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#unregulated capitalism

bunnyhugs22 · 6 months

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#capitalism #unregulated capitalism #adhd #adhd problems

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rageofathousandsols · 1 year

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The problem isn’t capitalism, the problem is unregulated capitalism. We need to put caps on how much CEOs can earn, especially in relation to their workers. We need to put a cap on how much profit a company is allowed to make before they are required to invest most of that back into the company. The idea that any company can increase its profit year after year is a ludicrous joke that is destroying the world around us, not just in the US.

Cap corporate profits at 5%. That’s more than they give us for annual cost of living increase, but it should satisfy the investors that they’re still making more money. If they think they’ll be earning more money than that 5% during the year, they can cut cost of sale, increase wages, hire new employees, invest in improved infrastructure, all those things that they claim there “isn’t money for”. Like hell there isn’t money, the money is just going to executives and investors who aren’t doing the daily grind of the work, people who aren’t earning the money and wouldn’t be receiving it if not for others doing the labor.

#capitalism #unregulated capitalism #eat the rich #always increasing profits are going to kill us all #sick and tired of this #capitalistic hellscape

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simperius · 4 months

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My favorite thing about John Oliver trending on Twitter for last night's episode is that all of the haters are saying some variation of "He's trying to bribe a member of the Supreme Court he should go to prison for this 😠😒"

You nailed it bud, that's the heart of the bit. They spent thirty whole minutes making that exact point. It SHOULD be illegal, and YET-

#its actually killing me inside a little that the segment has not made it to youtube yet #john oliver #last week tonight #we love unregulated capitalism but wait not like THAT #don't make me LOOK at it

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revoevokukil · 4 months

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Remember when I was asking whether I should make video essays?

Yeah, scratch that.

It looks more like we are back to the age where it makes sense to remove everything from the Internet, copyright everything IRL, and go nail your creative works to the church door or send them around with mail.

#not like it couldn't be foreseen that capitalism + AI in an unregulated environment will result in this kind of cowboy capitalim #but the speed and extent to which everything that is fundamentally valuable and beautiful is getting enshittified #really takes the biscuit #personal #ai #tumblr #human creators #human artists

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pickledfingers · 1 year

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Look guys. These people are going to die absolutely horribly, in a metal tube which was designed in a claustrophobic horror movie, and they will be aware that help probably isn't coming. One of the people on board is a teen who was going on a trip with his dad. That's absolutely awful.

But on the other hand.

These people were pitched an ocean trip by a man with a supervillain name, who has previously gone on the record multiple times as saying "safety sucks! Survivorship bias is a myth and that's why I don't need safety or a gps!". They saw the sardine tube built out of camper van parts with no seats or safety, and an Xbox controller to move it round. They breezed through signing the waiver which mentioned death three times on the first page.

And they still went "yep, I'll pay a quarter million for that."

Maybe this is just natural selection at work.

#titanic #oceangate #my heart honestly hurts for the teen #he doesnt deserve to suffer for his idiot billionaire dad's ego #but also im torn because this is literally written like ai generated satire #like this story is performance art about the dangers of unregulated capitalism #its hilarious

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whydidisavethistomyphone · 10 months

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Unregulated capitalism is a slippery slope to the bottom. Forcing people to pay for essentials like food, water and shelter means that someone can buy them up and ransom them back to you. Your money or your life.

#capitalism #unregulated market #free market #race to the bottom #political cartoon #comic #your money or your life

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dirhwangdaseul-archived · 1 year

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What do you consider to be mexican middle class culture and why do you hate it so much?

mmmm i had a longer response months ago and it deleted so i got unmotivated to answers this but i think i simplified it: its actually negative culture, basically nothing except the directive of success which must be dictated by the images created by the west's white supremacy image of economic success, so mexican homes look like european tv homes or us tv homes, and the propaganda from the us in particular gets translated simply for us and so the images there like coca cola's or cleaning products, or beauty items and men's health carries usually images of family or the self and so people wanna be that, which means that the only times these mexicans connect to the culture is with popular celebrations, or the food of which they usually have no indepth knowledge of origins, importance or even proper ingredients to prepare either, there's a disconnect entirely with the self and the very definitions of community and culture and all of these things are unspoken, you're expected to acquiesce silently, to conform, to not confront, which creates very tense and often abusive relationships for not complying to that image and daring to challenge its capitalist and white supremacist roots because the thing is that is not new and it happened right after spain was expelled, very few criollos ever truly examined the cruelty and power of their own families in favor of simply gaining control of ignorant populations idk sth like this

#i had sources and shit but ugh whatever just go to twitter and the whitexicans stories and tags and you'll see #you'll see how empty mexicans that make up the visibility of media and rep and even access to technology are #towns with poverty maintain culture due to the isolation provoked by shitty private transport systems #and gvt losing control to foreign industries often unregulated snd able to abuse the resources of a region #is a whole disaster of parasitic relationships from big powers but mostly white supremacy wnd its capital #méxico #el suco answers #basically people raised by white supremacy in media and money #and only the bare links of language and dates on a calendar as 'traditions' make them mexican so

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e3khatena · 3 months

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One of my coworkers is about to celebrate their one year anniversary with the store I work at and they’re still a minor.

Thinking about how so many people I knew were conditioned and told to get a work permit at 15 or 16 and then jump straight into work. Thinking about how many of those kids had no choice, money’s tight at home. Thinking about the kids that will spend ten years with a place being paid less than $15 an hour and suddenly realize there’s no upwards mobility.

Thinking about how we glamorize child labor by telling the kids that they can buy microtransactions in their favorite games. Kids with gambling addictions that have to work 20 hours and try to get more under the table, away from the watchful eye of the labor board, so they can try to get one more Genshin pull, one more Battle Pass, more V Bucks or Super Credits or Robux to stay competitive and in the loop. How fear of missing out has led to kids straight up missing out on being a kid so they can put themselves under the grindstone for one reason or another and see nothing wrong with it all.

See the heartwarming story of the kids who work this bakery. Taking precocious photo ops of kids who have their development and growth impacted by being thrown into the capitalist machine before they can comprehend what’s going on. They claim they have nothing better to do so they ought to contribute, but forget that they do have better things to do. They’re kids. They have friends to chat with and cringeworthy art to make and improve at and cartoons to draw in the margins of math books. They have pets to play with and dinners to enjoy with family and summers at a cheap above ground pool to look forward to.

I wish I had a bigger point to make, but I don’t, and I hate that I don’t and I hate the whole system and I can only hope kids can get something better than this.

#the intersection of late stage capitalism an unregulated market and kids who are being screwed over

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sleepydross · 1 year

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Asking a question about the submarine people

Are you aware that these people had to sign a release acknowledging, and I quote: "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death."

please answer candidly

#submarine #unregulated #the cost of no regulations #rich people #capitalism

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chongoblog · 8 months

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Ay girl they call my dick a metaphor for capitalism cuz of its unregulated growth

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a-dinosaur-a-day · 11 months

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For the record, and I will die on this hill, the actual message of Jurassic Park - including the book and the movie - is that we don't have any control, not even over ourselves.

This works in multiple ways, but especially in a meta way:

crichton was originally trying to write a story against unregulated genetic technology. no one, ever, has this takeaway. so he did not have control over how people take his story.

spielberg was doing that, but also "wow look at dinosaurs, look at how birdie and alive they are". some people have that takeaway. most people don't. so spielberg also does not have control over this story.

(remember guys, death to the author, it doesn't matter that this is what they were trying to say. also crichton sucks so who cares about him.)

most people see the story as "dinosaurs are inherently monstrous and we can't possibly live alongside them." this is not what the story says, at all. the story itself cannot control how people see it.

people who are keen observers of the story see how it is really saying unregulated capitalism leads to bad results - nedry is really the cause of many of the problems and its because he was overworked and underpaid. But this is not the intent of the authors, nor really what the narrative points to (as @thagomizersshow pointed out). So that message falls incredibly flat and has many holes. So not only is that not really the message, it is also not something people with decent meta analysis skills can control.

Throughout the story, it is constantly pointed out how little control people have of their surroundings. Hammond is the obvious example, but every character has moments where they wish they could act differently and can't, because they don't have control.

The theme of chaos runs throughout the entire story, not just because of Malcolm, though obviously he pushes it

Even the dinosaurs don't have control, and that's why they freak out - they want freedom, they want their own lives, but they can't have them. Their lack of control even to the extent that we have in nature leads to their own deteriorating mental states and eventual erratic behavior

all the characters - human and otherwise - are at the mercy of forces of nature beyond their control, throughout. the weather, the island itself, but the humans are at the mercy of the dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs are at the mercy of the humans.

in the end, the characters' choices at the climax are inherently limited by other characters' choices at the start, showcasing how little choice we actually have access to (and thus how little control)

yes, as far as we can tell, living beings have free will and are able to make choices. but what choices we have access to are extremely dependent on both ourselves as organisms and our environments that we live in. We do not have control over anything, not even ourselves.

And that is the message Jurassic Park carries, even if few people ever see it. Because it is so inherent to our lives that we ignore it.

After all... how much of the narratives we have in society imply we all can control ourselves completely?

And how much will that all break down when we admit we can't?

#jurassic park #meta analysis #literary analysis #control #free will

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Intuit: “Our fraud fights racism”

Tonight (September 27), I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Today's key concept is "predatory inclusion": "a process wherein lenders and financial actors offer needed services to Black households but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits":

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2329496516686620

Perhaps you recall predatory inclusion from the Great Financial Crisis, when predatory subprime mortgages with deceptive teaser rates were foisted on Black homeowners (who were eligible for better mortgages), resulting in a wave of Black home theft in the foreclosure crisis:

https://prospect.org/justice/staggering-loss-black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated/

Before these loans blew up, they were styled as a means of creating Black intergenerational wealth through housing speculation. They turned out to be a way to suck up Black families' savings before rendering them homeless and forcing them into houses owned by the Wall Street slumlords who bought all the housing stock the Great Financial Crisis put on the market:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

That was just an update on an old con: the "home sale contract," invented by loan-sharks who capitalized on redlining to rip off Black families. Back when banks and the US government colluded to deny mortgages to Black households, sleazy lenders created the "contract loan," which worked like a mortgage, but if you were late on a single payment, the lender could seize and sell your home and not pay you a dime – even if the house was 99% paid for:

https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Plunder-of-Black-Wealth-in-Chicago.pdf

Usurers and con-artists love to style themselves as anti-racists, seeking to "close the racial wealth gap." The payday lending industry – whose triple-digit interest rates trap poor people in revolving debt that they can never pay off – styles itself as a force for racial justice:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

Payday lenders prey on poor people, and in America, "poor" is often a euphemism for "Black." Payday lenders disproportionately harm Black families:

https://ung.edu/student-money-management-center/money-minute/racial-wealth-gap-payday-loans.php

Payday lenders are just unlicensed banks, who deploy a layer of bullshit to claim that they don't have to play by the rules that bind the rest of the finance sector. This scam is so juicy that it spawned the fintech industry, in which a bunch of unregulated banks sprung up to claim that they were too "innovative" to be regulated:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When you hear "Fintech," think "unlicensed bank." Fintech turned predatory inclusion into a booming business, recruiting Black spokespeople to claim that being the sucker at the table in the cryptocurrency casino was actually a form of racial justice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html

But not all predatory inclusion is financial. Take Facebook Basics, Meta's "poor internet for poor people" program. Facebook partnered with telcos in the Global South to rig their internet access. These "zero rating" programs charged subscribers by the byte to reach any service except Facebook and its partners. Facebook claimed that this would "bridge the digital divide," by corralling "the next billion internet users" into using its services.

The fact that this would make "Facebook" synonymous with "the internet" was just an accidental, regrettable side-effect. Naturally, this was bullshit from top to bottom, and the countries where zero-rating was permitted ended up having more expensive wireless broadband than the countries that banned it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/countries-zero-rating-have-more-expensive-wireless-broadband-countries-without-it

The predatory inclusion gambit is insultingly transparent, but that doesn't stop desperate scammers from trying it. The latest chancer is Intuit, who claim that the end of its decade-long, wildly profitable "free tax prep" scam is bad for Black people:

https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-intuit-black-taxpayers-irs-free-file-marketing

Some background. In nearly every rich country on Earth, the tax authorities send every taxpayer a pre-filled tax return, based on the information submitted by employers, banks, financial planners, etc. If that looks good to you, you just sign it and send it back. Otherwise, you can amend it, or just toss it in the trash and pay a tax-prep specialist to produce your own return.

But in America, taxpayers spend billions every year to send forms to the IRS that tell it things it already knows. To make this ripoff seem fair, the hyper-concentrated tax-prep industry, led by the Intuit, creators of Turbotax, pretended to create a program to provide free tax-prep to working people.

This program was called Free File, and it was a scam. The tax-prep cartel each took a different segment of Americans who were eligible for Freefile and then created an online house of mirrors that would trick those people into spending hours working on their tax-returns until they were hit with an error message falsely claiming they were ineligible for the free service and demanding hundreds of dollars to file their returns.

Intuit were world champions at this scam. They blocked their Freefile offering from search-engine crawlers and then bought ads that showed up when searchers typed "freefile" into the query box that led them to deceptively named programs that had "free" in their names but cost a fortune to use – more than you'd pay for a local CPA to file on your behalf.

The Attorneys General of nearly every US state and territory eventually sued Intuit over this, settling for $141m:

https://www.agturbotaxsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0

The FTC is still suing them over it:

https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/192-3119-intuit-inc-matter-turbotax

We have to rely on state AGs and the FTC to bring Intuit to justice because every Intuit user clicks through an agreement in which we permanently surrender our right to sue the company, no matter how many laws it breaks. For corporate criminals, binding arbitration waivers are the gift that keeps on giving:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

Even as the scam was running out, Intuit spent millions lobby-blitzing Congress, desperate for action that would let it continue to privately tax the nation for filling in forms that – once again – told the IRS things it already knew. They really love the idea of paying taxes on paying your taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

But they failed. The IRS has taken Freefile in-house, will send you a pre-completed tax return if you want it. This should be the end of the line for Intuit and other tax-prep profiteers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

Now we're at the end of the line for the scam, Intuit is playing the predatory inclusion card. They're conning Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender into running headlines like "IRS Free Tax Service Could Further Harm Blacks,"

https://defendernetwork.com/news/opinion/irs-free-tax-service-could-further-harm-blacks/

The only named source in that article? Intuit spokesperson Derrick Plummer. The article went out on the country's Black newswire Trice Edney, whose editor-in-chief did not respond to Propublica's Paul Kiel's questions.

Then Black Enterprise got in on the game, publishing "Critics Claim The IRS Free Tax Prep Service Could Hurt Black Americans." Once again, the only named source for the article was Plummer, who was "quoted at length." Black Enterprise declined to tell Kiel where that article came from:

https://www.blackenterprise.com/critics-claim-the-irs-free-tax-prep-service-could-hurt-black-americans/

For Intuit, placing op-eds is a tried-and-true tactic for laundering its ripoffs into respectability. Leaked internal Intuit memos detail the company's strategy of "pushing back through op-eds" to neutralize critics:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html

Intuit spox Derrick Plummer did respond to Kiel's queries, denying that Intuit was paying for these op-eds, saying "with an idea as bad as the Direct File scheme we don’t have to pay anyone to talk about how terrible it is."

Meanwhile, ex-NAACP director (and No Labels co-chair) Benjamin Chavis has used his position atop the National Newspaper Publishers Association to publish op-eds against the IRS Direct File program, citing the Progressive Policy Institute, a pro-business thinktank that Intuit's internal documents describe as part of its "coalition":

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html

Chavis's Chicago Tribune editorial claimed that Direct File could cause Black filers to miss out on tax-credits they are entitled to. This is a particularly ironic claim given Intuit's prominent role in sabotaging the Child Tax Credit, a program that lifted more Americans out of poverty than any other in history:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/29/three-times-is-enemy-action/#ctc

It's also an argument that can be found in Intuit's own anti-Direct File blog posts:

https://www.intuit.com/blog/innovative-thinking/taxpayer-empowerment/intuit-reinforces-its-commitment-to-fighting-for-taxpayers-rights/

The claim is that because the IRS disproportionately audits Black filers (this is true), they will screw them over in other ways. But Evelyn Smith, co-author of the study that documented the bias in auditing says this is bullshit:

https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/working-paper/measuring-and-mitigating-racial-disparities-tax-audits

That's because these audits of Black households are triggered by the IRS's focus on Earned Income Tax Credits, a needlessly complicated program available to low-income (and hence disproportionately Black) workers. The paperwork burden that the IRS heaps on EITC recipients means that their returns contain errors that trigger audits.

As Smith told Propublica, "With free, assisted filing, we might expect EITC claimants to make fewer mistakes and face less intense audit scrutiny, which could help reduce disparities in audit rates between Black and non-Black taxpayers."

Meanwhile, the predatory inclusion talking points continue to proliferate. Nevada accountants and the state's former controller somehow coincidentally managed to publish op-eds with nearly identical wording. Phillip Austin, vice-chair of Arizon's East Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, claims that free IRS tax prep "would disproportionately hurt the Hispanic community." Austin declined to tell Propublica how he came to that conclusion.

Right-wing think-tanks are pumping out a torrent of anti-Direct File disinfo. This surely has nothing to do with the fact that, for example, Center Forward has HR Block's chief lobbyist on its board:

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4125481-direct-e-file-wont-make-filing-taxes-any-easier-but-it-could-make-things-worse/

The whole thing reeks of bullshit and desperation. That doesn't mean that it won't succeed in killing Direct File. If there's one thing America loves, it's letting businesses charge us a tax just for dealing with our own government, from paying our taxes to camping in our national parks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen

Interestingly, there's a MAGA version of predatory inclusion, in which corporations convince low-information right-wingers that efforts to protect them from ripoffs are "woke." These campaigns are, incredibly, even stupider than the predatory inclusion tale.

For example, there's a well-coordianted campaign to block the junk fees that the credit card cartel extracts from merchants, who then pass those charges onto us. This campaign claims that killing junk fees is woke:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

How does that work? Here's the logic: Target sells Pride merch. That makes them woke. Target processes a lot of credit-card transactions, so anything that reduces card-processing fees will help Target. Therefore, paying junk fees is a way to own the libs.

No, seriously.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

#pluralistic

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unsoundedcomic · 3 months

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Hey Ashley, long time fan of your work (and I have been mercilessly shilling it to any of my friends with a passing interest in webcomics). I recently came across this discussion (https://www.tumblr.com/evandahm/745657404299116544/in-your-viewexperience-is-the-rate-of ) on the nature of how starting and maintaining a webcomic has shifted over the years; I’m curious what your experience has been on this

I have little to contribute to that discussion that hasn't already been said by them :) One thing I didn't see mentioned as much though was the turn away from computers to phones. That's driven a lot of the social media "revolution." Phones helped destroy the internet by locking people into tightly controlled apps, boxing them into postcard sized screens half covered by their thumbs and the glare of the overhead lights. And people exult at the crush of those chains, baby. Their wrists chafe and bleed and they couldn't be harder.

Artists and creatives loved the freedom of the early internet. But I think most normies were always very discomforted by it. Now it's been neutered, power has been gratefully returned to publishers, and Capitalism's back on the throne. Every year more and more control is returned to it. Some of it's subtle, like personal sites requiring the purchase of an SSL certificate so browsers don't mark them as scary and dangerous. Some of it's blatant, like Patreon's unregulated middleman monopoly between artists and their supporters. Some of it's insane, like insisting smears of graphite express informed consent before they're drawn too close together.

None of this is new to artists. Every generation of artists struggles not to be called sexual deviants, struggles to get paid for what they're doing, struggles not to surrender as society gaslights them into believing they should work for free. I guess with webcomics it's a little maddening because it was pretty exciting for a while; but then we had to watch in real-time as the partyhouse was set on fire, and the people that we thought were having a good time, all cheered watching it burn.

But we struggle on regardless because we love what we do, and we love the people who get it :)

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gobbogoo · 2 months

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So! Finished watching the new Fallout show. Twice. I heartily recommend it regardless of if you've played the games.

Thematically speaking, they absolutely NAILED it. Fallout's charm has always come from a specific blend of absurd comedy and grim tragedy. One moment you're being forced to execute an innocent person for your own survival, the next you're having a funny conversation about Shakespeare with a big green man. The show knows when to take itself seriously and when to be silly, and that's very important to get right! The violence especially is handled well. It has a careful balance between campy and gruesome similar to what you'd find in Evil Dead. Just like the wasteland, Fallout's violence is equal parts brutal and absurd.

But what I REALLY appreciate is how the show explores aspects of the world that the games CAN'T! Its occasional flashbacks to prewar America are arguably where the show is at its strongest, because while the Fallout games have always critiqued unregulated capitalism and government/corporate propaganda, they could only ever really do so in the past-tense. The show meanwhile takes full advantage of its ability to jump between present and past, and in doing so manages to use its cold-war setting to make some EXTREMELY relevant critiques of modern America.

Lastly, I feel I should mention it was a delightful surprise to see some not-insignificant nonbinary representation! Not that Disney blink-and-you'll-miss-it crap, either. I REALLY didn't expect that because I know Fallout is one of those older game series that has capital-G "Gamers" as a not-insignificant portion of its fanbase. The sort of people for whom there are only two sexes: "Male" and "Political."

But in retrospect the Fallout series ALSO has games where being gay is a literal unlockable ability that provides unique benefits in both conversation and combat with same-sex NPCs. This really wasn't a big jump from that.

So... yeah! If you for some reason read all this without having seen the show, go see it! It's a fun time!

#fallout tv series #fallout #fallout tv show #specifically the game that considers gayness to be a power is:#fallout new vegas #queer representation #nonbinary representation #fallout prime

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