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  • 38 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Folks. Publicly traded companies will ALWAYS compare the expected value of breaking the law with compliance.

    Say it costs $100 million to follow the law. Breaking it comes with a $300 million fine, but only a 20% chance of getting caught.

    They compare a 100% chance of paying $100 million to a 20% chance of paying $300 million.

    Average cost of following the law: $100 million

    Average cost of breaking it: $60 million

    If we’re gonna do capitalism (which I would rather we not, for the record!), we have to make that expected value calculation break in favor of following regulations. If it is cheaper to break the law than to follow it, you’re not just losing money by complying: you’re giving ground to your competition. Fines need to be massive. Infractions need to get caught and punished. Executives need to be held personally accountable. Corporations need to be dissolved. Fines cannot be just the cost of doing business.



  • I think you’re exactly right.

    A few years ago, we saw a huge amount of mobilization for George Floyd. People fighting cops and winning.

    After that, we saw a submarine full of billionaires implode & people cheered.

    Recently, a health insurance CEO was shot to death in the street, and people rallied around the shooter as a hero.

    Trump has been a uniquely effective vehicle for the ownership class to launch bullshit distractions at a population of Americans who are showing signs of class consciousness. Keep 40 or 50% of people mad at trans people and immigrants and DEI, and the rest busy trying to minimize the damage being done. Motherfucker said Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in a presidential debate, and people somehow still take him seriously.

    But he’s not long for this world. Dennis Prager has all the charisma of a bad case of trench foot. Rupert Murdoch is ancient, we’re already down a Koch brother, everything Elon Musk touches turns to shit, and I’m crossing my fingers that all the HGH gives Peter Thiel a heart attack.

    The ownership class has got to make hay while the sun shines. Things are primed to turn around on them quickly.



  • Republicans will ram through whatever shit they can whether it’s legal or not, and Democrats will trip over their own dicks and let the parliamentarian block them even when they have a majority.

    I increasingly feel like voting for people is a bad system. I don’t want to pick someone to make all the decisions for me: just let me vote directly on the issue dammit. Tired of representatives lying to get elected or doing heel turns or chickening out.




  • Folks.

    If you ever catch yourself describing how you want to torture someone to death, I want you to stop and take inventory of your priorities.

    Look. I am not a pacifist. Some motherfuckers need to be removed from positions of power by any means necessary, up to and including violence.

    That being said, should we not focus on restorative justice and rehabilitation? Why create unnecessary suffering in the process? The argument that things like the death penalty act as a deterrent doesn’t seem to be borne out in the evidence. What good is served by torturing someone, even if they’re the nastiest son of a bitch in existence?

    It is important to make sure we don’t let killing for sport seep into our ideology. Using violence against people is not something we should take pleasure in, let alone fantasize about. History has given us plenty of examples to draw from here; once you make a policy out of sadism, the group of people you use violence against only grows.

    Also, porn is fine in moderation (like everything else) and can be made totally consensually, you terminally online freaks.


  • I feel like there’s this explot in human psychology:

    1. People are pretty bad at matching causes to effects.

    2. Doing something novel / outside your usual routine can feel pretty good, regardless of what it is you’re doing.

    Therefore: People who try weird diets, snake oils, or letting the sun shine on their asshole really do feel better afterwards, at least for a while. That must mean it works!