We live in a capitalist dystopia

[CoffeeHorse]

This is why I buy Checkers now. It's not more expensive than other fast food options anymore, and they really do have the best fries.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Internet pundits invented the word "enshittification" to describe the ruthless monetization of the Internet, because they don't want to admit that there's already a word for this: capitalism.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

The right-wingers are not wrong when they say that capitalism encourages innovation, but the leftists are also not wrong when they say that capitalism encourages ruthless exploitation. There is nothing contradictory about both of those things being true at the same time.

 

[MrBlud]

Most innovations are just more ways to ruthlessly exploit anyway…

 

[NovaSaber]

Capitalism encourages "innovations" like planned obsolescence, making subscriptions out of things that should be one-time purchases, DLC, feature bloat, and spyware...

 

[Pale Rider]

Hospitals owned by private equity are harming patients, reports find

Hospital ratings dive and medical errors rise when private equity firms are in charge.

arstechnica.com

 

[Ungnome]

Private equity hurts pretty much anything it touches. It's essentially legal money laundering for rich people.

 

[MrBlud]

private equity buys out a hospital, saddles it with debt, and then reduces operating costs by cutting services and staff—all while investors pocket millions. Before the dust settles, the private equity firm sells and leaves town, leaving communities to pick up the pieces."

You can replace “Hospital” with anything and that’s 100% private equity’s entire business model.

They should be outlawed or regulated into oblivion.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I don't know how to regulate that without throwing out the whole model of publicly traded corporations. If people can buy it, they can do what they want with it. They can destroy it if they want. It's theirs. People shouldn't be able to destroy what they didn't build, but it's hard to enshrine that without making every corporation too big to fail.

The one thing I can think of is to scale back the idea of limited liability. Some debts are obviously the corporation's debts and should stay that way. There are reasons for the system that we have. But we may need some threshold where officers need to at least co-sign it. No more racking up these enormous debt balloons and being able to say "Not my problem" when they cash out. That would break the corporate raider business model right there.

That would break some other things. Corporations do borrow gigantic amounts for legitimate reasons, and this would discourage that. But, maybe they shouldn't be racking up so much debt for any reason.

 

[wonko the sane?]

The only way to stop the corporate greed would be enforce the concept that those corporations always owe an equal amount to the communities they touch and exist in that they do the shareholders.

I have no idea how to force literal psychopaths to be good people. I just don't. No amount of laws or oversight will stop them from trying to hug over literally anything and everything they touch for the sake of money.

Corporations are bad and they shouldn't exist.

 

[Pocket]

At a certain point, a lot of our anti-capitalist ambitions are impossible without officially enshrining into law that rich people are second-class citizens and can be denied some of the rights that the government otherwise takes great pains to uphold, on the grounds that they can do a lot more damage by exercising the same rights than average individuals can. Because there's no way to do away with corporations without doing away with individuals' right to conduct business. One is ultimately just a bigger version of the other.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, particularly in regards to the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws. In general it is very dangerous to give a government the right to prosecute people for things that were legal at the time, but big companies can invent new ways to ruin a lot of people's lives faster than any government can outlaw them. Ideally, it should still be possible to punish them for it.

 

[Ungnome]

Corporations SHOULD NOT HAVE RIGHTS. Corporate charters for any corporation engaged in interstate trade or with shareholders residing in multiple states should have the ability to be revised or dissolved by the federal government. Frankly, if a corporation misbehaves to the point of negligently or maliciously harming people, why shouldn't they be 'imprisoned' by having the federal government take over their board of directors for a number of years.... While we're at it reverse Citizens United and Dodge vs Ford Motor Company.

Knee jerk reaction, I know. Any workable solution would have to have a lot more nuance.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I have no idea how to force literal psychopaths to be good people.

That's the point of my idea. It's very easy for psychopaths to be psychopaths with other people's money. If they have some share of the debts they rack up, maybe they'll think twice about it.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Capitalism: "The profit motive spurs innovation, thus benefiting all!"

The innovation: "We sold the building for short-term profit, paid out huge dividends to ourselves with the proceeds, and now we're leasing it back to the hospital which can't really afford the new rent on a building it used to own, so we have to cut employee benefits. Huzzah!"

 

[Dekafox]

‘Greedflation’ caused more than half of last year’s inflation surge, study finds, as corporate profits remain at all-time highs

Groundwork Collective crunched Commerce Department data to find shocking greedflation results. But there’s evidence of it in a lot more places.

web.archive.org

Archive link because paywall.

Also:

How Google perfected the web

The web is filled with content designed for Google, not humans.

www.theverge.com

 

[Pocket]

Only more than half? I would have figured it was more like...all.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Land rights are so weird. You're signed up on a registry which meticulously tracks the sale from owner to owner, back through the generations, all the way back to the sacred moment in history when the land was stolen by someone with enough power to make his theft permanent.

 

[Spin-Out]

‘Greedflation’ caused more than half of last year’s inflation surge, study finds, as corporate profits remain at all-time highs

Groundwork Collective crunched Commerce Department data to find shocking greedflation results. But there’s evidence of it in a lot more places.

web.archive.org

Archive link because paywall.

Also:

How Google perfected the web

The web is filled with content designed for Google, not humans.

www.theverge.com

gee, it's almost like sociopathic executives are deliberately ******* around with the economy so they can pin it on the candidate they dislike and get a fascist who'll let them do whatever the hug they want and get away with it elected.

oh, wait, that's literally the gameplan.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

The biggest capitalists become fascists because once you reach a certain level of wealth, you tend to start thinking you're so special and so far above mere mortals that you should really be in charge of everything, and the law shouldn't apply to you the way it applies to everyone else.

 

[KidTDragon]

Why you should never retire

Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree are not that fulfilling

www.economist.com

You're already giving 40+ years of your life to Capitalism. Why waste the end of it engaging in leisure and self-fulfillment when it can continue to be put forth in service of our shared master?