• Action [email protected]@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      It’s the ultimate push to turn everything into the perfect Capitalist (not market-oriented) business solution: Getting paid for nothing

      If your goal is to accumulate capital, and there are not outside forces regulating your worst impulses, you ultimately will create a class of legal-protected thieves, since the absolutely best and most risk free way to accumulate capital is to be given it in exchange for quite literally nothing.

      Gambling is about as close to the platonic ideal as you can, but conquest by military force of political capture is also a very, viable route. Use the law to force people to buy your nothing and be protected for it, rather than being lynched when you steal someone’s products.

      • iocase@lemmy.zip
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        2 hours ago

        Mandated insurance that isn’t a crown corporation beholden to ratepayers is a perfect example. If you have mandated insurance for something, and that private insurance has a shareholder requirement to see growth every quarter, and the same amount of things are being insured, only one thing can happen:

        Rates go up with denials

        Payouts go down

        Eventually you’re paying for insurance you know is worthless but it’s mandated by law.

      • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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        4 hours ago

        I agree with you, but then isn’t it strange that AI does a whole lot of something instead of nothing? Like, the high amount of effort they put into making AI a big thing runs counter to the laziness of getting paid to do nothing.

        Though I guess they ARE getting paid doing nothing, with how many data centers are getting cancelled.

        https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/nearly-half-of-us-data-centers-planned-for-2026-canceled-or-delayed-and-it-s-expected-to-get-worse/ar-AA20sl2J

        • Cypress@lemmy.zip
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          2 hours ago

          Not when you realize that the “something” they’re charging you for is:
          a) bastardized cargo culted knockoff of “something” so insubstantial that it’s very nearly “something-shaped nothing”
          b) the “something” is made of stuff that isn’t even theirs.

          Not only is it giving you a bamboo and thatch sculpture of an airplane when you ask for an airplane; it’s made of STOLEN bamboo and STOLEN thatch.

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 hours ago

      any company born after 1993 can’t make good products… all they know is exploitation, fire their workers, enshittify, be pink capitalist, eat hot cash & lie

      (yes i know sony was founded before 1993 thank you)