The effect this had on Ireland is...mixed. The Irish state is thoroughly captured by the corporations that pretend to call Ireland home. Anything those corporations want, Ireland must deliver, lest the footloose companies up sticks and start pretending to be Cypriot, Luxembourgeois, Maltese or Dutch. This is why Europe's landmark privacy law, the GDPR, has had no effect on America's tech giants. They pretend to be Irish, and Ireland lets them get away with breaking European law.

4/

The Irish state even hires these companies' executives to regulate their erstwhile employers:

pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/eri…

But there is no denying that Ireland has managed to turn the world's taxable trillions into its own domestic billions.

5/

The fact that Ireland is cashing out less than 1% of what it's costing everyone else is terrible for the world's tax systems and competitive markets, but it's been a massive windfall for Ireland, and has lifted the country out of its centuries of colonial poverty and privation.

6/

There are many lessons to be learned from Ireland's experiment with regulatory arbitrage, but one is unequivocal: even a small, poor, disintegrating nation can change the world system by offering a site where you can do things that you can't do anywhere else, and if it does, that poor nation can grow wealthy and comfortable.

What's more, there are plenty of "things that you can't do anywhere else" that are *very good*. It's not just corporate tax evasion.

7/

First among these things that you can't do anywhere else: it's a crime in virtually every country on earth to modify America's defective, enshittified, privacy-invading, money-stealing technology exports. That's because the US trade representative has spent the past 25 years using the threat of tariffs to bully all of America's trading partners into adopting "anti-circumvention" laws:

pluralistic.net/2026/01/15/how…

8/

There is nothing good about this. The fact that local businesses can't sell you a privacy blocker, an alternative client, a diagnostic tool, a spare part, a consumable, or even software for your American-made devices leaves you defenseless before US tech's remorseless campaign of monetary and informational plunder - and it means that your economy is denied the benefits of creating and exporting these incredibly desirable, profitable products.

9/

Incredibly, Trump deliberately blew up this multi-trillion dollar system of US commercial advantage. By chaotically imposing and rescinding and re-imposing tariffs on the world, he has neutralized the US trade rep's tariff threats. Foreign firms just can't count on exporting to America anymore, so the threat of (more) tariffs grows less intimidating by the minute:

pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-s…

10/

The time is ripe for the founding of a disenshittification nation, an Ireland for disenshittification. I don't doubt that eventually, most countries will drop their anti-circumvention laws (the laws that ban the modification of US tech exports). Once one country starts making these disenshittifying tools, there'll be no way to prevent their export, since all it takes to buy one of these tools from a circumvention haven is an internet connection and a payment method.

11/

Once everyone in your country is buying and using jailbreaking tools from abroad, there'll be no point in keeping these laws on your own books. But the *first* country to get there stands a chance of establishing a durable first-mover advantage - of reaping hundreds of billions selling disenshittifying products around the world.

12/

That country could be to enshittification-resistant technology what Finland was to mobile phones during the Nokia decade (and wouldn't you know it, the EU's newly minted "Tech Sovereignty" czar is a Finn!):

commission.europa.eu/about/org…

13/

Henna Virkkunen

Henna Virkkunen is the Finnish Commissioner responsible for tech sovereignty, security and democracy in the second von der Leyen Commission.

^{European Commission}

The world has experimented with many kinds of havens over the centuries. In the early 18th century, Madagascar became a haven for British naval deserters, who were adopted into the island's matriarchal clans. Together, they founded an anarchist pirate utopia:

pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/zan…

14/

The global system of trade has allowed America's tech companies to steal and hoard trillions, and to put every country at risk of being bricked when their IT systems are switched off at a single word from Trump:

pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c…

15/

There are more than 200 countries in the world. There's also an ever-expanding cohort of brilliant international technologists whose Silicon Valley dreams have turned into a nightmare of being shot in the face by an ICE goon, or being kidnapped, separated from their families and being locked up in a Salvadoran slave-labor prison. These techies are looking for the next place to put down roots and "make a dent in the universe." Lots of countries could be that place.

16/

The Ireland for disenshittification wouldn't just have their pick of international technologists - they'd have plenty of Americans hungering for a better life. Two-thirds of young Americans "are considering leaving the US":

newsweek.com/nearly-two-thirds…

Ireland pulled off its tax-haven gambit by making influential people very rich, so that they would go to bat for Ireland. The Ireland for disenshittification will have the same chance.

17/

Nearly Two Thirds of Young Americans Are Considering Leaving the US 

Last year, 41 percent of U.S. adults reported considering moving abroad but this year the figure is substantially higher.

^{Jasmine Laws (Newsweek)}

The new tech companies that unlock US Big Tech's trillions and turn them into their own billions (with the remainder being shared by us, tech users, in the form of lower prices and better products) will be a powerful bloc in support of this project.

Ireland showed us: it just takes one country to defect from this global prisoner's dilemma, and then *everything* is up for grabs.

18/

I'm coming to Colorado! Catch me in #Denver on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover:

eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…

And in #ColoradoSprings from Jan 23-25, where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine:

firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

Then I'll be in #Ottawa on Jan 28 at Perfect Books:

instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/

And in #Toronto with Tim Wu on Jan 30:

nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doct…

19/

Cory Doctorow Live at Tattered Cover Colfax

Join us for a great event with Cory Doctorow as we hear about his bestselling book: Enshittification.

^Eventbrite

Image:
Stuart Caie (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

CC BY 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

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Sourabh.biswas003 (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

CC BY-SA 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

eof/

File:Double aperture Irish pillar box in Dublin 2008.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

^{commons.wikimedia.org}