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More sobbing. Then a deep breath. "I saw the doctor." A long pause. Joe wanted to hang up. More than anything. Because he knew that he was about to go through a door that led out of his life as it was and into a new, worse life. It was a door that only swung one way and once you went through it, you could never go back. There was a split second when he actually almost hung up on Lacey, but of course he didn't.
this reads pretty shallow ("long pause", come on) but the door metaphor is interesting
[...] Ostensibly, it was for fathers whose wives were dying of breast cancer [...] but actually it was for fathers whose wives were dying of treatable breast cancer who had been denied coverage by their insurers.
Work was never the same for Joe after Lacey got sick. He never rescheduled that meeting with the VP. He just couldn't muster the fucks needed to give it his all for on-demand wholesale distribution. People he'd started with left to work for experimental divisions doing partnerships with self-driving forklift companies, or diving into cloud-based self-serve platforms for ecommerce dropshippers, or all that other stuff that helped people get their Squatty Pottys and strobing LED USB chargers delivered to their doors with five nines of reliability.
reminds me of a mildly passive-aggressive medium post i read by some VC who found out his wife had cancer, and was nudged out of his company as a result
[...] "My insurance won't pay for me to go to a shrink to talk about how screwed up my insurance is."
mental health is an economic issue
[...] Letting people die because saving their lives would erode profits was a wicked act, and people who endorsed that act were wicked people. Blowing them up or shooting them wasn't right, but a world in which the wicked went about their days frightened of retribution was a more just one than a world where the wicked held their head high.
BlueCross BlueShield of Minneapolis broke ground on a new building in an industrial park at the end of its own gated cul-de-sac, with high guard towers, automated license plate recognition systems in a one-mile radius, panic rooms on every floor, and a large staff of 24/7 armed guards. Their shareholder disclosures costed this out and amortized the capital over five years, explaining how the running costs would be covered by a combination of a "security surcharge" on all premiums and a tiny per-share dividend hit. After a short bobble when the shorts moved onto the market, the share price closed up and some shorts took a big hit.
armed guard capitalism. the absolute gall in passing this onto customers tho
The billing guy seemed like a decent fellow stuck with a shitty job [...] He was embarrassed and apologetic, but he had a job to do. It wasn't his fault the system was so totally fucked up. There was nothing that one guy could do about it.
build worker power and push for medicare for all pls
(it's tricky cus obvs the responsibility shouldnt be on the workers, who prob dont have great prospects elsewhere anyway, but the people who have the power to change things have no interest in doing so. what's the alternative, if you want to change the system?)
Martin knew that The Event was coming. The fact was the world just didn't need all those people anymore, and the market had revealed that fact, squeezing them into tinier, more uncomfortable places. He wouldn't tolerate it if he was in their shoes. He'd be the first one to build a guillotine [...]
I like the way this is written in free indirect style from the POV of a character whose political views/morals are the complete opposite of Doctorow's, but who recognises the same facts. basically a right-wing marxist. clever narrative tool!
[...] the semi-employed, semi-employable dimbulbs who lucked into a prime piece of location would soon find themselves gently ushered to a place that was better matched with their worth to society and the human race.
[...] the smartest and best had figured out how to improve even the most marginal assets, well beyond the capacity of the 99 percent, and now the 99 percent had found themselves relieved of all their worldly goods and lacking the sums to rent anywhere to perch while they waited to die.
Martin describes this earlier on as being akin to large-scale gentrification
[...] Martin didn't let himself feel empathy for her. It was the grasshopper and the ants: he'd done all the work to make himself a cozy shelter from the blowing winter and she had done whatever she'd done instead---made a bunch of babies, watched reality TV, taken drugs, or crocheted. People who didn't think ahead were self-correcting problems. She was correcting herself, and it wasn't pretty, but it wasn't his problem, either.
(the aunt, with cholera)
(the ending is great if a little too heavy-handed cus Martin basically dies from the same thing while she lives)
I STUDIED THE BLADE