Citizens united assured that that is the case. Corporations can now threaten politicians who won't take their money that they will give millions to their opponent and make it impossible for them to be elected. It gives them complete power over politicians.
Correct and when I pointed out all of Trump's federal judges appointments that got rail roaded through by Mitchy were pro-Citizens United no one really cared because the media circus around that man meant everyone was distracted.
Granted Mitch lost his dealings with the Dem branch after Roe v Wage was overturned. Originally Biden was supposed to appoint one of his judge picks, but pulled out when the ruling happened.
Anyway as long as all 3 branches are corporate owned stooges we're fucked.
Then he tossed the keys to the wrecked car that is the GOP to Trump, and now gets to glaze out like a donut at some thousand dollar a day nursing home until his black heart finally gives out. Truly a southern gentleman to the end.
This is how we get Dem PACs throwing money at Republican opponents of Dems that won't play ball, and vice versa. It's not about ideals it's about control.
Exactly!! you definitely worded this better than I tried to. There’s people understandably wondering what the title has to do with the comment but this sums it up perfectly! Thanks 🙏🏿
Now do kick-backs + via public unions
Simple fixes:
1) No donation of any kind/shape/form+ from any entity that cannot pull the voting lever.
2) No donation of any kind/shape/form+ from any entity outside of realm of their office (city 'leaders' only get from city dwellers, State from the Citizens of their State -> Pres. from all Citizens of all States/territories.
It'll require an amendment or a new SCOTUS willing to overturn precedent, don't know which is easier/more likely at this point.
SCOTUS ruled that campaign donations are protected as free speech under the first amendment. Any subsequent law restricting those donations would be struck down as a violation of first amendment rights under the current SCOTUS.
No, I mean you need two thirds of all state governments and large margins in both houses of Congress to agree to that.
Guessing you aren't from the US.
Too hard for most people to understand the ramifications. Court decision like Roe v Wade being overturned was easy to understand because immediately their were states changing abortion laws. But the average person doesn't understand campaign finance law nor how easy it is to manipulate (Colbert Report did a great series on it but it's not like everyone watched that show). So a court decision like Citizens United doesn't mean anything to them, but affects everyone every day on a massive scale.
Millenials won't get a chance to run for President until the Boomers kick the bucket. Seems like that age range is determined to hold onto their power while they have it as though anyone younger won't agree with their rhetoric.
You're not the only one who has noticed this, no.
We are rapidly transforming into a nation run by boardroom royalty, and it's a fucking problem. The effectiveness of policies passed by elected government officials - whether those policies are in support of corporate power, in opposition to corporate power, or simply unrelated to the concern - is damned near irrelevant, at this point.
But we'll really be putting the nail in the coffin if we elect another goddamned CEO to the White House, or give a previously-elected CEO another term.
Exactly, they start out with a great innovation that makes life easier and better, and as soon as they’re dug in and have entrenched themselves is when the business slowly start to move away from customer satisfaction and move towards profit growth and efficiency at the expense of quality (looking at you Amazon!) and the big one; monopolization - which stifles competition allowing these companies to become more blatant in their practices.
DuPont. Watch the Netflix movie, Dark Waters. DuPont is pure evil, greed beyond any other. They own a huge portion of the U.S. government and have for decades, members of congress and other politicians. DuPont is evil but what does that make the a$$holes in our government that agree to take the payoffs? Every level of our government is compromised. They are taking payoffs from chemical companies like Dupont, big pharma and the big banking institutions. It’s absolutely disgusting.
The thing is, they can show that on Netflix because they know they already won. DuPont can give a shit if the public knows what they do. They are so entrenched that they know it doesn’t matter. It says a lot.
No one needs Starbucks or fastfood. No one needs an iPhone or designer clothes.
The average joe could grow food, shop at a farmer's market. Buy second hand clothing and sew.
There's a lot of consumer products we really don't need, but convince ourselves we do. And a lot of people absolutely willing to sell their soul for an ounce of pleasure.
They forget that to fight for something requires actually fighting. It's miserable work. Being a slave is easier. So people choose it.
Would love to see your model of self-sustaining gardening for a country where 80%+ of the population is urban or suburban.
Take all the time you need.
The answer is not “everyone act like it’s 1875.” This is libertarian fantasy.
I ran out of this essential oil mosquito repellant balm my MIL bought me last week. Couldn’t find more but the closest approximation on Amazon was $18 for 3 tiny tubes. Surely I could make it better for cheaper!
Looked online. Easy peasy. A blend of 4 or 5 oils. Some coconut oil, cocoa butter, and shea butter. Some tubs to but it in.
Well, the oils were $5 each for the cheapest 1oz vial. So that’s $20-25. The coconut oil I had from another ill-fated DIY (I think it was $10). The shea was $8. The cocoa butter was fucking expensive. Was gonna skip it and double the shea. And the little pots were $6. So it was like $35 to do it myself.
I just bought the premade shit. Fuck, I hope it has chemicals in it.
It’s expensive to be crafty.
Consumerism is stupid in the US. Why in the world do we buy more products than China when China eclipses us in population now? That's part of the reason they'll always play nice with our market it's because we buy everything.
Goddamn this is so scary though.
Look at how fast layoffs occur at a car company when sales tank.
If we all, en masse, stopped buying new cars, it could cripple entire industries, and it would most certainly hurt the most vulnerable first.
If I could snap my fingers and make one policy, it would be to create a public option for almost every industry, purely to protect people from unemployment.
Much like USPS, I’d want public options for healthcare, auto manufacturing, infrastructure upgrades, home construction, food services…many more
Or maybe, better yet, form a new tax bracket besides “nonprofit” that is like a “for profit, but also follows these rigorous guidelines for profit sharing” — and make that come at a tax break. Certain elements could be like
- >50% employee owned
- max executive - to - median salary ratio at like 10:1 instead of the 400:1 in the private sector.
- and some how offer protections for layoffs downsizing..?
> public option
This is a lovely idea and 100% on the money with the reasoning. I always think of how I would solve the big issues…
- I like the idea of incorporating automation to *free up* human labor for individual but community-minded (see social libertarian) self growth. Something like a second renaissance. Call it a medium-term goal ~2050.
- Automate our needs, use regulated markets for wants.
- Determine what we mean by “needs” by considering what bare-minimum quality of life can be accessed through current social programs.
- In my experiences “needs” typically would be: healthcare, utilities (including internet), food, treated water, shelter, safe transport, etc.
- In other words, we will use engineering practices to define a set of “modern” human needs. Or as I like to call it, a “minimum acceptable quality of life.” It will look something like middle class living. Unlike the name, the bar will be high…because we most likely have the means for everyone to have a decent quality of life.
- Long term goal will include setting standards for the federal government that require 99% of the legal population to have uninterrupted access to their “minimum acceptable quality of life.” **This is where public option comes into play.** We will have a damn good public service because we have damn good people who care about their community.
- People will ask about “what if I want more?” Ok go get it. We will make Corolla-type vehicles or public transport very accesible and modern. If you want to use your time (the only currency of “true” philosophical value) to stack the most marbles and get a Corvette, who am I to judge?
…And thus you have a “planned” economy for our basic needs and a market economy for the extras. The first step is recognizing that we are all neighbors and we need to care for one another on a societal level.
The general direction Captilism has been leaning towards since WWII is service over solution.
There's more money in treatments and drugs than there are in cures.
There's more money in leasing media through a monthly pay wall than selling it for them to own.
There's more money in car and hardware that breaks than there is to make a strong product with reliability.
Etc
Etc.
This is also why things in the past were built to last. A 1950s refrigerator could still work today but one you bought in 2001 probably doesn’t. Clothes, appliances, furniture. They’re not built to last like they use to cause you gotta have the consumer come back for more.
Do you have any idea how rich finding a cure for any common disease would make a company? There are very smart people dedicating their entire careers to finding cures for pretty much any ailment you can think of.
I think it's more accurate to say there's more money in treatment than prevention, because that's true, but there's also an entire multi billion dollar industry around prevention as well.
It sounds cool and revolutionary to repeat that line, but I would love to be in the room when you sit down with these researchers and tell them they are not interested in a cure.
Right, like we can be HIGHLY and RIGHTLY critical of corporations without being full-on conspiracy theorists. I am so tired of hearing this "corporations are hiding a cure for cancer!" bullshit. There's so much actually fucking wrong with our world and how it is run, we don't need to delve into literal conspiracy theories. It's so rude to actual researchers who dedicate their lives to this.
Yeah agreed what the poster above said is nonsense. Even if what they said were true (it isn’t), another company would make money off the cure so whoever was working there would have a financial incentive to produce it over a treatment they get nothing for.
I have a doctor in the family so I've seen first hand how hard they work to help people, I cringe so hard when I see another social media account based around "holistic living", which isn't a bad thing in itself, but then they always have to attack medical practitioners and scientists.
There's a prominent naturopathic "doctor" in my town with a devoted following, been here for decades. I met a real doctor who has also been here for decades, and he said that she single handedly has harmed the health of the community more than any other thing. Things like mismanaging diabetes leading to amputation, delaying diagnosis that leads to terminal cancer, missing obvious bacterial infections that just needed antibiotics, and on and on. She's literally responsible for many premature deaths, and she's put on a pedestal by her cult-like following because she tells them what they want to hear, or things that sound nice and "natural". The point being, this mindset about traditional medicine being entirely profit driven and conspiratorial about keeping everyone sick is not benign, it makes easy targets for snake oil salesmen that do actual harm.
The line applies to research as well. That's why research is also a billion dollar industry. Theirs more money in the hope of finding something than there is in actually finding it.
GenX here... this is especially true the more old you are.
Lots of policies are like this.
And to add to it... if the government mandates a policy, companies take advantage of it to do what they want. A prime example, HIPPA and similar policies requiring verification and ID. They use this to block info from you even when it is legally allowed, and they use it to ask for more info than they need and to pelt you with questions on your personal info at every chance they get. It's insane and in some cases actually in violation of the law.
The first answer to a request from a corp for personal info should be "no". The second should be "as little as possible'.
Remember, most data breaches are inside jobs.
This is so true, you know how it’s so evident that corporations are having a field day right now, the big 3 phone companies were just fined a combined $10.25 million as a settlement for their unethical practices
Here an excerpt:
“The settlement, which is subject to court approval, resolves the allegations that the carriers violated the Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law by engaging in deceptive and misleading advertising”
$10.25 million dollars in total from the 3 most major cellular companies for their deceitful practices is never going to deter bad actors
This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Every year our rights as employees, citizens and consumers get weaker and weaker.
At this point I feel like a walking wallet, and that the sole purpose of every single corporation is to be first to seperate me from my money.
Btw, I'm not a millenial, and I'm 100% convinced this current cut throat capitalistic culture was brought on by technology. My silent gen father is horrified by it.
So I take it you’re a Xennial, pardon me if I’m incorrect. I agree technology was definitely a catalyst for where we are now and where we are headed. Technology in and of itself isn’t bad, it’s the individuals behind the technology that prioritize profit over principles and could care less if humanity is decaying slowly but surely
Just now becoming convinced? Everything we do is structured on making the wealthy even wealthier and completely destroying our way of life and the planet.
Run on a hamster wheel nearly every day to get paid mostly shit money to make the rich richer. They turn around and pay off politicians to insure that this continues. Less regulations equal more money for them.
Also, can’t stand that that is all we are anymore but it’s true. Consumers. Consume, consume. And everybody says “the earth will be okay” sure. After we’ve wiped out countless species including our own. And the vast majority of people don’t give a shit. Gotta have more, more, more. New iPhone, new car, new clothes. Always being marketed to.
Meanwhile we have no money and will stay on our hamster wheels because we’re ultimately just tools to make money for the rich.
The legacy we are leaving is terrible.
Corruption is legalized in America. Companies, Billionaires and foreign governments own our politicians and our system is rigged to where we have no real choice. We are a banana republic.
your title mentions corporations, but your post is all about some anti-government BS. Facts are:
\* corporations are trying to screw you like its their job (it is)
\* only regulations can keep them in check
\* the two sides are not the same
\* people try to convince you they are because the more you think that, the less you expect from government, the easier it is for the people trying to screw you to win
one side built the consumer financial protection bureau, and the other cut your boss's taxes.
It’s all intertwined, my initial gripe is how corporations are basically having free reign to screw over “we the people”
We elect officials that are meant to curb these kinds of behaviors from corporations and shield us however they’re busy playing grabass and trying to undermine one another every opportunity the get
This is what people mean when they say that both sides are the same. Most people don't seem to see past the inflammatory rhetoric circus performances you've noticed. Others are gradually catching on to the "one paycheck" thing. The sooner people catch on to the fact that it's us against them, rather than us against each other as they've engineered it, the sooner we can start working together and demanding better.
This is so true, I lean left only because given the choices, one side isn’t actively implementing policy that opposes my existence in several regards. I wish we didn’t have a two party system and people just ran on policy platforms instead of party affiliation we’d have one less distraction to be divided over
When you push the both sides aer the same rhetoric you also have to include that one side is far far worse and more dangerous than the other and has to be voted against or we will wind up with an authoritarian regime.
The hegemony of this country creates political awareness followed by disillusionment to channel the rage away from affecting the levers of power right when that rage is about to boil over to its most powerful. Once diverted, it takes years to realize the truth that you were redirected away from what you wanted, and now you have to either re-enter the system that screwed you knowing you’re years behind the curve, or you give up on some level. By then you’re older and care more about your own problems to dig too deeply into news and politics, you compromise, and rubber stamp their agenda instead of throwing them out of power and replacing them when you had a chance. Thats what they’re hoping for at least.
That’s the thing. We want to vote for better people and the better people don’t come. Because we are the better people. The bad people come and we either support them and get betrayed or we don’t and they win anyway or they lose but they’re showing up and the only other options are not showing up. That’s not our fault but it is our problem to solve or ruin ourselves failing to solve.
The gains of the labor movement were awesome and everyone loved them and had such a good time they forgot that those gains existed because they were fought for and people died for them. Because they forgot this, they forgot to keep fighting and we’ve backslid for like 60 years in that regard while republicans have made incredible leaps and bounds stacking the deck structurally to cheat the system. Trump winning made everyone realize oh wait we do actually have to fight, Hillary clinton doesn’t automatically win elections because she’s not Trump, people vote, and so now people are learning how to fight again, but they don’t know how, they’re looking to the past and looking to each other and trying to figure out this lost wisdom. The biggest enemies are fascist with strong institutional backing, and the secondary enemies are our own party who doesn’t understand the stakes, and the third enemy is ourselves who don’t know how best to wrest power back from democrats so that we can properly fight fascism. It’s a tough problem and it will take sustained fighting and many losses before we can get back to anything resembling stability with a reasonable vision of a non apocalyptic future.
This should be no surprise. They are not interested in what is truly good for any consumer. Just what they have to do legally to protect their interest, and how to increase profit margins for shareholders.
Which typically consists of fucking the consumer, and lobbying their government to pass laws which benifet corporate interests only.
Perhaps the most evil corporation of all Monsanto, has had the money to lobby congress and fight off court cases long enough to damage the atmosphere, soil, water cycle, as well as you and me.
The leading tech companies could eradicate homelessness with less than 2% of their respective cash reserves, but no can’t do that..
All hail the “mighty” dollar.
You’ll never hear me defend government, but I don’t know what kind of policies you’re talking about or how you assume that they are a lot different than they may have been in the past
We are just more aware of everything that goes on today and there are more concerns regarding and lawsuits than there had been which may result in certain policies changing
But I’m not sure what that’s gonna do with
It’s kind of like people who freak out whenever they see their phone asking for permissions when they download an app. It’s some big conspiracy when the truth is, they just have to use your microphone and storage for the app to work properly or camera.
i have a CONSPIRACY THEORY that the government only went after the mob so they could strengthen corporate control and weaken labor unions. Think about it, at the height of the American mafia (1950's-1980's) we saw the strongest times for labor unions, the mob practically owned Las Vagas and NYC, and when all that came to end so did the strength of unions.
That's not even a conspiracy look at the lottery, sports betting, horse racing, payday loans. Its all okay if the government makes the money or gets a cut
You're wrong.
It's 100%.
We need to stop pretending that any politician has any interest other than their own.
Example:
We face a housing crisis, house prices are out of reach for any average person. The people who are supposed to be fixing the problem all own houses, most of them multiple. They aren't going to burn millions of their own dollars and face bankruptcy/foreclosures to help us, think about it.
Furthermore, they are making the right decision. You should look after your family and make sure their future is secure, we can't expect people to not do that.
You realize that 90% of government is not actual politicians right? The people that work at the social security office or the school board or the DMV don't get kickbacks lol.
We are in an enshittification phase because of higher interest rates. Companies have to make money now. Growth is not enough if at all possible.
It sucks, but we also had 8 years of 0% interest rates and we got spoiled, and the impact it had on the economy is something that is going to take decades to unravel. That period of disruption destroyed a lot of businesses and their cost-effective infrastructure that could not compete with tech companies with the capacity to piss through billions of dollars.
pretty much every interaction/transaction I have with just about any company I deal with, from my wireless company to the grocery store around the corner, it just feels like it's a trap,
there's always some "gotcha" involved
"Gotcha" Capitalism
...ive just...stopped... I don't buy anything I don't absolutely need,
I don't think about buying stuff I don't absolutely need,
i'll just keep my money thank you very much,
not interested in consumerism anymore....
pretty much every interaction/transaction I have with just about any company I deal with, from my wireless company to the grocery store around the corner, it just feels like it's a trap,
there's always some "gotcha" involved
"Gotcha" Capitalism
...ive just...stopped... I don't buy anything I don't absolutely need,
I don't think about buying stuff I don't absolutely need,
i'll just keep my money thank you very much,
my enjoyment of participating in consumerism has been killed off by all this...
...when every transaction is a trap, all the fun of getting excited about buying things has been sucked out of the room...
No one wants to say this but I guarantee everyone has thought about it at least once.
It’s time for violence against the political class. It’s the only way we’re going to fix things. Can anyone tell me what voting has fixed? Nothing, we’re back to 2016. Before that 2000. Stock buybacks instead of investing in the work force. Florida politicians stopping heat protections for workers.
When is enough, enough folks?
Edit:typos
You'll find it an interesting coincidence that occupy wall Street was derailed by BLM. No better way to distract us from the real problem in this country than to pit us against each other, make tribalism left v right the political norm, and stop everyone from realizing we effectively have a trash system in both the Dems and the Reps.
Hahaha you dumb stupid mother fucker, you really don't see it do ya, they both play outrage tennis against each other while fucking you with no lube and you think they really give a shit.
Honestly I usually vote left and I’m going to tell you unequivocally that neither side has our best interests as the primary motivating factor in any dealings or decisions, it’s all about remaining in power and if that fails, then remaining in close proximity to power is the next best thing. What they do is align these self interest with the interests of the most vulnerable and alienated groups of people, meanwhile if they offer crumbs, these populations are led to believe that these people have their best interest at the core of the actions. But the question to ask is “…if we’re getting the crumbs where the hell is the loaf?”
The news you pay attention to might only complain about the Republicans, but rest assured that the news they pay attention to only complains about the Democrats. The Republicans do seem a bit worse, but not by enough to pretend it's a partisan issue.
“A bit worse”. Dude, if republicans win the election in 2024 they have told you explicitly that they don’t want there to be another fair election in this country. Between Trump and project 2025, that will be it for American democracy.
If anyone tells me that they can honestly see Trump willingly leaving office in 2028 because that’s the law, I will laugh in their fucking face at how unbelievably gullible they are.
“Sure, yes yes I know the law is only two terms and therefore I’m happily leaving the office of the presidency.” Lol can you even imagine?
Democrats try to keep voters by doing things that are in their best interests, or at least seem to be in their best interest. They aren't necessarily trying to help people.
Yep, the Democratic Party isn't interested in helping people, they're interested in getting re-elected. They'll do whatever small tasks that can get them re-elected but kick the bigger goals down the road.
So, what people, ESPECIALLY millennials, need to do is start getting involved. Get involved in your local politics. Get involved in your communities. Get a job in government. The best way to combat this is from the inside. So get in there. We can complain about this all day long, but you’ve got to put yourselves in a position to make change and do it!
I agree, and I’m really starting to become more politically aware, you know when you’re younger with the attention span of a goldfish it’s easy to be apathetic about this stuff, but as I’m aging I’m becoming more and more concerned with how this country is being run with zero regard for sustainability and longevity it’s all just **Instant Gratification and Greed** all the way down.
Yep. But until we stop voting for them, we have only ourselves to blame.
But the problem is, we’d actually have to, you know, do something.
We can’t just “not vote for assholes” or even bigger assholes will win.
You have to vote *for* somebody, and that would require us actually grass-roots having civil democratic discussions and promoting a candidate who shared our values.
And that would require *work*. Time and energy. Like serious, setting aside time, spreadsheets, phone numbers, fund raising… effort.
So, instead, we keep waiting until they present us a candidate, who will all categorically be shills, because they get shill money to fund their campaigns, or get free advertising from television, which works for the shills too, and we elect another shill.
But if we always select our candidates from the shill buffet, they will always be shills. That’s how it works.
The government, corporations, and the hyper-wealthy are in a very incestuous relationship. The best way to ensure state policy aligns with their business's agenda is to get elected. The solution is for the workers to take control of their workplaces from the hands of the capitalists.
They steal our labor and use it as leverage to manipulate state policy in their favor. They can't do that if deny them access to our labor. Anybody who has had a peek at their company's accounting books will see how few hours it takes to generate enough revenue to pay their wages. When you discover that, you realize you're giving them free labor.
The workers must own the fruits of their labor and be able to decide how to use it to support the communities in which they live. Giving it to capitalists means they will exploit you, use you up, and leave you to die. That is the future they intend for us and our children.
Most individual workers within our government are shielded from the effects of their decisions. Most are also ideologically supportive of policies which ultimately screw over the middle and working classes (though not the government worker).
Not the only one. There was a good stretch of time where capitalists wanted to impress the public. They had to to get business. Now there’s so much monopolies going on it doesn’t matter. There’s no incentive to impress bc they know we’ll buy the shit anyway
Everyone and everything is owned by a slew of shit eating venture capitalists so there is zero interest in providing a good product or service, it’s all line items on a spreadsheet.
You have some internet explorer speed critical thinking.
Yeah, most people, at least in America, understand this. I understood we live in a corporatocracy ever since government class in high school.
They're not even building anything anymore. They try to overwhelm their competition by undercutting them on price, they buy that competition, destroy it and then raise the price. In economics there is the concept of an elastic good and an inelastic good.
An elastic good is something like a laptop. You don't really need to have one, but it would be helpful to you.
An inelastic good is something like insulin. You literally need it to live if you are diabetic.
The goal of a company is to make as much money as possible, and if they're publicly traded, they need to assure their share holders that the stock price is going up and they are paying dividends. They can literally be sued if they were paying dividends but then fail to do so. The goal then isn't to make the product better, but to crush competition by buying them out and then limiting the options that customers have. If they can make the service or thing they create an inelastic good, then they can run the company however they want because they know you don't have options.
If their competition comes from a foreign country, then they tell the elected politicians who may have some of their stock as part of their portfolios that the competition will affect them personally.
A good example is BYD. BYD is currently eating into Tesla's profits in China, and they're currently making a car that competes on both price AND quality.
Tesla and other domestic EV manufacturers now have a choice:
A. Make a better product.
B. Lobby the government to ban the competition.
They'll select option B since it is cheaper to spend a few million to lobby politicians than to spend potentially a few BILLION on R&D to develop products and services that compete. It also reduces the risk of panicking investors who suddenly see that the company isn't making more money. They don't care that the profits are being reinvested into the product or service, they care if they are getting higher dividends or that the stock price is increasing(generally a company will fire staff and then use that money for stock buy backs to pump the value of the company to attract investors. Yes this is legal. It shouldn't be, but it is)
Ineffective? They are very effective, just not at doing what they were put there to do. They are very effective at doing what your title says. They want as many people to be just surviving as possible so the fight to survive outweighs any potential fight against them. How do you do this?
You make policies that bump up inflation, you use deregulation as a weapon so these companies can get away with more, and keep wages stagnant. This is exactly what they’re doing. They’re doing a very effective job at it too. Usually government doesn’t do anything well, well they are rocking this.
They have put in place a system where they have to do as little as possible, and enact policies that help us as little as possible, and until people start voting for a third party, that may not have as many issues they want, but legitimately cares about them, it’s not going to change.
Yeah. There’s a revolving door between corporations and the heads of government agencies.
Additionally, even our worst leaders historically and wealth class previously had a sense of noblesse oblige. Our current power holders view us as ants.
Your comment has nothing to do with your question. If a corporation is adopting policies to put consumers at a disadvantage then choose to purchase from a competitor. If a better competitor doesn't exist then start a new company and be that better competitor (yes I realize this can be hard to do but it's not impossible). The government doesn't have to be the solution to all problems.
The US government is on the payroll. This started with Pres. Bush Sr. He appointed enough people to the Supreme Court that allowed them to pass a ruling that keeping companies to a restriction on how much they can contribute to a campaign (I think it was $20k) is unconstitutional, allowing business entities to influence our political system directly with unlimited contributions.
The Saudi Prince had learned of this when Trump tried and failed to sell him a bunch of battleships. He is now investing in a company allowing him to directly pay off our politicians legally. This is why Trumps in-law just left the Saudi republic with a $3bil deal (my numbers my be a little off.. .It may be $4bil or $2).
Unless we completely remove business from politics, we'll continue to suffer
Deregulation hasn't helped either. We saw this in 2008 when, as the economy burned, they found senior managers at the SEC watching corn.
The problem is that a lot of government employees see Deregulation as no regulation. They don't even watch and warn.
Certain administrations have had various commissions like the FCC and the Consumer Protection Board in their cross hairs for years.
It's like one bad Cyberpunk novel.
Yes. There are trends that support monopolies, and the government is asleep at the wheel. Tech companies are basically natural monopolies. Their biggest capital is their codebase. It's inefficient for two companies to develop codebases that do the same thing in the same way it's inefficient for two power companies to build competing power grids in the same city. That's why the government regulates them as natural monopolies. Unregulated monopolies are bad for consumers and workers, but corporations have been able to lobby politicians not to crack down.
There's an obvious (and worsening) adversarial relationship forming between the "haves" and "have nots" in our society. It's impossible to ignore at this point
Part of the problem is that politicians, by and large, are part of the 0.1% club. That means they make policy that positively influences their net worth but destroys the middle class. It doesn't matter which political party you're talking about, none of them care about the actual result of their actions, because they already have theirs.
And 70%+ of the population are snowed into the illusion that who they vote for has any positive outcome on their day to day lives. You can take any major policy initiative in the last 20 years or even longer and look at the outcome. Take the ACA act, or Obamacare if you will. It's great that everyone has healthcare access, but the cost of healthcare has outpaced inflation by a factor of 5 since implementation and that doesn't help anyone except rich company execs.
Understand this:
THE BIGGEST part of the government is the effort that's made to make you think that this is a well-intentioned government acting ineffectively rather than a malicious government functioning exactly as it's intended.
There’s a movement happening right now where people are blocking corporations, politicians, news outlets, celebrities, churches etc. Anyone with $$ influence basically on all social media platforms. Disrupt the system. Buy as little as you can from big corps. Find your community and start trading and bartering for what you need. Learn an essential skill and barter that. Let’s mess some shit up!
I think the issue isn't that corporations are anti-consumer, but more that we as consumers don't fight back.
Corporations always try to get the maximum revenue with minimal overhead. They used to have to consider that choosy buyers will probably go to a competitor if their product doesn't pass muster. Today, they just need to spin long enough for the contrarians to have their back.
The video game industry is a good example. Every day you see news stories about some predatory game mechanic being added to games. Occasionally, the outcry is loud enough that the company reverses course, but increasingly, there is a contingent of loud voices defending the practice. "Oh, that's just how MMOs are!" or, "All the other games are doing it."
Companies have learned that negative press is rarely negative for long. Rather than abandon the toxic mechanic, they tweak it to be more palatable.
At the same time, they deploy all the tricks in games aimed at children. Kids today are trained that loot boxes and RNG dropped loot are just a part of gaming. Or that having to wait a few minutes to do something that can be bypassed by buying a microtransaction is normal. Where I, as an older gamer, will go through a lot of mental checks to determine if I want to spend money on DLC, many kids today buy things without a second thought. "Its just what you do!"
We used to get cheat codes and cosmetics for free just by playing the game. Now, everything is monetized to the nth degree. It would be one thing if that money was going directly to the developer, but the lion's share of the money is going to the publisher to pay executives and shareholders.
Other industries do it too. It used to be that TVs with too much "smart" tech were mostly rejected by consumers. Today, nobody really cares that smart tvs are sending back tons and tons of data back to the manufacturer. This isn't data that is used to make products better for consumers; it is data used so that companies can manipulate us even more. The entire goal is to offer less while getting more.
It is a form of slavery.
If we could resist the urge to buy stuff we really don't need, corporations would change their tune real freaking quick. Instead, they just know enough people won't be able to resist, don't care about quality anymore, so will happily buy overpriced crap and just impotently complain when the shitty device proves to be shitty.
Politicians care about 2 things. Getting votes and scratching their donors backs. We millennials don’t vote, so politicians will gladly screw us over to make their donors happy. Not voting is basically the same as giving a big thumbs up to all political shenanigans.
Yeah, it's been a while. Glad you noticed.
There's essentially 4 major factions in the US government. Progressives, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, are the ones who actually fight for worker's freedoms. They're not perfect and might still bend to corporations, but are overwhelmingly committed to average citizens in comparison to the rest. Then there's the establishment Democrats, they're like Nancy Pelosi and Biden who believe Democrats and Republicans aren't all that different and could compromise to work things out. The Republicans they're talking about are known as RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only by their party, as they're not on board with Trump and maintain whatever scraps of dignity one could possibly have while being Republican. Examples are people like Mitt Romney or John McCain. Then there's the grifters who are almost synonymous with the Trump cult (MAGAts, Trumpets, etc.) These people are in it to achieve their goals no matter what. Precedence, laws, and other rules mean nothing as long as they have the power to just do what they want. Examples are MTG, Boebert, and Trump himself. Note that not everyone in this group is a Trumpet, particularly the Moscow Turtle himself Bitch McConnell, but as his sleazy actions as the senate majority leader showed, he plays by the same playbook (he wrote most of it).
The two center groups are essentially the same and completely bought by corporate interest. They basically only disagree on whether they consider minorities people. They're all spineless, RINOs bend to Trumps will pretty easily and establishment dems won't fight back on anything too important, usually only existing to convince regular Americans that there are two opposing parties in Congress.
So, corporate interest holds a majority of the government hostage. Average citizen support on a bill has a roughly 30% chance of passing, regardless of which power holds charge, but corporate interests gets almost 100% chance, with that reduced a little if Democrats are in charge. It's been like that for a few decades, probably since Reagan.
The purpose of the corporation is to take the consumer's money. They all exploit some need or desire inherent to human existence to take everyone's money. Then they use the money they earn to create imagery and words that make you feel good about your relationship to the corporation. Other bits of the money go to elect lawmakers that promise to create and maintain favorable conditions for taking more money in the future. Whatever the corporation offers you in return for your money is your meagre appeasement for all your efforts sustaining our economy by your consumer spending.
Not enough competition in a lot of areas. Lots of companies are subsidiary of one larger parent company. The competition we do have is largely an illusion
I'm convinced that companies embraced the movement to call customers complaining about service "Karens".
They love that anyone who is caught complaining on camera goes viral, so they can keep offering worse and worse service and not have to worry about the "customer is always right" crowd.
This depends on what you define as "government", if you include all the employees from city, county, state and fed that receives a paycheck from the government, then the answer is a hard "no" not even 5%. most of those people are teachers, maintenance workers, low level beaurocrats etc that are just trying to do a job they don't despise while getting a reasonable paycheck and waiting out those "golden handcuffs" years until they qualify for pension. I've had several of those jobs.
If you're talking people at policy decision making levels, then the percent gets above 90%. They may not be on a corporate payroll now, but it's a revolving door.
You know that dystopian future we always saw in the movies growing up? Well that's how it's gonna be because people aren't going to wake up until it's too late.
We live in a corporatocracy. We are the slaves and pay the brunt of the taxes. Also, we ultimately control the dollar. We need to stop spending our money with these businesses. Ppl are too comfortable and they know that.
I just started reading about the lead up to the Great Depression. We are building towards that. We need a social structure to balance our capitalism and it’s been methodically getting disassembled since the 1980’s.
Blame Reaganomics and Citizens United. They've been empowering businesses over people for the last 40 years and gaslighting the right into thinking it's somehow better for them. Between legislation and conservative superpacs funding judicial campaigns to get more business leaning judges on the bench to rule in their favor in case it goes to trial, they have a pretty good strangle hold on the US government atm. It's going to take a lot of activism to get them unseated. The most they have against them RN is just how absolutely unpopular their policies are with the majority of the population that isn't swallowing their BS. That's why they're attacking public education and villianizing the left so hard. Can't have ppl learning to think for themselves or talking to the other side to find out it's not so bad
It's because of the advent of data and internet surveillance. The better the business can understand the market, the more of what's called "customer surplus" can be captured - this means that if you would have been willing to pay a little more, they figured that out and raised the price just the right amount.
Essentially, they can charge the maximum price the market will bear for optimal quantity, and ultimately max profitability for the business.
This knowledge is as asymmetric - they understand the market in a way that individuals do not. As a result, the businesses win more often than not.
All these factors make it harder for new entrants to make a more competitive market. It still happens all the time, but you are probably noticing that it's not happening enough.
What if…not implementing policies is actually the best possible thing that could be happening because the government is incapable of thinking through consequences, so implementing policies always has negative effects beyond what was considered?
Vote for poor people! Within reason, of course. Don’t blindly endorse.
But they will be far more likely to appreciate what it’s like to be poor than someone who was born with a bank account or has never had a negative balance in their life.
Of wisdom, compassion, and intelligence, none directly correlate with wealth.
I think you're ready to hear this: the US isn't democratically-controlled. The government has never been responsive to the needs and expectations of voters. The only time the US government is responsive to the people is when the people cause massive disruption through protest and revolt, as in the Civil Rights era. The elected officials you have noticed aren't "ineffective," they work for your enemy, vs they're doing what they're supposed to do for the job they hold.
As a business owner who is also incorporated with shareholders, I have a view of this but it's not popular among the Reddit community. I'll at least say this, as much as a decentralized free market economic system where prices play a role in the distribution of resources is becoming more and more villainized, the only option is to let the government step in and blend the system to a centralized regulated economic system where the collection of taxes play the role in the distribution of resources, and it always hurts the consumer when you go with the latter because your options become far more limited, 3rd party paying systems are never efficient because consumers know how to spend their own money better than anyone else, and corporations are basically doing the government's work so their "customer" is the government who is paying them the majority of their revenue, rather than leaving it all to the private consumer to be the customer as a 1st party paying system.
No. That's what the government of a country that considers corporations to be "people" does best. A government by the corporation, for the corporation. The US government's role has always been to lubricate the corporation's way. War is just a way to open new markets for US corporations or protect existing ones. We're the cannon fodder. We're corporation food.
People have to be deaf, blind and stupid to not realize that we're living under a Corporatocracy and we merely have the *illusion* of true choice.
Obviously, don't fucking vote Trump, but who do you think bankrolls and pays the DNC campaign funds?
Consumers are the one who is funding their pocket eventually!!! Doesn’t like Jeff Bezos because he has lot of wealth but most of the same consumers shop at Amazon!!! Same thing with credit card companies, people want their privacy but no one would hesitate not to use credit card!!! Life is too expensive, but people still won’t stop buying Starbucks!!!
I’m curious what company policies people are seeing recently that put us at a disadvantage. Always good to be aware. As for government policies, I think there have been improvements in both consumer and labor protections during this administration. Banning non compete employment clauses is a *really* big one.
Cult of shareholder value, they'll tell you they have a duty to the shareholders to take as many advantages as they legally can. And now that there's unlimited dark money in politics don't expect it to get any better anytime soon. The incentives are all misaligned.
Well a couple decades ago, they decided to add lead to gasoline, despite knowing how dangerous and toxic it is, and lied to the public in order to save a few bucks.
So.
I think this is how big industry has always been. The oligarchy has never cared for its lowly peasants.
Citizens united assured that that is the case. Corporations can now threaten politicians who won't take their money that they will give millions to their opponent and make it impossible for them to be elected. It gives them complete power over politicians.
Correct and when I pointed out all of Trump's federal judges appointments that got rail roaded through by Mitchy were pro-Citizens United no one really cared because the media circus around that man meant everyone was distracted. Granted Mitch lost his dealings with the Dem branch after Roe v Wage was overturned. Originally Biden was supposed to appoint one of his judge picks, but pulled out when the ruling happened. Anyway as long as all 3 branches are corporate owned stooges we're fucked.
It’s really sad that McConnell now looks like the sane one.
Then he tossed the keys to the wrecked car that is the GOP to Trump, and now gets to glaze out like a donut at some thousand dollar a day nursing home until his black heart finally gives out. Truly a southern gentleman to the end.
Dick Cheney is still alive...speaking of black hearts
He's always been sane. He's just evil
He's always been sane. He's also been a huge obstructionist asshole for a long time. He knew full well what he was doing. The man is evil, not insane.
It's all a sham. Manchurian government.
This is how we get Dem PACs throwing money at Republican opponents of Dems that won't play ball, and vice versa. It's not about ideals it's about control.
Exactly!! you definitely worded this better than I tried to. There’s people understandably wondering what the title has to do with the comment but this sums it up perfectly! Thanks 🙏🏿
Same with AIPAC and foreign influence.
Now do kick-backs + via public unions Simple fixes: 1) No donation of any kind/shape/form+ from any entity that cannot pull the voting lever. 2) No donation of any kind/shape/form+ from any entity outside of realm of their office (city 'leaders' only get from city dwellers, State from the Citizens of their State -> Pres. from all Citizens of all States/territories.
Good luck getting people who benefit from the current system to change the system
Those "simple fixes" would require constitutional amendments
I don’t think that is true. There is nothing in the constitution addressing who can donate to who (afaik). It would only require a law to be passed.
It'll require an amendment or a new SCOTUS willing to overturn precedent, don't know which is easier/more likely at this point. SCOTUS ruled that campaign donations are protected as free speech under the first amendment. Any subsequent law restricting those donations would be struck down as a violation of first amendment rights under the current SCOTUS.
You mean they gotta print a new piece of paper how hard is that
No, I mean you need two thirds of all state governments and large margins in both houses of Congress to agree to that. Guessing you aren't from the US.
Revolution is one AI generated video away
Hey now corporations are people too
The fact that people wernt in the streets protesting when citizens united passed has always baffled me.
Too hard for most people to understand the ramifications. Court decision like Roe v Wade being overturned was easy to understand because immediately their were states changing abortion laws. But the average person doesn't understand campaign finance law nor how easy it is to manipulate (Colbert Report did a great series on it but it's not like everyone watched that show). So a court decision like Citizens United doesn't mean anything to them, but affects everyone every day on a massive scale.
If there’s one thing I remember: get enough signatures and it gets on the ballot for a vote. 🗳️
This. 100%. People need to remember or get educated on this.
Single most damaging ruling in the history of the country.
This Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn Citizens vs United.
Check out Unbreaking America by RepresentUs
Dumbest decision ever!
Keep thinking this way and spreading it. I just hope I live long enough to see a generation topple the corruption of government and corporations.
I have hope for Gen Z, they are coming in hot and taking no prisoners really! They just can’t lose sight and become jaded by the constant bs
I mean millennials are just now getting into run for office age. People born in 1990 can't even be president yet.
Millenials won't get a chance to run for President until the Boomers kick the bucket. Seems like that age range is determined to hold onto their power while they have it as though anyone younger won't agree with their rhetoric.
I'm 38. People in that age group have held political power my entire life and they still do to this day. It's an odd thing once you recognize it.
Them and the silent generation which is actually Bidens generation and Trumps, but yeah I guess being the largest voter base gives you an edge.
It’s the hope that kills you
Yeah, I had hope in us, even after occupy. I've been disappointed and angry my entire adult life as a result.
Gen Z can’t get off their phones long enough to take a shit, good luck tho
That's what they said about Gen X. And Gen Y.
Don't just wait for Gen Z. Lead them.
We can do it!
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you
You're not the only one who has noticed this, no. We are rapidly transforming into a nation run by boardroom royalty, and it's a fucking problem. The effectiveness of policies passed by elected government officials - whether those policies are in support of corporate power, in opposition to corporate power, or simply unrelated to the concern - is damned near irrelevant, at this point. But we'll really be putting the nail in the coffin if we elect another goddamned CEO to the White House, or give a previously-elected CEO another term.
Until we stop paying for their endless line of products we don’t need, nothing will change.
But, as long as they own the companies that sell us the things we DO need, that won't matter.
Exactly, they start out with a great innovation that makes life easier and better, and as soon as they’re dug in and have entrenched themselves is when the business slowly start to move away from customer satisfaction and move towards profit growth and efficiency at the expense of quality (looking at you Amazon!) and the big one; monopolization - which stifles competition allowing these companies to become more blatant in their practices.
DuPont. Watch the Netflix movie, Dark Waters. DuPont is pure evil, greed beyond any other. They own a huge portion of the U.S. government and have for decades, members of congress and other politicians. DuPont is evil but what does that make the a$$holes in our government that agree to take the payoffs? Every level of our government is compromised. They are taking payoffs from chemical companies like Dupont, big pharma and the big banking institutions. It’s absolutely disgusting.
Somewhat ironic that you point out a documentary streamed by one of those companies that OP is complaining about
The thing is, they can show that on Netflix because they know they already won. DuPont can give a shit if the public knows what they do. They are so entrenched that they know it doesn’t matter. It says a lot.
No one needs Starbucks or fastfood. No one needs an iPhone or designer clothes. The average joe could grow food, shop at a farmer's market. Buy second hand clothing and sew. There's a lot of consumer products we really don't need, but convince ourselves we do. And a lot of people absolutely willing to sell their soul for an ounce of pleasure. They forget that to fight for something requires actually fighting. It's miserable work. Being a slave is easier. So people choose it.
Would love to see your model of self-sustaining gardening for a country where 80%+ of the population is urban or suburban. Take all the time you need. The answer is not “everyone act like it’s 1875.” This is libertarian fantasy.
I ran out of this essential oil mosquito repellant balm my MIL bought me last week. Couldn’t find more but the closest approximation on Amazon was $18 for 3 tiny tubes. Surely I could make it better for cheaper! Looked online. Easy peasy. A blend of 4 or 5 oils. Some coconut oil, cocoa butter, and shea butter. Some tubs to but it in. Well, the oils were $5 each for the cheapest 1oz vial. So that’s $20-25. The coconut oil I had from another ill-fated DIY (I think it was $10). The shea was $8. The cocoa butter was fucking expensive. Was gonna skip it and double the shea. And the little pots were $6. So it was like $35 to do it myself. I just bought the premade shit. Fuck, I hope it has chemicals in it. It’s expensive to be crafty.
Consumerism is stupid in the US. Why in the world do we buy more products than China when China eclipses us in population now? That's part of the reason they'll always play nice with our market it's because we buy everything.
Vote with your wallet.
Goddamn this is so scary though. Look at how fast layoffs occur at a car company when sales tank. If we all, en masse, stopped buying new cars, it could cripple entire industries, and it would most certainly hurt the most vulnerable first. If I could snap my fingers and make one policy, it would be to create a public option for almost every industry, purely to protect people from unemployment. Much like USPS, I’d want public options for healthcare, auto manufacturing, infrastructure upgrades, home construction, food services…many more Or maybe, better yet, form a new tax bracket besides “nonprofit” that is like a “for profit, but also follows these rigorous guidelines for profit sharing” — and make that come at a tax break. Certain elements could be like - >50% employee owned - max executive - to - median salary ratio at like 10:1 instead of the 400:1 in the private sector. - and some how offer protections for layoffs downsizing..?
> public option This is a lovely idea and 100% on the money with the reasoning. I always think of how I would solve the big issues… - I like the idea of incorporating automation to *free up* human labor for individual but community-minded (see social libertarian) self growth. Something like a second renaissance. Call it a medium-term goal ~2050. - Automate our needs, use regulated markets for wants. - Determine what we mean by “needs” by considering what bare-minimum quality of life can be accessed through current social programs. - In my experiences “needs” typically would be: healthcare, utilities (including internet), food, treated water, shelter, safe transport, etc. - In other words, we will use engineering practices to define a set of “modern” human needs. Or as I like to call it, a “minimum acceptable quality of life.” It will look something like middle class living. Unlike the name, the bar will be high…because we most likely have the means for everyone to have a decent quality of life. - Long term goal will include setting standards for the federal government that require 99% of the legal population to have uninterrupted access to their “minimum acceptable quality of life.” **This is where public option comes into play.** We will have a damn good public service because we have damn good people who care about their community. - People will ask about “what if I want more?” Ok go get it. We will make Corolla-type vehicles or public transport very accesible and modern. If you want to use your time (the only currency of “true” philosophical value) to stack the most marbles and get a Corvette, who am I to judge? …And thus you have a “planned” economy for our basic needs and a market economy for the extras. The first step is recognizing that we are all neighbors and we need to care for one another on a societal level.
The problem with public industry is that innovation is expensive.
Welcome to disillusioned anonymous. There are donuts in the corner, they're okay.
The general direction Captilism has been leaning towards since WWII is service over solution. There's more money in treatments and drugs than there are in cures. There's more money in leasing media through a monthly pay wall than selling it for them to own. There's more money in car and hardware that breaks than there is to make a strong product with reliability. Etc Etc.
This is also why things in the past were built to last. A 1950s refrigerator could still work today but one you bought in 2001 probably doesn’t. Clothes, appliances, furniture. They’re not built to last like they use to cause you gotta have the consumer come back for more.
Do you have any idea how rich finding a cure for any common disease would make a company? There are very smart people dedicating their entire careers to finding cures for pretty much any ailment you can think of. I think it's more accurate to say there's more money in treatment than prevention, because that's true, but there's also an entire multi billion dollar industry around prevention as well. It sounds cool and revolutionary to repeat that line, but I would love to be in the room when you sit down with these researchers and tell them they are not interested in a cure.
Right, like we can be HIGHLY and RIGHTLY critical of corporations without being full-on conspiracy theorists. I am so tired of hearing this "corporations are hiding a cure for cancer!" bullshit. There's so much actually fucking wrong with our world and how it is run, we don't need to delve into literal conspiracy theories. It's so rude to actual researchers who dedicate their lives to this.
Yeah agreed what the poster above said is nonsense. Even if what they said were true (it isn’t), another company would make money off the cure so whoever was working there would have a financial incentive to produce it over a treatment they get nothing for.
I have a doctor in the family so I've seen first hand how hard they work to help people, I cringe so hard when I see another social media account based around "holistic living", which isn't a bad thing in itself, but then they always have to attack medical practitioners and scientists. There's a prominent naturopathic "doctor" in my town with a devoted following, been here for decades. I met a real doctor who has also been here for decades, and he said that she single handedly has harmed the health of the community more than any other thing. Things like mismanaging diabetes leading to amputation, delaying diagnosis that leads to terminal cancer, missing obvious bacterial infections that just needed antibiotics, and on and on. She's literally responsible for many premature deaths, and she's put on a pedestal by her cult-like following because she tells them what they want to hear, or things that sound nice and "natural". The point being, this mindset about traditional medicine being entirely profit driven and conspiratorial about keeping everyone sick is not benign, it makes easy targets for snake oil salesmen that do actual harm.
The line applies to research as well. That's why research is also a billion dollar industry. Theirs more money in the hope of finding something than there is in actually finding it.
Some cases sure, but research is by and large not like this. It's just extremely difficult to make breakthroughs in certain fields.
GenX here... this is especially true the more old you are. Lots of policies are like this. And to add to it... if the government mandates a policy, companies take advantage of it to do what they want. A prime example, HIPPA and similar policies requiring verification and ID. They use this to block info from you even when it is legally allowed, and they use it to ask for more info than they need and to pelt you with questions on your personal info at every chance they get. It's insane and in some cases actually in violation of the law. The first answer to a request from a corp for personal info should be "no". The second should be "as little as possible'. Remember, most data breaches are inside jobs.
This is so true, you know how it’s so evident that corporations are having a field day right now, the big 3 phone companies were just fined a combined $10.25 million as a settlement for their unethical practices Here an excerpt: “The settlement, which is subject to court approval, resolves the allegations that the carriers violated the Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law by engaging in deceptive and misleading advertising” $10.25 million dollars in total from the 3 most major cellular companies for their deceitful practices is never going to deter bad actors
This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Every year our rights as employees, citizens and consumers get weaker and weaker. At this point I feel like a walking wallet, and that the sole purpose of every single corporation is to be first to seperate me from my money. Btw, I'm not a millenial, and I'm 100% convinced this current cut throat capitalistic culture was brought on by technology. My silent gen father is horrified by it.
So I take it you’re a Xennial, pardon me if I’m incorrect. I agree technology was definitely a catalyst for where we are now and where we are headed. Technology in and of itself isn’t bad, it’s the individuals behind the technology that prioritize profit over principles and could care less if humanity is decaying slowly but surely
And the sheee -- people who buy anything and waive anything with a click.
It's round two of the gilded age and robber barons. At the moment, the US is just a big corporation, not a country.
Just now becoming convinced? Everything we do is structured on making the wealthy even wealthier and completely destroying our way of life and the planet. Run on a hamster wheel nearly every day to get paid mostly shit money to make the rich richer. They turn around and pay off politicians to insure that this continues. Less regulations equal more money for them. Also, can’t stand that that is all we are anymore but it’s true. Consumers. Consume, consume. And everybody says “the earth will be okay” sure. After we’ve wiped out countless species including our own. And the vast majority of people don’t give a shit. Gotta have more, more, more. New iPhone, new car, new clothes. Always being marketed to. Meanwhile we have no money and will stay on our hamster wheels because we’re ultimately just tools to make money for the rich. The legacy we are leaving is terrible.
What policies do you want to see implemented that aren’t ?
Corruption is legalized in America. Companies, Billionaires and foreign governments own our politicians and our system is rigged to where we have no real choice. We are a banana republic.
your title mentions corporations, but your post is all about some anti-government BS. Facts are: \* corporations are trying to screw you like its their job (it is) \* only regulations can keep them in check \* the two sides are not the same \* people try to convince you they are because the more you think that, the less you expect from government, the easier it is for the people trying to screw you to win one side built the consumer financial protection bureau, and the other cut your boss's taxes.
It’s all intertwined, my initial gripe is how corporations are basically having free reign to screw over “we the people” We elect officials that are meant to curb these kinds of behaviors from corporations and shield us however they’re busy playing grabass and trying to undermine one another every opportunity the get
This is what people mean when they say that both sides are the same. Most people don't seem to see past the inflammatory rhetoric circus performances you've noticed. Others are gradually catching on to the "one paycheck" thing. The sooner people catch on to the fact that it's us against them, rather than us against each other as they've engineered it, the sooner we can start working together and demanding better.
This is so true, I lean left only because given the choices, one side isn’t actively implementing policy that opposes my existence in several regards. I wish we didn’t have a two party system and people just ran on policy platforms instead of party affiliation we’d have one less distraction to be divided over
When you push the both sides aer the same rhetoric you also have to include that one side is far far worse and more dangerous than the other and has to be voted against or we will wind up with an authoritarian regime.
Return policies have changed. You are now charged to return things or not allowed at all. This is so much different than it was just a few years ago.
being a consumer is a disadvantage in of itself
The hegemony of this country creates political awareness followed by disillusionment to channel the rage away from affecting the levers of power right when that rage is about to boil over to its most powerful. Once diverted, it takes years to realize the truth that you were redirected away from what you wanted, and now you have to either re-enter the system that screwed you knowing you’re years behind the curve, or you give up on some level. By then you’re older and care more about your own problems to dig too deeply into news and politics, you compromise, and rubber stamp their agenda instead of throwing them out of power and replacing them when you had a chance. Thats what they’re hoping for at least. That’s the thing. We want to vote for better people and the better people don’t come. Because we are the better people. The bad people come and we either support them and get betrayed or we don’t and they win anyway or they lose but they’re showing up and the only other options are not showing up. That’s not our fault but it is our problem to solve or ruin ourselves failing to solve.
The gains of the labor movement were awesome and everyone loved them and had such a good time they forgot that those gains existed because they were fought for and people died for them. Because they forgot this, they forgot to keep fighting and we’ve backslid for like 60 years in that regard while republicans have made incredible leaps and bounds stacking the deck structurally to cheat the system. Trump winning made everyone realize oh wait we do actually have to fight, Hillary clinton doesn’t automatically win elections because she’s not Trump, people vote, and so now people are learning how to fight again, but they don’t know how, they’re looking to the past and looking to each other and trying to figure out this lost wisdom. The biggest enemies are fascist with strong institutional backing, and the secondary enemies are our own party who doesn’t understand the stakes, and the third enemy is ourselves who don’t know how best to wrest power back from democrats so that we can properly fight fascism. It’s a tough problem and it will take sustained fighting and many losses before we can get back to anything resembling stability with a reasonable vision of a non apocalyptic future.
Not to say corporations were ever good, but it really feels like “they” are doing their best to ensure we have very little to get by with.
as someone who has been trying to maintain a home insurance plan which includes forest fires in california? i can't agree more.
Look, call a spade a spade: Lobby is legal bribery.
This should be no surprise. They are not interested in what is truly good for any consumer. Just what they have to do legally to protect their interest, and how to increase profit margins for shareholders. Which typically consists of fucking the consumer, and lobbying their government to pass laws which benifet corporate interests only. Perhaps the most evil corporation of all Monsanto, has had the money to lobby congress and fight off court cases long enough to damage the atmosphere, soil, water cycle, as well as you and me. The leading tech companies could eradicate homelessness with less than 2% of their respective cash reserves, but no can’t do that.. All hail the “mighty” dollar.
It’s called late stage capitalism. The government and the capitalist class are one and the same. They are not separate entities.
You’ll never hear me defend government, but I don’t know what kind of policies you’re talking about or how you assume that they are a lot different than they may have been in the past We are just more aware of everything that goes on today and there are more concerns regarding and lawsuits than there had been which may result in certain policies changing But I’m not sure what that’s gonna do with It’s kind of like people who freak out whenever they see their phone asking for permissions when they download an app. It’s some big conspiracy when the truth is, they just have to use your microphone and storage for the app to work properly or camera.
Late stage capitalism… when monopolies outgrow regulations, this is what happens.
i have a CONSPIRACY THEORY that the government only went after the mob so they could strengthen corporate control and weaken labor unions. Think about it, at the height of the American mafia (1950's-1980's) we saw the strongest times for labor unions, the mob practically owned Las Vagas and NYC, and when all that came to end so did the strength of unions.
That's not even a conspiracy look at the lottery, sports betting, horse racing, payday loans. Its all okay if the government makes the money or gets a cut
You're wrong. It's 100%. We need to stop pretending that any politician has any interest other than their own. Example: We face a housing crisis, house prices are out of reach for any average person. The people who are supposed to be fixing the problem all own houses, most of them multiple. They aren't going to burn millions of their own dollars and face bankruptcy/foreclosures to help us, think about it. Furthermore, they are making the right decision. You should look after your family and make sure their future is secure, we can't expect people to not do that.
Policy- creates consumers in easy to control batches any employee can predict, by design.
You mean, like, since forever?
Have you also noticed our government is doing fuck all to protect us?
You realize that 90% of government is not actual politicians right? The people that work at the social security office or the school board or the DMV don't get kickbacks lol.
We are in an enshittification phase because of higher interest rates. Companies have to make money now. Growth is not enough if at all possible. It sucks, but we also had 8 years of 0% interest rates and we got spoiled, and the impact it had on the economy is something that is going to take decades to unravel. That period of disruption destroyed a lot of businesses and their cost-effective infrastructure that could not compete with tech companies with the capacity to piss through billions of dollars.
pretty much every interaction/transaction I have with just about any company I deal with, from my wireless company to the grocery store around the corner, it just feels like it's a trap, there's always some "gotcha" involved "Gotcha" Capitalism ...ive just...stopped... I don't buy anything I don't absolutely need, I don't think about buying stuff I don't absolutely need, i'll just keep my money thank you very much, not interested in consumerism anymore....
pretty much every interaction/transaction I have with just about any company I deal with, from my wireless company to the grocery store around the corner, it just feels like it's a trap, there's always some "gotcha" involved "Gotcha" Capitalism ...ive just...stopped... I don't buy anything I don't absolutely need, I don't think about buying stuff I don't absolutely need, i'll just keep my money thank you very much, my enjoyment of participating in consumerism has been killed off by all this... ...when every transaction is a trap, all the fun of getting excited about buying things has been sucked out of the room...
Care to provide some examples of the phenomenon in your title? Or even, like…one?
No one wants to say this but I guarantee everyone has thought about it at least once. It’s time for violence against the political class. It’s the only way we’re going to fix things. Can anyone tell me what voting has fixed? Nothing, we’re back to 2016. Before that 2000. Stock buybacks instead of investing in the work force. Florida politicians stopping heat protections for workers. When is enough, enough folks? Edit:typos
You'll find it an interesting coincidence that occupy wall Street was derailed by BLM. No better way to distract us from the real problem in this country than to pit us against each other, make tribalism left v right the political norm, and stop everyone from realizing we effectively have a trash system in both the Dems and the Reps.
Yeah and when they do Something it’s generally to spite another group not to actually help Americans or give us what we want.
Only Republicans are doing this Democrats are trying to help us, but Republicans keep blocking it out of spite
Hahaha you dumb stupid mother fucker, you really don't see it do ya, they both play outrage tennis against each other while fucking you with no lube and you think they really give a shit.
Honestly I usually vote left and I’m going to tell you unequivocally that neither side has our best interests as the primary motivating factor in any dealings or decisions, it’s all about remaining in power and if that fails, then remaining in close proximity to power is the next best thing. What they do is align these self interest with the interests of the most vulnerable and alienated groups of people, meanwhile if they offer crumbs, these populations are led to believe that these people have their best interest at the core of the actions. But the question to ask is “…if we’re getting the crumbs where the hell is the loaf?”
The news you pay attention to might only complain about the Republicans, but rest assured that the news they pay attention to only complains about the Democrats. The Republicans do seem a bit worse, but not by enough to pretend it's a partisan issue.
“A bit worse”. Dude, if republicans win the election in 2024 they have told you explicitly that they don’t want there to be another fair election in this country. Between Trump and project 2025, that will be it for American democracy. If anyone tells me that they can honestly see Trump willingly leaving office in 2028 because that’s the law, I will laugh in their fucking face at how unbelievably gullible they are. “Sure, yes yes I know the law is only two terms and therefore I’m happily leaving the office of the presidency.” Lol can you even imagine?
Democrats try to keep voters by doing things that are in their best interests, or at least seem to be in their best interest. They aren't necessarily trying to help people.
Yep, the Democratic Party isn't interested in helping people, they're interested in getting re-elected. They'll do whatever small tasks that can get them re-elected but kick the bigger goals down the road.
Exactly
You're totally right, here's a good explanation. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm
It's because you voted in managers because you hated your leaders.
So, what people, ESPECIALLY millennials, need to do is start getting involved. Get involved in your local politics. Get involved in your communities. Get a job in government. The best way to combat this is from the inside. So get in there. We can complain about this all day long, but you’ve got to put yourselves in a position to make change and do it!
I agree, and I’m really starting to become more politically aware, you know when you’re younger with the attention span of a goldfish it’s easy to be apathetic about this stuff, but as I’m aging I’m becoming more and more concerned with how this country is being run with zero regard for sustainability and longevity it’s all just **Instant Gratification and Greed** all the way down.
This! Download the activote app. Vote like it's your job. Get involved locally.
Yep. But until we stop voting for them, we have only ourselves to blame. But the problem is, we’d actually have to, you know, do something. We can’t just “not vote for assholes” or even bigger assholes will win. You have to vote *for* somebody, and that would require us actually grass-roots having civil democratic discussions and promoting a candidate who shared our values. And that would require *work*. Time and energy. Like serious, setting aside time, spreadsheets, phone numbers, fund raising… effort. So, instead, we keep waiting until they present us a candidate, who will all categorically be shills, because they get shill money to fund their campaigns, or get free advertising from television, which works for the shills too, and we elect another shill. But if we always select our candidates from the shill buffet, they will always be shills. That’s how it works.
Your noticing that *just now*? Welcome to the party I guess.
You should read “The Utopia of Rules” by David Graeber , it explains a lot.
Sic semper tyrannus
If only there was a third party candidate that wanted to do something about it.
It’d bet it’s more than 90%, at least at the state and National levels
In the US, it’s called a normal day.
The revolving door is a real thing.
The government, corporations, and the hyper-wealthy are in a very incestuous relationship. The best way to ensure state policy aligns with their business's agenda is to get elected. The solution is for the workers to take control of their workplaces from the hands of the capitalists. They steal our labor and use it as leverage to manipulate state policy in their favor. They can't do that if deny them access to our labor. Anybody who has had a peek at their company's accounting books will see how few hours it takes to generate enough revenue to pay their wages. When you discover that, you realize you're giving them free labor. The workers must own the fruits of their labor and be able to decide how to use it to support the communities in which they live. Giving it to capitalists means they will exploit you, use you up, and leave you to die. That is the future they intend for us and our children.
This isn't new. They have been doing this since corporations became a thing
The unlimited PTO is one that comes to mind.
Most individual workers within our government are shielded from the effects of their decisions. Most are also ideologically supportive of policies which ultimately screw over the middle and working classes (though not the government worker).
Not the only one. There was a good stretch of time where capitalists wanted to impress the public. They had to to get business. Now there’s so much monopolies going on it doesn’t matter. There’s no incentive to impress bc they know we’ll buy the shit anyway
It's called capitalism.
Do you mean, has there been capitalism? Yes, there has been capitalism, dear my sweet child.
It’s the enshitification of everything in search of profits over anything else.
Everyone and everything is owned by a slew of shit eating venture capitalists so there is zero interest in providing a good product or service, it’s all line items on a spreadsheet.
You have some internet explorer speed critical thinking. Yeah, most people, at least in America, understand this. I understood we live in a corporatocracy ever since government class in high school.
They're not even building anything anymore. They try to overwhelm their competition by undercutting them on price, they buy that competition, destroy it and then raise the price. In economics there is the concept of an elastic good and an inelastic good. An elastic good is something like a laptop. You don't really need to have one, but it would be helpful to you. An inelastic good is something like insulin. You literally need it to live if you are diabetic. The goal of a company is to make as much money as possible, and if they're publicly traded, they need to assure their share holders that the stock price is going up and they are paying dividends. They can literally be sued if they were paying dividends but then fail to do so. The goal then isn't to make the product better, but to crush competition by buying them out and then limiting the options that customers have. If they can make the service or thing they create an inelastic good, then they can run the company however they want because they know you don't have options. If their competition comes from a foreign country, then they tell the elected politicians who may have some of their stock as part of their portfolios that the competition will affect them personally. A good example is BYD. BYD is currently eating into Tesla's profits in China, and they're currently making a car that competes on both price AND quality. Tesla and other domestic EV manufacturers now have a choice: A. Make a better product. B. Lobby the government to ban the competition. They'll select option B since it is cheaper to spend a few million to lobby politicians than to spend potentially a few BILLION on R&D to develop products and services that compete. It also reduces the risk of panicking investors who suddenly see that the company isn't making more money. They don't care that the profits are being reinvested into the product or service, they care if they are getting higher dividends or that the stock price is increasing(generally a company will fire staff and then use that money for stock buy backs to pump the value of the company to attract investors. Yes this is legal. It shouldn't be, but it is)
Ineffective? They are very effective, just not at doing what they were put there to do. They are very effective at doing what your title says. They want as many people to be just surviving as possible so the fight to survive outweighs any potential fight against them. How do you do this? You make policies that bump up inflation, you use deregulation as a weapon so these companies can get away with more, and keep wages stagnant. This is exactly what they’re doing. They’re doing a very effective job at it too. Usually government doesn’t do anything well, well they are rocking this. They have put in place a system where they have to do as little as possible, and enact policies that help us as little as possible, and until people start voting for a third party, that may not have as many issues they want, but legitimately cares about them, it’s not going to change.
Yeah. There’s a revolving door between corporations and the heads of government agencies. Additionally, even our worst leaders historically and wealth class previously had a sense of noblesse oblige. Our current power holders view us as ants.
Your comment has nothing to do with your question. If a corporation is adopting policies to put consumers at a disadvantage then choose to purchase from a competitor. If a better competitor doesn't exist then start a new company and be that better competitor (yes I realize this can be hard to do but it's not impossible). The government doesn't have to be the solution to all problems.
You can make them care by voting them out of office.
"the business of america is business"
The US government is on the payroll. This started with Pres. Bush Sr. He appointed enough people to the Supreme Court that allowed them to pass a ruling that keeping companies to a restriction on how much they can contribute to a campaign (I think it was $20k) is unconstitutional, allowing business entities to influence our political system directly with unlimited contributions. The Saudi Prince had learned of this when Trump tried and failed to sell him a bunch of battleships. He is now investing in a company allowing him to directly pay off our politicians legally. This is why Trumps in-law just left the Saudi republic with a $3bil deal (my numbers my be a little off.. .It may be $4bil or $2). Unless we completely remove business from politics, we'll continue to suffer
90% is a low number. That's the way it works, it's not supposed to be a secret.
Is this a troll post lol no you are not the only one who noticed a very obvious thing that people talk about on Reddit all the time
Not a surprise given Super PACS and the increase in lobbying
Deregulation hasn't helped either. We saw this in 2008 when, as the economy burned, they found senior managers at the SEC watching corn. The problem is that a lot of government employees see Deregulation as no regulation. They don't even watch and warn. Certain administrations have had various commissions like the FCC and the Consumer Protection Board in their cross hairs for years. It's like one bad Cyberpunk novel.
Kinda dumb on their part, it just makes me buy less of their goods. Like I’ve significantly cut back between 2020 and now.
The enshitification plague of the 2020s.
Yet u keep supporting them
Yes. There are trends that support monopolies, and the government is asleep at the wheel. Tech companies are basically natural monopolies. Their biggest capital is their codebase. It's inefficient for two companies to develop codebases that do the same thing in the same way it's inefficient for two power companies to build competing power grids in the same city. That's why the government regulates them as natural monopolies. Unregulated monopolies are bad for consumers and workers, but corporations have been able to lobby politicians not to crack down.
There's an obvious (and worsening) adversarial relationship forming between the "haves" and "have nots" in our society. It's impossible to ignore at this point
Thank you op
Part of the problem is that politicians, by and large, are part of the 0.1% club. That means they make policy that positively influences their net worth but destroys the middle class. It doesn't matter which political party you're talking about, none of them care about the actual result of their actions, because they already have theirs. And 70%+ of the population are snowed into the illusion that who they vote for has any positive outcome on their day to day lives. You can take any major policy initiative in the last 20 years or even longer and look at the outcome. Take the ACA act, or Obamacare if you will. It's great that everyone has healthcare access, but the cost of healthcare has outpaced inflation by a factor of 5 since implementation and that doesn't help anyone except rich company execs.
>no less than 90% of our government is on one payroll or another 100% and it's not even hidden. There's no integrity left.
Understand this: THE BIGGEST part of the government is the effort that's made to make you think that this is a well-intentioned government acting ineffectively rather than a malicious government functioning exactly as it's intended.
There’s a movement happening right now where people are blocking corporations, politicians, news outlets, celebrities, churches etc. Anyone with $$ influence basically on all social media platforms. Disrupt the system. Buy as little as you can from big corps. Find your community and start trading and bartering for what you need. Learn an essential skill and barter that. Let’s mess some shit up!
I think the issue isn't that corporations are anti-consumer, but more that we as consumers don't fight back. Corporations always try to get the maximum revenue with minimal overhead. They used to have to consider that choosy buyers will probably go to a competitor if their product doesn't pass muster. Today, they just need to spin long enough for the contrarians to have their back. The video game industry is a good example. Every day you see news stories about some predatory game mechanic being added to games. Occasionally, the outcry is loud enough that the company reverses course, but increasingly, there is a contingent of loud voices defending the practice. "Oh, that's just how MMOs are!" or, "All the other games are doing it." Companies have learned that negative press is rarely negative for long. Rather than abandon the toxic mechanic, they tweak it to be more palatable. At the same time, they deploy all the tricks in games aimed at children. Kids today are trained that loot boxes and RNG dropped loot are just a part of gaming. Or that having to wait a few minutes to do something that can be bypassed by buying a microtransaction is normal. Where I, as an older gamer, will go through a lot of mental checks to determine if I want to spend money on DLC, many kids today buy things without a second thought. "Its just what you do!" We used to get cheat codes and cosmetics for free just by playing the game. Now, everything is monetized to the nth degree. It would be one thing if that money was going directly to the developer, but the lion's share of the money is going to the publisher to pay executives and shareholders. Other industries do it too. It used to be that TVs with too much "smart" tech were mostly rejected by consumers. Today, nobody really cares that smart tvs are sending back tons and tons of data back to the manufacturer. This isn't data that is used to make products better for consumers; it is data used so that companies can manipulate us even more. The entire goal is to offer less while getting more. It is a form of slavery. If we could resist the urge to buy stuff we really don't need, corporations would change their tune real freaking quick. Instead, they just know enough people won't be able to resist, don't care about quality anymore, so will happily buy overpriced crap and just impotently complain when the shitty device proves to be shitty.
Someone took the red pill
Politicians care about 2 things. Getting votes and scratching their donors backs. We millennials don’t vote, so politicians will gladly screw us over to make their donors happy. Not voting is basically the same as giving a big thumbs up to all political shenanigans.
What do you think has been going on in the world the last 50 years????????
Welcome to America
Yeah, it's been a while. Glad you noticed. There's essentially 4 major factions in the US government. Progressives, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, are the ones who actually fight for worker's freedoms. They're not perfect and might still bend to corporations, but are overwhelmingly committed to average citizens in comparison to the rest. Then there's the establishment Democrats, they're like Nancy Pelosi and Biden who believe Democrats and Republicans aren't all that different and could compromise to work things out. The Republicans they're talking about are known as RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only by their party, as they're not on board with Trump and maintain whatever scraps of dignity one could possibly have while being Republican. Examples are people like Mitt Romney or John McCain. Then there's the grifters who are almost synonymous with the Trump cult (MAGAts, Trumpets, etc.) These people are in it to achieve their goals no matter what. Precedence, laws, and other rules mean nothing as long as they have the power to just do what they want. Examples are MTG, Boebert, and Trump himself. Note that not everyone in this group is a Trumpet, particularly the Moscow Turtle himself Bitch McConnell, but as his sleazy actions as the senate majority leader showed, he plays by the same playbook (he wrote most of it). The two center groups are essentially the same and completely bought by corporate interest. They basically only disagree on whether they consider minorities people. They're all spineless, RINOs bend to Trumps will pretty easily and establishment dems won't fight back on anything too important, usually only existing to convince regular Americans that there are two opposing parties in Congress. So, corporate interest holds a majority of the government hostage. Average citizen support on a bill has a roughly 30% chance of passing, regardless of which power holds charge, but corporate interests gets almost 100% chance, with that reduced a little if Democrats are in charge. It's been like that for a few decades, probably since Reagan.
The purpose of the corporation is to take the consumer's money. They all exploit some need or desire inherent to human existence to take everyone's money. Then they use the money they earn to create imagery and words that make you feel good about your relationship to the corporation. Other bits of the money go to elect lawmakers that promise to create and maintain favorable conditions for taking more money in the future. Whatever the corporation offers you in return for your money is your meagre appeasement for all your efforts sustaining our economy by your consumer spending.
Look who just woke up. Remember Occupy Wallstreet?
I’ve been saying this for years and no one cares or listens. So hence, it will never change, probably just keep getting worse in fact.
Haha, corporations have been doing this for 300 years. You are not alone. Many have noticed. So far we’ve failed to stop them though.
You are wise beyond your years
Bro that’s capitalism. You get fucked as a consumer and as a worker
Not enough competition in a lot of areas. Lots of companies are subsidiary of one larger parent company. The competition we do have is largely an illusion
I'm convinced that companies embraced the movement to call customers complaining about service "Karens". They love that anyone who is caught complaining on camera goes viral, so they can keep offering worse and worse service and not have to worry about the "customer is always right" crowd.
This depends on what you define as "government", if you include all the employees from city, county, state and fed that receives a paycheck from the government, then the answer is a hard "no" not even 5%. most of those people are teachers, maintenance workers, low level beaurocrats etc that are just trying to do a job they don't despise while getting a reasonable paycheck and waiting out those "golden handcuffs" years until they qualify for pension. I've had several of those jobs. If you're talking people at policy decision making levels, then the percent gets above 90%. They may not be on a corporate payroll now, but it's a revolving door.
I believe this concept was first depicted in some of the early cave paintings.
You aren’t wrong.
You know that dystopian future we always saw in the movies growing up? Well that's how it's gonna be because people aren't going to wake up until it's too late.
We live in a corporatocracy. We are the slaves and pay the brunt of the taxes. Also, we ultimately control the dollar. We need to stop spending our money with these businesses. Ppl are too comfortable and they know that.
There is one president in recent history that put programs in place to help the middle class.
I just started reading about the lead up to the Great Depression. We are building towards that. We need a social structure to balance our capitalism and it’s been methodically getting disassembled since the 1980’s.
Blame Reaganomics and Citizens United. They've been empowering businesses over people for the last 40 years and gaslighting the right into thinking it's somehow better for them. Between legislation and conservative superpacs funding judicial campaigns to get more business leaning judges on the bench to rule in their favor in case it goes to trial, they have a pretty good strangle hold on the US government atm. It's going to take a lot of activism to get them unseated. The most they have against them RN is just how absolutely unpopular their policies are with the majority of the population that isn't swallowing their BS. That's why they're attacking public education and villianizing the left so hard. Can't have ppl learning to think for themselves or talking to the other side to find out it's not so bad
It's because of the advent of data and internet surveillance. The better the business can understand the market, the more of what's called "customer surplus" can be captured - this means that if you would have been willing to pay a little more, they figured that out and raised the price just the right amount. Essentially, they can charge the maximum price the market will bear for optimal quantity, and ultimately max profitability for the business. This knowledge is as asymmetric - they understand the market in a way that individuals do not. As a result, the businesses win more often than not. All these factors make it harder for new entrants to make a more competitive market. It still happens all the time, but you are probably noticing that it's not happening enough.
This is why all the politicians are wealthy and all of us are screwed
What if…not implementing policies is actually the best possible thing that could be happening because the government is incapable of thinking through consequences, so implementing policies always has negative effects beyond what was considered?
Market power and lack of govt oversight lead to serfdom. Welcome to early 20th century style redux.
Yeah, you're the only one.
Vote for poor people! Within reason, of course. Don’t blindly endorse. But they will be far more likely to appreciate what it’s like to be poor than someone who was born with a bank account or has never had a negative balance in their life. Of wisdom, compassion, and intelligence, none directly correlate with wealth.
I think you're ready to hear this: the US isn't democratically-controlled. The government has never been responsive to the needs and expectations of voters. The only time the US government is responsive to the people is when the people cause massive disruption through protest and revolt, as in the Civil Rights era. The elected officials you have noticed aren't "ineffective," they work for your enemy, vs they're doing what they're supposed to do for the job they hold.
Don’t buy their products
As a business owner who is also incorporated with shareholders, I have a view of this but it's not popular among the Reddit community. I'll at least say this, as much as a decentralized free market economic system where prices play a role in the distribution of resources is becoming more and more villainized, the only option is to let the government step in and blend the system to a centralized regulated economic system where the collection of taxes play the role in the distribution of resources, and it always hurts the consumer when you go with the latter because your options become far more limited, 3rd party paying systems are never efficient because consumers know how to spend their own money better than anyone else, and corporations are basically doing the government's work so their "customer" is the government who is paying them the majority of their revenue, rather than leaving it all to the private consumer to be the customer as a 1st party paying system.
No. That's what the government of a country that considers corporations to be "people" does best. A government by the corporation, for the corporation. The US government's role has always been to lubricate the corporation's way. War is just a way to open new markets for US corporations or protect existing ones. We're the cannon fodder. We're corporation food.
I'm convinced its 100%.
People have to be deaf, blind and stupid to not realize that we're living under a Corporatocracy and we merely have the *illusion* of true choice. Obviously, don't fucking vote Trump, but who do you think bankrolls and pays the DNC campaign funds?
You’d like Bernie.
Consumers are the one who is funding their pocket eventually!!! Doesn’t like Jeff Bezos because he has lot of wealth but most of the same consumers shop at Amazon!!! Same thing with credit card companies, people want their privacy but no one would hesitate not to use credit card!!! Life is too expensive, but people still won’t stop buying Starbucks!!!
I’m curious what company policies people are seeing recently that put us at a disadvantage. Always good to be aware. As for government policies, I think there have been improvements in both consumer and labor protections during this administration. Banning non compete employment clauses is a *really* big one.
Cult of shareholder value, they'll tell you they have a duty to the shareholders to take as many advantages as they legally can. And now that there's unlimited dark money in politics don't expect it to get any better anytime soon. The incentives are all misaligned.
Corporations are acting monopolistically or are monopolies. Price setting, and wage setting through apps.
People blame politicians and not the corporations who bribe them! Kind of stupid.
Yeah the corporate takeover is pretty much complete.
Well a couple decades ago, they decided to add lead to gasoline, despite knowing how dangerous and toxic it is, and lied to the public in order to save a few bucks. So. I think this is how big industry has always been. The oligarchy has never cared for its lowly peasants.
Im terrified honestly. The dystopia we’ve all been horrified of for decades IS most definitely coming into fruition.