The risk of creating a viable competitor is too big so they will do pretty much anything a government wants in order to avoid being kicked out of the country.

It's not about the profit they can make in the country it's about making sure that there is never a viable competitor that could enter into any of your other markets.

Ultimately there really isn't a lot these companies do that's special. The most we survived because they're the ones who when the market was developing survived via survivorship bias. When you're talking infrastructure including internet infrastructure you are generally going to end up with some form of Monopoly forming. At least if you're not extremely careful to enforce competition. And I don't think there's a country on planet Earth that does that

In the blue States it's generally individual cops getting caught doing it. Albeit a lot but still individual cops.

In the red States it's coming down from the top that's the difference. It's because corruption at the top is more common in a red state than a blue state.

This is to be expected if you understand how left and right wing politics work.

In a red State you have a right Wing state. So you have people that are prone to hierarchical structures and obedience.

That's going to encourage corruption because the people at the top will view themselves as being absolutely in charge and the people beneath them will encourage that view. It's why Trump can get away with committing so many crimes and the public still loves him.

A hierarchical command structure versus a democratic command structure is going to lend itself to top down corruption more often and the corruption is going to be worse. There is just no getting away from that or the consequences of right-wing politics.

Are actively hiding their economic data. We are going to have a 1930s style economic collapse.

All the pieces are here. We are in the middle of a industrial revolution with massive amounts of automation and technological unemployment without any significant new employment opportunities on the horizon. Seriously sit down and write out what the jobs are going to be after automation and ai and machine learning rip through the economy. You can't just go and make cars after the buggy whip factory shuts down when the car factory is also automated.

Next we have a huge economic bubble where we are spending trillions of dollars specifically AI infrastructure spending and the massive bank loans that go with it.

And we have widespread drought resulting in crop failures and increasing food prices. Even if you don't believe climate change and the water cycle breaking is the problem the drought is still real.

This is everything that led up to world war I at world war II.

We have the technology to stop this but we don't have the education and critical thinking and social structures to stop it...

Seriously. I understand the bomb squad needs robots that's a good thing. But every year a crime goes down and every year we put more cops with better weapons and more weapons on the street.

I understand what's going on with all that immigration enforcement bullshit. There's a bunch of bitter old assholes who get off on seeing people slammed into the ground.

But is there really that many people for whom the pleasure of watching a couple of Mexicans get dragged into a black van by masked goons is enough to make them A-Okay with this bullshit?

I just had to get the new fancy license and they made me take my glasses off because they're using facial recognition now.

One of the funny things I keep seeing over and over again is confused white people in the middle class pulled over by cops and harassed the same way they're used to seeing "those people" harassed.

The place where it's really showing up is DUIs. In several red states with heavy duty police enforcement there is a ton of stories about people getting pulled over and arrested and losing their license when they were Stone Cold sober. There are a couple of big scandals where the local police were just told you need to get your arrest numbers up or else.

DUI is really popular for that because the cops can arrest you without cause or proof and it takes months before it comes out that you were innocent. Meanwhile your license is suspended.

The fact that they're doing this to the in group is a massive red flag. It's a huge shift in how things work.

They are objectively bad for the economy and they know it. People are starting to know it too no matter how much propaganda there is.

Google it. It is a fact that the Republican party is worse for the economy than the Democratic party. Trickle down economics doesn't work and never has.

We have been trained to get angry when we see anyone discussing the two political parties. So it's tough to have this discussion but it's a discussion we need to have.

Because without positive economic gains for 90% of us the Republican party has to give voters some reason to vote for them.

Yes homophobia and racism and transphobia will always be good old standbys but religion is fading in America. It's just not bringing the numbers in that it used to.

So they are pivoting to crackpottery with anti-vax being the big one.

So they fold corporation on paper, walk away from the loan and open up a new corporation that gets to use the facility.

Dude it's 2025, by now you should know how this game is played.

I forget which town but one of them immediately removed all the cameras when somebody did a foi request.

You're not going to find out where the billionaires are going because like Steve Jobs used to do they hide their license plates.

But your shitty little Republican mayor who frequents the local gay bar doesn't have the resources to do that. A

So we have had multiple decades of Court packing so you're headed by the heritage foundation, a right-wing think tank that made that their primary goal.

If you look into Amazon for example and wonder how they got so big you will find that they were just going around buying up all there competitors using investment capital. Most tech companies that's how they got big they just bought up competitors.

Facebook is in a unique situation. Nobody under the age of 18 wants to be on the same social media platform has their parents so every few years a new social media platform develops as a separate platform for the kids.

Every time that happens Facebook just buys that platform.

Tick tock was a problem because they couldn't just buy the platform since it was owned by the Chinese government. So they just pressured the government here to shut it all down and give them control.

Refusing to enforce antitrust law makes your life noticeably worse even if you don't use the services involved.

The problem is it's government regulation and its bureaucrats that enforce the law there.

We have been taught our whole lives that there is nothing worse than the bureaucrat. It doesn't help that as an American most of your interactions with the government are negative. Means testing for assistance programs is brutal and difficult so if you fall on hard times and need help fuck you. Most of us did never do need help still have to go to the DMV sometimes and wait in line frustratingly or we get pulled over by cops and that's our interaction with the government.

It is very easy to translate those frustrated emotions with a sabotaged government into a desired cut regulations that control corporate abuses that hurt you.

And that is way too complicated a concept for probably 80% of the population to understand...

It's not a product in the traditional sense. It's a tool that the upper elite are hoping to use to replace you so that they are no longer dependent on your labor or your consumer dollars.

It always strikes me odd that people ask the question if there are no consumers who will buy their products?

You think somebody with a billion dollars hasn't asked that question?

What if they come up with a different answer than the old one we're told Henry Ford did. (Fun fact Ford paid better not because he wanted consumers but because the work was extremely tough and he had a hard time getting employees)

What if the solution they come up with is to automate everything and anything so that they can limit their dependency to a handful of engineers and a handful of bugs that keep those engineers in line?

What if there's no place for you in tomorrow?

I don't think most people can face that kind of existential dread. It borders on cosmic horror

It's not just greenflation. Companies have realized that they can make more money focusing on the top 10% of consumers and just what the bottom 90 go to hell. If they had the slightest fear of competition then they wouldn't take that risk because a competitor might work their way up in the cheaper markets and then jump into the more profitable ones, but since we don't enforce antitrust law because we're busy freaking out about trans girls playing field hockey in the Midwest you can kiss that goodbye.

During incognito browser mode. So that's fun. As usual we found out as part of a lawsuit and settlement.

Back in the '80s which kept the economy going and then we followed that with two huge economic bubbles that kept things going. There was also a lot more government assistance back then in a lot of ways that we don't think about. I'm not talking about food stamps I'm talking about heavy duty subsidies like the aforementioned infrastructure spending that made it easier to get jobs.

We were in a much better position to weather 12 years of Republican rule back then. The Republicans have been building up to this for 60 years, ever since Goldwater lost. Trump is the final form of the party. A pedophile pretending to be godly while openly admitting he will burn in hell and still somehow tremendously popular with the party.

It's not just about how terrible Trump is it's about how voters would let somebody like that have that much power. It's a sign that our civilization is near collapse. A fundamental breakdown in the institutions that have been protecting all of us for our entire lives.

It's the opposite. People here have mostly done okay for themselves. Most of us are well over 50 and we got the full benefit of the Great society and the New deal. For example the government paid for 70% of our college tuition.

I don't think anyone here believes that they are going to ever suffer any serious hardship. And that's why we have so many Trump supporters here. They keep quiet because this isn't a safe space and Trump supporters won't talk about it if they're not in a safe space. But I know they are there.

These are the same people that are learning the kind of terms typically associated with libertarians right now.

They always think they will get off scot-free and maybe some of them will. But the point is not all of them will.

To fix the problems Republicans inevitably cause with their trickled down lies and idiot moral panics.

We didn't get that this time. And we've had 60 years of right wingers sabotaging the economy.

The coming crash is going to be brutal and I don't think we can do anything about it.

The only possible fix would be to give the Democrats a super majority in the Senate during the midterm elections so they could completely undo and course correct decades of economic mismanagement and sabotage from Republican rule.

There is no way you can get people to understand that or to prevents distraction from whichever moral panic fits their fancy the most.

By 2028 many of the people here reading this will be homeless. Some of you might at least have a roof over your head if family takes you in. Good luck. It is as has been in America for decades now every man for himself. And we will continue to worship at the altar of I got mine fuck you

So the CIA doesn't really work anymore. After 70 years people have gotten wise to their tricks. There were multiple efforts to depose South American heads of state that were less than perfect for the CIA and American interests (and by American interests I mean American corporate interests, not your interests). Those attempts failed.

That's why we're getting ready to go to war with Venezuela so we can take the oil and so Trump can distract from the Epstein files. In the old days we could easily depose a weak dictator like Maduro. The fact that we can't and that we have failed after two or three attempts is a sign of massive changes in foreign policy and what works and what doesn't.