Wow, a hugely wealthy oligarchical capitalist facilitating the rise of fascism?
How completely unpredictable, with no historical precedent whatsoever!
Who could have possibly expected this?!
How much money do these fuckers need before they are content enough to not rat fuck American democracy so they can eek out a few percent more on their billions?
… The answer is infinity.
Capitalism requires constant growth, constant extraction, constant return in investment, constant tendency toward monopolies and wealth disparity until you end up with a neo feudalistic caste society.
You can either attempt to restrain and regulate the system, which we are currently doing a rather poor job of, overthrow the system, which is nigh impossible given the precarity of the average prole, or you can just watch as we head closer and closer to… some kind of hybrid of the handmaids tale and elysium.
… Or, maybe, escape to a slightly less insane foreign country, but you’re gonna need a lot of money or a very lucrative skill set as an employee to do that as anything other than an illegal immigrant.
You know, I always wondered where the professionals ended up in Elysium. Like there are the medical professionals taking care of the earthlings, but the life saving machines are in Elysium so they aren’t needed up there.
But like, what about the software folks? Like there’s an epic shit ton of software going on in that movie that just kind of gets handwaved.
Passification is handled by robots and crazy humans. Other than the one executive who comes down, where are his direct reports? There is no way he was interested in the factory management, that would be a middle management job. And then what about accountants? Researchers designing the tech on Elysium?
It never really made a whole lot of sense that Elysium was just the rich. They can’t just “get” everything they want up there, it had to come from earth.
Certainly not Prescott Bush!
Man… that’s one of the things that seems like a conspiracy theory to a great many people, but just actually is true.
Dude literally got caught doing massive amounts of money laundering for literal Nazis during WW2 and by all rights should have been convicted of treason.
Its like how most people don’t know that IBM machines enabled the Germans to tabulate and keep track of the holocaust, that their machines spit out the UIDs that were tattooed onto the victims at the death camps…
… I think that ‘War is a Racket’ by Smedley Butler really needs to be added to the basic K-12 curriculum alongside 1984 and Brave New World…
But oh oops, the Republicans already destroyed our education systems, nevermind.
There should be a law for owners of media being kept at arm’s length.
I think the laws we already have about free speech mean the government absolutely can’t tell a newspaper owner what to print. They can be held liable if they break laws, but not endorsing a candidate is not illegal.
EDIT: If you don’t like what I’m saying that’s on you. The constitution of the US is pretty clear about this and the Supreme Court has upheld it numerous times. I don’t think it’s cool that Bezos did this, but I also don’t think that a law stopping someone from doing it is a good idea or even plausible in the US. As long as we’re run as an oligarchy we’ll never get past problems like this, because if there is money to be made off information and money can buy power, unethical people will make unethical moves to manipulate the information that people take in. But as we all know, you cannot legislate morality, so the only thing to do is to remove the incentive.
We absolutely have laws that regulate portions of news coverage. Yeah, they can’t tell them what to say or what not to say, but there could exist laws that prevent owners from exerting too much influence over it.
Were you thinking of the “fairness doctrine”?
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine
How would such a law work and not infringe on freedom of speech as it has been codified by jurisprudence?
I thought your laws for example had standards about news vs entertainment, which is why the idiots at Fox keep getting away with misinformation.
tax them until they learn to mind their own business
Since he owns the Post, it is very strictly speaking “his business”.
On one hand, I’d love to see the Post endorse Harris, but on the other hand, I do feel that the owner of a company absolutely should have this level of control over their own company.
It might be different if he were compelling the paper to compromise on it’s integrity or something, but simply preventing his own paper from endorsing a political candidate is absolutely something that he should be able to do.
Please note that this isn’t a commentary on his immense wealth, or the role of the ultra wealthy in America…simply an observation on what a business owner should be able to do with their own company.
well he did it. why? looks like he’s trying to help by trumping the editors opinion. only they were bypassed because story’s out. pay site drama is not worth it. wsj and wp paywalls have always been not worth it. subs leaving in droves like TwX.
Has this f*ing idiot never heard of the Streisand Effect? The fact that they broke a decades long tradition to do this makes a louder thump than their endorsement would have.
He’s not a calebrity reliant on publuc opinion. He doesn’t give a shit.
Bezos has tons of federal government contracts. When Trump was president last time he went after Amazon and others he disliked to get their contracts cancelled. Bezos is concerned that if Trump wins, Trump could fuck with his contracts.
That’s the reason. It’s fucked up and more evidence of why news media shouldn’t be owned by fuckhead billionaires. Shameful day in WaPos history. Cowardice. Grovelling to placate Trump for the benefit of the paper 's owner.
Tin foil hat: I am somewhat concerned that our oligarch overlords seem to be hedging in a way that they think Trump might win.
I’m extremely concerned. LA times backing out too. There’s no reason not to, unless they’re afraid the psycho toddler dictator is going to be holding the reigns next year. Fucking traitorous cowards, money over country.
