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by johnnyjeans 308 days ago
In fairness the laisseiz-faire market has been dead for over 2 centuries, it's just that this kind of thing usually happens with backchannels, often with a threat of malicious legislation if you don't play ball. There's a point where the more capital you control, the less freedom you actually have. For a company the size of intel, the line between private and public is blurred. Sometimes it's brazen, like with the seizure of the railroads in the 19th century, but the state is usually sensible enough to keep the illusion alive in the public's eye if they can help it.

This administration doesn't seem to care very much about appearances. Nothing you and I can do about it but pity the poor sons of bitches who are large enough to be perceived by the archons, and clench our assholes in the hopes that we aren't swept up in the damages.
1 comments
rickdeckard 308 days ago
> This administration doesn't seem to care very much about appearances.

(Or, this administration cares ONLY about appearances)

Either way, I'm not talking about appearances, I'm talking about the sitting US-president publicly attacking one of the most important companies of the US economy, with complete disregard for the consequences of his actions and the impact to the country and its citizens.

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johnnyjeans 308 days ago
The part where it becomes appearances is that it's public. The negative impact here stems from the office of the president criticizing the CEO of a publicly traded company, using an unofficial but public channel. This impact doesn't exist if it happens in private backchannels.

I think it's foolhardy to hold any certainty on the effect of transitioning from gloabalism to neo-mercantilism, which seems to be the economic policy of this admin. Given the complexity of the systems involved it should be flagrantly obvious that whether this is good or bad for the American people is wholly unpredictable for tiny little monkey brains. Thus, when I speak of the negative impacts in this context, I'm implicitly just sticking to what's definitely harmful, which is tied up in appearances here, and empirically measurable in intel's stock price (though it seems to be mostly minimal, thankfully.)

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