It’s too late for that. Guillotine is the only solution. Trust me, I’m a licensed guillotine operator.
Are you looking for investors at this time?
Investing schemes is exactly how billionaires became billionaires. I don’t need money, I do it out of passion, for the greater good.
As long as conservatives continue to live, they will continue to defend the wealth class with their lives. They always have and always will.
To defeat the boss, we must first eliminate their foot-soldiers. Sherman’s work is not finished.
The problem isn’t necessarily with the IPOs. If an unprofitable company wants to go public with nothing to offer but empty promises, why shouldn’t they?
The real problem is how these companies have grown as large as they have with no profits, and are dominating the US economy. In a sane world, ordinary investors wouldn’t be lining up to buy shares of these companies that may never show a profit. What makes it even worse is how indexes are bending their own rules to get these companies in. Many ordinary people might not even realize how much their retirement is tied into these companies at this point.
Now, educated investors might see these as a lotto ticket. Put a small amount into each one, and maybe one or two hits big and generate outsized returns. But those folks are not gambling with their pensions. I have a bad feeling that when it all falls apart, the country as a whole will be left holding the bag, either because the stock market craters to the point that no one can retire, or the Feds step in and bail it all out
If an unprofitable company wants to go public with nothing to offer but empty promises , ehy shouldn’t they?
Because its fraudulent and in the end its always the people that have less that will end up suffering the consequences?
But that’s the thing, it’s not fraudulent to run a business that loses money. And these folks are committing no fraud, they are entirely honest in their filings that show they are burning through money with no hope of actual profit.
Yet, people keep buying. It’s like they care less about the underlying business, and more about catching a profit before it all falls apart.
They don’t need to be fraudulent, if they can get just as much investment by being honest.
The “people” buying are retirement accounts that actual people can’t control
Most of us can’t control line-item investments, but we can move that money around. I’d bet the “super duper low risk” categories don’t hold much or any AI stock at the moment. Anyone know?
They’re looking for a government bailout
Yet, people keep buying. It’s like they care less about the underlying business, and more about catching a profit before it all falls apart.
Acquiring profit is what capitalism is all about.
why should a government care about those with nothing to offer it?
why should a government care about those with nothing to offer it?
What are you offering me to care for your comment?
If an unprofitable company wants to go public with nothing to offer but empty promises, why shouldn’t they?
Because it hurts the public? Do you not think the people should ever defend themselves?
Google’s Sergey Brin spent $100m opposing California’s Prop 40, a one-time wealth tax that would put the funds toward healthcare and other public services.
I’m just amazed that this is legal. In my book, Sergei would right now be enjoyingnthe view out of a prison window for that stunt alone…
Using infinite money for political actions is protected as free-speech now, thanks to the Citizens United decision in 2010. That’s a huge part of where this all went really badly wrong. It was not the first nail in the coffin, it was more like a railroad spike. And the fascism express is coming through, right on time. All aboard!
Citizens United
Such naming pisses me off so much; and that this kind of deception works so well.
In Germany we have for example the “Association of Family Businesses” who regularly advocate for libertarian shit. The name alone makes people think of the nice little baker two streets away that is run in the fourth generation, while the actual members are billionaires like Rossmann, Vorwerk, etc.
Oh or also the “farmer’s association” which typically lets people think of that nice old dude with his 10 cows and 2 tractors, while in reality it’s the big corporations (including dairy factories and chemical companies).
Yeah, perception is unfortunately more important than truth. With a functioning government and legal system we could at least try to fight against such misleading political activities but those institutions have been so extensively undermined I’m not sure if they’re even really still standing or if they’re just floating in the air waiting for gravity to notice there’s nothing still holding them up.
You cannot really block these things unless you want to decide how someone can use his own money.
I agree that lobbying should be illegal (basically I see it as legalized corruption) but in the end Brin could simply had bought billboard on every street or commercial time on TVs and newspapers.
You absolutely can and it was actually blocked for the longest time. It wasn’t until Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 that enabled the formation of super PACs and thus allowed practically unlimited campaign spending from billionaires. Just look at this statistic from the linked Wikipedia article:
The share of billionaire campaign spending increased by over 6000% over the last two decades.No, you cannot.
Blocking the donations to a party does not stop a billionaire to spend his money to push for a specific law proposed from politician, you simply change the way it happen.
And you also don’t stop billionaires to ask for a specific law, a billionaire could simply say that he will support the proposer of a law he is interested in, politicians will learn fast that if they propose a law some billionaire like (ask) such billionaire will use his money to push for this politician election.
In all this you don’t donate a single dollar to the party.
This is such an anti-democratic take on a problem created by anti-democratic means. Plenty of places are able to better regulate the power of money in politics.
No, it is a lucid analysis of what could happen.
In the end there is no way you can stop someone from spending their money how they want, I am sure you understand that. And this is true for everyone, not only billionaires.You can stop donating to parties (in my country you can donate to a party only a very small amount) but what it would be really antidemocratic would be to decide how someone can or cannot use their money.
Go try to buy a human organ. It may not be impossible to stop you, but it sure is hard to accomplish and you take a pretty big risk of prison time.
Yes, you can effectively stop people from spending their money on bad things. Money isnt a god.
Go try to buy a human organ. It may not be impossible to stop you, but it sure is hard to accomplish and you take a pretty big risk of prison time.
Yes, you can effectively stop people from spending their money on bad things. Money isnt a god.
I get your thinking but you out of target: I am talking about something legal (buy billboards or TV times) and you about something illegal, it is not the same thing.
It is like buying cocaine and a boat: you can stop me from buying cocaine because it is illegal but you would have a hard time to stop me from buying a boat, which is legal even if you don’t like boats.Bad things means illegal things, not things that you don’t like.
And how can be illegal to say that you support some politician and buy with your own money at your own name a billboard to write “support [candidate] because he is awesome”. ?
why shouldn’t people be able to run ads of arbitrary content?
Funny thing is it’s always the same for socialism/communism as there’s always people who want more power than someone else.
Define socialism and communism.
I’ll pick capitalism 100 times over comunism.
Marx did say that peasants are the ultimate bourgeois reactionaries.
So? Marx was wrong…
just because communism isnt that good, doesnt mean other options arent. that is just saying you rather choose to stay with slavemaster than starve in the wilds, as if those two were only options. I dont blame you for thinking that though, just consider what thoughts are your own and what are from other people.
The whole arrangement is remarkable: investors get to cash out on an AI valuation nobody can justify, pension funds get handed the risk, and if it blows up we’ll be told the economy is too important to let it fail.
We could also just stop tying people’s entire futures to a 401k. That would solve all of this.
And leave people with idle cash accounts? Inflation alone will tax it to hell.
I think we need a fundamental shift in how society is structured. Money is one of the biggest problems we have as a species.
We are literally killing the planet for little pieces of paper. Tell me that isn’t fucked up.
Yes it is but nobody wants to listen to people like us. Ive been advocating getting rid of money for over a decade.
This is a billionaire problem as well as a deregulation problem (and of course, there is absolutely a feedback loop in play). Wealth disparity has become a vast chasm, and deregulation allows megacorps and billionaires to leverage their already insane wealth with the investments and retirement funds and pensions of the general public, via index funds and ETFs to continue to multiply their already nonsensically insane wealth.
yeah, the size of the chasm will continue to grow exponentially too, as they have more and more power and weight to throw around. It will accelerate until things become untenable, and that won’t be fun for anyone involved, be it the 99% or the rich, just for different reasons
Don’t forget that selective regulation can be worse than none.
The stage is already set to use regulatory capture to protect tech monopolies in the name of security and safety.
Can’t have these useful tools in the hands of citizens who are not engaged in maximizing shareholder value.
I mean, yeah. We have selective regulation - and selective enforcement of said selective regulation - already. If you’re trading enough significant figures, the SEC demonstrably does not give a flying fuck what you do in the vast majority of cases.
Saying what it should be done already. USA doing it’s thing again.
It’s long past that time. Tax the hell out of the ultra-rich!
What can go wrong? Little reckless IPOs never killed anybody and never tanked world economy not even once… or twice… or thrice… or… oh well… how the fuck is this legal again?
The IPOs don’t concern me so much as the total amount of our economy AI has tied up. AI investments account for the majority of stock gains and almost all 2025 GDP gains. The Buffett Index, total stock valuation vs. GDP, stood at 225% last year. It was around 130% in 1929 and 2008.
No, this doesn’t feel legal and shouldn’t be in any case.
sounds like someone is gaming the economy
Yeah, there’s agents on stock portfolios doing that and then there’s the usual suspects.
but no recourse whatsoever
the world economy is not any countries responsibility, and money is speech and any restriction of speech is unethical.
that’s some mad take
Copyright is a restriction on speech. So are libel laws. Are those unethical? I’m on the fence about copyright myself.
libel depends on omnicents in order to not falsely charge people with it.
edit: if you wanted a good example of speech that is more justifiably censored look to revenge porn and child porn laws
Allowing money to be equated with speech is both deeply unethical, as well as being just absolutely fucking stupid.
Furthermore, refusing to restrict any speech whatsoever is both wildly impractical and totally bonkers levels of dangerous. Because according to your pithy little “absolute”, yelling fire in a crowded theater has to be allowed.
Geez, dude, go step outside and breathe the fresh air or something. My god…
Last I checked, that time started at least as far back as 2021
You shouldn’t even be able to do an IPO if you have more debt that profits.
Not to mention listing “accidentally ending all humanity” as a real risk of your business.
People can pay and buy freely
Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Naomi Klein is awesome
