We live in a capitalist dystopia

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

It's weird that people can read about how hedge fund managers and finance experts can utterly destroy companies like Sears and Southwest Airlines, and not realize that the real culprit was unfettered capitalism. These shitty bosses were just following capitalism's North Star, and putting shareholder return before everything else.

Yes, all businesses are technically capitalist, but a good business is generally not 100% capitalist. A good business has certain priorities other than just shareholder return.

It is the human factor, not capitalism, which leads certain bosses to run their companies in a manner that is good for the community and good for their employees. And then capitalists point to those bosses as if they are proof that capitalism has a heart.

 

[NovaSaber]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1609198986052919297

 

[Pocket]

This is why I've been skeptical about all those tax incentives in the Anti-Inflation Act. Announce that they can get, say, $1000 towards the purchase of a heat pump or new insulation, and the companies that make those things will at best take that as an excuse to raise their prices by $1000, or at worst raise it even more just to punish the masses for thinking they could benefit from "big government" programs.

 

[Nevermore]

At this point, the only way to force companies to act responsibly with their prices is an excess profit tax.

 

[wonko the sane?]

We've need a windfall tax since the 90's.

 

[Ungnome]

We need an FTC with teeth to actually go after bad actors instead of the one we got who gives most large corporations a free pass to do whatever they want. Doesn't matter what kind of regulations you have if the regulating body doesn't bother to enforce them.

 

[Pocket]

At this point, the only way to force companies to act responsibly with their prices is an excess profit tax.

Then they'll just use that as an excuse to jack up prices even more. Sure, they have a lot less to gain at that point, but they'd have even less still to gain if they don't, so they will. As Dan Olson said in his NFT video, diminishing returns are still returns.

It honestly seems to me that if companies are given even the slightest amount of freedom, they will always use that freedom to take the worst possible course of action. But if you eliminate all options except the best one, effectively turning them into mere puppets of public policy, you might as well cut out the middleman and have the government run all industry directly.

...At which point you're the Soviet Union and you have a completely different set of problems.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Elon Musk's obscene wealth does not just prove that Elon has too much money. It proves that Wall Street investors have too much money. How do you think Tesla achieved its sky-high market valuation in the first place?

When something is that overvalued, it literally does mean that investors have too much money. They're looking for places to put it. The same is true of the crypto-currency boom, NFTs, etc. A lot of people in our society have so much money that they're literally scratching their heads figuring out what to spend it on.

 

[wonko the sane?]

So when the options are:

1.) feed the hungry, house the homeless, treat the sick, clean up pollution
or
2.)Give it to some asshole that is fairly obviously lying BUT has a really slick marketing package

The rich will ALWAYS take number 2. Every time, DESPITE the fact that they already have more money than ******* god.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

People often ask why billionaires keep trying to acquire even more wealth because they can live comfortably on their money for a hundred lifetimes. But when you're a billionaire, you aren't thinking about the cost of living. You're thinking about the cost of power.

Billionaires have the power to change our world as we know it, and a frighteningly large number of ordinary people seem to think there's nothing wrong with this.

 

[NovaSaber]

 

[NovaSaber]

Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31tn debt | Robert Reich

The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for

www.theguardian.com

When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).

Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.

Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.

This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.

Hence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.

This means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes is going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.

 

[NovaSaber]

Why don't we just ban lobbying?

“There Will Be More Derailments”

Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department has not moved to revive an Obama-era safety rule that could help prevent future train accidents and derailments.

www.levernews.com

In the aftermath of a fiery Ohio train derailment, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s department has no plans to reinstate an Obama-era rail safety rule aimed at expanding the use of better braking technology, even though a former federal safety official recently warned Congress that without the better brakes, “there will be more derailments [and] more releases of hazardous materials.”

Instead, transportation regulators have been considering a rail-industry-backed proposal that could weaken existing brake safety rules.

Though the Obama administration did originally enact a rule requiring those better brakes on some trains, its regulators sided with lobbyists and ignored the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) request that the safety rules apply to rail cars carrying the kinds of dangerous, flammable chemicals onboard the Ohio train. Under the rules weakened by both the Obama and Trump administration’s decisions, that train was not being regulated as a “high-hazard flammable train.”

 

[Ungnome]

If you ban lobbying, congressmen won't be able to afford their vacation homes. It just wouldn't be fair.

 

[Plutoniumboss]

You wouldn't even have to enact anything new to ban lobbying, just call it what it is. Bribery. And then prosecute it as such.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Repeal Citizens United.

 

[Rhinox]

Only way to do that is to get rid of over half the Supreme Court.

 

[Plutoniumboss]

The lower half or the upper half?

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Both. Start over clean.

 

[NovaSaber]

Volkswagen—$150 to renew service to locate abducted boy | Fortune

Detectives had to pay $150 to reactivate the service before the company would find the stolen vehicle with the 2-year-old inside.

fortune.com

During their search, detectives called Volkswagen to request help tracking the stolen car via Car-Net—a suite of mobile connected services that allows drivers to do things like lock their car remotely or map their vehicle’s location and surroundings.

“Unfortunately, there was a delay, as Volkswagen Car-Net would not track the vehicle with the abducted child until they received payment to reactivate the tracking device in the stolen Volkswagen,” officials said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Saturday that Volkswagen told officers the stolen vehicle’s Car-Net trial had ended, and said a $150 fee to restart the service would need to be paid before the carmaker would locate the SUV.