5 ms·

This article comes across as a narrative in search of a justifying story: it could just have easily used a 1980s example of corporate raiding instead (or decept

This article comes across as a narrative in search of a justifying story: it could just have easily used a 1980s example of corporate raiding instead (or deceptive advertisement of pink sheet stocks to consumer investors, etc.) This, however, wouldn't allow the author to tell a reactionary "just so" story about our feckless and greedy rulers. One wonders.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I read it as both This has been happening non stop since the 70s and the current state of America shows the results of 50 years of breakneck capitalism What you’re seeing is that at this point it’s so entrenched that people can look at it and shrug instead of being horrified that instead of being a rare situation it’s “Business as usual” Everyone should be horrified
- blq10 3y ago
  Breakneck capitalism, so to speak is why I can get almost any material , consumer or professional, delivered to my door in a few days - including things that would be considered exotic a year ago, at a tenth the price they would have been (even adjusting for col). Corporate raiding is nothing new, and financialization does let it happen at a pace that it couldn't previously - but just saying "but that's capitalism!" is quitting Worker owned collectives have the same problems, people want to acquire power and then use it to be ahead when strategies fail and someone has to take responsibility. How do you prevent that looks different in a market economy than a planned one (planned ones having more widespread but also more small scale corruption issues like these) - but you still do need to do the work to prevent it.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    It's nice that you can get things. But there's a cost - increasingly large numbers of people can't. I'm sure as the game continues you won't become one of them. IMO the real problem is that maybe 5% of the population are amoral sociopaths, and being absolutely heartless and uncaring - often with a liking for outright abuse and violence - gives them a competitive edge in almost any political and social system you can imagine. Normal people just can't imagine that another human might operate like this. But worse - many people seem to have some kind of bizarre deferential herd instinct to follow these crazies off the suicide cliff. It may not be a fixable problem. We're a flawed species. Perhaps it won't be long before evolution - the ultimate owner of the casino - shrugs and moves on.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      Do you think it's worse to be median in the US now than it was 50 years ago or 200 years ago? Or 600 years ago? Do you think it's worse to be in the bottom 10%? It's definitely not worse to be in the top 10%. So where are we failing? Because I don't think we're failing anywhere on any medium-term horizon. If you think we're failing from a short time ago, there's always ups and downs - but not a big reason to think the trend is reversing.
      - bloak 3y ago
        Those are difficult questions. Are we talking about how "happy" people are? That's the goal for some people, and an official goal for Bhutan according to its constitution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness). But I don't think we know very well how to measure it accurately. It has been claimed that the move from hunter-gathering to agriculture brought a lot of misery while improving efficiency according to economic measures.
    - MerelyMortal 3y ago
      > increasingly large numbers of people can't. Do you have numbers to back that up?
    - JackFr 3y ago
      > But there's a cost - increasingly large numbers of people can't. That’s simply not true.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >IMO the real problem is that maybe 5% of the population are amoral sociopaths, and being absolutely heartless and uncaring - often with a liking for outright abuse and violence - gives them a competitive edge in almost any political and social system you can imagine. Absolutely. Bob Menendez's indictment is the definition of: this is a powerful, already wealthy individual selling out the US people to a foreign government for, frankly, not a lot of money. Why? He may spend the rest of his life in prison. How can anyone but a sociopath think that's a good trade?
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > Corporate raiding is nothing new How prevalent was it from the 1940s to the 1970s? One of the larger issues that is causing problems is the misnomer of "maximizing shareholder value" which took hold in the late-1970s and especially the 1980s (unsurprisingly the same era as Reagan). * https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    I for one can’t get all the things I want in a few days: I want ethically sourced clothing, or milk from local cows gently pasteurized. Sometimes I want a particular kind of cheese from a farmers market and they’re sold out that day. When you start looking for quality material produced in a way that minimizes human suffering, no, capitalism doesn’t make this available to me in a few days or for cheaper.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      People were given the choice between having lots of things made with shortcuts or having a few things but made the right way. People, completely as expected, chose lots of things made with shortcuts. A gallon of locally sourced, ethically made milk is awesome. But so is a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a pack of cheese slices for the same cost.
      - danaris 3y ago
        Because the externalities are completely hidden from them, and because their own situations are precarious enough that they have no real choice but to choose the cheapest options. Make it clear at the point of purchase all the negative tradeoffs made to enable that Low, Low Price, and some significant percentage of people will choose to buy things that cost more. Make sure that everyone—yes, everyone, no exceptions—has a decent amount of disposable income on a reliable basis, and that percentage will grow a lot more.
        blq10 3y ago
        No it will not. Larger incomes are only larger because of industrial machinery, the same process that makes it more expensive to buy "organic' is what drives income up. Software engineering is so well paid due to these dynamics.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    All of those came from public investment in infrastructure, funded by taxing the shit out of robber barons and trust busting at a never before seen scale starting in the 1930s and going until we went to Vietnam. It’s like capitalists completely forgot about the massively successful Great Society program (which is the only thing holding this all together still) that literally created from whole cloth most of the roads, sewers, electricity, social security, elderly healthcare, consumer protections, etc… that we all rely on everyday. So no. That’s totally wrong, the world you live in much worse than it could have been for MOST people had generations of psychopaths not divested the public benefit aspect of organizing Greed is NOT good
TradingPlaces 3y ago
Nonstore retail as a % of all retail: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=19hYU https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=19hYU He just waves his hand at all that. He mentions Amazon once.
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  The core thesis of the piece, if I'm comprehending it right, is that a failing retailer had insiders who -- with full knowledge of what they were doing -- engaged in self-enrichment schemes that they knew would leave investors holding a worthless bag. He mentions that they did a massive raise, including billions in debt, ostensibly to modernize and digitize and compete online, and instead they used it to buy back stock. There doesn't seem to be any waving of hands. And the primary target of the piece are low info gambling meme-stock bettors.
  - pvdoom 3y ago
    > -- with full knowledge of what they were doing -- engaged in self-enrichment schemes that they knew would leave investors holding a worthless bag Honestly, kinda based.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > He mentions that they did a massive raise, including billions in debt, ostensibly to modernize and digitize and compete online, and instead they used it to buy back stock. Honestly, that one should be prosecuted under fraud regulations. And stock buybacks that leave the company with more debt than the company had before should be banned ASAP.
    - JackFr 3y ago
      A firm can be financed with debt or equity. Issuing bonds to buy back stock is simply changing the structure of how the firm is financed. It does not have a moral component. Where is the fraud?
      - 3y ago
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
They say you can't cheat an honest man. WSB users were trying to take advantage of shorts by creating a short squeeze; instead they themselves got taken advantage of.
- xwolfi 3y ago
  It was obvious. I giggled when a journalist asked a Robinhood executive "how could you dare grey out the buy button, you re scamming investors", and he replied befuddled "how is it a scam to prevent them to buy at the peak of a bubble?". The disconnect between the short squeeze amateurs and the reality of any market was painful to witness, myself working at a large stock broker. Stocks are worth their dividend over time: stock with no dividend and with only a speculative future value are always a trap. It's ok to be conservative and expect a regular payment related to performance, it's very risky to speculate on other market participants' behavior: they have agency too, and sometimes are competent.
  - jahnu 3y ago
    > stock with no dividend and with only a speculative future value are always a trap Berkshire Hathaway paid a dividend once. 50 years ago.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      https://ycharts.com/companies/BRK.A/stock_buyback https://ycharts.com/companies/BRK.A/stock_buyback (buybacks are equivalent to dividends with a favourable tax treatment)
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      They do stock buybacks instead...
      - birdyrooster 3y ago
        And what their shareholders borrow against the value of their inflated shares and never have to pay income taxes? Seems almost like a national bust out based on the article definition.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>This article comes across as a narrative in search of a justifying story: it could just have easily used a 1980s example of corporate raiding instead I don't understand your point. The 1980s were over 40 years ago, this just happened. In fact, it's ongoing. >"just so" story about our feckless and greedy rulers Oh, that's your point. Yeah, your leaders trading stocks on insider info, politicians selling influence to foreign governments..it's always happened, so who cares?
- woodruffw 3y ago
  My point concerns the end of the article: the author applies their three phases to the last 35 or so years of American society, conveniently ignoring the rot that came with their childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, &c. So no, the point isn’t defeatism. It’s to observe that so many of these types of polemics come with a healthy dose of rose colored glass.
  - Werewolf255 3y ago
    I agree with this overall sentiment. When the author speaks of "crappy institutions and leaders" I understand he mean something along the lines of "we shouldn't accept this level of performance from things we can change" or some other call for more effective government/infrastructure/etc. It's when the author drops into 'overwhelming debt ending in failure' that he drops the mask enough to show that he doesn't want any sort of government or public infrastructure. It's a libertarian, leaning anarcho-capitalist, viewpoint that explains the discontinuity in tone that permeates many of the articles I sampled from this author.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I read it as both This has been happening non stop since the 70s and the current state of America shows the results of 50 years of breakneck capitalism What you’re seeing is that at this point it’s so entrenched that people can look at it and shrug instead of being horrified that instead of being a rare situation it’s “Business as usual” Everyone should be horrified

blq10 3y ago
Breakneck capitalism, so to speak is why I can get almost any material , consumer or professional, delivered to my door in a few days - including things that would be considered exotic a year ago, at a tenth the price they would have been (even adjusting for col). Corporate raiding is nothing new, and financialization does let it happen at a pace that it couldn't previously - but just saying "but that's capitalism!" is quitting Worker owned collectives have the same problems, people want to acquire power and then use it to be ahead when strategies fail and someone has to take responsibility. How do you prevent that looks different in a market economy than a planned one (planned ones having more widespread but also more small scale corruption issues like these) - but you still do need to do the work to prevent it.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  It's nice that you can get things. But there's a cost - increasingly large numbers of people can't. I'm sure as the game continues you won't become one of them. IMO the real problem is that maybe 5% of the population are amoral sociopaths, and being absolutely heartless and uncaring - often with a liking for outright abuse and violence - gives them a competitive edge in almost any political and social system you can imagine. Normal people just can't imagine that another human might operate like this. But worse - many people seem to have some kind of bizarre deferential herd instinct to follow these crazies off the suicide cliff. It may not be a fixable problem. We're a flawed species. Perhaps it won't be long before evolution - the ultimate owner of the casino - shrugs and moves on.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    Do you think it's worse to be median in the US now than it was 50 years ago or 200 years ago? Or 600 years ago? Do you think it's worse to be in the bottom 10%? It's definitely not worse to be in the top 10%. So where are we failing? Because I don't think we're failing anywhere on any medium-term horizon. If you think we're failing from a short time ago, there's always ups and downs - but not a big reason to think the trend is reversing.
    - bloak 3y ago
      Those are difficult questions. Are we talking about how "happy" people are? That's the goal for some people, and an official goal for Bhutan according to its constitution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness). But I don't think we know very well how to measure it accurately. It has been claimed that the move from hunter-gathering to agriculture brought a lot of misery while improving efficiency according to economic measures.
  - MerelyMortal 3y ago
    > increasingly large numbers of people can't. Do you have numbers to back that up?
  - JackFr 3y ago
    > But there's a cost - increasingly large numbers of people can't. That’s simply not true.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >IMO the real problem is that maybe 5% of the population are amoral sociopaths, and being absolutely heartless and uncaring - often with a liking for outright abuse and violence - gives them a competitive edge in almost any political and social system you can imagine. Absolutely. Bob Menendez's indictment is the definition of: this is a powerful, already wealthy individual selling out the US people to a foreign government for, frankly, not a lot of money. Why? He may spend the rest of his life in prison. How can anyone but a sociopath think that's a good trade?
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > Corporate raiding is nothing new How prevalent was it from the 1940s to the 1970s? One of the larger issues that is causing problems is the misnomer of "maximizing shareholder value" which took hold in the late-1970s and especially the 1980s (unsurprisingly the same era as Reagan). * https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I for one can’t get all the things I want in a few days: I want ethically sourced clothing, or milk from local cows gently pasteurized. Sometimes I want a particular kind of cheese from a farmers market and they’re sold out that day. When you start looking for quality material produced in a way that minimizes human suffering, no, capitalism doesn’t make this available to me in a few days or for cheaper.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    People were given the choice between having lots of things made with shortcuts or having a few things but made the right way. People, completely as expected, chose lots of things made with shortcuts. A gallon of locally sourced, ethically made milk is awesome. But so is a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a pack of cheese slices for the same cost.
    - danaris 3y ago
      Because the externalities are completely hidden from them, and because their own situations are precarious enough that they have no real choice but to choose the cheapest options. Make it clear at the point of purchase all the negative tradeoffs made to enable that Low, Low Price, and some significant percentage of people will choose to buy things that cost more. Make sure that everyone—yes, everyone, no exceptions—has a decent amount of disposable income on a reliable basis, and that percentage will grow a lot more.
      - blq10 3y ago
        No it will not. Larger incomes are only larger because of industrial machinery, the same process that makes it more expensive to buy "organic' is what drives income up. Software engineering is so well paid due to these dynamics.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  All of those came from public investment in infrastructure, funded by taxing the shit out of robber barons and trust busting at a never before seen scale starting in the 1930s and going until we went to Vietnam. It’s like capitalists completely forgot about the massively successful Great Society program (which is the only thing holding this all together still) that literally created from whole cloth most of the roads, sewers, electricity, social security, elderly healthcare, consumer protections, etc… that we all rely on everyday. So no. That’s totally wrong, the world you live in much worse than it could have been for MOST people had generations of psychopaths not divested the public benefit aspect of organizing Greed is NOT good

TradingPlaces 3y ago

Nonstore retail as a % of all retail: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=19hYU https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=19hYU He just waves his hand at all that. He mentions Amazon once.

llm_nerd 3y ago
The core thesis of the piece, if I'm comprehending it right, is that a failing retailer had insiders who -- with full knowledge of what they were doing -- engaged in self-enrichment schemes that they knew would leave investors holding a worthless bag. He mentions that they did a massive raise, including billions in debt, ostensibly to modernize and digitize and compete online, and instead they used it to buy back stock. There doesn't seem to be any waving of hands. And the primary target of the piece are low info gambling meme-stock bettors.
- pvdoom 3y ago
  > -- with full knowledge of what they were doing -- engaged in self-enrichment schemes that they knew would leave investors holding a worthless bag Honestly, kinda based.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > He mentions that they did a massive raise, including billions in debt, ostensibly to modernize and digitize and compete online, and instead they used it to buy back stock. Honestly, that one should be prosecuted under fraud regulations. And stock buybacks that leave the company with more debt than the company had before should be banned ASAP.
  - JackFr 3y ago
    A firm can be financed with debt or equity. Issuing bonds to buy back stock is simply changing the structure of how the firm is financed. It does not have a moral component. Where is the fraud?
    - 3y ago

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

They say you can't cheat an honest man. WSB users were trying to take advantage of shorts by creating a short squeeze; instead they themselves got taken advantage of.

xwolfi 3y ago
It was obvious. I giggled when a journalist asked a Robinhood executive "how could you dare grey out the buy button, you re scamming investors", and he replied befuddled "how is it a scam to prevent them to buy at the peak of a bubble?". The disconnect between the short squeeze amateurs and the reality of any market was painful to witness, myself working at a large stock broker. Stocks are worth their dividend over time: stock with no dividend and with only a speculative future value are always a trap. It's ok to be conservative and expect a regular payment related to performance, it's very risky to speculate on other market participants' behavior: they have agency too, and sometimes are competent.
- jahnu 3y ago
  > stock with no dividend and with only a speculative future value are always a trap Berkshire Hathaway paid a dividend once. 50 years ago.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    https://ycharts.com/companies/BRK.A/stock_buyback https://ycharts.com/companies/BRK.A/stock_buyback (buybacks are equivalent to dividends with a favourable tax treatment)
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    They do stock buybacks instead...
    - birdyrooster 3y ago
      And what their shareholders borrow against the value of their inflated shares and never have to pay income taxes? Seems almost like a national bust out based on the article definition.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>This article comes across as a narrative in search of a justifying story: it could just have easily used a 1980s example of corporate raiding instead I don't understand your point. The 1980s were over 40 years ago, this just happened. In fact, it's ongoing. >"just so" story about our feckless and greedy rulers Oh, that's your point. Yeah, your leaders trading stocks on insider info, politicians selling influence to foreign governments..it's always happened, so who cares?

woodruffw 3y ago
My point concerns the end of the article: the author applies their three phases to the last 35 or so years of American society, conveniently ignoring the rot that came with their childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, &c. So no, the point isn’t defeatism. It’s to observe that so many of these types of polemics come with a healthy dose of rose colored glass.
- Werewolf255 3y ago
  I agree with this overall sentiment. When the author speaks of "crappy institutions and leaders" I understand he mean something along the lines of "we shouldn't accept this level of performance from things we can change" or some other call for more effective government/infrastructure/etc. It's when the author drops into 'overwhelming debt ending in failure' that he drops the mask enough to show that he doesn't want any sort of government or public infrastructure. It's a libertarian, leaning anarcho-capitalist, viewpoint that explains the discontinuity in tone that permeates many of the articles I sampled from this author.