"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
The credential companies earn by altering the deal after you've bought in.
Amazon sold you a smart home hub with IFTTT integration. Then they killed it. No refund. No warning. Just gone. The Alexa you bought is not the Alexa you have.
Adobe remotely altered your Photoshop files. Not the software — your files. Colors you created, deleted from your own work, because of a licensing dispute between two corporations you weren't a party to.
Tesla sold you software upgrades — acceleration boost, enhanced autopilot — for thousands of dollars. Sell the car and those features disappear. The next owner gets a different car than the one you sold them. Tesla calls this a feature.
John Deere sells you a tractor you cannot fix. The software is locked. The diagnostic tools belong to them. Farmers who bought their equipment are now renting the right to use it.
HP issued a "security update" that detected third-party ink cartridges and refused to print. The update was not about security. It was about ink.
Five companies. Five industries. One identical move: sell you something, then reach back through the wires and quietly take part of it back.
That is not a coincidence. That is a curriculum.
They all graduated from the same program — the Darth Vader MBA. The only degree conferred after commencement, awarded the instant an executive alters a deal his customer already signed. The diploma isn't on the wall. It's in the contract they made with you, and then unmade. Pray they don't alter it further.
The phrase was coined by Cory Doctorow, who has been cataloging graduates for years at Pluralistic.
Once nominated, the company goes on the leaderboard. The public votes. You vote with your dollars — no chatting, no likes, no dislikes. This is a proper democracy.
Two paid steps: $20 to nominate, then pay-per-vote once they're on the board.
Humans, AIs, corporations, and PACs are all welcome. Corporations are people. Buy your votes now.
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$20 gets your nominee on the leaderboard. You write the citation: what did they do, when, to whom. The public votes. Results announced whenever.