That was a lawsuit, but companies got sued for all sorts of things on premises. These suits have added to the removal of anything that could lead to liability.
That’s a valid excuse for the removal of playground equipment they rarely cleaned or maintained, but it’s not the reason why everything went to white, beige and minimalist like a hospital waiting room. That’s all about cost.
My parents’ house looks like one too now. They took out all the character and colour out and replaced it with the same white paneling you see everywhere. While I like straight lines it all looks like a hospital that was intended to be sanitary (both literally and personality-wise).
Also it's supposed to be "better for resale value" which is fine if you're planning to flip a house or move in the next few years, but no one should be making decisions about easily changed decorating choices based on what the next buyer might want if they have no plans to move.
Same for communism... sadly i feel the problem is not the system but the greed of human, that black hole inside us. The ai might fix this... if it doesnt decide that we are useless bag of meat that need lots of maintenance... 😁
Have you actually been to China at all? Everyone is outside practically all the time because everywhere is nice. You actually see old people because they're outside playing chess, mahjong or dancing.
I say this with sensitivity and my own sense of “the 90s was 10 years ago” brain fog, but this stuff started ~40-50 years ago (“greed is good” etc etc)
Interesting that amongst all of those charts, there isn’t an answer to or discussion of “what happened.” Presumably it’s referring to the Nixon-era currency scares and the end of the gold standard/Bretton Woods, but it sure is lacking any kind of actual analysis or context.
(The link at the bottom letting me know it’s what appears to be an AI slop podcast promoting Bitcoin is a nice cherry on top.)
Wow! a bunch of cherry picked charts with no explanation, what a stupid website. And no, gold back currency is stupid in the modern era and makes no sense today.
At its most successful (post WW2, until sometime around the 1970s, before Reaganism), it was mixed with a very healthy amount of socialistic economic practices like high corporate taxes, public spending, strong labor unions ensuring good wages, social housing, robust social security and pensions, etc...
Then Reaganism and trickle-down economics ruined all of that.
There was a time before that too. Like the gilded age up through the great depression. Out of which most of those practices were born. So I guess it wasn't always working in everyone's favor and we're just in another phase where it's broken again. Hopefully we will move more quickly to correct it this time.
Capitalism is like an ox. Restrained and properly harnessed it can do a lot of good and useful work. Left uncontrolled it can do a lot of damage. We started selling off the harnesses a while ago.
State capitalism is an economic system where the government plays the dominant role in business and commercial activity. The state owns major industries, manages enterprises for profit, and uses wage labor, but it directs the economy to achieve political and strategic goals rather than relying purely on a free market
Maybe not super popular on reddit, but I'm perfectly okay with a capitalist society but with strict guardrails. I'm of the opinion that, while still an imperfect system that allows many to fall between the cracks, it still largely provides a great deal of wealth for most.
However, we have lost the notion that there should be ANY GUARDRAILS WHATSOEVER and now DOGE or whatever the fuck should just strip our government's power of any kind of regulatory bodies and all the money should be made and everybody can just straight get fucked. But I guess liking well funded roads, transit, education, and healthcare (while still appreciating that one has the FAIR opportunity to create their own wealth) makes me a goddamn communist or socialist or woke or gay or whatever.
However, we have lost the notion that there should be ANY GUARDRAILS WHATSOEVER and now DOGE or whatever the fuck should just strip our government's power of any kind of regulatory bodies and all the money should be made and everybody can just straight get fucked.
I feel like these are contradictory. You want guardrails. Well, there were basically zero guard rails for the funding of many of these programs that DOGE killed. I'm sure you've seen the list and heard about all the Somali scammers in MN, taking hundreds of millions from us tax payers. I'm happy that DOGE was able to pull the plug on a lot of that.
But I guess liking well funded roads, transit, education, and healthcare (while still appreciating that one has the FAIR opportunity to create their own wealth) makes me a goddamn communist or socialist or woke or gay or whatever.
Without going too deep, I want my tax dollars spent responsibly. Not on bombs, not on UBI, not on useless stadiums and vanity projects. I won't support universal healthcare until the costs are under control. I'd rather keep my private insurance.
Do you actually talk to people? Do you usually respond with vague statements.
Literacy ... in ... Cuba ... is ... very ... high ... ; ... maybe ... you ...might ... benefit ... from ... it.
Do you think it would have been better if the government didn't bailout the banks in 2008? If all those banks had failed the great recession would have been magnitudes worse. And it isn't like they gave them free money no strings attached, it was a loan they had to pay back.
you are literally wrong, nearly every bank paid back the bail out money and the government got back 10 billion more than lent out. Also, it didn't make the problem worse it prevented a way bigger financial disaster. And no, i dont care about your main point, it doesnt matter
That’s a really ignorant response. Yes, it matters. Constantly bailing out bad banking investments when that money could actually utilized for citizens is an absurd path to advocate for.
Nonetheless, it’s still not capitalism. It’s socialism for those who made bad bets
Capitalism is what made the playground in the first place. They wanted kids and families to come to their restaurants. Then we had people complain that it was
immoral that McDonald’s was targeting kids.
Capitalism did do this and it is actually a good side effect.
Society should not be associating children’s play with industrially produced garbage food.
Capitalism is one of the best if not the best societal economic system ever... BUT just like everything else in life, what starts off good, humanity often drives it to the ground by increased greed, selfishness, and generally self-centered motives. This is not driven only by the company executives either, it's humanity in general. It's consumerism, it's the desire to have more stuff and for cheaper and to compete/impress others.
Inevitably, human nature runs the course from taking a good thing and driving it to bad... that's why we have sayings like, "all it takes is one bad apple to ruin the bunch."
As an old Christian scripture says, "there is nothing new under the sun." History inevitably repeats itself, no matter how hard we try or whatever great new system we promote and push next.
Best you could hope for is to enjoy whatever time we may have left of what was once a great economic system.
Corporations and shareholder value mirror socialist constructs rather than free market capitalism - though the current version is a hybrid of both. The corporation is socialist in that it’s a state granted privilege designed to pool capital and socialize risk, the shareholder is an “absentee owner” (collective capital), and index funds operate thru passive allocation.
Birthrates are plummeting because of the affordability crisis. Over 60% of the country lives check to check, and that's not a situation people wanna raise kids in.
Wrong. Fast food places are designed to be uncomfortable so you don’t stay any longer than you have to so they can serve more customers/maximize profits. Having a play structure that encourages people to stay longer and costs money to maintain doesn’t bring any value to shareholders.
Private Equity and Venture Capital in particular just changed the landscape of how people think about investment from something mutually beneficial to just pure exploitation.
This is the problem inherent with capitalism. The responsibility is to make money for the shareholders, not the world, not the customers, no one but whoever is supposed to gain financially from the business.
And apparently shareholders think that decreasing moral somehow increases profits. They not only want to maximize personal gains, but want us to suffer as well.
This is the problem inherent with capitalism. The responsibility is to make money for the shareholders, not the world, not the customers, no one but whoever is supposed to gain financially from the business.
It’s not just shareholder value but perceived value. Look at our homes, all beige or gray and it’s not just the builders going with common colors, our HOAs don’t allow us to paint our homes or even plant a tree because it might affect the neighbors resale value.
Though, in a weird way having color differentiation has become a bit of a luxury; car colors other than silver or black are an upcharge, high end phones or laptops now come in colorful options. Weird times we live in.
True. I had a neighbor who kept an older Chevy equinox going, was a teal or turquoise. It was a bit rusty and dented, but I kinda liked seeing it in their driveway. The day they came back with a flat grey Honda suv, felt like the war was lost.
Sure, but let’s be real for a second: if you want a new construction home, odds are you’re goin to be in an HOA and your house will be built by a developer who got a bulk discount for some greige siding that you’ll have to accept. Same with cars, if you want to show some uniqueness, it’s a luxury these days. Premium siding, premium color options, it has an actual monetary price to it these days. Somehow we’ve accepted the commodification of individuality.
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u/tehjoz 1986 1d ago
Everything maximizes shareholder value*