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It's easy for us to be sanguine about knocking down the ladder after most of us have already scurried our ways to the top. Think of existing regulation (banks,

It's easy for us to be sanguine about knocking down the ladder after most of us have already scurried our ways to the top. Think of existing regulation (banks, environment, agriculture, pharma... you name it). Is it really there to protect the little guy? Or, is it a revolving-door between the regulator and the regulated, where megacorps can use public funds & resources to defend their own private interests?

mc32 4y ago
Regulation is a double edged sword. At least in some industries much of it is to protect the little guy, but it’s also a whole new jobs program. Just like most “guest speakers” invited to a company. They’re a cottage industry and they give the Corp some cred cover.
thatguy0900 4y ago
You can look at see what a unregulated us banking system looks like, it's alive and well right now. Crypto is a hot mess of scams and fraud. It wasn't far in the past that rivers caught on fire, either. Regulation isn't perfect but neither is megacorps having free reign to conduct psychological tests on the public at large to see how much stupid shit they can manipulate them into thinking as their whole business model.
- zhxshen 4y ago
  Company dumps creosote into the ground for 40+ years. Somebody blows the whistle, EPA prosecutes the whistleblower. Company gets a slap-on-the-wrist fine, while the whistleblower gets house arrest. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute-and-jail-a-mississippi-lab-owner-because-of-her-activism/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute-an... Administrative law is broken. Doubling-down on it isn't going to solve the problem.
hackerlight 4y ago
It's obviously a mix of both, and it's up to us to make the system tilt more towards the former.
- zhxshen 4y ago
  Through venal politicians, and--judging by the typical "man on the street" segment--voters who are barely literate?
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    Well not everyone is illiterate, so you're trying to weave some rhetorical trick here. Anyway, the alternative of me being forced to huff your SUV exhaust and listen to your 6am leafblower and get early dementia is not a world I want to be a part of.
    - zhxshen 4y ago
      Not a trick... an observation. Spengler put it better than I ever could in "The Decline of the West": If by "democracy" we mean the form which the Third Estate as such wishes to impart to public life as a whole, it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑improvers' and freedom‑teachers' desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other. The concepts of Liberalism and Socialism are set in effective motion only by money. … the Jacobins had destroyed the old obligations of the blood and so had emancipated money; now it stepped forward as lord of the land. There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the directions indicated by money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. The great movement which makes use of the catchwords of Marx has not delivered the entrepreneur into the power of the worker, but both into that of the Bourse.

mc32 4y ago

Regulation is a double edged sword. At least in some industries much of it is to protect the little guy, but it’s also a whole new jobs program. Just like most “guest speakers” invited to a company. They’re a cottage industry and they give the Corp some cred cover.

thatguy0900 4y ago

You can look at see what a unregulated us banking system looks like, it's alive and well right now. Crypto is a hot mess of scams and fraud. It wasn't far in the past that rivers caught on fire, either. Regulation isn't perfect but neither is megacorps having free reign to conduct psychological tests on the public at large to see how much stupid shit they can manipulate them into thinking as their whole business model.

zhxshen 4y ago
Company dumps creosote into the ground for 40+ years. Somebody blows the whistle, EPA prosecutes the whistleblower. Company gets a slap-on-the-wrist fine, while the whistleblower gets house arrest. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute-and-jail-a-mississippi-lab-owner-because-of-her-activism/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute-an... Administrative law is broken. Doubling-down on it isn't going to solve the problem.

hackerlight 4y ago

It's obviously a mix of both, and it's up to us to make the system tilt more towards the former.

zhxshen 4y ago
Through venal politicians, and--judging by the typical "man on the street" segment--voters who are barely literate?
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Well not everyone is illiterate, so you're trying to weave some rhetorical trick here. Anyway, the alternative of me being forced to huff your SUV exhaust and listen to your 6am leafblower and get early dementia is not a world I want to be a part of.
  - zhxshen 4y ago
    Not a trick... an observation. Spengler put it better than I ever could in "The Decline of the West": If by "democracy" we mean the form which the Third Estate as such wishes to impart to public life as a whole, it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑improvers' and freedom‑teachers' desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other. The concepts of Liberalism and Socialism are set in effective motion only by money. … the Jacobins had destroyed the old obligations of the blood and so had emancipated money; now it stepped forward as lord of the land. There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the directions indicated by money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. The great movement which makes use of the catchwords of Marx has not delivered the entrepreneur into the power of the worker, but both into that of the Bourse.