The thing that makes Wilhoit's Law so apt to this moment - and to our understanding of the recent history that produced this moment - is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It's a way to join the dots between fascists' business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views.

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It describes a continuum that ranges from minor commercial grifts to martial law, and shows how tolerance for the former creates the conditions for the latter.

The gross ways in which Wilhoit's Law applies are easy to understand. The dollar value of corporate wage-theft far outstrips the total dollars lost to all other forms of property crime.

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Yet there is virtually *no* enforcement against bosses who steal their workers' paychecks, while petty property crimes can result in long prison sentences (depending on your skin color and/or bank balance):

opportunityinstitute.org/blog/…

Elon Musk values "free speech" and insists on his right to brand innocent people as "pedos," but he also wants the courts to destroy organizations that publish their opinions about his shitty business practices:

mediamatters.org/elon-musk

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Which Costs Washington More: Wage Theft or Shoplifting?

How much does wage theft really cost workers? While corporations claim to be victims, the numbers don't add up.

^{Economic Opportunity Institute}

Fascists turn crybaby when they're imprisoned for attempting a murderous coup, but buy merch celebrating the construction of domestic concentration camps where people are locked up without trial:

officialalligatoralcatraz.com/…

That stuff is all easy to see, but I want to draw a line between these gross violations of Wilhoit's Law and pettier practices that have been creating the conditions for the present day Wilhoit Dystopia.

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Take terms of service. The Federalist Society - whose law library could save a lot of space by throwing away all its books and replacing them with a framed copy of Wilhoit's Law - has long held that merely glancing at a web-page or traversing the doorway of a shop is all it takes for you to enter into a "contract" by which you surrender all of your rights.

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Every major corporation - and many smaller ones - now routinely seek to bind both workers and customers to garbage-novellas of onerous, unreadable legal conditions.

If we accept that this is how contracts work, then this should be perfectly valid, right?

8/

> By reading these words, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges.

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You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. This indemnity will survive the termination of your relationship with your employer.

I mean, why not? What principle - other than "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" - makes terms of service valid, and this *invalid*?

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Then there's binding arbitration. Corporations routinely bind their workers and customers to terms that force them to surrender their right to sue, no matter how badly they are injured through malice or gross negligence. This practice used to be illegal, until Antonin Scalia opened the hellmouth and unleashed binding arbitration on the world:

brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi…

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There's a pretty clever hack around binding arbitration: *mass* arbitration, whereby *lots* of wronged people coordinate to file claims, which can cost a dirty corporation more than a plain old class-action suit:

pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arb…

Of course, Wilhoit's Law provides corporations with a way around this: they can reserve the right *not* to arbitrate and to force you into a class action suit if that's advantageous to them:

pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dog…

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Heads they win, tails you lose.

Or take the nature of property rights themselves. Conservatives say they revere property rights above all else, claiming that every other human right stems from the vigorous enforcement of property relations. What is private property?

13/

For that, we turn to the key grifter thinkfluencer Sir William Blackstone, and his 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England":

> That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.

oll.libertyfund.org/pages/blac…

Corporations love the idea of *their* property rights, but they're not so keen on *your* property rights.

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Blackstone on Property (1753) | Online Library of Liberty

Related Links: Sir William Blackstone Subject Area: Law Source: Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books.

^{oll.libertyfund.org}

Think of the practice of locking down digital devices - from phones to cars to tractors - so that they can't be repaired by third parties, use generic ink or parts, or load third-party apps except via an "app store":

memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10…

A device you own, but can only use in ways that its manufacturer approves of, sure doesn't sound like "sole and despotic dominion" to me.

15/

Some corporations (and their weird apologists) like to claim that, by buying their product, you've agreed not to use it except in ways that benefit their shareholders, even when that is to your own detriment:

pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/you…

Apple will say, "We've been selling iPhones for nearly 20 years now. It can't possibly come as a surprise to you that you're not allowed to install apps that we haven't approved. If that's important to you, you shouldn't have bought an iPhone."

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But the obvious rejoinder to this is, "People have been given sole and despotic dominion over the things they purchased since time immemorial. If the thought of your customers using their property in ways that displease you causes you to become emotionally disregulated, perhaps you shouldn't have gotten into the manufacturing business."

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But as indefensibly wilhoitian as Apple's behavior might be, Google has just achieved new depths of wilhoitian depravity, with a rule that says that starting soon, you will no longer be able to install apps of your choosing on your Android device unless Google first approves of them:

9to5google.com/2025/08/25/andr…

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Google will require developer verification to install Android apps, including sideloading 

Google has announced that only apps from developers that have undergone verification can be installed on certified Android devices in 2026...

^{Abner Li (9to5Google)}