161–170 of 378 posts
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> Fundamental issue is the expectation that all public companies must keep growing and show profits quarter after quarter, year after year. This is obviously unsustainable. Hey, feel free to invest your retirement savings in a company that doesn't grow profits year after year, I'm sure you'll do great!
Not all companies exist solely as an investment vehicle.
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And hundreds of millions of reasons why government-led heavy-handed internet oversight is worse. I also included other options such as education. But I'll take any option, including the status quo, over what I consider the nuclear option that often has unintended consequences regardless of original intent.
Government-led heavy-handed oversight is so terrible that it also gave us rivers free of coal sludge, products that work as advertised, drugs that have to be tested before they are sold, airplanes that usually don't crash, and cars that are safer, more fuel efficient, and cleaner then they were before mandated seat belts, air bags, emission limits, and mileage gains. At this point, the nuclear option, like the GDPR,…
My point is that governments have a “long and shitty track record” too.
Not saying that government is bad, but it’s clear that governments, when given the power, can be far more dangerous than any company. They can do a lot of good as well, but they have a pretty bad track record.
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> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?
A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?
Make no mistake, with all the stuff going on in China (political imprisonment, "Social Credits"), it is almost certain that if Google was to share data with the Chinese government it will lead to human rights abuses, ruined lives, imprisonment and maybe even death penalties, not because somebody is a hardened criminal, but merely because they (unknowingly) googled the wrong things.
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> Fundamental issue is the expectation that all public companies must keep growing and show profits quarter after quarter, year after year. This is obviously unsustainable. Hey, feel free to invest your retirement savings in a company that doesn't grow profits year after year, I'm sure you'll do great!
Many do and many don't grow profits but rather sustain profits year after year, and they do great.
Yep, their value never changes, which means that if you invested your savings in them, you'd get no returns.
Tell me, where do you invest your retirement savings?
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>Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out. Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.
I could understand making that that argument in a thread about Starbucks, but saying that about Google is suspiciously naive. There are companies with which it's not only difficult not to do business with, but impossible. Even a person that is not using the internet at all will still have some of their information sucked into the gaping maws of Facebook and Google through their social circle.
But despite how bad all of this is, it is still an easier thing to accomplish than deciding to avoid your government. In the end, if I'm willing to isolate myself enough, Google won't have my information. But even if I go totally off the grid, the government will still make demands of my and if I refuse them they will seek me out, using agents who are armed and who have far more leniency to use violence to make me comply.
I'm not trying to say that one can easily avoid large corporations. In some cases it would require significant changes. But for as hard as it is, it is still easier than trying to avoid the government who wants to do something with/to you that you don't want done.
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>Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out. Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.
> Companies are easier to not do business with. Some companies, however at a certain point, it becomes extremely difficult to not doing business with specific companies. For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax. Also, how would you stop doing business with Google. You cannot simply stop using the search engine or Gmail. You would have to block (or stop using) websites using Google Analytic…
I can't speak to every area of their business, but as a credit consumer: You freeze your Equifax credit report and only work with lenders who will accept pulling a report from a different agency.
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While I'm not a fan, this is the crux of the Charles Koch book "Good Profit." In short, government oversight / over-reach quickly becomes a game of favoritism and distorted markets. Like it or not, it's hard to argue with that theory.
Not really: "When companies become too large it quickly becomes a game of anti-competitive actions and distorted markets" Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out.
I see it differently. Everytime I reach for my wallet I'm voting.
On the other hand, the government "market" has been cornered by two parties. We get to vote for their henchmen & henchwomen who (self) serve their parties - parties that are bought and paid for by forces we can't see nor control - more than the citizens who elected them.
With rare exception, my wallet has more power than your vote. Anyone who tells you otherwise needs a good history book.
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Many do and many don't grow profits but rather sustain profits year after year, and they do great.
> and they do great Yep, their value never changes, which means that if you invested your savings in them, you'd get no returns. Tell me, where do you invest your retirement savings?