91–100 of 100 posts
Both workforces are union and I doubt employees will see much benefit from this. I would expect to see the unions block this unless they get major concessions.
>I would expect to see the unions block this unless they get major concessions. I can understand mergers being blocked by regulators, but what powers do unions have? What was the last time a merger was blocked by an union?
Nationalize the rails. Let companies compete on their rolling stock.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>More importantly, no reasonable person would skip the $85 Billion (with B) price tag which is a definite proof of my words above. Why is $85B automatically bad? Is it just because it's a large sum of money?
> Why is $85B automatically bad? I didn't say automatically, I referred to "my words above" - that kind of money, and the profits on top of it, can only come from monopoly pricing and it's a strong sign that the business in question is operating in near monopoly conditions. In most of the world, railroads (and other roads) are government owned because it's hard to make that kind of business competitive plus there are…
In many parts of the world, railroads were originally private enterprises. The US is perhaps exceptional here in that they never nationalized theirs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "People who disagree with me about a railway company merger cannot possibly be reasonable, So according to you, I somehow stated that disagreement with me makes somebody unreasonable, and in support of that you provided... a fictional quote. Your strawman isn't simply unreasonable, it's aggressively dishonest. > "and instead must be mustache-twirling villains" is certainly an interesting take. Now you offer halluci…
> > There are reasonable people who think this merge would be good > No there aren't You did state that disagreement makes you unreasonable.
No, I didn't, and there's no such claim in the words you so selectively quoted. Outside of that, I used the specific facts of the case to show that it's unreasonable to call the merge good.
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What happened to antitrust is you guys had an antitrust system that was going way too far (think breaking up regional gas stations too far) and then nixon appointed Rehnquist to the supreme court in 1972, then Reagan appointed him chief justice in 1986. Rehnquist made decent arguments for reforming that that were then taken too far over his tenure (and continuing to this day) and now we have multinational oligopolies…
I meant more recently. Lina Khan was making progress and even Tr*mp seemed to be taking a harder line on the tech companies in particular.
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Could you explain why you think any "startup" "needs an exit"? Why should we accept businesses that cannot persist on their own? This comment caught me off guard with how blatantly VC-sycophantic it is.
> Could you explain why you think any "startup" "needs an exit"? Because it is, and always has been, profit over product (and people).
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You guys? How many people on HN do you think were around so that they could vote for Nixon in 1968?
I think that referred to Americans
Nationalize the rails. Let companies compete on their rolling stock.
There are some good theoretical arguments for such a structure, but OTOH experience trying to apply it on railroads hasn't been exactly positive. UK probably being the prominent example.
Ensuring full utilization of Positive Train Control could allow a lot more traffic (including a lot more passenger rail, and make it a first class citizen of the rails) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control
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What great progress was made under the previous administration?
Lawsuits against Meta, Amazon, Google, Kroger, etc. They were actually starting to enforce antitrust laws. Tr*mp DOJ actually started the Google one.