7 ms·

It's a PR move to cow CA politicians to be more amenable to C-suites without challenge. It's theater. Petty, obstinate, twattish theater.

• philwelch 5y ago
  Those poor, powerless, persecuted politicians.
  • vkou 5y ago
    Compared to billionaires (who tend to retain their power and money, regardless of where public opinion stands on them), that's a not a wrong set of adjectives to describe most of them.
  • SauciestGNU 5y ago
    Politicians are at least theoretically accountable to an electorate, whereas egomaniacal billionaires are accountable to nobody.
    • FredPret 5y ago
      uhhh... they are accountable to every one of their clients, every time those clients make a purchase. For almost all billionaires, that's a far larger constituency and a much more frequent and efficient selection process compared to elections every x years by the 30% of the population who bother to vote. As soon as they stop performing, the money stops rolling in.
      • mhh__ 5y ago
        Ergo businesses can do no wrong?
        • FredPret 5y ago
          Business has to do something right or it’ll evaporate. Politicians also have to do something right or they won’t get elected. But business has to do more specific nice things for more people, more frequently, or they’ll be gone long before an election cycle. Politicians have a few selection events every few years. The evolutionary pressure on business is far greater, so they reflect what we truly want much better - good or bad. Look at some lists of top companies from 20, 30, 50 years ago. Juggernauts in their time, most of them have long been out-evolved. Same with rich families, inherited money rarely lasts more than a few generations and tends to decline precipitously with each new batch of heirs. But we have politicians routinely kicking around for decades based on nothing but platitudes and general charm.
      • vkou 5y ago
        > uhhh... they are accountable to every one of their clients, every time those clients make a purchase. Nearly nobody gives a damn about the behaviour, eccentric, insane, evil, or otherwise, of the primary shareholders of a corporation that is involved, directly or indirectly, in producing products that they consume. I may think that the Sackler family are murderous scumbags, but if I need medication made by Purdue, that's the medication I'll be buying.
        • philwelch 5y ago
          > Nearly nobody gives a damn about the behaviour, eccentric, insane, evil, or otherwise, of the primary shareholders of a corporation that is involved, directly or indirectly, in producing products that they consume. No, but they have to produce a product that someone is willing to consume at a price they are willing to pay for it. Meanwhile, politicians fail to reduce homelessness with a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars per homeless person.
      • nicoffeine 5y ago
        They aren't even held accountable when they sell products that spark a nationwide overdose epidemic. "That may seem like a lot of money, but billionaire math can be deceptive. The Sacklers proposed to pay the $4.5 billion out over nine years. Their current fortune is estimated to be at least $11 billion. Conservatively, with interest and investments, this means they can expect a 5 percent annualized rate of return on that fortune. If that’s the case, they’ll be able to pay the fine without even touching their principal. When they’re done paying in 2030, they will probably be richer than they are today."[1] There are a few cases of powerful politicians serving jail time. I can't think of a single case where a billionaire was put in jail, except for Madoff, because he was stealing from other billionaires. When you've got billions, you have enough to buy politicians every cycle. You are effectively above the law, forever, regardless of how well your initial product line is doing. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/opinion/sackler-family-opioids-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/opinion/sackler-family-op...
        • smabie 5y ago
          Billionaire dictators get put in prison or worse all the time. However I suppose that's a subset of politician
        • roenxi 5y ago
          The US has around 700 billionaires. That is comparable in size to the US House of Representatives. There are a lot more politicians than billionaires. Plus there is a lot more turnover in politicians than billionaires. It doesn't tell you anything that only 1 of them went to jail. Even assuming they are incarcerated at something close to the background rate (an unreasonable assumption) we would expect 0% of them to be in jail; at any given moment. Adjust that for the fact that they have basically no rational reason whatsoever to commit crimes and there is nothing unusual going on.
          • Apocryphon 5y ago
            Why only look at billionaires and exclude multimillionaires?
    • refurb 5y ago
      Exactly! The only people who should be able to spout off on things are the powerless. Cant have politicians being called out by people who hold actual sway.
    • bradknowles 5y ago
      Politicians are only accountable to the people who put money into their election. Which means, mostly the millionaires and billionaires. And SuperPACs owned by corporations who have unlimited funds that they can give, because Citizens United showed that $1 = 1 vote.
  • afavour 5y ago
    It's the voters that end up paying the price anyway.
  • rcpt 5y ago
    To be fair California politicians have no say over voters power of direct democracy. It's why we have prop 13 and thus why our housing market is a nightmare.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    I don't feel particularly bad for them, but certainly feel less bad for whiny billionaire CEOs.