Profiteering is the wrong word.
Instead, crony capitalism, abuse of power, or something else is more appropriate
Gold Phone and Mobile Service Blasted as Latest 'Trump Family Profiteering'
Submitted 2 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-mobile-phone-public-citizen
Comments
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Pirate@feddit.org 2 days ago
Instead, crony capitalism, abuse of power, or something else is more appropriate
So, standard capitalism stuff?
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Kind of, except the person doing it is the sitting president. Call it an aggravating factor.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
how exactly are they abusing their power with this one?
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Using their position of political power to advertise a business which directly benefits them. It is plainly not part of the duties of the office. Same reason good presidents put their financial affairs in a blind trust for the duration of of their term.
rmuk@feddit.uk 2 days ago
For giggles, I’d like you to explain how the President of the United States launching his old overpriced phone on his own overpriced network with every possible element named, adorned and even priced after himself could be considered anything other than abusing their power?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
How is this a real question? We’re fucking cooked.
Flamekebab@piefed.social 2 days ago
Without proper consequences their behaviour will continue.
k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
But, but, they’re been blasted. Didn’t you see in the article? Surely, they’ll stop this behaviour this time.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Blasted is nothing, wake me up when they get slammed.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 2 days ago
Let’s break down who’s actually going to buy this piece of shit.
Anyone with any experience with buying a modern Android phone?.. Nope. Metro, Tello, US Cellular, etc are all cheaper than Trump Mobile by almost half the price and the phone itself is a REVVL variant selling for $500, and Apple fans aren’t watching anyway.
So that just leaves extremely uninformed people who don’t know any better. You’ll be able to identify how little they know by the fact that they’ll pay double the going-rate of an MVNO for an overpriced, gold piece of shit.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 day ago
the phone itself is a REVVL variant selling for $500
I don’t think the phone actually exists, it’s just a digital mockup.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 1 day ago
…that’s even worse somehow
Infinite@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
39.5ft
Nice Grinch reference.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Ho is his coin doing? Didn’t hear much about that…
answersplease77@lemmy.world 1 day ago
All his family coins are 95% down. The worse problem is that their coins were designed from the start with the plain purpose to draw international donations indirectly to Trump ( but for favors in return? as the case was with Justin Sun, who is the #1 Trump coin holder, and he previously donated a million to trump to pardon him from his fraud case. )
Both of the Trump and Malenia coin whitepapers, fee percentages, premined allocations and locked durations…etc everything shows clear as day that it’s a grift to the Trump family and that all coin revenues go to them that it’s impossible for the coin to gain any value.
That’s not my opinion. Those are the facts that everyone has reported on already.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Ow it was clear to me it was a Grift, it’s his only modus operandi.
Thanks for the detailed write up, very insightful!
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I think that Trump feels that this will finally impress Ivana enough.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Y’all, the last thing the suckers who will buy this wasn’t is some Nanny State telling them they can’t buy this.
It’s a stupid fake phone. Let them buy it. Who cares? If not this, the grifters already have 700 other things lined up behind it. Let them pay for our schadenfreude, as they have done so many times before.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The problem is not with the buyers.
PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 2 days ago
Is this a red line
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s the latest in a long red line of red lines.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yes, but at this point it looks like the red sharpie is running dry.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
this is just them making money off people who will willingly give them money
its not some blatant overreach of power, at worst their using their fame as advertising for it
nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
The FCC, which licenses radio spectrum and makes the rules for device certification is part of the Executive branch. So are the CFPB and the SEC, or what’s left of them. He’s literally, corruptly leveraging his office to benefit his cons and preventing regulations from applying to himself and his cronies.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 day ago
They’re using the office of President to advertise products. Not just any products but overpriced Chinese garbage. They’re also lying about them being made in the US.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I’ve got a really good feeling that if sanders were president, and he was selling merchandise, using his position as POTUS to advertise for it, and said it was made in the us while its raw materials were made elsewhere, you’d be fine with that
I’m no fan of trump, but this isn’t an overreach of power nearly as bad as you say it is. its not the job of there potus, but its also not harmful
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Let’s put it this way.
Pretend I’m some semi-adversarial nation, like Saudi Arabia. I want trump to let off some sanctions, or tariffs, or in general give me preferential treatment compared to other nations. I want to give trump a big sum of money to do this, just writing him a check would be obvious corruption. So instead, I just book whole floors of his hotels during off-peak hours, and at a premium pricing. I don’t even bother having anyone stay in the rooms, so trump can even book those rooms again for additional money. I just “legitimately” sent trump a bunch of money, and now he is paying it forward by stopping investigations into my goons sawing journalists into tiny pieces.
If this sounds to far-fetched for you, keep in mind that it literally happened.
apnews.com/…/travel-business-saudi-arabia-malaysi…
This phone company trump has made really only exists as a bit of paper and some software. It has no infrastructure, no brick and mortar store fronts, nor any assets. It’s mostly an agreement with a large carriers to lease time on their networks, charged per usage amount. For this scenario, let’s pretend I’m Vladimir Putin trying to pay trump for leaving Ukraine high and dry. I simply put in orders for Trump’s phone service, and then never even use the phones. Hell, a physical phone is probably never sent. On paper, it looks like 100,000 people signed up for the service, but they never use any of the lines, so trump collects nearly 100% of the money, with just a little bit lost to keep a small server up to handle transactions and accounts.
If none of this makes sense to you as an obvious vector for trump to receive money from foreign agents, then I’d guess that you’re the kind of person who thinks that the mob ran legitimate protection services.
ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 2 days ago
But Trump just said he hates talking on phones….wtf?
RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world 2 days ago
What better way to get you to pay them to steal and abuse your data?
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
It comes pre-installed with “Your Palantir Pal” AI assistant.
OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
The goal is to not let them take their fucking money and run. Because then it would be real… So you come up with a new idea, a better idea, a NEW STOCK.
IYKYK 😂