Those near-misses are coming more frequently, as the culture of profit over safety incurs a mounting maintenance debt, filling America's rails with potential "bomb cars."

Rail mergers and other forms of deregulated, anything-goes capitalism are justified by conservative economists who insist that "#IncentivesMatter," and that the profit motive provides the incentive to improve efficiency, leading to lower costs and better service.

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It's not just tech, either - every sector from athletic shoes to international sea-freight is concentrated into anti-competitive, value-annihilating cartels and monopolies:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

As our friends on the right are forever reminding us: "#IncentivesMatter." When a company runs out of lands to conquer, the incentives all run one direction: downhill, into a pit of enshittification.

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The internet didn’t enshittify because we got the wrong technology.

The internet enshittified because we got the wrong rules.

https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b

#enshittification #IncentivesMatter #Antitrust #Interoperability

Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that's why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century "glorified hotel room key" territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: #IncentivesMatter.

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(As is often the case with Trump, he draws with a fisted crayon where others delicately shade with fine pencil, making it easier to see the work for what it is) (see also: E. Musk).

Axiomatic to model-building is the idea that if you tax something, you'll get less of it ("#IncentivesMatter"). The theory of corporate tax cuts goes like this: "if we tax corporations for the money they might use to build new plant and hire new workers, they will do less of those things."

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