Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Last I checked, that time started at least as far back as 2021
Funny thing is it’s always the same for socialism/communism as there’s always people who want more power than someone else.
You shouldn’t even be able to do an IPO if you have more debt that profits.
Not to mention listing “accidentally ending all humanity” as a real risk of your business.
We could also just stop tying people’s entire futures to a 401k. That would solve all of this.
And leave people with idle cash accounts? Inflation alone will tax it to hell.
I think we need a fundamental shift in how society is structured. Money is one of the biggest problems we have as a species.
We are literally killing the planet for little pieces of paper. Tell me that isn’t fucked up.
Now? After they fed their AI models the Internet and whatever images hosted there?
This really feels like Elysium, where — at the moment — they’re getting AI, and we’re getting the shaft. Sure, it doesn’t stop human creation, but since people are having a hard time with the oligarch imitations/facsimiles, I’m wary.
What can go wrong? Little reckless IPOs never killed anybody and never tanked world economy not even once… or twice… or thrice… or… oh well… how the fuck is this legal again?
The IPOs don’t concern me so much as the total amount of our economy AI has tied up. AI investments account for the majority of stock gains and almost all 2025 GDP gains. The Buffett Index, total stock valuation vs. GDP, stood at 225% last year. It was around 130% in 1929 and 2008.
No, this doesn’t feel legal and shouldn’t be in any case.
sounds like someone is gaming the economy
Yeah, there’s (AI) agents on stock portfolios doing that and then there’s the usual suspects.
the world economy is not any countries responsibility, and money is speech and any restriction of speech is unethical.
Allowing money to be equated with speech is both deeply unethical, as well as being just absolutely fucking stupid.
Furthermore, refusing to restrict any speech whatsoever is both wildly impractical and totally bonkers levels of dangerous. Because according to your pithy little “absolute”, yelling fire in a crowded theater has to be allowed.
Geez, dude, go step outside and breathe the fresh air or something. My god…
Copyright is a restriction on speech. So are libel laws. Are those unethical? I’m on the fence about copyright myself.
libel depends on omnicents in order to not falsely charge people with it.
edit: if you wanted a good example of speech that is more justifiably censored look to revenge porn and child porn laws
Google’s Sergey Brin spent $100m opposing California’s Prop 40, a one-time wealth tax that would put the funds toward healthcare and other public services.
I’m just amazed that this is legal. In my book, Sergei would right now be enjoyingnthe view out of a prison window for that stunt alone…
Using infinite money for political actions is protected as free-speech now, thanks to the Citizens United decision in 2010. That’s a huge part of where this all went really badly wrong. It was not the first nail in the coffin, it was more like a railroad spike. And the fascism express is coming through, right on time. All aboard!
why shouldn’t people be able to run ads of arbitrary content?
This is a billionaire problem as well as a deregulation problem (and of course, there is absolutely a feedback loop in play). Wealth disparity has become a vast chasm, and deregulation allows megacorps and billionaires to leverage their already insane wealth with the investments and retirement funds and pensions of the general public, via index funds and ETFs to continue to multiply their already nonsensically insane wealth.
yeah, the size of the chasm will continue to grow exponentially too, as they have more and more power and weight to throw around. It will accelerate until things become untenable, and that won’t be fun for anyone involved, be it the 99% or the rich, just for different reasons
Don’t forget that selective regulation can be worse than none.
The stage is already set to use regulatory capture to protect tech monopolies in the name of security and safety.
Can’t have these useful tools in the hands of citizens who are not engaged in maximizing shareholder value.
I mean, yeah. We have selective regulation - and selective enforcement of said selective regulation - already. If you’re trading enough significant figures, the SEC demonstrably does not give a flying fuck what you do in the vast majority of cases.
Any large enough fund should have their own teams for rating the securities. Americans, why are your pension funds so shit?
Because the ownership class gives us shit so they can slurp up more cash.
The problem isn’t necessarily with the IPOs. If an unprofitable company wants to go public with nothing to offer but empty promises, why shouldn’t they?
The real problem is how these companies have grown as large as they have with no profits, and are dominating the US economy. In a sane world, ordinary investors wouldn’t be lining up to buy shares of these companies that may never show a profit. What makes it even worse is how indexes are bending their own rules to get these companies in. Many ordinary people might not even realize how much their retirement is tied into these companies at this point.
Now, educated investors might see these as a lotto ticket. Put a small amount into each one, and maybe one or two hits big and generate outsized returns. But those folks are not gambling with their pensions. I have a bad feeling that when it all falls apart, the country as a whole will be left holding the bag, either because the stock market craters to the point that no one can retire, or the Feds step in and bail it all out
If an unprofitable company wants to go public with nothing to offer but empty promises , ehy shouldn’t they?
Because its fraudulent and in the end its always the people that have less that will end up suffering the consequences?
But that’s the thing, it’s not fraudulent to run a business that loses money. And these folks are committing no fraud, they are entirely honest in their filings that show they are burning through money with no hope of actual profit.
Yet, people keep buying. It’s like they care less about the underlying business, and more about catching a profit before it all falls apart.
They don’t need to be fraudulent, if they can get just as much investment by being honest.
Yet, people keep buying. It’s like they care less about the underlying business, and more about catching a profit before it all falls apart.
Acquiring profit is what capitalism is all about.
The “people” buying are retirement accounts that actual people can’t control
Most of us can’t control line-item investments, but we can move that money around. I’d bet the “super duper low risk” categories don’t hold much or any AI stock at the moment. Anyone know?
They’re looking for a government bailout
why should a government care about those with nothing to offer it?
why should a government care about those with nothing to offer it?
What are you offering me to care for your comment?
The whole arrangement is remarkable: investors get to cash out on an AI valuation nobody can justify, pension funds get handed the risk, and if it blows up we’ll be told the economy is too important to let it fail.
It’s long past that time. Tax the hell out of the ultra-rich!
We just need our politicians to not be on the take and actually push the people bribing the fuck out of them… to not bribe them…
I worry about this plan
Politicians on the take? come the fuck on, have some respect - its ALL CAP THE TAKE!
Wait: consults his 8yo’s urban dictionary
NO CAP, it’s ALL CAP THE TAKE.
FACT
Naomi Klein is awesome
