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by fieryscribe 2223 days ago
Whatever the government decides, they rarely, if ever, provide an explanation or recourse either: the Patriot Act, Ahmad Arbury, TBTF, the assassination of Awlaki, snooping on Americans, Operation Fast and the Furious, the Pentagon's missing billions, Epstein's death, etc.

I'm as pro-democracy as they come, but the belief that the government is somehow (and always) more accountable than companies strains credulity. Companies are accountable to Wall Street, which implies they're accountable to their consumers too. Shake Shack did not have to return the funds they received recently, but they did, because of media attention.
1 comments
ClumsyPilot 2222 days ago
Accountability to wallstreet = accountability to consumers? Where is this idea even coming from? Can you name a single instance of Wallstreet punishing anti-consumer practices? Did AT&T selling of customer location data affect stock price?

All your examples are from defence. I've been watching people challenge in court every kind of decision, from roadbuilding to Brexit.

But tech companies circumvent laws, uber is not a taxy company, people driving them are not employees, Youtube is not a media company, etc. Every time this happens, voting becomes more and more meaningless.

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vonmoltke 2222 days ago
> All your examples are from defence.

Half of those examples have nothing to do with the DOD. One of them (Ahmad Arbury) has nothing to do with the federal government at all. Where did you get this idea from?

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fieryscribe 2222 days ago
Wall Street punishes companies that are not profitable or are losing money. Consumers can make that happen by walking away when companies are anti-consumer. If they do, profits fall and Wall Street would hold that company accountable.

Why do you think Zoom hired security professionals and bought Keybase? Why do you think Facebook reacted after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Why do you think TikTok separated itself from ByteDance in China?

Even with the most federal oversight, US banks and financial firms tanked the economy and then got paid for it. And it's not a left-right thing; it's a them-us thing. And if you don't believe that, you only need to take a look at the Panama Papers scandal.

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