Adventures in Greed (Megacorps vs Everyday people)

[rachel]

The history behind how since the 1980s private equity firms have slowly been buying every brand in existence...

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vwGb-Btdl0[/video]

[Mozai]

The history behind how since the 1980s private equity firms have slowly been buying every brand in existence...
[video]

Adblocking on youtube stopped working on this laptop.  I'm sad that I have to sit through 0:47 of ads about how great a private equity firm is before I can start watching the video about how terrible P.E. firms are.

[rachel]

That time back in 2018 when Trump made a deal with Foxconn to open a factory in Wisconsin to make TVs & computers and shit, creating over 13 thousand jobs in the process. Unfortunately it was all a scam, it's been 6 years and they've only built a couple empty warehouses and they don't even make anything.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeu4p9rQx0[/video]

[rachel]

Clothes have been getting consistently worse over the past 40 years. Also H&M uses muslim slave labor in china.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCwbU41Icfw[/video]

[rachel]

Tech billionaires are suing small farmers in California because they don't want to sell their land. The billionaires want to make a libertarian tech utopia and promise to make "affordable housing" (starting at $400k)

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHlcAx-I0oY[/video]

[rachel]

All the megacorps (Google, Apple, Disney, Nike) are owned by the same asset holding companies (BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.) through a system called "Universal Ownership" where holding companies will buy 5-10% of the shares of every company on the market, giving them voting rights on the board. It doesn't matter if one of the companies on the market does better or worse, all the profits get funneled into asset holding companies. This creates a situation where none of the megacorps have to compete with each other to lower prices. It's a meta-monopoly

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxZO0jd8VoU[/video]

[rachel]

https://futurism.com/neoscope/paralyzed-man-exoskeleton-too-old

"After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy," Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. "The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money."

According to Straight, the issue was caused by a piece of wiring that had come loose from the battery that powered a wristwatch used to control the exoskeleton. This would cost peanuts for Lifeward to fix up, but it refused to service anything more than five years old, Straight said.

"I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?"

[ThePedalMan998]

That is a disturbing story, I hope that other companies do not adopt a similar mindset when it comes to people reliant on their tech for basic needs.

[rachel]

Historian goes to Davos to call out greedy corporate executives for avoiding taxes and pretending like philanthropy is a solution to wealth inequality. ...Then the CEO of Yahoo is like "wow can we talk about something else please?"

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaen3b44XY[/video]

[Mozai]

[Fishmé]

Awe damn... that's too real... it's creeping up.

[rachel]

Infographic showing how Americans think wealth is distributed, how they think it should be distributed, versus how it's actually distributed.

Spoilers: The reality is much worse than people think.

[Fishmé]

Infographic showing how Americans think wealth is distributed, how they think it should be distributed, versus how it's actually distributed.

Spoilers: The reality is much worse than people think.

🤢🤮

[nicefish]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN3tKgzb-dw[/video]

[rachel]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance-industry-heres-how

A global spy tool exposed the locations of billions of people to anyone willing to pay. A Catholic group bought location data about gay dating app users in an effort to out gay priests. A location data broker sold lists of people who attended political protests.

What do these privacy violations have in common? They share a source of data that's shockingly pervasive and unregulated: the technology powering nearly every ad you see online.

Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called "real-time bidding" (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads—it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you've never heard of.