Comment by RajT88
6 hours ago
> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029
That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.
6 hours ago
> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029
That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.
Well, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
That's not quite how facism works.
There are the purges. But it's normally not the corporate or moneyed puppetmasters getting purged, rather it's the political allies of the fascists that get purged. Military and law enforcement leaders who start off as allies have a particularly dismal survival record in these kinds of governments, since they don't have even the ephemeral protection of democratic legitimacy.
It may take longer, but they will, eventually. Maybe not Tim Cook.
The companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly.
Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
I've seen values estimated at between $150,000 to $200,000 for that trinket. That's actually a pretty solid bribe for most politicians and that's just what's been visible to the public.
For comparison, in AZ we had legislators caught in a sting operation that were selling individual votes for gambling legislation for between $660 to $60,000 in the 1990s.
We should not normalize this. That was a outright bribe even if it wasn't as big as what others gave. I wouldn't get off the hook for murder just because I argued that Ted Bundy killed waaaaaaay more people than me.
Too late “we” as a country already have. This country left caring about ethics and morals in 2016.
This.
I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive.
This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
You could say "moneyed interests". There is a distinction - there are both huge companies and billionaires, and a lot of the companies are owned in part or in whole by the billionaires. But together, they increasingly determine how our political system is run.
It all seems to entrenched and at the same time escalating, it feels like it's inevitable it'll all fall apart. I'm surprised we're not seeing more moneyed interests colluding to establish equilibrium which is sustainable.