Status Updates From The Bezzle (Martin Hench #2)

‘‘But the real real issue? It’s all those poor motherfuckers who are—in the power of these looting sadists. That’s why I care. I think it’s why you’ll care—It’s a human tragedy.’ I’d been waiting for it to die since I first tried it. It wasn’t any one thing that turned me off, it was everything—like someone had taken all the things I hated about technology—stuck them together into a grotesque Frankenstein’s monster.’

‘—what happened in 2008, when the richest—crashed the global economy, got trillions of dollars in bailouts, & walked away even richer?—paid themselves a one-billion-dollar special dividend, then made generous offers—merged them into one very large—private prison system,—The worse we hurt, the better they do—a machine, a million-armed robot—Some jobs you do for money—Some—you do for satisfaction—I was better at mine—’

‘Ratcatchers used to speak of the king rats,—rats found their tails hopelessly entangled—individual rats are at war with one another, fighting for food, fighting for control over the direction of the whole—Behold,—private-equity roll-up—king rat made of—companies, all vying to dominate each other & the public at the same time—I’ve been reading—The Information (Gleick),—Something had changed—It started with the food.’

‘If you're ever tempted to hold out hope that life will get better for—prisoners,—avoid that temptation—It is not in our character. To be an—is to live with—festering background knowledge that you are in a land that imprisons more of its people than any country in the history of the world—confront the fact that you live in a place where the only thing standing between you & decades in a prison—is luck & connections.’

‘—ever since I dropped out of MIT—West Coast, where all the computer companies were. I have a pretty good grasp of California plant life—Its reproductive strategy is to drop—heavy, oily leaves around its base—trapped heat—highly flammable oil consummate their tragic love affair and burst into flame,—eucalyptus seedpods need fire to open up—while the ashes of the fallen competing trees enrich the soil with nutrients.’