Today’s links Fighting junk fees is “woke”: Visa and Mastercard want you to pay credit card swipe fees to own the libs. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Fighting junk fees is “woke” (permalink) “Populism” isn’t intrinsically left or right. The distinction between the two is often obscured by jargon, but there’s a simple litmus test (courtesy of Steven Brust): “ask what’s more important: human rights, or property rights. If they say ‘property rights are human rights,’ they’re on the right.” Which is to say, both the left and the right can be populist, but the populist left seeks to improve peoples’ lives, no matter what that takes, while the populist right is only willing to make the world better when that doesn’t interfere with the interests of property owners. This is how you get the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire equating publicly produced, free insulin with forcing enslaved Black people to pick cotton in the fields: https://newrepublic.com/post/174485/libertarian-party-suggests-former-black-lawmaker-pick-crops-free For right populists, the property rights of pharma giants are human rights, so anything that interferes with those rights is equivalent to any other human rights violation. This is not only wrong, but it’s also a huge vulnerability in the right populist mindset. It’s a button that, when pushed, produces a reliable and reflexive outrage. This is essential for the creation, maintenance and expansion of plutocracy. In a plutocracy, a small minority owns…Pluralistic: Fighting junk fees is "woke" (04 August 2023)