From Dobbs to Bitcoin: The Economy of Control

From seed pods to crypto cons, today’s mind games—whether waged by bots, billionaires or bad policy—aim to distract, disempower and keep women from thinking for themselves.

It’s time to talk about women’s economics with attitude. It’s time to laugh at what is often absurd and call out what is dangerous. By focusing on voices not typically part of mainstream man-to-man economic discourse, Women Unscrewing Screwnomics will bring you news of hopeful and practical changes and celebrate an economy waged as life—not as war.

Back in the 1950s, there was a flurry of movies that I now would argue had a lot to do with immigration, racism, McCarthyism’s Red Scare and anti-communist witch hunts. Movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Brain from Planet Arous, featured alien brains attempting to control the minds of humans, who appeared to be exclusively white, middle-class Americans—translated: good people. The alien brains were evil, of course. 

I thought of them because today, when I opened a new document on Microsoft Word, intending to write this article, my new and unwanted AI companion, Co-pilot, added a new feature. First it demanded I describe what I wanted to write. And then it added three boxes up top with suggestions for me—I suppose just in case my body with its brain had been snatched.

What were Co-pilot’s suggestions?

• Create a short math quiz for a fifth grader.
• Write a newsletter on ways to improve productivity and better manage time.
• Write a funny poem to wish happy birthday to my 5-year-old sister.

I can honestly say these possibilities were about as far from my vague, still unformed goals as the Planet Arous. It did distract me, though, and take a mix-master to my brain. And it did make me think of those old movies, those old red scares and an equally mind-boggling continuous stream of lies and nutty distractions coming from the White House and its Cabinet. (Here’s 11 countering facts from CNN about July’s Cabinet meeting and mis-and disinformation about inflation, tariffs, taxes, energy, migration and mental health.)

It is hard to single out one of these issues to focus on in just a short column about our economy. But body snatchers seem appropriate to me, given the recent hoo-hah over the Epstein files and their non-release, Pam Bondi’s history of non-prosecution of Epstein back when she was Florida’s attorney general, Trump’s repeated denial of documented sexual gropings and rapes, and his and Epstein’s obsession with “beautiful ‘women’ on the younger side.” 

And let’s not forget the Dobbs decision by a Court I refuse to call Supreme, when it attempts to make women’s bodies and their decision-making powers a state property. 

So, what did all the good people in these scary movies do to save themselves? They didn’t. In the ending scene of The Body-Snatchers‘ film, the hero—who had not yet succumbed to his ripening seed pod—screamed wildly at townspeople with robotic, empty faces, driving by with more seed pods to spread: “You fools! You’re in danger! … They’re after you! They’re after all of us! … You’re next!” 

But what does this have to do with the economy, Rickey? Well, automatons who blindly follow the invisible, guiding hand of the markets with a sole, soul-free goal of piling up more mountains of paper currency than anyone can possibly use, tend to make crypto sans-ethical, robotic decisions without considering social consequences. Oddly zoned out, they don’t really see, much less take to heart, damaged people or deadly pods in their environment. 

Back in the way back 1950s, “crypto” meant a secret creed, and this most often referred to communist cabals. There’s a more current largely secret creed of what I’ll call the commie capitalists and what Bernie Sanders describes as socialism for the rich: Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin tends to grow in value when our national currency loses its worth, and the reverse happens when the dollar goes up in value.

We now have a president enriching himself in the cryptocurrency biz, so I have to wonder: Why and how did our real dollar’s value go down so quickly by 10 percent during the first six months of #47’s term—and yet our mainstream media is not screaming at us, like the Body Snatcher’s guy: “You fools! You’re in danger! They’re after all of us!” 

Here is a link to NPR’s non-hysterical story about the U.S. dollar losing value this month. But you know what just happened to public broadcasting’s funding. Trump’s so-called Republicans have somehow become zombies from Night of the Living Dead, and are possibly in need of a good smack to the head with a shovel. (Just kidding.) Please stand with public media and donate here.

Speaking of smacking, snatching and grabbing—and not just for girl parts that make some grown men giggle—let me note how the bulleted suggestions that Co-pilot gave me this morning seem to indicate corporate AI seeks to replace the work of real thinking by educators and children, and possibly all thinkers everywhere.

When I was a college professor teaching writers, I would often quote what author E. M. Forster once said about his craft: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Today, he might add: “unless I’m rudely interrupted by AI.”

This reminds me of Trump’s education secretary, who recently said with the help of GS (genuine stupidity): “Pass the A-1 Sauce to our hungry young minds!”—equating artificial intelligence with steak sauce.

P.S.: Most kids could tell you in a minute how to get rid of Co-pilot in Word’s Preferences tab. But only a living, friendly person will tell you that. Your Co-pilot bot has other ideas—not its own.

This 11-foot tall, 3000 pound metal bull with blue programmed laser eyes at Trade Station in Miami imitates the realistic-looking bull on New York’s Wall Street, and is now widely known as the symbol for cryptocurrency. Its artist, Furio Tedeschi, objected to its design having its testicles eliminated.

In 2021 Miami Mayor Francis Xavier Suarez announced he’d only accept his paychecks in crypto, declaring Miami the “crypto capital of the world.” Suarez often praised Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried planned to move his company from New York to Miami until his arrest in 2022 in the Bahamas—the same year that earlier, the Miami Bull had been installed at the city’s convention center. Bankman-Fried was extradited to the U.S. and sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He was nicknamed the Bernie Madoff of crypto. In April 2025, the Miami Bull was vandalized.