Steve Randy WaldmanJun 29, 2024
"This is the American story of the past 4 decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between 'too rotten to stand' and 'too big to care'" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car
Pluralistic: The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you (28 Jun 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show threadferricoxide
@interfluidity @pluralistic

The whole "too big to fail" thing that justified the bailouts in the aftermath of the 2008 crash still enrage me. In a saner environment – like the aftermath of the Great Depression – it would have resulted in laws quickly ending up on the books that set upper bounds on the size of corporations (so they could never become "too big to fail") and result in a crap-ton of DoJ intervention to unwind the deals that went into creating the currently-extant crop of "too big to fail" organizations. Should have also resulted in jail time and penury for those at the helms and in the boardrooms of those "too big to fail" organizations.
Jun 29, 2024 at 5:48pmWeb
Show threadcerementJun 29, 2024

@ferricoxide @pluralistic @interfluidity

“But unlike other Western economies, the Icelandic government let its three major banks fail and went after reckless bankers. Many senior executives have been jailed and the country's ex-prime minister Geir Haarde was also put on trial”

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35485876

How did Iceland clean up its banks?

What can we learn from Iceland, where the economy is bouncing back after the financial crisis?

BBC News
Show threadferricoxideJun 29, 2024
@cerement @pluralistic @interfluidity

Smaller scale economy. Had there not been intervention in the US, we'd probably be still be going through a similar type of thing Japan's still enduring after their economy tanked in the 90s. My primary gripe is that nothing like Glass-Steagall came of it (and it was the dismantling of Glass-Steagall that allowed it). I mean, with the destruction of pension oriented retirement in favor of individual brokerage approaches, more people would have been wiped out than were in the Great Depression, so intervention was warranted ...but it went to the perpetrators rather than the "proles".
Show threadPappyJun 29, 2024

@cerement @ferricoxide @pluralistic @interfluidity

I read about how Iceland did big bank failures a few years ago. What a revelation! SMH, America can do better. We choose not to.

Show threadferricoxideJun 29, 2024
@Pappy @cerement @pluralistic @interfluidity

Best government billionaires can buy. Legislation and administrative decisions to help them make money. Legislation and administrative decisions to help them not lose money. And a bought court to say it's all legal and as the Founders meant it to be.
Show threadNeia masksJun 29, 2024
@ferricoxide @interfluidity @pluralistic

If it's too big to fail, it should be nationalized.
Show threadJargogglesJun 29, 2024
@neia @pluralistic @ferricoxide @interfluidity
Exactly. Instead of bailouts, companies should have to sell a stake in the company to the government.
Show threadferricoxideJun 29, 2024
@neia @interfluidity @pluralistic

Congratulations: you reached critical service or infrastructure status!
Show threadStephanie J Lahey, PhDJun 30, 2024
@ferricoxide @pluralistic @interfluidity 🎯