Qasim Rashid, Esq.Dec 29, 2022

As Southwest CEO Bob Jordan pretends to apologize—remember—SW got a $7B federal bailout, spent $5.6B of that on Stock Buybacks, gave their CEO a raise to $9.1M, & forced frontline workers into 16 hour shifts under threat of termination—while spending $0 updating SW software😳

Southwest’s debacle isn’t an accident. It’s the predictable result of billionaire & corporate corruption & greed—& thousands of workers & travelers are paying the price.

In a just world SW execs will face criminal charges.

Show threadmhoyeDec 30, 2022
@QasimRashid I ... don't know if this is corruption in the way we usually mean it. I mean, it's professional negligence and should be criminal negligence for sure, but I'd wager you could subpoena every paragraph written at that company and not find any criminal intent; you'd just find a total commitment to the idea that "shareholder value" is the most important thing that company produces, and not "happy humans delivered to their destinations."
Show threadmnemonicoverloadDec 30, 2022
@mhoye @QasimRashid It's also fiduciary negligence from a traditional perspective as well. These sorts of decisions are short term profit driven and hurt the overall long term outlook of the company.
Show threadmhoye
@mnemonicoverload @QasimRashid While that's true, if "the long term outlook of the company" isn't part of the reward cycle - or worse (and likely) the golden parachutes make long-term planning irrelevant - then that long term outlook doesn't matter.
Dec 30, 2022 at 4:15pmWeb
Show threadmnemonicoverloadDec 30, 2022
@mhoye @QasimRashid The long term outlook is of course largely irrelevant to the modern fiction we call "the market" but it has very real consequences to the actual economy (jobs, stability, continuity of service, negative externalities, etc).
Show threadmhoyeDec 30, 2022
@mnemonicoverload @QasimRashid I absolutely agree with that, but I think the logical next step of that argument is "... the modern fiction we call the market is not actually good for the parts of the thing we call the economy that matter to people."
Show threadmnemonicoverloadDec 30, 2022
@mhoye @QasimRashid Well yes, exactly. Personally I'd go one further and say capitalism itself, like previous economic systems we've discarded once their utility was at an end, was only necessary within a specific context of societal development and that time has passed. IMO it's no longer fit for purpose.