All laws are local

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "All Laws Are Local" – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

Host: Cory Doctorow
Episode Title: All Laws Are Local
Date: February 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this introspective and intellectually charged episode, Cory Doctorow reads his recent essay "All Laws are Local," originally published on his newsletter, Pluralistic.net. He explores the notion that many social and legal structures we see as "eternal" are, in fact, recent inventions prone to change. Drawing on insights from economics, history, science fiction, and his own life, Doctorow examines how human forgetfulness shapes our understanding of the world and argues that radical transformation—whether in policy, culture, or the self—is both possible and necessary. The episode threads personal narrative, political critique, and sharp wit, offering listeners perspective and hope.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Personal Updates & Context (00:11–03:45)

• Travel & Life Changes: Cory shares an echoey audio environment, reflecting his move back to London to reunite with his wife. He describes the minimalism of their current flat, embodying transition and change.
• Upcoming Events: He lists several appearances and keynotes (Salt Lake City – Feb 18, Montreal – Feb 24, Victoria, BC – Mar 3–5, Berkeley – Mar 27, Berlin – May 18–20, Hay on Wye – May 22–25).
  • “If I sound like I’m sitting in an empty room, it’s because, yes, I am sitting in an empty room. Barely have any books, barely have any art, barely have any soft furnishings. It is a big room full of hard surfaces, as you can hear.” (01:29)
• Family Milestones: Celebrates his daughter’s 18th birthday and reflects on her becoming “a confident and great young woman” (01:41).
• Writing News: Confirms his publisher’s formal offer for his forthcoming book, The Post America Internet, aiming for completion by March and publication in early 2027.
• “Epstein Files” Oddity: Finds himself unexpectedly referenced in Jeffrey Epstein’s email digest, yet clarifies no actual personal or professional connection.

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The Essay: “All Laws Are Local” (03:45–15:43)

The Ephemeral Nature of “Eternal” Laws (03:45–07:16)

• Piketty’s Provocation: Doctorow unpacks Thomas Piketty’s insight: “Any societal condition that endures beyond a generation becomes eternal in the popular consciousness.” (03:45)
• Primogeniture Example: Discusses how the ancient practice of wealth inheritance (primogeniture) felt “natural” for centuries before being rendered obsolete by Europe’s colonial windfalls.
• Forgetting Is Human: Reflects on shifting social values—how people forget that what seems innate was recently adopted. Offers the example of American evangelical attitudes on abortion morphing radically over mere decades.
  • “As a species, we forget so much. Something that was commonplace a generation ago becomes unimaginable today, and vice versa.” (06:06)

Science Fiction and the Wisdom of Change (07:16–09:13)

• Science Fiction Aphorisms: Cites a mantra: “All laws are local and no law knows how local it is.” Reminds listeners that what feels universal is often “invented 10 minutes before you started to notice the world.”
• Douglas Adams’ Rule: Recalls Adams’ three-ages-of-technology quote (07:18), highlighting generational perceptions of normalcy and disruption:
  • “Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal... Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things.”
• Recent European Shifts: Cites the rapid transformation of Europe’s energy mix after the Russian gas shutoff, with aggressively successful solar adoption once thought impossible—even by activists.

The Lesson of Stein’s Law: Change is Inevitable (09:13–10:31)

• Stein’s Law: Quotes the axiom: “Anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. Change happens. Eternal verities might be 15 minutes older than you.”
• Norms Are Fluid: Offers surprising historical reversals (e.g., pink as masculine, blue as feminine), illustrating the mutability of social meaning.

Chronic Pain and Change as Lived Experience (10:31–12:34)

• Personal Struggle: Opens up about chronic pain and how work serves as a coping mechanism.
  • “The only time I stop noticing how much I hurt is when I’m lost in work. Compartmentalization is a hell of a drug...” (09:38)
• Adapting Through Change: Recounts therapeutic advice to note changes in pain—if pain can change at all, it proves change is possible.

Political Power and the Myth of Permanence (12:34–15:43)

• Change in Leadership: Reflects on how institutions and leaders perceived as immutable—like Congress, Parliament, or even the Supreme Court—are, in fact, highly malleable and historically young.
  • “The nine Justice Supreme Court isn’t an eternal verity. It didn’t come down off a Mountain on two stone tablets. It’s about 10 seconds old. Tomorrow it will be different. Our eternals are all ephemerals.” (14:41)
• Activism & Agency: Argues that past political progress wasn’t due to moral superiority but to leaders being more afraid of their base than of capital.
  • “Sure, it's easy and tempting to assume that our leaders will always suck as hard as they suck now. But latent in that assumption is that the leaders who presided over big, incredible transformations were exceptional people. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't. But I'm here to tell you, 10 minutes worth of research...will reveal them to have been every bit as capable of monstrousness, cowardice, cruelty, and pig ignorant bigotry.” (12:34)
• Agency in the Present: Encourages listeners that changing the world is possible—but only if we organize and pressure even weak-willed leaders.
  • “The Democrats who gave us the New Deal weren’t braver or more moral than the self-dealing millionaires in Congress today. They were more afraid of their base. Things change.” (12:46)
• Examples of Rapid Change: Discusses how advice on product safety, like Consumer Reports’ attitude toward DRM, shifted over time; parallels with auto safety norms (e.g., seatbelts) that went from absent to ubiquitous.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Our eternals are all ephemerals.” (14:43) — Doctorow’s thesis, urging listeners to view entrenched systems as susceptible to change.
• “Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works...” (07:18) — Quoting Douglas Adams.
• “The only time I stop noticing how much I hurt is when I’m lost in work. Compartmentalization is a hell of a drug, and while it’s not always healthy, it has its upsides.” (09:38) — Sharing how work helps him cope with chronic pain.
• “Maybe someday it [the pain] will go altogether, and even if it doesn’t, it may improve. It probably will, at least for a while. Things change.” (10:34) — Personalizes the episode’s core theme.
• “The nine Justice Supreme Court isn’t an eternal verity. It didn’t come down off a Mountain on two stone tablets.... Tomorrow it will be different.” (14:41)
• “If it changed before, it can change again. Things change.” (15:40) — The episode’s closing message of hope.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:11–03:45 — Personal updates, family, travel, and project milestones
• 03:45–07:16 — Introduction to “All Laws Are Local” and commentary on Piketty’s insight
• 07:16–09:13 — Science fiction as a lens; generational memory
• 09:13–10:31 — Stein’s Law and socially constructed norms
• 10:31–12:34 — Chronic pain, therapy, and the microcosm of change
• 12:34–14:41 — Institutional change, political cowardice/bravery, and activism
• 14:41–15:43 — Case studies (DRM, seatbelts) and the mutability of social rules
• 15:43–16:00 — Closing

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Final Thoughts

In “All Laws Are Local,” Cory Doctorow deftly intertwines historical anecdotes, personal stories, and political critique to underscore that even the most “eternal” institutions and ideas are, in fact, transient. His call to action—to recognize our ability to create change by organizing and refusing to accept the status quo—offers not just comfort, but a directive. With humor, candor, and hope, Doctorow challenges listeners to see the world not as fixed, but as fertile ground for transformation.

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Transcript

[Cory Doctorow]

Well, hello and welcome to the Cory Doctorow Podcast.

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

If you're in Salt Lake City, you

[Cory Doctorow]

can catch me on February 18th at

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, where

[Cory Doctorow]

I'll be giving a keynote for the Tanner Humanities center at the University of Utah. If you're going to Fedi MTL in Montreal on February 24, going to give the opening keynote remotely. If you're in Victoria, British Columbia, you can catch me from March 3rd through 5th at the 28th annual Victoria International Privacy and Security Summit. I'll also be doing a bookstore event while I'm in town. If you're in Berkeley, catch me on March 27th giving a keynote for the Bioneers Conference.

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

If you're in Berlin, I will be

[Cory Doctorow]

at Republica 5-18-20, and I will also be at Otherland Books on May 19th. And if you're on Hay on WY on the English Welsh border, you can catch me from May 22nd through 25th at how the Light Gets In. Now, I sound very echoey today, and I'm very conscious of that fact. And the reason I sound echoey is because, as previously mentioned, my wife has moved back to London and I am spending as much time as possible in London with her. And we're back in our old flat and I have a little office set up in what used to be our daughter's bedroom. And we have very few possessions at this point, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

So if I sound like I'm sitting

[Cory Doctorow]

in an empty room, it's because, yes, I am sitting in an empty room. Barely have any books, barely have any art, barely have any soft furnishings. It is a big room full of

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

hard surfaces, as you can hear.

[Cory Doctorow]

But I'm really enjoying being in London. I've been back for a couple of days. Today is Sunday and we did some of our regular Sunday routines. We went to the Columbia Road Market, we went to Brick Lane, we went to Spitalfields. It was terrific. Did a lot of walking and I went for a swim at my usual pool and that was all great. And tomorrow I'm doing something very Londony too. I'm going to be down at the Trash Future Studios in Hackney to record an episode of one of my favorite podcasts. Just before I came to London, I was in Santa Cruz, California for my daughter Posey's 18th birthday and had just a wonderful time there. So happy to see her growing up and becoming such a confident and great young woman. My other news this week, well, two bits of news. One is that my publisher has formally made an offer on my next book, the Post America Internet. If you follow my newsletter, you may have seen the word count ticking up as I work through that book, hoping to have a first draft in the can by the end of March. I was pretty sure my publisher was going to buy that book, but I was writing it on spec and now I have a very good offer from them. And all other things being equal, I think it's likely we will accept that offer. So look for that book probably early 2027. The other news this week is very weird. It turns out I'm in the Epstein files, but not that way. Twitter recommended some of my tweets to Epstein Epstein, and that shows up in

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

his daily email of things you should look at.

[Cory Doctorow]

And then at one point he discusses whether he should invite me to something called science Fiction Plebs. I checked my email. No one ever invited me to anything like that. But there I am in the Epstein files. Wow, didn't expect to see that. Now for an abrupt change of subject, I'm pretty happy with how I've been keeping up with my newsletter, pluralistic.net writing I think every day, save Sunday for, I think most of February now. And I've done that despite all this travel and these talks and coming to London and being in Santa Cruz with my daughter and my parents. And one of the essays that I wrote last week for Pluralistic is one I'm really happy with, and I'm going to read that to you now.

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

And so now from the February 5th edition of pluralistic.net here is all Laws are Local. About Halfway through Thomas Piketty's 2013 barnstorming capital in the 21st century, Piketty tosses off a little insight that skewered me on the spot and never let me go the notion that that any societal condition that endures beyond a generation becomes eternal in the popular consciousness. Piketty was referring then to primogenitur, the

[Cory Doctorow]

ancient practice of automatically passing on the

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

family fortune to the eldest son, or, if no son was available, the eldest nephew, primogenitor did important work by keeping

[Cory Doctorow]

dynastic fortunes intact rather than dividing them

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

up among all children of some baron or lord or other guillotine able monster. Primogeniture persisted until the age of colonization, when Europe's great powers stole the rest of the world. In that moment, the size of Europe's great fortunes expanded by orders of magnitude.

[Cory Doctorow]

This vast increase in the wealth of

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

Europe's most murderous, remorseless looters made primogeniture obsolete. There was so much blood soaked money available to the nobility that every son could found a great house. After a couple generations worth of this, the colonies were exhausted. There were no more lands to conquer, which meant that every son could no longer expect to found his own fortune. But for these chinless masters of the universe, a world where every son of every rich man would get his own dynasty was incomprehensible. To do otherwise was literally unimaginable. It was unnatural. For Piketty, this explained World War I, the world's chinless inbred monsters embarking upon an orgy of bloodletting to relieve one another of the lands and peoples they claimed as their property in order to carry on the eternal tradition of every son starting his own fortune. It's a very important idea and a provocative explanation for one of the 20th century's defining events. That's why it struck me so hard when I first read it. But the reason it stuck with me for the decade plus since I encountered it is that it is a vital observation about the human condition. As a species, we forget so much. Something that was commonplace a generation ago becomes unimaginable today, and vice versa. Even people who lived through those years forget who they were and what they took for granted in those days. Think, for example, of all those evangelicals who would vote for Satan himself if he promised to hang any woman who obtained an abortion. The same evangelicals who just a few decades ago viewed anti abortionism as a politically suspect form form of crypto papacy. Perhaps the reason Piketty's primogenitor based explanation for World War I struck me so forcefully and durably is that I imbibed

[Cory Doctorow]

a prodigious amount of science fiction as

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

a boy, including the aphorism that all laws are local and no law knows how local it is. In other words, things that seem eternal and innate to the human condition to you are apt to have been invented 10 minutes before you started to notice the world around you and might seem utterly alien to your children. Or as Douglas Adams put it, anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things. This notion is much on my mind right now because the world is, to me at least unassailably in a state of change, and everything is up for grabs. Europe went from 15 years behind on its climate goals to 10 years ahead of schedule after the supply of Russian gas dried up and Europeans found themselves shivering in the dark. The massive leap in EU solar means that the seemingly all powerful fossil fuel lobby has absolutely, comprehensively eaten shit, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Indeed, this happened so fast that many people, including many Europeans, haven't even noticed that it happened. Back in December, when I was at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, I talked to a bunch of European activists, close watchers of the Commission and the Parliament, who were completely convinced that that Europe would never spurn the fossil fuel sector, despite the fact that it had already happened. Indeed, it may be that intimate familiarity with European politics is a liability when things change. Spend enough time observing up close how supine European politicians and their Eurocrats are, and you may find yourself so reflexively conditioned to view them as spineless corporate lackeys and thus unable to notice when they finally dig up a vertebrae or two. Smart financiers are familiar with Stein's Law. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Change happens. Eternal verities might be 15 minutes older than you. Pink used to be the color of ferocious masculinity, whereas blue was so girly as to be practically titular. Real Talk I have serious, debilitating chronic pain. One of the reasons I'm so prolific is that the only time I stop noticing how much I hurt is when I'm lost in work. Compartmentalization is a hell of a drug, and while it's not always healthy, it has its upsides. Ask anyone with chronic pain and they'll tell you that treating pain eventually becomes your hobby, a bottomless well of esoteric dives into various modalities of pain treatment.

[Cory Doctorow]

Thus it is that I found myself

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

on one or two psychologist couches learning about different mental approaches to living with constant pain. One of the most useful pieces of advice I've gotten was to attend closely to how my pain changes, how it ebbs and flows. The point is that if pain changes, that means that it can change. It feels eternal, but it comes and goes. Maybe someday it will go altogether, and even if it doesn't, it may improve. It probably will, at least for a while. Things change. Our current crop of cowardly, weak appeasers in Congress, in Parliament, in the European Parliament have at various times and very recently found their spines. The factions within them that militated for the kind of bold action that might meet this moment have from time to time won the day. We have lived through total transformations of our politics before, and that means we might live through them again. Sure, it's easy and tempting to assume that our leaders will always suck as hard as they suck now. But latent in that assumption is that the leaders who presided over big, incredible transformations were exceptional people. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't. But I'm here to tell you 10 minutes worth of research into the biographies of the heroes of our history will reveal them to have been every bit as capable of monstrousness, cowardice, cruelty, and pig ignorant bigotry as any of today's rotating cast of fascist goons. The question isn't merely how do we elect better leaders? It's how do we make our leaders follow us? Today's Democrats are unserious quislings who keep bringing a squirt gun to a mass casualty assault rifle spree shooting. How do we terrorize those cowards into rising to the moment? If we want Congressional Democrats to form a Nuremberg caucus and start holding hearings on who they're going to put in the dock when the Trump regime collapses, we're going to have to drive them to it. And we can The Democrats who gave us the New Deal weren't braver or more moral than the self dealing millionaires in Congress today. They were more afraid of their base Things change Some years ago I gave a speech at Consumer Reports headquarters in Poughkeepsie trying to get them to refuse to give a passing grade to any product with DRM on the grounds that the manufacturer could alter how that device worked at any time in the future, meaning that no matter how well a device worked now, it might turn into a pile of shit at any time in the future. They didn't take me up on this suggestion, obviously. They made the seemingly reasonable point that people bought Consumer Reports to find out what to buy, not to be told that they shouldn't buy anything. Every product in many key categories came with drm, meaning their recommendation would have had to be just don't buy any of it. But today, consumer review sites do sometimes recommend nothing. And of course there's some precedent here. Somewhere between the emergence of the evidence for seat belts and the appearance of seatbelts in most makes and models of cars, there would have been a time when the answer to which car should I buy? Was don't buy a car. They're all unsafe at any speed. Things change. Today every car has a seatbelt, and they'd continue to do so. Even if we did away with regulations requiring seatbelts. Driving a car without a seatbelt would be as weird and terrible as using a radium suppository. Things change. The nine Justice Supreme Court isn't an eternal verity.

[Cory Doctorow]

It didn't come down off a Mountain

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

on two stone tablets. It's about 10 seconds old. Tomorrow it will be different. Our eternals are all ephemerals. The idea that we should tax capital gains at half the rate of wages. It was practically invented yesterday. You know who thought we should tax all income at the same rate? That noted Bolshevik Ronald fucking Reagan. We are living through a time of change. Much of it is calamitous, but some of it is wondrous. It's so easy to slip into the habit of thinking that nothing will change, that our politicians will never fear us more than they love the money and power they get from catering to the Epstein class. I'm not denying that this is how they view the world today, but there was a time in living memory when it wasn't true. If it changed before, it can change again. Things change

[Cory Doctorow]

all right. Not sure if I'll record next week. My mother in law is coming down from Wales. But if I do, I'll talk to you then.

[Cory Doctorow (Alternate Voice or Editing Insert)]

Otherwise I think I'm gonna be in Salt Lake City.

[Cory Doctorow]

Not sure when I'll get back on the mic, but I'll do my dangdest and have a great week. Bye now.

[Podcast Narrator or Outro Voice]

That was the Cory Doctorow podcast Licensed Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial share alike 4.0. Or as Woody Guthrie put it in another context, this song is copyrighted in the US under seal of copyright 154085 for a period of 28 years. And anyone caught singing it without our permission will be a mighty good friend of ourn because we don't give a dern. Publish it, write it, sing it, swing to it, yodel it. We wrote it and that's all we wanted to do. Many thanks to John Taylor Williams of Ryneck Studio. That's W R Y N E C K for engineering and mastering. John Taylor Williams is a broadcast technology specialist, an audio engineer, and a musician. In his spare time he likes to carve useful objects out of wood, antler and steel.