The only thing that works for this finance-driven development is a public Wall of Shame. If consumers know which firms produce this crap, they at least have a choice of not buying it. The researchers are probably scared of the legal actions of the producers, but not disclosing crimes like back doors is a crime in itself.

Well, automate them, off course. That is how I started my programming career. I started as a technical draftsman using AutoCAD, and I was "actively lazy": when I had to type something 10 times, I wrote a little program to do that for me. When my bosses noticed that my computer was better configured than that of my colleagues, I started getting programming assignments as well.

Wait, you mean it is not forced down our throats BY "investment groups"? If so, why does it also grant secrecy to financial institutions?

You forget one: Bribery. No chance in hell that cash is going to vanish. But for the common man it will be harder and harder to use.

Yes, Pollution. But that is another story. As anybody knows, Pestilence retired mumbling something about Penicillin.

So? The Netherlands are a tax haven for postal-box firms from all over the world. These firms have no business in the Netherlands, except for avoiding to pay tax. They don't care what their name says in Dutch.

Storing CO2 does not help anyone, and only does harm. The problem is not that there is too much CO2 in the world, the problem is that we convert way too much carbon and oxygen into CO2. Period. If we store all the CO2, we deprive ourselves from oxygen, because we keep on converting it! The Biosphere II experiment has clearly demonstrated that (by using concrete, which, by itself, stores CO2). Storing CO2 is just one more environmental crime to cover up another.

Please do not mix economy with finance. They are hardly related anymore.

So:

1. 1 - The market will solve it!
2. 2 - The money goes to a newly formed group of big companies in bed with a bank (because this allows the bank to create money out of thin air). Off course, the bank demands "securities" (for what?) and society is heavily taxed.
3. 3 - Problem solved. At least, on the low-traffic pacific island where the "investors" now live.

To bear the blame if things go wrong. Oh, you want quality? Sorry, in the modern everything-must-be-done-yesterday-at-no-cost IT sector, quality is usually not an option. There's no market for quality.

They left a message: "So long, and thanks for all the plastic"

Well, they did not send an X-Do-Not-Spy HTTP header, so they obviously agreed.

That's the problem of politics today: when so much money is at stake, it is plainly impossible to put that money where your mouth is. It literally doesn't fit...