Metabolizing the theory of "political capitalism": How many $TRUMP coins should your company buy?

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Cory Doctorow

2025-12-06 21:04:58

It's a strange fact that the more sophisticated and polished a theory gets, the simpler it tends to be. New theories tend to be inspired by a confluence of many factors, and early attempts to express the theory will seek to enumerate and connect everything that seems related, which is a *lot*.

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Pluralistic: Metabolizing the theory of “political capitalism” (06 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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The idea of companies and industries stalling out because the whole industry can't upgrade to the newest technology sounds a whole lot like technical debt.

I've been wondering recently if not only companies but countries (and empires) are susceptible to this. I think of the UK trying to run a 20th century empire with an infrastructure designed for coal. Or the US trying to run a 21st century empire on an infrastructure designed for oil. Of course these empires decline. They have to pay the technical debt on the existing systems, while their competitors don't. So that would make Riley/Brenner theory a private sector corollary to imperial decline.