Comment on Painful day for tech titans as EU finally sinks its regulatory teeth into them
redfox@infosec.pub 8 months agoYou remember how all the US politicians are funded by the same huge corporations and rich people who all benefit from the regulators doing nothing but pretending to care?
Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share, but those politicians have multiple houses and blatantly conduct insider trading every day, but Americans still vote for them time after time?
I’d like to say you could just not use their products, but that means you have to replace windows with some other os, not buy a major manufacturer cell phone, or do much else 🤷
Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share
That’s a minority of US politicians and you know it. Not to mention it’s a minority of a minority of those politicians that get elected.
We got exactly what we voted for and that’s the truly maddening thing.
Part of that is definitely manipulation of representation (i.e. gerrymandering) but not all of it.
The comment was meant to be syndical and sarcastic.
Of course it’s not representative of the entirety.
But it does express my frustration with political hypocrisy and insider trading. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find me any politicians that haven’t engaged in that at some point, to some degree. One of the famous ones that comes to mind is Nancy pelosi, but she is not alone, and this is not particular to one party or another, they both definitely engage in it, it’s been well documented and is irrefutable.
If you look past one party or another, you’d see that it’s a broken system. The fact that it’s legal for our elected representatives to conduct in activities that would otherwise be illegal for the general population is outrageous, and the fact that we all know they do it and they are the only ones that can control it in police themselves is also outrageous. It’s the only self-serving career that I can think of that is completely unchecked, has unlimited benefits for only 4 years of service, and the only ones that can control it or police it is themselves.
Now that I think about it, Johnny Harris did a really good report about insider trading by Congress.
but that means you have to replace windows with some other os
Any problems with installing Linux? Try openSUSE if you don’t like Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian, which are the most often recommended ones. It’s the distribution most polished for that abstract “average user” that I’ve seen. And it’s one of the traditional mainstream ones and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. (Btw all those Arch-based schoolboy distributions are trash and I don’t use them, I also don’t use Arch btw. I use Void.)
not buy a major manufacturer cell phone,|
BQ is nice. It is a major manufacturer though.
These are good suggestions for tech people IMO. I was thinking more general population that just wants to buy a product and use it as is. My mom isn’t going to get a laptop and then install linux. I’d have to. 😇
I’ve never heard of BQ before, so that was an interesting mention. I didn’t look hard enough to find out if it was available in the US.
I think the overall sentiment I’m conveying is that as a consumer, I’d like to just stop doing business with entities I deem bad faith (which is easy to say until you need a new TV and the ‘good’ company TV is twice as expensive). There’s not a lot of choices for average people in this category (big tech). You’ll be exposed to them almost out of necessity. I suppose appropriate regulation for those giant companies, and the US wont, but at least the EU will.
I also wonder if MS/Google/Apple were EU based corps, if they would take the same actions? I can’t say how much of an average EU country’s economy a company like Microsoft would be, but just the thought of how much that would be makes me think they’d get preferential treatment in which ever country that would be. I’d have to look at brands like BMW and see how they did doing that MPG scandal, things like that.
Then let’s hope for regulators. I’m in the second world anyway, so don’t know how much of an effect those would be.
dohpaz42@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This right here. It is so far gone, and deeply entrenched into how society works at fundamental levels, that it is impossible to avoid any mega corporations and their influence on how we live (not just tech companies too).
I know that pointing fingers does nothing to help, but this really is Reagan’s fault with his so-called trickle down economics.
redfox@infosec.pub 8 months ago
I hear what you’re saying. I counter with low effort LLM reply. I don’t live by what LLMs say, but they generate some good starting points to go and do much more narrow research.
I don’t think it’s entirely Reagan’s fault, I think the idea existed before him. He just sold the idea to the American public. So I guess I could fault him for either believing in it, or just saying he did to support the desires of the wealthy.
CLAUDE 3:
“Did any American politicians, economists, or general capitalism principles regarding ‘trickle down economics’ exists before president Reagan? What examples of trickle down economics existed before him? Did he invent the idea, or just the phrase?”
The concept of “trickle-down economics” predates President Ronald Reagan and his administration’s economic policies. However, the specific phrase “trickle-down economics” became more widely used during Reagan’s presidency to describe his economic policies, which were based on the idea that reducing taxes on businesses and the wealthy would stimulate economic growth, creating more jobs and wealth that would eventually “trickle down” to the broader population.
Examples of trickle-down economic principles before Reagan include:
The “Horse and Sparrow” theory, attributed to the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say in the early 19th century, which suggested that if the rich were allowed to get richer, their increased consumption would benefit the working class.
In the 1920s, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, advocated for lower taxes on the wealthy and businesses, arguing that it would spur economic growth.
The “Laissez-Faire” economic policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which favored minimal government intervention and regulation, with the belief that unfettered capitalism would benefit society as a whole.
While Reagan did not invent the underlying economic theories, his administration’s policies and rhetoric, particularly the use of the phrase “trickle-down economics,” brought the concept to the forefront of public discourse and became closely associated with his presidency.
It’s important to note that the effectiveness and fairness of trickle-down economics have been heavily debated among economists and policymakers, with critics arguing that it primarily benefits the wealthy and does not necessarily lead to broad-based economic growth or income redistribution.