Under the brutal heat dome that hovered over the eastern seaboard in mid-June of 2024, my family and I were in Washington D.C. to do the typical tourist things: the Air and Space museum, Arlington Cemetery, the Holocaust Museum, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the U.S. Capitol tour, and more. My wife found an ideal location near Eastern Market and Capitol Hill. The space was cool and comfortable, and very well equipped –– other than just one dish towel, a notable absence of spoons and forks, and an air conditioning system that whined loudly and made for a sleepless first night until the second night, when we turned it off just before bedtime.
The afternoon before our last day, the fire alarm went off, although there was no smell of smoke; some water was dripping into our downstairs unit from above, and the noise from the alarm was loud and obnoxious; but I guess no one would ever sleep through it!
Some kind of corporate fire alert system had been installed near the entrance to property, which had six rental units in it. The alert system panel included a large number of buttons, including one to push to stop the alarm and one to immediately notify the company operating the system; but this turned out to be hopelessly useless. Even calling the number on the panel yielded nothing but the advice to call the fire department. So, after urgently texting our host and getting no response, we called the DC Fire Department, and they showed up right away, with a lot of interesting tools: special axes, hooks, and a unique looking crowbar.
We let them know that water was dripping through the ceiling in a couple of places, and they decided to check the upstairs apartments. When no one answered at the first one, we watched them break down the door, but they discovered nothing; above that apartment, they had to break down another door, and found a sink which had been left running by one of the tenants. (Later, a comment from the Captain in charge of the DC FD crew: “You’d be surprised how often that happens; stupid people keep us very busy.” Somehow, the property manager learned what was going on, and after the sink was shut off by the guys from the DCFD, we were told by a representative from the property management company that the property had to be vacated immediately for repairs.
So we called our “host,” someone purportedly named Paul, to let him know the situation. Here’s where it gets weird: we repeatedly asked “Paul” to call us by phone but he refused to do anything but text on the Airbnb app. Some of the responses were a bit stiff and non-responsive, but he eventually made an offer for us to stay in a different place in D.C. that he owned for our last night; but the location was not at all convenient. He refused to give us any other options or any sort of refund to find our own more convenient place, and refused to call. Our daughter in law, well experienced in corporate ways, looked at all of the texting between us and Paul, and quickly concluded that we were dealing with . . . a bot.
Bots don’t call, but they do text as though they were human.
WTF? Back when Airbnb was getting started, we used it a lot, and there was always a real person who was the host. A bit of investigation reveals that more and more Airbnb “hosts” are actually LLCs or other corporate entities. As noted in Vox, in November of 2023:
“Airbnb began as a more flexible, more social experience than hotels, but that sense of peer-to-peer exchange has all but disappeared. Airbnb hosts today are often professionals who intend for hosting to be their main job and source of income, and new hosts often list entire homes rather than home-sharing their primary residence. Many form LLCs, hire employees, or engage the services of professional property management companies to manage their listings. The majority of Airbnbs are run by hosts with multiple listings. That’s contributing to the persistent shadow now looming over Airbnb: the perception that it’s a social ill worsening the housing crisis.” (from What happened to Airbnb? Financially, the sharing economy darling is thriving, but guests, hosts, and cities have had enough.)
Notably, absentee owners generally are driving up affordability in many markets. Your commentator believe that Airbnb now has a lot of absentee owners.
Back in the heat dome, we spent most of the afternoon outside on the sidewalk, dealing with the “fire” at the Airbnb, and did find other lodging for the night; our daughter in law had plenty of “points” with Marriott, so we got a great location in City Center near the White House. Eventually, through my wife’s persistence, we were able to get a credit for the night’s stay we didn’t use, but we had to call Airbnb’s help line, not the host, and eventually, too, secured $250 for our inconvenience –– from Airbnb corporate.
So, what’s going on here? Wealthy individuals, or business entities, have transformed what was initially a room sharing service with hosts into a money maker for owners of Airbnb properties. The proper remedy is to do what both Asheville N.C. and Boulder Colorado have done: require Airbnb properties to always have a host in residence. To some, this may seem like bureaucratic “red tape,” impinging on the freedom of those who want to make more money. To us, it seems like good manners, good ethics, and plain old common sense to have a responsive host on hand for people visiting from other places. The “bottification” of Airbnb is really a story of how many corporate absentee owners will be content to count their dollars more than care about their customers.
Want to know if your Airbnb host is actually a “bot”? See how much personal information is provided about your host, and see if the same issues keep cropping up in customers’ reviews: for example, we noticed that the “host” had been notified about the absence of forks and spoons, as well as the noisy AC system, many times, with no resolution. That’s a solid sign that there is no “someone” who actually cares about your vacation. Again, as noted by Vox, that sense of “peer to peer” has all but disappeared. It’s a sad sign of our corporate-driven times. All “perfectly legal,” of course.
The antics of Silicon Valley “alpha dogs” have reached a new and disturbing level. In the public interest, PLBW offers some extraordinary writing by Lora Kelly of the Atlantic magazine. By way of preface, your “perfectly legal but wrong” commentator notes that much of the world’s problems these days come down to men that want to “swing their dicks” (so to speak) and show that they can beat down anyone else. For example, both Donald Trump and Vladamir Putin seem like two peas in a pod in that particular way.
But raising yourself by beating down others is the essential madness of toxic masculinity: being “top dog” will always be short-lived, and is no way to live life as a human. Do you really want to feel great about yourself because you can beat down all challengers? Take some advice from George Foreman, former heavyweight boxing champ, in his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air from 1995:
“I’m having knockout after knockout, starting to look at myself in the mirror ––I see this body, I see this face ––I see this man who’s going to be heavyweight champ of the world. He is the king of men: he can beat anybody in the room and you get into a room with guys and you start thinking nobody can whip me. So it wasn’t something you could turn on and off it was something that stayed with you all the time. As a matter of fact I remember winning the championship of the world –– I defeated Joe Frazier and I remember thinking I can beat anybody in the world, anybody, and it followed me around everywhere I would go. And that got in the way of my life because I no longer had a life; I mean I wouldn’t meet a friend, I was like I’m meeting people that I could whip, I would size you up you know, you know you can’t whip me, so you know you lose a life because 24 hours a day you are the heavyweight champion of the world in your mind.”
“The king of men” but “You lose a life. “ Wow. All in pursuit of being the biggest, toughest, meanest, strongest, richest. . . .whatever.
So, it now happens that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have embraced this hyper–masculinity and are now in a serious pissing contest: they have actually agreed to go at each other in a “cage fight.” As Lora Kelly writes on June 27, 2023:
“Something strange is happening on Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram. For years, he posted periodic, classic dad-and-CEO fare: anniversary shots with his wife. Photos of his kids and dog being cute. Meta product announcements.”
“In recent months, though, Zuckerberg has been posting more about fighting. Not the kind that involves firing back at critics on behalf of his oft-embattled social-media empire, but actual mixed-martial-arts training. Earlier this month, he posted a video of himself tussling with a jiujitsu champion. On Memorial Day, he posted himself in a camouflage flak vest, flushed after an intense army workout. And last week, Zuckerberg and Elon Musk said they were going to have a cage fight. The men apparently have ongoing personal tensions, and Meta is working on building a Twitter competitor. But announcing in public their intent to fight takes things to another level.”
“If you rolled your eyes at the cage-fight news: fair enough. The idea of two middle-aged executives, each facing an onslaught of business and public-image problems, literally duking it out is a bit on the nose. But the fight itself—and whether or not it happens—is less important than what it tells us about how Musk is reshaping Silicon Valley. Musk is mainstreaming new standards of behavior, and some of his peers are joining him in misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals.”
“Leaders such as Musk and Zuckerberg (and, to some extent, even their less-bombastic but quite buff peer Jeff Bezos) have lately been striving to embody and project a specific flavor of masculine—and political—strength. . . .”
“The two executives’ cage-fight announcement is ‘a reflection of a really tight monoculture of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people, most of whom are men,’ Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington who researches the tech industry, told me. In other words, the would-be participants embody the industry’s bro culture.”
“Zuckerberg’s recent interest in waging physical battles marks a departure for the CEO, who a few years ago seemed more interested in emulating someone like Bill Gates, an executive who parlayed his entrepreneurial success into philanthropy, O’Mara added. Zuckerberg has been very famous since he was quite young. His early years at the helm of his social-media empire—“I’m CEO, Bitch” business cards and all—were lightly, and sometimes ungenerously, fictionalized in The Social Network by the time he was in his mid-20s. He has consciously curated his image in the years since.”
“For a long time, Zuckerberg led Facebook as a “product guy,” focusing on the tech while letting Sheryl Sandberg lead the ads business and communications. But overlapping crises—disinformation, Cambridge Analytica, antitrust—after the 2016 election seemingly changed his approach: First, he struck a contrite tone and embarked on a listening tour in 2017.The response was not resoundingly positive. By the following summer, he had hardened his image at the company, announcing that he was gearing up to be a “wartime” leader. He has struck various stances in public over the years, but coming to blows with business rivals has not been among them—yet.”
“Musk, meanwhile, has a history of such stunts. At the onset of the war in Ukraine, he tweeted that he would like to battle Vladimir Putin in single combat, and he apparently has ongoing back pain linked to a past fight with a sumo wrestler. That Zuckerberg is playing along shows that the rules of engagement have changed.”
“Musk has incited a race to the bottom for Silicon Valley leaders. As he becomes more powerful, some other executives are quietly—and not so quietly—following his lead, cracking down on dissent, slashing jobs, and attempting to wrestle back power from employees. Even as Musk has destabilized Twitter and sparked near-constant controversy in his leadership of the platform, some peers have applauded him. He widened the scope of what CEOs could do, giving observers tacit permission to push boundaries. ‘He’s someone who’s willing to do things in public that are transgressing the rules of the game,’ O’Mara said.”
“During the first few months of Musk’s Twitter reign, few executives were willing to praise him on the record—though Reed Hastings, then a co-CEO of Netflix, did call Musk “the bravest, most creative person on the planet” in November. A few months later, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, told Insider that executives around Silicon Valley have been asking, “Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?” The Washington Post reported this past Saturday that Zuckerberg was undergoing an “Elonization” as he attempts to appeal to Musk’s base, the proposed cage fight being the latest event in his rebrand. (Facebook declined to comment. A request for comment to Twitter’s press email was returned with a poop emoji auto-responder.)”
“Whether or when the cage match will actually happen is unclear. Musk’s mother, for her part, has lobbied against it. But whether Zuckerberg unleashes his ‘inner Elon’ in a cage or not, both men are seeking to grab attention distinct from their business woes—and succeeding.
The tech industry has long offered wide latitude to bosses, especially male founders. Musk didn’t invent the idea of acting out in public. But he has continued to move the goalposts for all of his peers.”
“In a video posted on Twitter last week, Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, told TMZ that he had spoken with both men and that they were “absolutely dead serious” about fighting. He added something that I believe gets to the heart of the matter: ‘Everybody would want to see it.’”
I, for one, will refuse to watch. It would be perfectly legal to do so, just like it’s perfectly legal for Musk and Zuck to go at it in a cage fight. But, for goodness’ sake, my “fellow Americans” (as LBJ used to say): why do we keep encouraging celebrity nonsense? “Misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals” (Lora Kelly‘s choice words) says it all. This country has given far too much attention to celebrities, and too much credit to the swaggering dominant male energy that wants to take on all comers. At the same time, we pay too little attention to the daily heroics of good men who stay humble, work hard, and practice random acts of kindness and caring, and not nearly enough attention to the ethically questionable things that Musk and Zuckerberg have been doing right before our eyes. Proof? For Zuckerberg, check out
But true celebrity covers up serious ethical flaws, and both Musk and Zuck are, let’s face it, celebrities. Political celebrities like Berlusconi in Italy, or Trump in the U.S. are just as flawed, or even more. Here’s a sad fact: trending right now, late June 2023 on You Tube is Bobby Kennedy Jr. doing pushups and bench presses, featuring chiseled pecs, nice abs, and looking super fit for a 69 year old. This is getting millions of views. Too many people in this country would vote for a vaccine conspiracy theorist if he’s got a famous name and the right “look” ––the alpha male who “alone” can fix it –– instead of any sober-minded public servant who takes facts seriously and actually cares about the public good.
Politically, and in business, it looks like America is getting exactly what it deserves: celebrity antics rather than thoughtful innovations in products and policy that further the public good. Meanwhile, to borrow a metaphor from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the democracy “doomsday clock” ticks ever closer to midnight.
It’s fairly commonplace for CEOs of U.S. companies to move quickly into crisis management mode after a public relations disaster. Alan Shaw, CEO of Norfolk Southern, was in just such a mode after the February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Beyond visiting the community several times, he penned an Op-Ed in the Washington Post (March 8, 2023) with the comforting title, ““We’re committed to helping East Palestine recover.” After detailing many of the safety steps that the railway was committing to, he said:
“. . . .we are firmly committed to the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I’ve been to the area five times since the accident. Many of the people I’ve met are angry, scared and concerned about the future. I understand their skepticism that a big corporation such as Norfolk Southern will do the right thing, and we are determined to earn their trust.”
And later:
“The steps we are taking are just a beginning. I’ve met with community leaders, business owners, school officials, clergy and residents to begin to identify ways we can invest in the future prosperity of East Palestine and support the long-term needs of its people. . . .We will see this through. We are going to make it right.”
Well, no, at least not right now. Shortly after this op-ed was published, it became known that Norfolk and Southern was not interested in paying community members for the loss of their property values as a result of the railway’s negligence.
As CNN Business reported, Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Shaw four different times at a March 9 Congressional hearing to commit to compensating homeowners, only to hear Shaw repeatedly reply, “Senator, I’m committed to do what’s right.”
Markey said that wasn’t an acceptable answer. When Shaw was asked by Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, “Will you pledge to no more stock buybacks until a raft of safety measures have been completed to reduce the risk of derailments and crashes in the future,” Shaw again dodged the question by answering only with, “I will commit to continuing to invest in safety.”
According to CNN Business, paying the homeowners and businesses wouldn’t necessarily be difficult for Norfolk Southern. “With a population of about 5,000 people, there are roughly 2,600 residential properties in East Palestine, and the average value of a property there in January of this year, prior to the derailment, was $146,000. Taken together, the value of all residential real estate in the town adds up to about $380 million, including single family homes and multi-family properties.”
“Those values are only a fraction of the money that Norfolk Southern earns. Last year it reported a record operating income of $4.8 billion, and a net income of $3.3 billion, up about 9% from a year earlier. It had $456 million in cash on hand on its books as of December 31.”
“It’s been returning much of that profit to shareholders, repurchasing $3.1 billion in shares last year and spending $1.2 billion on dividends. And it announced a 9% increase in dividends just days before the accident.”
CEO Shaw’s op-ed assurances are part of the standard playbook for CEOs, and, of course, perfectly legal. “Determined to earn their trust?” If you want to regain and keep people’s trust, keep your promises. As my mother always said (and, most likely, your mother, too): “Actions speak louder than words.” A corporate CEO in disaster PR mode will always sound reassuring, but ultimately must look after the company’s “bottom line.” Paying out promptly to East Palestine property owners who have lost value because of the company’s negligence would be a promise kept (“We’ll make this right.”), and set a high standard for corporate responsibility. Norfolk and Southern could afford to do it. But I’m not holding my breath.
One of the sad but seldom mentioned realities about the U.S. legal system is how it protects corporations by failing to hold them fully accountable for the harms they inflict on ordinary people, and often leave the public to pay for the damages done. All quite legal, of course.
There are hundreds of examples, but a recent one comes from the “Marshall Fire” of January 2022, near our home. The fire destroyed over 1,000 homes in Marshall and Superior, Colorado.
Coal mining began in the area in 1859, sixteen years before Colorado became a state. The area is named after Joseph Marshall, a coal baron, and 51 mines were officially registered there with the state over the course of production. The Lewis Mine operated from 1914 to 1946. Once coal extraction operations ended, the company sold the property to the City of Boulder. Continuous fires in the old coal pits have occasionally surfaced.
Fissures, venting, and the odor of coal combustion were noted during an inspection in 2003. On Dec. 20, 2005, a brush fire was ignited by heat from a vent at the site. That fire was quickly contained and extinguished, the report stated. A temperature reading at the vent registered 373 degrees.
The U.S. Department of the Interior responded by dumping 275 tons of aggregate (small rock) on the site the next month, burying the vents another 18 inches. Additional compaction and grading was done 2016. More vents were found, but their exhaust was “warm, moist air” that only measured 90 degrees, according to the report.
Notice that it’s taxpayer money that has to monitor the situation and “dump the aggregate” into the vents; and, if this was the cause of the fire, then public resources must be devoted to helping the victims, including FEMA funds and money from Colorado’s state treasury. Many helping hands (and monetary donations) are also helping, but not the corporation.
The corporation? The one that left the coal fires burning? Long gone.
Speaking of fires, Pacific Gas & Electric now merits a place in the hall of corporate shame. Its negligence has sparked a number of devastating fires in California.
Writing recently, federal district court Judge William Alsup made numerous damning comments in a court filing, “Final Comments of District Court Upon expiration of PG&E’s Probation.
PG&E was placed on probation in 2017 when it was convicted of six felony crimes connected to one of its natural gas pipelines that exploded in 2010, killing eight people. Since a company can’t go to prison for committing a crime, PG&E faced a $3 million fine and the maximum length of probation.
Since then, PG&E has caused even more devastation, Alsup writes. While on probation, according to Alsup’s report, PG&E was responsible for at least 31 blazes that killed 113 people and scorched 23,956 homes and buildings. The deadliest and most destructive was the 2018 Camp Fire, which burned the town of Paradise to the ground and for which which PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter charges. PG&E faces dozens more charges for other blazes.
You might say, “Well, now there’s some real accountability. But you would be mistaken. No PG&E officer or director or employee responsible for the company’s negligence has lost a loved, one, a home, or had their property destroyed, nor have they gone to jail or paid a fine. The company has paid a fine, but is evidently a “recidivist” who cannot stop breaking the law. Still, the corporate charter is alive and well, and so is the corporation: shareholders will be the ones paying the fine, since the fine will be paid out of PG&E’s earnings.
Good parents teach their kids to clean up when they mess up. A good legal system would make companies clean up their mess before they go on to other pursuits. But ours all too often does not.
Here’s another Colorado story: a few years back, a woman lost her entire family when her house blew up because of an uncapped pipeline that an oil and gas company in Weld County left behind. The photo that accompanies this blog is of that destroyed home in Firestone, Colorado.
From Colorado Public Radio, we learned “National Transportation Safety Board investigators have released their summary of what went wrong on April 17, 2017, when an explosion linked to an oil and gas well in Weld County killed two people and injured one.”
“The report states the explosion occurred due to the ignition of natural gas from lines then owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and likely severed during home construction. In a statement on the probable cause of the incident, the report also reads that ‘the approval by local authorities to allow occupied structures to be built on land adjacent to or previously part of oil and gas production fields’ without full documentation of the state or locations of the lines contributed to the accident.”
“It also found that the lines near the residence, which had been previously owned by Patina Oil and Gas Corporation, were not abandoned according to state regulations. Those require that lines be disconnected from the source, cleared of liquid hydrocarbons and sealed at both ends.
The report states “none of the three lines found at the residence were properly abandoned in accordance with these requirements.”
At least in this case there were some consequences. After the accident, the company shut down thousands of wells for additional inspections. The legislature passed new legislation and Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is now rewriting industry rules for underground oil and gas lines in light of the new legislation. The woman who lost her house and family has taken an active role in the process. Besides new rules for transferring ownership, she also thinks the commission should require the removal of abandoned flowlines.
All of that said, however, people should notice that no officer or employee of Patina Oil and Gas (or the company it sold its operation to, Anadarko) has lost a house, a loved one, or any money, unlike the victims of fire in Marshall CO, Paradise CA, or Firestone CO. But that’s just the way the legal system “works.” Or doesn’t, by failing to prevent ongoing disasters.
