had any? Bakugo continues to curse under his breath the longer he stands inside of the hotel room, moving to turn the lock on the handle. He lets out a sigh as he takes a moment to himself. Scoping the scenery out, he hums to himself silently as he thinks of his options. The first thing he notices are the windows— they’ve been left open.

I could make it look like he jumped, he suggests before quickly disregarding. No, that’ll call for attention. It needs to be something silent. And something outside of this room— Turning around, he twists the door knob before remembering that he locked it, feeling something flap around underneath. Two signs for maintenance— just what he needs.

Opening the door and peeking his head through it, the coast is clear. The red ‘do not disturb’ on his door and the green housekeeping sign for the room adjacent to him. This will give him enough time to venture out and get a better look at his options.

—

By the time Bakugo’s finished his tour of the hotel, he’s managed to reroute the surveillance off of his floor and housekeeping has fallen for his small diversion, the cart parked right outside the room next to him— he’s managed to successfully snag the keys off of it as well, opening what he needs before setting them back in place. In such a short time, he’s managed to conjure up a plan to successfully hide the body— if he’s able to get the garbage chute up and running in a short period of time while also getting the staff outside of the laundry room right when he needs it. Inwardly, he cheers himself, finding this to be an easy task before instructed another assignment to complete.

Heading back inside the room, he’s found the edge of the bed frame to be falling off, and hopefully it could aid as a ladder to create a diversion for the laundry staff. Those damn workers will be in there twenty-four-seven if he doesn’t do something about it. Finding the custodial closet using the keys he borrowed, he’s managed to twist off the pipe and found some fuses that’ll help repair the garbage chute.

Bakugo thought that since it’d be a year since doing this, his heart would calm down and stop pounding against his chest, but as much as he loves it, he’s reminded of the impeccably tight schedule that he’s on and that he needs to do this fast. He moves with a haste, sorting his thoughts out with every step that he takes. Turning off the valve to the water supply, he’s figured that’ll lead to a little halt in the laundromat workers downstairs and with the garbage disposal inside of the custodial room, he can quickly get rid of the body and the blankets in no time.

Climbing down from the roof, Bakugo pauses when he hears sudden movement. “The damn water stopped working all of a sudden,” a rough voice speaks, his tone rising the more he gets angrier. “What am I supposed to do for the next seven to eight hours?”

“Calm down,” Bakugo hears next, a soft feminine voice coming from whoever the man is speaking to. With the exasperated sigh leaving their mouth, Bakugo can tell that this seems to be an ordinary occurrence of the man complaining and the woman having to hear it. “Call in for maintenance and use the rest of your shift to relax. Easy.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say,” the man scoffs. “You’re just a young thing with nothing much going on. For Pete’s sake, you’re in your twenties working in a goddamn hotel!”

Bakugo doesn’t know how the young woman’s able to keep calm when he hears her nonchalantly retort back, “And you’re in your fifties working in a hotel. Shouldn’t you be working high up in corporate by now?”

You’ve managed to silence the man, completely exiting the clean room and making your way down the line. You’ve gotten used to Aizawa’s complaining by now, but sometimes he knows just what button to push. Like now. Eyebrows rising, you see Adam's apple bob as he realizes his mistake. You have surely proven your point. In his incessant rambling, he forgot that both of you are in this circumstance and while there’s no further hope for him to better his life, you still have that opportunity. And unlike him, you have a plan on making it out of the hotel and finding a much more secure and well-paying job.

“Y’know what?” Aizawa clears his throat. “I’m gonna go read that book I’ve been meaning to catch up on the worker’s lounge.”

You curtly nod, plastering a faux smile on your face as Aizawa makes his way down the hall and out of your sight. “Tell me about it later.”

With a heavy exhale, you let out your breath as you push the cart down to the next room, forgetting to read the sign as you move to unlock it. Bakugo doesn’t move fast enough before you have the door unlocked and you’re pushing it open. The sight before you doesn’t fully register until a second too late, eyes widening and about to scream when you feel a rough hand planted over your mouth and you’re being pushed up against the wall. It went by in a flash, but it’s vivid in your mind. Pale skin sprawled out on the bed— motionless. Lifeless. Your heart is racing, panging heavily on your chest as the crimson red eyes that match the color of the blood-soaked covers peer down menacingly at you. “Do. Not. Make a sound.”

You finally make eye contact with the person that’s got you in this position. And it’s easy for you to jump to conclusions— think that he’s the killer and because you walked in on this scene, you’re going to be his next victim. Bakugo’s never been in this position before, never getting caught. He doesn’t know what to do in this predicament.

Actually, he does, but he’s not sure if he wants to carry through. He’s not a killer, only the man that cleans up. He can stomach seeing a dead body, but not sure if he can stomach actually creating one. But, he doesn’t necessarily need to do it himself. He can call his organization, have them do the job for him and he’ll gladly clean it up.

Could he, though? Could he clean up the body of his own mistake? A young and pretty woman, seemingly around his age range, who had no business being in his. Of all of his tasks and mission reports, he’s never had witnessed a woman being killed and he really doesn’t want to anytime soon.

Fuck. You’ve really put him in a predicament here. Couldn’t you read the damn sign?

“Do ya understand me?” Staring into your eyes, he can see that you’re still freaked out. You’re still breathing heavily and your heart’s still racing. Your eyes continue to divert his, trying not to make eye contact at all. His patience is running thin and everything he’s just thought will be running right through the door if you don’t calm down. So, he gives you a little “nudge.”

Shaking you, he clenches his job as he breathes once more, “do y’understand me?”

And finally does it register to you that he’s speaking, fright turning into confusion as your eyes turn glossy. “Mwhat?”

Bakugo seethes, hand pressing down harder over your mouth as he squeezes you into the wall. “Listen to me,” he checks his surroundings, reaching over to lock the door once more while simultaneously making sure he keeps his hold on you. “If ya make a sound, yer going to join this man. I have a pair of pliers that I can use to gouge out yer throat, it only takes a few seconds. Y’understand?”

Tears start to trickle down your eyes as you squeak, nodding your head in obedience. You’ve seen your fair share of movies, true crime television shows and podcasts. You don’t doubt a word that he says. And with a man of his size and caliber, if you dared to fight back, he’d tower over you in less than a second. If he goes back on his word and kills you, you hope it’d be a quick and easy one. So, in his hand, you nod once more. “I understand.”

He keeps you in that same position for a little while longer, staring into your eyes for a bit while longer before letting you go. Dropping his hand, you and him both let out a breath, but he still keeps you trapped against the wall. “Since ya decided to ignore the ‘do not disturb’ sign, yer going to help me dispose of the body.”

You rapidly nod. “Okay.”

You’re complying so easily, it makes him skeptical. “Yer not gonna fight?”

You shake your head, stammering out a “no.”

“Why not?” In response, you start to squirm within his tight hold. His big and calloused arms on your waist. So close to you, you can feel the heat of his breath against your skin, so close to your neck. And his eyes, the color of rubies, despite them scorning you and scrutinizing your every move— they’re pretty. This scruff of a man with messy blond hair towers over you, bulging muscles that have easily pinned you down to the wall the moment you stepped foot into the room. The longer you look into his eyes, you realize that this man has seen some shit and has done even more terrible things. Why would you fight?

“You’d win,” you ultimately shrug. It’s enough to receive another once over from Bakugo, “You got a point.”

Peeking over Bakugo’s shoulder as best as you can, you look at the lifeless body— the corpse seemingly at peace. It makes you curious, and maybe a bit too brave. “W-why’d you kill him?”

“Huh?” Taken aback, Bakugo didn’t know how to answer your question. Should he tell you the truth or should he lie about it? Or should he evade your question altogether? Glancing behind him, at his current job, he lets out an exhale. “Just help me hide the body if you don’t want your skull bashed in.”

—

With the extra hand by his side, Bakugo was able to seamlessly dump the body inside of the garbage disposal and set everything that he had used back in its previous spot. You were compliant and didn’t argue with anything that he told you to do, able to divert and lie when questioned by your coworkers. It was as though you were familiar with this and had been working as a cleaner yourself. Bakugo was impressed. Still, he’s still unsure what to do with you.

Standing inside of the hotel room, he’s watched you clean up every crevice of the room, analyzing how you’ve fixed it up to pristine shape for the next occupant. It’s just a shame that the next person will have to deal with the ghost of Shinso Hitoshi. Dropping a spray bottle back into your cart, you slowly turn around to sheepishly view who you suspect to be a murderer. “Are you going to kill me now?”

You’ve taken him back yet again, but more so because you’ve been so calm. How are you not scared at the possibility of losing your life? He doesn’t answer your question and his silence is all that you need to finally break down. “Because before you do, I’d like to at least plead for my life!”

With the raise of your voice, your eyes widen. “Sorry,” you tone it down. “B-but… I won’t say a word. I’ll just— I’ll stay silent! Plus, you’ve made me an accomplice. If I did say anything, you could easily rebuttal it in court.”

You’ve got a point, he sighs. It’s a shocker that he didn’t even think about that before. He just made you an accomplice in the heat of things. Checking the time, it’s late and he has a bit of time for himself before he’s called in for his next task. “Are there any bars close by?”

“What?” you ask, bewildered. He gives you a look, telling you not to let him repeat himself. Gulping, you nod your head, “There’s a few not too far from here actually.”

“When do ya get off yer shift?”

Checking the time, you do the quick math. “In a little less than an hour actually.”

“Great,” he pushes himself up from off the wall. “We can discuss it over a drink then.”

“You’re not going to kill me then?” The moment you clocked out, Bakugo dragged you outside of the building and instructed you to take him to the nearest bar. As per usual, you complied, bringing him to one that you actually frequented yourself as the bartender immediately recognized you the moment you took a seat, setting a Mojito right in front of you before asking Bakugo what he wanted. With a bourbon in his hand, Bakugo cocks an eyebrow at you. “What makes ya think that?”

“You haven’t done so already,” you shrug. “I don’t know. With all my true crime knowledge, if you wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already. You’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

“Maybe I’m just having my fun with ya before I kill ya off. Have ya thought about that?” Bakugo inches into your personal space, standing up and towering over you. Purposely taking a domineering stance, he watches as fright twinkles in your eyes. Sickeningly does he find some humor in it before he sits back down on the stool. Clearing his throat, he takes another sip of his drink. “Nah, but yer right. ‘M not gonna kill ya.”

“Then why’d you bring me with you?” you ask. “Why not just send me on my way with another threat or something? It'd have worked.”

Leaning into his chair, Bakugo shrugs. “There’s just somethin’ about ya that makes ya interesting—” licking his bottom lip, his eyes grazing over your body, taking you more in. “—just need to discover what.”

—

Back pressed into the dresser, it aches as the straight edge leaves a bruise on your bare skin. His bare hands are no gentler, calloused palms that hold you down and grip your waist with a vice strength that has your heart beating against your chest. From its incessant pounding, it's caught Bakugo's attention as lets out an airy and amused chuckle. “Not scared to clean up a dead body, but yer frightened by my cock, hm?”

His breath against your neck as his teeth graze the shell of your ear. He paused and in anticipation, your body shudders. “Fear it's the one thing that's gonna kill ya? Yer a rather sick one, aren’t ya?”

You can only mewl out in pain as he pushes you further against the dresser. You can’t help but stare into those crimson eyes of his, how they’re sparkling in lust— lust directed right towards you. However, despite the pain and the haughty desire that courses through your body right now, you can only agree with him. That rush of being afraid, the possibility of losing your life and simultaneously hiding someone that’s already lost theirs. It was an exhilarating experience as you had a tall and brawn of a man that glared daggers into your chest if you dare get him caught. The possibility of aiding a criminal and becoming an accomplice no longer frightened you. No, it was the fact that you enjoyed it and now want to continue feeling that rush of living on the edge.

At the lack of response, Bakugo can only continue to chuckle in pure amusement. He’d mistaken you as a fragile being when in reality, you’re just as fucked up as everyone else is in this world. What was that saying again? The innocent ones aren’t as naive as they seem? At least it was something along those lines.

He leans over to bite down on your lower lip, thick and supple as he can taste the remnants of whatever chapstick you were wearing. You shamelessly moan at the feeling of his touch roaming your body. Big hands that reach to cup your ass and grope at them before hoisting you up on the dresser and eliciting a squeal from your lips. Who knew that a vixen such as yourself could sound so pure. Yet, Bakugo takes the opportunity to fully indulge in you, his tongue exploring the caverns of your mouth and giving you no fighting chance towards catching up. Instead, you can only moan and whimper against him as he’s in between your legs and you’re trapped in his vice grip.

Even with the assisted height of the white piece of furniture, Bakugo still has the leverage. His hips meeting your inner thighs as you feel the press of his clothed erection against your mound. Hands that previously didn’t know what to do finds themselves snaking around his neck and your nails scratching at the nape of his neck, playing with the short strands of his undercut. It drags a guttural groan from him, humming in response to your actions as he pulls away from you.

Your eyes flutter open to make contact with him once more, they’re glossy and needy as they beg for me. “Please…”

You don’t know what you’re begging for to be quite honest. You just need to feel more of him— to no longer be restrained by each other’s clothing; to feel each other’s raw bodies against each other’s. Bakugo knows exactly what you want, what you so specifically desire. And as much as he wants to give into those natural urges, he finds it fun to tease. “What’s it that ya want?”

His rough fingers start to traverse your body, from the nape of your neck down to your shoulders as goosebumps start to rise in anticipation. From the crevice of your shoulder to your waist does his fingers travel upwards to flick at the nub of your breasts and down to your navel. “What do you want inside of you, hm?”

His gruff and gravelly voice really does wonders to you, spiking up your heart rate even more that you’re concerned if this’ll turn into a medical mishap. Body still so close to yours, you can feel his body heat mixing with yours as small beads of sweat begin to form. “Do you want my fingers inside of ya?” he inquires. “The same ones that were used to hide a dead body? You’d fuckin’ like that, wouldn’t ya?”

And you nod ever so shamelessly, eyes pleading with him to make you feel full in some sort of capacity. “Ah,” he hums. “Once again, so quick to comply and say ‘yes’ to anything I tell ya. It’s kind of… pathetic.”

You let out a screech, fingers reaching for your hair and pulling ever so roughly. He’s forced you to bear out your neck, your chest heaving heavily as you pant. “Don’t you think so, too?”

You squeal out something incoherent, too fixated on the pain to contort anything understandable. However, his grip loosens as he once again pulls you in for a kiss, swallowing away the momentary pain. Pulling away once more, Bakugo looks at you to say, “don’t worry, doll. I promise to make ya feel good.”

He’s kept well on his promise, fingers stuffed inside of you as he’s still got you sat on the dresser. Legs spread open wide for him as he’s hell-bent on seeing just how well your pussy reacts to him. Your juices secrete onto the piece of furniture as your mind is fixated and captivated on this brute of a man. Two digits stuffed inside of you— thick and intimidating. The hands of a murderer, your subconscious whispers into the back of your mind, yet you can’t find the strength to fight him off. And you sure as hell don’t want to, especially when those said hands are being used to bring you to such immense pleasure right now. Has a man ever made you feel this good before?

You’re afraid to answer your own question as you’re letting another moan as your thighs begin to tighten and your sweet cunt starts clenching around his fingers. Your hand reaches to grab his wrists, but he’s unrelenting as he speeds up the pace. “Oh, God…” you cry out.

“No God here,” Bakugo smiles connivingly. “Just me, doll.”

“I— I’m gonna—”

“Let this pussy cream all over my fingers, baby,” he drawls, spreading your legs even wider with his free hand as he feels your walls pulsate around him. “Show me how much of a dirty slut you are for me.”

And the way your body follows his commands boosts his already inflated ego, a maniacal grin gracing his features as he watches your body convulse. Your mouth falls open in an ‘O’ as you have fallen speechless. A white band forms around the base of his fingers as he continues fingering you through your orgasm, a small puddle starting to form as it widens and sticks to your inner thighs as he watches you in delight. “Yeahhhh…” he breathes, barely above a whisper.

Not a complete asshole, he gives you a moment for you to relax before he’s pulling you out of your haze suddenly. Forcing your legs to wrap around his waist, he carries you over to the bed, dropping you on it and watching your body bounce on it as he’s caught you off guard. In this naked glory and now laying on the bed so vulnerably, it’s given Bakugo the better opportunity to ogle your body much more closely. He takes in your breasts and your curves down to your delectable cunt that still glistens from your orgasm. Eyes traveling back to your face, nothing beats those features of yours.

What’s a sweet little maid doing in the hands of him? You’ve surely lost your way.

Bakugo starts pulling off his own clothes, giving you a show that you have no intent on looking away from. And the way your pupils darken is all the reminder that he needs that you aren’t no saint. Reaching for his pants, he pulls at the buckle of the belt, dragging it from the loops with one aggressive swoop before dropping it on the bed. It could possibly find itself handy.

He maintains eye contact with you, as he watches you sit up on the bed. Unzipping his pants, he shimmies out of it before kicking them off and slowly crawling on the bed and over you. He feels like a predator who’s caught his prey and ready to devour you. Your eyes widen in expectancy, ready and waiting for him to pounce. Both now in an equally naked glory, you’re ready for whatever he has to give. However, from hovering over your body, he’s sitting up once more and removing such close proximity that has you confused and has you questioning his next move.

Until you feel a hand on your ankle. You can’t imagine the ease it takes to flip you over, not letting out a single grunt as he’s gotten you on your stomach now. Breasts pushed into the soft fabrics of the bed with a hand pushing down on your back as you feel his heavy-weight against you. The jingle of his belt comes to your ears as you look behind you, feeling both of your hands in his grip and he’s using the piece of leather to bind them together. He watches you intently as he smirks, “Can’t have ya movin’ ‘round while I use your perfect little pussy.”

He fixes you how he wants, forcing you on your knees as your upper body lays pliant and still. He’s got your ass and pussy out in the open for his use and he watches how your cunt is once again begging to be filled, clenching onto nothing in the search of friction. He’s got a hand around his length, hard and waiting to fill itself into you and ruin this pretty little body of yours. Dark shaft of his that’s veiny and cut tip leaking of pre, he rubs his head as the many possible ideas of what he could do to you rings throughout his mind. But with the aching throb of his cock, he knows he can’t keep withholding you what you want— what the both of you want.

With his body weight, he inches forward until you can feel his skin against you. His heavy cock in between the crevice of your ass as his body heat radiates off him like the scorching sun. Engulfed in his presence, your breath hitches as you tug on the tight restraints of the belt wrapped around your wrists. The raspy chuckle that escapes the man above you sends shivers down your spine as he leans into you. His chest presses against you as one hand grabs at the belt-bounded hands and the other helps align his cock with your entrance. “Y’think yer ready for the wild ride, doll? Cuz I don’t think I’ll stop once I start. This pussy just looks too good to give up.”

“Yes,” you huff out, nodding. “Please, I need you in me.”

He grins. “Whatever y’say.”

The walls of your apartment are paper thin, so you don’t doubt that your neighbors can hear your extracurricular activities. You’re not being considerate of their comfort at all as you shamelessly weil into the night. Skin slapping against skin, the wet sloshing sound of your juices sounding through your bedroom as Bakugo fucks you viciously. You’re crying out like a disgusting little whore, first whining about how he was too big of a stretch and now look at you. You’re not bitching anymore.

“Look at ya,” Bakugo grunts, keeping up the rough and torturous pace. “Taking my cock like the nasty little slut ya’re.”

A thumb prodding at your asshole, puckered and tight, Bakugo lets out a nice string of saliva trickle down in between your ass as he massages the next entrance. The action has you clenching as your nails dig into the palm of your hands, tensing up at the feeling of him teasing your hole. He slaps your ass, nonverbally reprimanding you. “Don’t tell me you can’t handle a finger up your ass now,” he mocks you. “Aww, don’t tell me you can’t handle it. Don’tcha wanna feel good? I know you do.”

You mewl, eyes shut as your face is stuffed into the comfort of your silk-clad pillow, you don’t utter a word to Bakugo. Can’t bring yourself to. “Don’t worry, doll—” For once, Bakugo’s a bit more gentle. Still keeping the exhausting pace of drilling your poor pussy, he rubs your ass with a gentleness. “—It’ll only hurt for a moment.”

He doesn’t give you any warnings, only pressing his thumb deeper until he can’t anymore. Just as he said, where one moment you were squealing in pain, the next your body relaxed as your nerves didn’t know what exactly to focus on. The beatings of your cunt or the thick digit invading your ass. Right as you got adjusted to the additional penetration, you let out a dragged moan that only had Bakugo smirking. “Told ya,” he says with a smack of your ass.

It’s all overwhelming, how you feel so full yet can’t reach behind you to touch Bakugo, to pull him impossibly closer to you. You whine and moan out, high-pitched sounds that’re like music to Bakugo’s ears as you jut your ass back into him. Your cock swallows him whole, your sweet cunt pulsating and clenching around his length in a desperation for him to breed you. And fuck is he tempted to. He can imagine the ropes of cum he could pour into you, mixing with that intoxicating nectar of yours.

His grunts and moans are guttural as he withholds his orgasm, waiting for that perfect moment. With his thumb still inside your hole, he presses the palm of his hand into your ass, the pads of his fingers digging into your skin and threatening to create dark bruises. “C’mon, doll. I ain’t got all night.”

You’re so close, you can feel it. In the pit of your stomach, that familiar churn rises up inside of you and bubbling up to be something deadly. “Fuck,” you cry. “‘M so close!”

It’s inhumanly possible, but Bakugo speeds up even more, battering down on your pussy until you’re screeching out a garbled mess. White blurs your vision and if Bakugo was trying to say anything, you didn’t hear it. Your body spasms as you feel your inner thighs and the sheets beneath you get soaked. You don’t register the sudden hollowness you feel as Bakugo pulls out, the sight of you squirting getting him on so much that his orgasm follows yours shortly after. Ejaculating, he spurts his cum all over your back as your legs fall pliant as the last of your juices seep into your sheets and you can only lay in your mess.

Cock softening as droplets of his orgasm drip down your ass, Bakugo pants as he looks at the time. Half past three in the morning, he should really leave. He knows this, but he’s exhausted and if he makes more than five movements, he’s going to knock out for sure. “Fuck,” he curses as he climbs off you and falls to your left side. You’re panting heavily, chest rising and falling as Bakugo looks over at you. Your eyes feel heavy and you’re trying to force yourself to stay awake, but to no avail. With all the strength you have left, you spin to the side and your back towards the blonde in your bed. Bakugo snorts as he shuffles to turn away from you as well. G’night, he grunts out in his mind.

—

“I’m not a murderer, by the way.” Bakugo finds his way on the edge of the bed, his back towards you. The sun peeks out through your curtains, giving him the light he needs to get dressed. “Don’t think I’ve ever clarified that. I didn’t kill that poor piece of shit.”

He catches you off guard, making you turn around to view his back. Processing his words, you’re not sure if you believe him or not, but you decide to go along with it. You’ve already laid in bed with the man and you’ve given up on convincing yourself of the morals that you believed you once had. Was this a way to make you feel any better? “Then, what are you?” You didn’t mean for the little laugh to leave you at the end of your question, making it seem like you were doubting him. Though truthfully, you were.

“I just clean up the bodies after the murder,” he explains as he gets dressed, ignoring your little chuckle. He can’t blame you. “Someone else kills them and I hide the evidence that it even happened.”

“Oh,” you breathe, intrigued. There’s a job for that? Before you can answer any questions, he stands. Now fully clothed, all except for his shoes.

“Yeah,” he answers, gruffly. “I’ve sent out a recommendation for ya. You seem fit for the job, so I made a call to one of the higher ups to get in contact with ya.”

“You… you did?” Furrowing your eyebrows, it catches you off guard. “How’d… when did you even have the time to do that? You were pretty much glued to me the moment I walked in on you.”

Bakugo smirks. “I’ve got my ways—” Glancing at the clock, he silently curses to himself. “—Anyways, I’ve got to go. See ya around or whatever.”

Your eyes widen at the announcement of his departure, making you sit up in the bed and reach out to him. “Wait!”

“What?” he snaps back, glaring right at you now. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Is that it?” you ask, not sure what exactly that you’re asking. “Is there nothing else?”

“Nothing else to what?” he turns back around. “I’m pretty damn sure you won’t call the cops. That’d be stupid of ya.”

That smirk on his face. Moments ago, you found it to be such a sexually appealing thing, but now you just wanna smack it off his face. “Or what? You want me to say I had a good time with ya? Is that it, doll?”

Your face heats up as you grow flustered. “No.”

“If it makes you sleep better at night,” he crosses his arms, making them bulge even more. “I did.”

With that, he gives you another once over before reaching for the door. Without a goodbye, he swings it open and then shut as he quickly makes his departure.

—

SEVENTY-TWO HOURS LATER

Bang, bang, bang. Three hefty knocks at your door that makes you jump out of your seat from around your very small and quaint living area. You haven’t heard from Bakugo since he’s left, and you don’t know how you expect him to when you don’t even have any way to contact him. However, you were still hopeful— still had him on your mind since the moment he walked out of your small apartment. From the three knocks, you’re hoping that it’s him, coming to devour you like he did three days ago.

“Who is it?” you call out from the other side, but there’s no response. When you look through the small peep hole there’s no one there. Kissing your teeth, you’re about to head back to the couch when something in the back of your mind tells you to turn back around. When you do, you hear the small slip of paper slide from underneath the front door and there’s a singular letter sitting there right at your feet.

Picking it up, the envelope just has your name on it— first and last— nothing else. Not your address and not one from who or where it came from. It reminded you of some of the last things Bakugo told you. “I’ve sent out a recommendation for ya. You seem fit for the job, so I made a call to one of the higher ups to get in contact with ya.”

Ripping open the envelope, you let the tattered thing fall to the ground as you read letter:

Dear (Y/N),

It’s a shame to know that one of our trusted agents was caught during a mission. Truthfully, you should’ve been handled with more care and caution, but if it were to go that way, you wouldn’t be receiving such an invite like this. Agent #B354 has recommended you to join our very secretive profession to be part of our agency.

We will give you another twenty-four hours to make a decision and get your bearings together. Whether or not you accept this invitation, you will be sworn to secrecy about this organization or you will be dealt with accordingly— as you should’ve originally been. If you decide to join, welcome to the team Agent #Y976. If you decide that this profession isn’t for you, you’ll receive a non-disclosure agreement to sign and we wish you the best of luck in life.

From, NMC Organization

( departing words. ) honestly, this fic could've gone on longer and i feel like it could be more detailed, but i don't have the time for that, unfortunately. please leave your comments and feedback below!

#bakugo katuski x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki smut #bakugo smut #bnha smut #bnha x reader #mha smut #mha x reader #bakugou katuski x reader #bakugou katsuki smut #bakugo katsuki #bakugou katsuki #bnha #tw: (n)sfw #tw: dark content #x reader #x black reader #bakugo x black reader #( 🀄 ) : standalone.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

Text

Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO "an illegal airline price-fixing service"; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal. I regret the error.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who benefited from a service that helps airlines set prices. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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mysticheathenn · 3 months

Text

Messages From Your Mental Prison

Hi, Hexlings!

This pick-a-card reading is about your mental health and the state of how you view the world and everything that is going on in your life. This could be about your depression, Anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts. Read with caution as this reading may have triggers.

This is a general reading, remember to take what resonates and leave what does not. This reading does not supplement your need to seek professional help. Tarot should be used as entertainment and not a for sure answer to your problems but as a guide, a sense of hope, and amusement.

Take your time when choosing your pile. Ask yourself the question and choose the picture that you can’t stop looking at. Listen to your intuition.

MasterList

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TW Ahead Read With Caution

Pile l:

Messages From Your Mental Prison. Tarot: 8 of Pentacles (Reversed), 9 of Swords, 4 of Swords (reversed), 10 of Cups (reversed), Justice

This reminds me of the TikTok clip of the voice screaming "It's not fair. It's not fair." reminding me of how many people have probably told you that you handle stress and everyday life so well but little do they know your mental state is literally one inconvenience away from having a mental breakdown. Stress and anxiety practically camp out in your mind on a daily basis pile l. You can't seem to escape it, it's all you have known for quite a while and you're tired. There is a saying that "There is no sleep for the wicked" Well in your case "There is no sleep for the poor or those who lack the resources to pull themselves up in their life." All you want in life is enough to pay your bills and a little extra for savings and be able to do something with your life like try a new hobby without feeling guilty for spending money that isn't on "important" things like survival. You probably have been in survival mode for quite some time now and wondering when will you see a breakthrough. You're tired of being tired. You're tired of practically playing Russian roulette with your bills of which one can you not pay for this month. One thing I will say pile l is even though things may seem bleak please don't give up, I sense things will get better financially for you. Sometimes in life you just need to find your footing for things to take off.

Extra Messages: Tea Tree Leaf Oracle: Seek out information that will help you out, A Journey either physical or mental, unsettled times. Need to plan ahead, Announcement, Get back to the basics.

Pile l your extra message oracles make me believe that you feel lost, maybe even stuck for some of you with no clue in the world of how to better your situation or go about life. You have the get back to the basics card which sticks out to me like a sore thumb letting the game know that I sense you may be the type who always tries to do those get-rich-and-quick schemes like drop shipping or anything else you see that pops up on your social media feed and it never works out for whatever reason. You want to know why....it's because you aren't supposed to be doing that. That's not your path to riches. You have the 8 of Pentacles and 10 of Cups card but it's reversed meaning you are meant to have emotional and financial fulfillment you just need to stop and get back to the basics. What basics mystic? What is it that has been drawing or calling you in? What is something you keep putting off or not doing because you believe based on society and family it won't make you any money? For most of you, this is what you need to be doing. For others of you, you will be going on a journey where you need to find this out. Figure out what feeds your soul that you would do for free and do that but add tax. You are meant to freelance and be your own boss, not working for other people. Overall this is a journey process for you pile l. You will deal with more hard times as you figure this out but remember this journey is temporary to where you want to be, so keep pushing. An answer if it hasn't already will come to you.

Pile ll:

Messages From Your Mental Prison. Tarot: The Hermit, Page of Swords (reversed), Queen of Cups, 10 of Wands, 10 of Swords (reversed)

When was the last time you nurtured yourself or spent time alone and really tried to heal and nurture yourself with positive thoughts pile ll. It's a never-ending cycle of you constantly bombarding yourself with cruel words that aren't true. This reminds me slightly of the reading I posted titled Mystery pt. ll. But overall this feeling of yours feels more so as if the world has its weight on your shoulders and you feel as if you are a burden to those around you. You may live at home, with roommates, or feel that you constantly are asking anyone and everyone around you for help as if you can't do anything for yourself and you're tired. You're ready to be able to be independent without having to rely on others. Maybe others have made you feel bad as well for asking for help when you are down on your luck to where you just feel crushed, stuck, unable to move in a direction because one way people will make you feel bad for your predicament and the other hand you will make yourself feel bad because you feel whatever this is you should be able to do by yourself but can't because life is tough right now. As I mentioned in pile l you need to get back to the basics. Get back to the basics of life and take things one step at a time. You are doing the best you can with what you have and don't let anyone make you feel bad about that.

Extra Messages: Tea Tree Leaf Oracle: Position of authority, August, Someone you know is undependable and insincere, Slowly but surely getting ahead. Pay attention to your work, Good Fortune.

As mentioned your life while it maybe chaotic at the moment everything is a journey and slowly but surely things will get better and you will get ahead eventually. With the Position of authority I am seeing this in two ways some of you should pay attention to your work as there may be a position available for you in management where you can make more money this may happen around or sometime in August. If not within the company you work maybe this is an invitation to be your own boss or look elsewhere for higher positions especially if you have more than enough qualifications. For others of you, this position of authority is letting you know that you are the boss of your own life and have complete control of what goes on and who is in it. Never let people who claim to be friends or family make you feel bad for being on hard times. They aren't who they say they are and you should move accordingly with that information. Overall Good Fortune is in your cards by the end of this rough patch. You just need to focus and hone in on ways you can do more within your life with the resources of which you have. Again this could be moving up in the company or going elsewhere, where advancement is an option.

Pile lll:

Messages From Your Mental Prison. Tarot: The Star, The Sun, Ace of Pentacles (reversed), The Fool (reversed), Awakening

Pile lll, my babies, it's time to allow yourself to be seen by the world. It's time to stop hiding in the shadows allowing life to pass you by. You can't keep yourself in the mental prison of feelings of imposter syndrome, fear of judgment, etc. Life wants to give you financial blessings, especially with the Ace of Pentacles in Reversed but you are blocking them because you aren't doing what needs to be done. This could be you starting a YouTube channel, being a content creator on social media, writing a book or screenplay/ maybe even fanfiction for some of you, others this might just be you hiding from a promotion that you deeply desire but feel you lack experience, knowledge, etc. Whatever this is for you, you have to release the thoughts that plague your mind and go for the thing that puts you in front of everyone. Yes at first you may make mistakes or look cringe or whatever the issue may be but that's how everything is when you first jump deep into something. You make mistakes and people will talk...but you want to know something life moves on and the world doesn't end. Seriously do the thing, it's time. You will beat yourself up if others take the things that you want for yourself and you want to know something you have no one to blame but yourself because you decided to not do what needs to be done. Write the book. Film yourself. Apply for better jobs even if you think you are not qualified. Have you heard of the girl who applied to jobs she had no business doing and ended up getting hired making $100k a year...that could be you right now but you are stuck listening to self-doubt and the thoughts of what others will say. Storytime: I knew that I didn't want to continue working at whatever job I was working at back in 2015 so when my friend and I figured out that employers don't check a lot of your information we applied for positions that would pay us well and you want to know something the resume I lied on got me so far in life to where I was Assistant GM of hotels at one point. All because I believed I could do what others were doing in the hotel industry even without a lick of experience. Did I mess up in the beginning, yes. Did I care...no because I was doing more good than harm so no one really questioned if I lied or not. You have to take the jump. Do the thing.

Extra Messages: Tea Tree Leaf Oracle: Short Journey, Back to Basics, Work achievement & success, TIME TO ACT, Someone is extremely stubborn and unwilling to change, Protected from negative forces beyond your control, Solid foundation success with effort, waiting for news package or letter, A meeting with a strange could be important.

Pile lll do you see the amount of synchronicities in your oracle reading. Spirit is coming through loud and clear that you need to get out of your stubbornness and began acting on your dreams, goals, and desires. You are protected from anything that could try and take what this is away from you. Even with a solid foundation success with effort is telling you "Hey if you do the thing you will not fail because you are protected." Now this goes without saying that you won't deal with some challenges because that's life what it is saying is you will come out on top and the journey for you won't be a long one if you just do the effort that it takes. Spirit will do the rest if you just do what needs to be done.

Pile lV:

Messages From Your Mental Prison. Tarot: The Empress, Queen of Pentacles, 5 of Swords (reversed), 8 of Swords (reversed), 6 of Wands

You are victorious pile lV your only problem is that you don't believe you are worth a pot to piss in a lot of the time. Even with the Empress and Queen of Pentacles card here letting me know how nurturing, giving, empathetic, and even resourceful you are you don't see any good things about yourself. You remind me of people who speak negatively about themselves not knowing that their actions speak the opposite. You can't say you don't care but your actions speak another language. You can't put yourself down but then be upset when life mirrors your thoughts. Deep down you know how amazing you are and the many great things that you can do, but for some strange reason you recently for some of you while others of you this has been going on for a while where you constantly hold yourself to such a low standard and critic everything that you do. Why is that? Where did it begin? How can you remove this person or thing that made you feel this way? For some of you, this may have been a relationship (platonic, romantic, or familial) that made you feel self-critical of yourself because they felt something about themselves. You must remember that when people speak unkind things to you that it's a reflection of themselves and not you. You don't have to take what others think of you and run with it as if they are true because they are not. A scene that comes to mind is when the mom in Black Swan says "What happened to my little girl?" What happened to you that made you feel and think these thoughts to yourself and how can you get back to the Empress and Queen of Pentacle energy.

Extra Messages: Manifestation Oracle Cards: Wellbeing, Empowerment, Strength

How can you today give yourself the love that you deserve? Is it a DIY spa day? A trip to a therapist or talk with a trusted friend? How can you show up for yourself in ways that you haven't before that will make you see the person you are? Have the strength and courage to stand up to anyone who makes you feel any less than what and who you are. For a few of you, you may be a part of the LBGTQ+ community and others around you have made you feel different, a "freak" or whatever insecurity that you question your existence. There is a quote by Elenor Roosevelt that says "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." Please don't let assholes who were raised by baboons let you lower yourself or feel anything less than amazing, beautiful, and authentically you. Regardless of how you feel about yourself find something in your life, day, or something as small as a freckle on your face that you love and keep bringing more of that energy in for you and keep your head up. This feeling is only temporary, things will get better.

Thank you for liking and reblogging my readings. I always appreciate you guys on here and on Patreon.

Stay safe and be blessed

#spirituality #witchblr #tarot reading #tarotcommunity #tarotblr #pick a card #tarot cards #pac tarot #pick a pile #pac reading #pick an image #pick a picture #pick a photo

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