This is just the citizenry paying double tariffs. First, we bought the higher priced goods. Now, the companies are trying to take our tariff payments again, this time from the government, to "make up" for the tariff money that we had already paid them in the first place.
What should happen is that $X of the budget should be put into escrow for the next administration to use after these criminals make their way out.
Maybe triple. (1) paid higher prices, (2) the government will issue debt to refund the tariffs to importers who we already reimbursed through higher prices, and then (3) Congress will use the extra debt from the refunds as justification for higher individual taxes to pay for the 2025 tax cuts for businesses.
And the supreme court is to blame for all of this because they decided to invalidate lower court injunctions, reasoning that there was no chance for "irreparable harm"... Yeah, right.
Both the people who voted for the criminal to be president. And the people who supported such a horrible Democratic candidate that she couldn't even win against Trump.
Yes, because that's several million people, and the elected democrat officials count in the hundreds.
It's actually tens of millions, if you count eligible voters that didn't vote. Not to mention the tens of millions of voters for the other Party.
People don't lose elections, campaigns do. And when they do, out of a refusal to accept responsibility, they cast blame outwards. They try to get people to blame each other, rather than the frankly quite obvious people at fault.
People who voted for Trump were pretty clear about what their issues were. They wanted to bully trans and they wanted to stick it to the libs. They were looking forward to liberals suffering. Some of them would never vote for a woman or black person. They liked masculinity Trump projects - aggressive insulting fraudster.
That's exactly the kind of simplistic thinking that I was talking about.
People had legitimate concerns about cost of living, food inflation (look at the charts of food prices 2020-2024), ballooning national debt, military adventures, crime, fraud, expensive housing and rent. I could go on.
Trump's government is unlikely to offer any solutions to the above, but that's a different story. Voting because they wanted libs to suffer... sheesh. Most people are not that dumb and have objective reasons to vote a certain way. Any party that wants to stay in power longer will have to address these issues.
Do you really think an average family is more concerned about trans issues than their inability to afford a house?
Unfortunately you are pretty much out of touch with reality. What parent wrote is true for large swaths of voters (sticking it to libs - any regular US forum I ever opened was full of 'libtards' and other worse insults even on completely unrelated topics... or just go to bible south, even completely ignoring racism and bigotry topic).
Sure, thats not all, then there are folks believing that a criminal, notorious liar, populist and suspected pedophile is going to do magic unheard of in reality. Very smart, what could go wrong...
Solution of the issues you write would move US to highly regulated country maybe like France, which is unpassable in US and would cause massive issues down the line. Also, the issues you list are valid for basically whole world, has many reasons and US republicans are the very last group of people in a long line of people who would tackle specifically those effectively, they usually go into opposite direction.
None of that favored Trump. National debt, military adventures, crime, fraud - all of those are consistently better under democratic administrations. They are consistently worst under republican administrations. Trump himself committed crimes and it was very clear he will be more corrupt then anyone before him. Trump himself talked like someone who will be aggressive ... and here we are with Venezuela, Iran clusterfuck.
> expensive housing and rent
People who genuinely cared about those did not voted for Trump. However, some used these as excuse.
> Voting because they wanted libs to suffer... sheesh.
Yes. I say so because I was actually listening to what conservatives said and did. Yes, if you do not read what they actually say, there was a lot of sane-washing going on. But, you have to ignore what Trump voters were actually saying in conservative places.
> Most people are not that dumb and have objective reasons to vote a certain way.
Their priorities are not what you say they are. It is simple as that.
> Any party that wants to stay in power longer will have to address these issues. Do you really think an average family is more concerned about trans issues than their inability to afford a house?
Frankly, yes, MANY conservative people were radicalized by that prospect. That is why Trump team made created culture war about it prior election and why they do it now too.
It does not matter what favors which administration (btw like I said, food inflation stats look awful during Biden's admin, although covid is probably more to blame). The grass is always greener on the other side, and people that cannot afford rent are just not going to vote for more of the same. It is always a swinging pendulum.
The more I think about these things, the more I am convinced that Marx was right, and we only have a semblance of democracy. There is no fundamental difference between the parties.
Like I said, I am more worried about paying real estate taxes, keeping the house, getting my kids through the college, paying car insurance and being able to afford food, and not having to leave the city downtown before dark. Trans issues... not my concern at all. Immigrant rights - I frankly do not care. The plumber who was unclogging my kitchen pipe today is a Trump voter who is not a fan of this war, and he was mostly complaining about skyrocketting cost of doing business and cost of labor that started shooting up about 5 years ago, and THAT likely was the main reason for his vote. Many people keep hanging out on the forums where niche party darling issues get discussed nonstop, and that creates an impression that most of the population cares about them, but I don't believe that's the case at all.
Anyone who manages to decrease the cost of healthcare, food, gas, improves an economy, etc.etc. will get my vote. That was not Biden, and it is clear by now that will not be Vance. Anyone who talks about immigrant rights ahead of my own, defunding the police and so on will not get my vote.
Unfortunately I always seem to have a choice between a bad candidate and a worse candidate. This time I had to choose between a word salad producer who was a VP of a senile president, and a baffoon. The democratic candidate was as unlikeable as the republican. I stayed home. You guys can attack my position as much as you want, but I am not going to put my financial well-being and that of my kids behind the issues that do not matter much for me, and that is not going to change. I believe the same goes for most of american families.
I'll give you a small example. I live in heavily democratic district. A local government had a referendum a few years ago on permits to build low income housing units, subsidized by local taxes. Housing immigrant families was mentioned. The referendum was a complete fiasco. You would have barely found any Trump voters in the room. People's concern about taxation took precedence.
Last years took us from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump who will likely lose midterms because of many things including the Iran adventure. Neither party offered any tangible advantage.
> It does not matter what favors which administration
It does matter. Republicans are supporting the Iran war right now. Americans in general are not, republicans are in. Conservatives and MAGA even more. So, no, they were not actually worrying about military adventures, they like them.
> The grass is always greener on the other side, and people that cannot afford rent are just not going to vote for more of the same
Oh yeh, actually, data shows they do.
> I am more worried about paying real estate taxes, keeping the house, getting my kids through the college, paying car insurance and being able to afford food, and not having to leave the city downtown before dark.
Funny crime was going down for years. Funny, actual crime rates do not even enter discussion about crime. It was republicans who wanted business like expensive college. Who are against students ability to discharge that debt in bankruptcy.
> Trump voter who is not a fan of this war, and he was mostly complaining about skyrocketting cost of doing business and cost of labor that started shooting up about 5 years ago
Well, maybe he should not have voted for Trump.
> Anyone who manages to decrease the cost of healthcare, food, gas, improves an economy, etc.etc. will get my vote.
It would be a mystery why would someone who want cheaper healthcare and better economy would vote for party that consistently pushes for healthcare to be more expensive and worsens economy voted republican. But republican voters do so while people like you talk about these as if matter for republicans
> This time I had to choose between a word salad producer who was a VP of a senile president, and a baffoon. The democratic candidate was as unlikeable as the republican. I stayed home.
Frankly, if Harris is as unlikable as Trump for you, then I doubt the economic concerns here were drivers of yours stay home action. Because it was super clear where Trumps administration will go - including economically.
> Trans issues... not my concern at all. Immigrant rights - I frankly do not care. [...] Immigrant rights - I frankly do not care. [...] Housing immigrant families was mentioned
Fun fact, Biden deported more people then any president before him. Democratic party was never all that pro-imigrant as conservative propaganda makes them.
As for trans, it was republican party that made that issue and they did gained vote on that.
War - history won't agree with you. Trump started Iran. Biden got us into supporting Ukraine on the other side of the planet. I like neither.
Crime - I don't care about "going down for years". I look at Chicago where I work, and people in my office these days make sure they are out of the south part of downtown before the dark.
The guy's business started nosediving 5 years ago, and you mention Trump again?
Jeez.
Anyway, you really sound like a (not very convincing) TV commercial. I am telling you that neither party improved the life of an average american (or mine if you don't want to generalize), and you are telling me these are not the droids I am looking for. That's the reason I don't like talking to die hard republicans AND democrats. Neither makes any sense anymore, and neither looks beneath the surface. Maybe instead of voting for the side that I like more I should start voting for the party that pisses me off less.
But there are still reasonable folks to talk to from either party, and they are NOT found in this discussion.
Bye.
Not to me.
Both involve us in wars that have nothing to do with us, both are sucking away the money that could be spent on improving things domestically instead of spending it on MIC. Both use lame excuses for justification (WMD vs "fighting for democracy".) One is about protecting private equity access to Ukrainian agriculture, the other one is about denying China access to heavy crude. Both are likely to be losers.
I am sick of both.
> Preventing Ukraine from being taken over by Russia improves US security. Just sitting and doing nothing would be incredibly stupid and amoral.
The only thing it improves is the pockets of the US MIC. It will be taken over anyway, being in Russian backyard. Why didn't you take your broomstick and go fight over there if you are such a believer? Or would you rather leave the meat grinder for the Ukrainians to experience? What's amoral and stupid is that now I have to pay three times as much for heating because of LNG exports.
> But actively bombing Iran is so stupid the US never did it until Trump was elected.
LOL. Obama and Libya 2011 come to mind as a close contender. But I agree with you on this one.
Hehehe. Nice try. All I am saying this is not our fight. If you really think it is, don't be a coward and join in, instead of having Ukrainians die for you.
Thank you for proving what I said at the very beginning of this conversation. Say something that makes perfect sense, democrats like you would label a Putin shill. Say someting against Trump's policy, get labeled a libtard. Both get us into moronic wars.
No wonder I no longer bother going to the polls. Take care.
You keep repeating stupid Russian talking points about the war. Russia invaded Ukraine with the goal of taking it all over and Ukranians are defending their country because they don't want to be part of Russia. This isn't hard to understand.
You must be really dense. I don't repeat anything. I am saying that I am paying through the nose to heat my house as a result. I don't give a flying duck about your Ukraine and Iran. None. Got it? Saving the patch of dirt on the other side of the planet will not motivate me to vote for your party. Reducing cost of living will.
Hopefully more and more people feel the same way.
If you really want to get to the root cause, on the Democratic side it’s the people who promoted/supported/covered up for Biden when it would have been obvious to anyone close that he wasn’t fit for the purpose any more. And Biden himself, for his hubris.
That was why things were rushed and there wasn’t a proper primary. Yes, they could have held a very late/quick convention and would likely not have picked Kamala, but anyone getting the nomination at that late stage would still have been hugely in the back foot.
There is no single root cause in a complex system of checks and balances. Many parts need to fail for things to get as bad as they are now. Trying to reduce everything to a single fault is either stupid populism or blatant propaganda.
IMHO the highest court, which is tasked with delivering timely justice, ought to make their decisions in a reasonable amount of time, and not allow legally questionable executive actions to continue while the legal question is unanswered.
You may consider that populist, but my opinion is that SCOTUS has derelicted their constitutional duty in these trying times.
I agree, but derelicition of duty by SCOTUS during this regime does not explain why a 34-times convicted felon and insurrectionist was even allowed to run for office again. Nor does it explain why the entire Senate keeps rolling over for every wet fart coming from the office of the Pedophile Of The United States.
You can find many other valid issues with the US system listed in this thread. Most of them are valid criticisms, and many of them identify a different underlying cause. Pointing them out or even focusing on a single one is not necessarily populist -- but insisting that there is a singular root cause is.
I love how the root cause is always the opposition, never the perpetrator.
Focusing on the Democrats (who are hot garbage) is such a wonderful way to keep attention focused anywhere but on the almost half the country still supporting a murderous cabal filled with people covering for a bunch of (other??) people who raped children to get pleasure from the sexual torture (yes, it's pretty clear from the Epstein files that they did everything they could to destroy those young children's minds and hearts for sport, and that was the real 'game' they were playing).
But by all means, carry on about bad tactics in the election, surely that is the 'root cause' here.
I don't disagree with you, but I also wonder what exactly the Biden justice department was doing with these files for four years. It seems to me like they were covering for the same people. Being "in the club" is more important to them than party.
1) You seem to think I'm some sort of GOP-pedo-billionaire sympathiser; nothing could be further from the truth. I'll help you slam the prison door and throw away the key.
2) No-one mentioned Epstein in this part of the discussion until you did - I thoughts we were discussing tariffs. I was responding to someone saying that, in the context of the tariff mess, they blame the people who voted for Trump, and "the people who supported such a horrible Democratic candidate that she couldn't even win against Trump". My point was simply on this specific issue, the root cause was the hubris and chain of events that led to Kamala being chosen, almost at the last minute, rather than that people "supported" her in that situation.
(And if you need someone to explicitly state that, yes, they also blame the people who voted for Trump or you get triggered, then consider it confirmed.)
You made a choice to focus on one (less important) half of the equation, and that choice comes with consequences - including obfuscation of the actual perpetrators, who commit crimes against humanity. We have had years of this which enabled our current situation. I don't think it is the right choice to make.
I was not going to pretend to understand your motives via text - not enough information. So I was responding to the concrete effects of your comment whether intended or not, and not to your personal opinions. I was pointing out the other (more important) half that you failed to acknowledge. It's so horrible that just stating it makes it seem like I am 'triggered', when I was just just stating facts.
The conversation is not strictly about tariffs, that was just the starting point. Once it was expanded to Trump and Kamala and the election, the context was far larger and naturally everybody reading would reasonably understand this. You contributed to expanding the conversation, it is normal that discourse would follow from that.
In brief, I think we need to be quite careful to explicitly mention specific evils at this time, particularly because a major tactic of those perpetrating them is making a lot of noise to drown out focus on their crimes.
I focused on the part of the comment that I was replying to that I disagreed with.
Without wanting to be overly reductive, this is the point of discussion: to focus on the points of disagreement, for the purposes of understanding, alignment, or persuasion.
I would have thought that this was obvious, and how people expected discussions to work. I would have said that needing to be thorough and explicitly state each point of agreement, alongside addressing the points of disagreement, was frustrating and unnecessary. But maybe I'm wrong on this, so thank you (genuinely) for giving me this to reflect on.
(RE: "triggered" - maybe re-read what you wrote. Responding to an ostensibly benign comment about the background cause of Kamala being chosen as the candidate, with "such a wonderful way to keep attention focused anywhere but on the almost half the country still supporting a murderous cabal filled with people covering for a bunch of (other??) people who raped children to get pleasure from the sexual torture" certainty comes over as disproportionately and inappropriately emotional and angry in word and tone, to this observer.)
Restricted representative size, gerrymandering, FPTP voting, businesses with resident/citizen rights, the restriction of 42 U.S.C. 1983 to not cover Federal actors...
Tons of goods companies paid tariffs for were inputs for those industries.
Instead of being mad at companies that were forced to pay illegal tariffs, who now want to recoup some of that, be mad at the cause of illegal tariffs. Letting the govt keep the money by fighting over who is a victim, hold the govt feet to the fire so they learn not to do this to begin with.
You really think Trump is capable of learning such a lesson? This isn't a 'they' situation, it's a 'him' situation. The cronies enabling him may well be cap[able of learning such a lesson, but their noses are too deep in the trough of self interest to care.
Ehh, they do a little better, but they are very much run by capital now. Most of their politicians are capitalist investors. And while individuals may get smacked down on occasion, as a whole they still follow the desires of capital holders above all else.
Because we don't want people whose profession is maximally exploiting perverse incentive structures to flourish. A society that grants outsized rewards to bad faith citizens is bad for everyone. The more influence those cheaters have over the economy the worse off we all are.
You should not be able to get rich to the tune of a 600% daily return just because you're insider trading. That doesn't incentivize sharing your information with the market. On the contrary that incentivizes delaying communicating your secret information until the last second to maximize the return on your unexpected information.
Also requires a culture of respect for the people who are handling baggage - an important thing lacking in parts of society in the US, where working fast food is used as a pejorative.
The culture bit is the most important. You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will.
The TSA is security theater, a vast majority of American jobs seem to be competence theater. You only ever tend to see care and craft in small business and actual crafts. It's so rare that it's incredibly refreshing to find anyone in any business that bothers to do good work and take care of the small things.
It's not about respecting the baggage handlers. It's about a culture where you respect yourself such that you are obliged to do the best work you can, whether it's baggage handling, being a CEO, or flipping burgers. Self respect and respect for the job far outweigh any notion of employers or other citizens respecting baggage handlers. They have sophisticated notions of status and face and place in society that are sadly absent in American culture.
You could take the Kansai airport baggage handler team and drop them into any airline in the world, and they'd perform to the same high standard. Take any halfass United Airline baggage team and drop them at Kansai and they'd be breaking guitars, killing dogs, and all the other usual shenanigans just like back at home, and they wouldn't give a flying rat's behind about how their employer respects them or not. They're there for paychecks. Respect doesn't even enter into consideration.
> You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will.
This places the blame solely on the workers. Their CEO earns a ludicrous multiple of their wage. They are treated like shit and are expendable. It’s a two way street, treat workers with respect and and you might get some respect from them.
Yep. The reason employees don't care about their work is that caring for their work is not valued. Box checkers and opportunists proliferate as loyal craftsmen get screwed over repeatedly.
> You could take the Kansai airport baggage handler team and drop them into any airline in the world, and they'd perform to the same high standard. Take any halfass United Airline baggage team and drop them at Kansai and they'd be breaking guitars, killing dogs, and all the other usual shenanigans just like back at home, and they wouldn't give a flying rat's behind about how their employer respects them or not. They're there for paychecks. Respect doesn't even enter into consideration.
The hypothetical of dropping one baggage team into another airport might be true in an immediate timeframe but it doesn't address the core issue - each team was formed in a completely different society, one values celebrity and quick-buck scamming, one values planting trees that cast shade long after you're dead. Pretending like the influential people who steer the most economic activity aren't to blame at all for that difference in culture is insane, especially when we have a felon president who has been pardoning many high profile fraudsters.
> The hypothetical of dropping one baggage team into another airport might be true in an immediate timeframe but it doesn't address the core issue - each team was formed in a completely different society, one values celebrity and quick-buck scamming, one values planting trees that cast shade long after you're dead.
I'd say it's even simpler than that - new people quickly adjust to their workplace culture. Take any individual "halfass United Airline" baggage handler and drop them at Kansai, and I'd expect that soon after, they'd be "performing to the same high standard" - or they'll get managed out.
But then, there's the other thing - take a large team, or worse, take the managers from a half-ass shop and drop them at Kansai, and it's quite likely that in a year, Kansai will be no better than United.
Years ago I had an argument with my HR director at the time. I Was hiring for a position and I said I was willing to pay what was approximately 10-15% above market for the position at the time. He said he could get me a dozen prospects at the market rate or even ten percent below, that I was wasting my budget. I said, "I don't want the people who will work for that, the people I'm looking for know they're worth more." He repeated he felt I was over paying. I said, "look at my head count, and compare it to our competitors. I have half the staff but higher metrics in every category. You don't hear about major or long lasting IT problems here. I'm paying 115% but I'm getting 150% and overall spending less."
When your people feel respected and compensated, they work far better.
> This places the blame solely on the workers. Their CEO earns a ludicrous multiple of their wage. They are treated like shit and are expendable. It’s a two way street, treat workers with respect and and you might get some respect from them.
In southern Ontario there are multiple car factories from various makers. The plants of the Detroit Three are all unionized. There are also plants for Toyota/Lexus and Honda, and after decades of asking, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) or Unifor unions has not unionized them: the employees are not interested.
Seems that the workers don't feel they need a union as a counter-weight to management at Japanese companies.
Them being paid better wouldn't resolve the issue. Updating American culture such that individuals respected themselves, had a sense of shame, operated from a baseline of respect and gratitude for the opportunity to be working in the first place, these things fix the issue. Concurrently, the CEO respecting the workers, the institution, themselves, would result in wages commensurate to their value.
Expecting excellence, putting care and craft into your work, is something that is taught, it doesn't just magically happen.
Paying these same workers more would not noticeably improve outcomes, people would still lose luggage, steal shit, and then have even more money to spend.
The workers and the CEO are products of their culture, and without some sort of specific intervention against the outcomes wrought by those cultural influences, things would continue as before. Serious institutions indoctrinate their members and build a culture oriented around expectations of excellence and care and craft.
Such institutions can't compete in the marketplace we've set up, because it's cheaper to offer shitty service and low product quality, to keep employees expendable, low skill, low paid cogs, and to reward CEOs and management willing to screw over their fellow employees at every opportunity to ensure the number goes up.
That doesn't change unless the culture changes, which would change the regulatory environment, which would allow for things like excellent service and quality to be valued accordingly. America doesn't value excellence, it values "number go up."
I'm interested to hear why you think that better pay wouldn't help the issue. Being comfortable with your living situation and feeling like you're respected in excess of your boss's federal or state legal obligations plays a big role in having the wherewithal to put serious effort into whatever you're doing day to day, and it helps to mitigate the divide between the richest and the poorest among us / bad jokes or insults that originate out of fear of being poor.
> Such institutions can't compete in the marketplace we've set up, because it's cheaper to offer shitty service and low product quality, to keep employees expendable, low skill, low paid cogs, and to reward CEOs and management willing to screw over their fellow employees at every opportunity to ensure the number goes up.
The federal minimum wage has been the same since 2009, but In-N-Out is an example of a company that chooses to avoid blaming the worker or the market or the regulatory environment for all of their business difficulties. They choose to pay well over the California minimum wage, and I don't find it coincidental that I've had better experiences with employees there vs some other fast food locations. Costco has made similar choices with how they treat their employees and they're doing great. No regulation needed, just better leadership.
The CEOs that blame "inevitable" market forces on why they have to treat employees poorly while refusing to look inward will ironically lose out in the market. And at a larger scale, probably the countries too.
It's certainly possible to find people who care about doing a job properly in a western society. Paying a bit more has been suggested on another post as a method of trying to achieve that, but I'd argue that that is necessary but not sufficient. You need to not only pay people a bit more, but also screen them very carefully for the attitude of doing the job properly.
It is a cultural problem. Just paying a bit more won't fix it. By paying a bit more, you might be able to get a larger share of the limited portion of people in the society that care, but you're not changing the people fundamentally, just being more selective.
> Based on recent 2023-2024 data, the average CEO-to-employee pay ratio at major Japanese corporations is roughly 12:1 to 20:1, significantly lower than the 200:1–300:1 ratios seen in the U.S..
We have a bunch of socially minded people providing free value in the form of open source that enjoy the gift they are giving to others. When they become aware that their charity disproportionately benefits selfish people who have opposite inclinations - who employ people to search for exploits, without fixing them, to suck up as much wealth as possible - I'm not surprised they would want to take a step back and ask for a share of that.
And that's totally fine under the same market mechanics you're recommending. If you want maintainers to stop complaining and filing potential petitions asking for funding via taxes etc, just pay them.
> If you want maintainers to stop complaining and filing potential petitions asking for funding via taxes etc, just pay them.
That's exactly what I want. If you want to give your product away for free, that's great! You're a better person for doing so. If you want to sell it, that's great too! You should be rewarded and compensated for building great stuff just like anyone else is.
But what I do not want to see as a citizen and taxpayer is "we want to build this for free, ope now we want to get paid and it's totally not fair that Meta took our free thing and did something productive with it and we need taxpayer dollars.". That's not fair to anyone, and solving that by "mandating" or "requiring" things is anti-free market, and against the free spirit of human creativity and entrepreneurship.
> When they become aware that their charity disproportionately benefits selfish people who have opposite inclinations
Let's not call it all charity though. You get invited to conferences, you get job opportunities you otherwise wouldn't get, you get to feel great about the thing you are working on - there's a lot of unpaid benefits, and under-the-table ones too.
I'm saying if the populace wants taxes to fund open source and votes for it, and maintainers just stop working on open source otherwise that's also the free market. Doing stuff for free and then complaining about when it benefits greedy folks in an outsized way is a negotiation tactic with the public that people are allowed to do.
Sure, people can do anything. As a person/citizen/voter I would probably vote against using tax dollars for open-source work. I'd prefer a less convoluted and more honest approach. Doing something for free and then complaining about not getting paid for it later is super cringe and passive aggressive regardless as to whether or not "greedy people" are using it.
Being an open-source maintainer is just some thing people decide they want to do. There's nothing special about it. If you want to get paid, figure out that arrangement for yourself. If you want to do it for free and give it away because you love it, that's great too. That's what free association is all about.
Taxing me to pay for other people to fund their hobby seems ripe for 2 bad things: 1. if the government is funding it, the government gets a say - doesn't bode well for open-source, and 2 it creates market inefficiencies in a bad way - we fund thing we shouldn't fund and we do so to support a lifestyle or hobby instead of what is truly economically valuable for all.
Needing to maximize shareholder value is a myth. There is no law that requires you to do that - people like to use the idea as an excuse to do scummy business.
Sure, it's a dubious legal requirement at best. But you try telling people that on an earnings call and watch your valuation plummet because you took a long position and the market wanted a next quarter position. And even if you don't care about selling your stock personally, it does impact your ability to raise funds.
That's an incredibly vague standard and courts have repeatedly declined to get involved in second guessing management decisions. Aside from outright fraud or negligence executives can claim almost any business related decision is in the interest of shareholders because they have a reasonable expectation that the future benefits outweigh the costs. Judges aren't going to be delving into financial projections and expense reports to override the leaders of a business.
A widget company could sponsor a soccer team or whatever and say the costs are worth it. Or that same company could not do that and say it's not worth it. Two opposite decisions that both would count as acting in the interest of shareholders.
They also allow people to convince those who trust that prediction markets are accurate barometers of likeliness that certain events will be likely with a meager amount of money.
It gives people who aren't aware of the bot accounts / thumb on the scale the perception that insane crackpot delusions are more popular than they are.
There is a reason Musk paid so much for Twitter. If this stuff had no effect he wouldn't have bought it.
Social media should not allow algorithms to actively AMPLIFY disinformation to the public.
If people want to post disinformation that's fine, but the way that these companies push that information onto users is the problem. There either needs to be accountability for platforms or a ban on behavior driven content feeds.
People lying on the internet is fine. Social media algorithms amplifying the lie because it has high engagement is destroying our society.
As someone who really hates what this unlawful administration is doing, I went to my local progressive club meeting for the first time expecting at least a fraction of what MAGA folks fantasize about - elite schemers developing an actual strategy to fight back.
Instead what I found were a bunch of kind mostly elderly people sharing news that I had read online a week before, and some folks gathering signatures for positions running for office.
You are doing a huge disservice to yourself by staying indoors and making assumptions about stuff that you aren't investigating in person.
It is disappointing to me that people can look at the list of infamous people he has already pardoned, who have paid him, and then expect that he won't continue acting on trend, just because some shallow-book manipulable prediction market, which is primarily a money laundering tool for event fixers, tells us that it's "not likely".
I think that because of my own judgment, not because the market told me. Also, it seems unlikely that someone would burn money to manipulate this market as there's nothing to gain from it.
By the way, Trump literally said he won't pardon SBF[0]. It seems money is not the only factor he considers when handing out pardons.
What should happen is that $X of the budget should be put into escrow for the next administration to use after these criminals make their way out.
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