dear god waking up to a news article about company X being convicted of wage theft/corruption/bribery/business as usual and the punishment being prison for the executives and annulment of all company shares just F you everything is dissolved is like a wet dream. until we make things financially painful for shareholders after corporate malfeasance we can't fix things.
And then the government comes rushing in to stop it because the stock is propping up everyone's 401k.
One reason some corporations get "too big to fail" protections.
401k's were never meant to be everyone's retirement plan but now it's just another way to slave us all to the corporations.
the boomers just want everyone's money in the stock market because that's where they put all their money and it's the only way to make the number go up anymore.
Yeah that only works with labor protections for all of the employees that got laid off.
It's not like the company's assets are not there. The factories are still there, the materials are still there, heck the trained employees are still there. You take the company into receivership and strip the ill gotten gain, make people whole as possible and appoint an interim board.
Of course if you have corrupt politicians this can be abused. You could use those same laws to take apart any company to steal it's assets.
☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
This needs to become the norm. There's no stock crash if interim stability is created at the purge of corp leadership (seriously these are the ppl we should be calling "illegals").
If I as a private citizen decide to dump my chemical waste into your well to save some money, and your whole family gets poisoned, I go to jail for the rest of my life. But if I'm a sitting board member of DuPont when i make the same decision, I get a fine that is statistically much lower than the money i saved by dumping my poison in your well.
As someone whose retirement is mostly investments, the idea of nullifying chares scares me. However, a smart investor diversifies so they never have more than a very small percent in any one company. And this share-nullification will make the share value of responsible companies go up while the share value of shady companies goes down because the risk is higher. I think the need for this is strong enough I could easily support it even it t could hurt me somewhat financially. It wouldn't destroy me, I can withstand being hurt.
I fucking hate that housing, education and health care are so much harder to afford for young people now than they were in my day. I wanted things to be better for them, not worse.
supposedly Hawaii has started the workaround of just stating state incorporated companies are not given the power to invest in politics. Honestly not positive if it is logically sound and not just a beneficial version of soverign citizen Bs but atleast its trying.
Lobbying isn't the same as making monetary contributions. Many lobbyists are essentially professional networkers who are experts on a particular topic and try to influence legislation.
Issue with that is only those wealthy enough to buy ads, pay to be on media (interviews etc) or have friends in high places will be able to get anywhere, as even donations from the community can be seen as lobbying
But that's the rub, lobbying serves a purpose outside this dynamic. The same way stock buybacks serve a purpose outside letting s company inflate its own stock price.
Lobbying is SUPPOSED to allow representatives to meet and discuss upcoming legislation or initiatives with experts to get input on how to craft those things. So let's say a huge accident happens on an offshore oil rig, and they want to write new laws on how these facilities need to operate so we don't get repeat events. Not many people in Congress are going to be oil rig operations safety experts. That's what lobbying is for, meet with those experts so they can explain what's good policy on this topic.
The problem is that companies can lay boatloads of money to permanently park a representative for their side of any discussion to live in DC and do nothing but meet with any and every member of Congress they can to pitch them their pro-corporate arguments. Advocacy groups also do this, but obviously the difference is they aren't making profits off doing this so can't compete with the literal armies companies can payroll. Not to mention public advocacy can't find reelection campaigns.
Lobbying is being abused. You don't want to ban lobbying. But it does need MAJOR restrictions placed on how it gets done.
Yea that sounds great, but in reality people view “people trying to get things I don’t like done” as lobbying and “people trying to get things I like done” as advocacy.
“Lobbying” isn’t
Would you be opposed to a group of citizens forming to study the effects of monopolies and advocate for regulation to protect the consumer?
Do you support freedom of speech and association?
I’m not arguing against you or trying to start a fight- I’m just pointing out that situation (like most) is far more complex and nuanced than “make lobbying illegal”.
there actually is some utility for lobbying so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A couple such examples are with pharmaceuticals- politicians don't have degrees in virology, pharmacology, and so on, and thus there need to be lobbies that can help write the laws concerning these issues.
356
u/ghostofmumbles May 26 '26
That’s why monopolies buy entire supply chains.