My guess is they'd all prefer to cooperate, but they know that if any of their competitors defect, then they're worse off for it. Plus, there are legal hurdles to direct cooperation among competitors.
We saw a show of uncoordinated unity after the Jan. 6 insurrection, but as soon as that unity showed signs of fraying, it became hard to sustain.
That would be a steep hill for shareholders to climb, IMO. They'd have to prove that ignoring trump was not in shareholders' interest in the short term and (even harder) in the long term, right?
By your theory, couldn't (presumably other) shareholders sue over what Apple actually did? Like, maybe cowing to Trump has done damage to Apple's brand, in violation of fiduciary duty.
Even if that were a valid legal excuse (and it is not clear that it is), it doesn't hold up to moral scrutiny.
But realistically the reason they all bent the knee to Trump is probably not because they were cowards or because they wanted to protect their shareholders, but because they welcomed him being elected.
Partly because they knew it would kill off the anti-trust enforcement that was finally starting to gain steam with Lina Khan's FTC and partly because they are rich enough to play Trump's corruption game, where as long as you pay him off and linguistically publicly fellate him once in a while the world is your oyster.
So... you're saying that they are doing what they are doing because it benefits the company and makes the stock more valuable? Sounds like their fiduciary duty to me.
At some point, the responding local police should be held criminally liable. A tiny brass badge should not shield you from having to comply with society's laws.
> At some point, the responding local police should be held criminally liable.
At some point, the people doing the "swatting" (false police call) should be held criminally liable, maybe even for attempted murder by cop. There's definitely a crime being committed there. I'm 100% sure that calling the cops on someone and making a false report is against at least one or two (or maybe even several) laws.
I'm guessing the calls were anonymous, and the police didn't bother tracing the numbers.
Which does raise the question: why is it SOP for the police to send a SWAT team to a random house based on nothing but an anonymous phone call? At the very least it should take some kind of statement from an actual identified human who can be held accountable if it turns out to be a hoax.
Um, no. In a high trust society "swatting" would not be a thing--because people would understand that it's a huge violation of trust. And people who did make hoax calls like this would suffer severe punishment--because that's what a high trust society has to do to people who violate trust like that, in order to stay high trust.
> Act now (to reduce potential loss of life)
Not necessarily, since SWAT teams are generally not noted for their restraint--certainly not if their response on swatting call number 55 to the same house is the same as it was for call number 1.
> and verify later
Okay, let's say this is valid for call number 1. Still, what about call number 2 to the same house? Let alone call number 55? Especially when the owner of the house produces evidence that people had threatened to swat him?
So no, we do not have the kind of society where your logic makes sense; the rare cases where the quick knee jerk response actually prevents harm are more than overwhelmed by the much more common cases where it's a false alarm but the police keep on violating innocent people's rights anyway.
> Your law enforcement gives blanket trust to reports, because in a high trust society false report is rare.
But in our actual society, false reports are not rare--this case is an illustration of that (55 false reports, no true ones). So, as I said, this logic does not work for our actual society, which is clearly not a high trust society.
Ignoring that "high trust society" is a dog whistle for xenophobia... it still doesn't make sense because in an actual "high trust" society, police officers breaking down the door of an innocent resident will make news the first time. By the third time, people will demand answers about what the fuck is wrong with police training process to make them think they can do this. Preferably, heads will roll.
America is one of the lowest trust society among developed nations. People don't trust government officers to do the right thing, like, at all, and they wear the distrust as a badge of honor.
That’s certainly moving the goal posts, but of course America was founded on the principle of distrust of rulers, for good historical and governance reasons. Trust between citizens is a whole different topic
Having that badge should cause you to be held to a higher level of accountability. Abusing the power given to you by being an officer should mean receiving much more severe consequences.
The trouble with that logic, as the US courts figured out, was that if the police could be held accountable for misdeeds done while allegedly doing their job then so could other public officials, like judges.
For instance, the judge who refused involuntary commitment for the schizophrenic who killed the woman in Charlotte could be held accountable for their bad judgment.
Judges face almost no consequences for their decisions, and so they think it is right and proper that police should have qualified immunity from similar consequences.
It doesn't follow logically at all. The origins of judicial immunity have distinct historical roots, just as Congressional speech & debate immunity has distinct roots.
There's an argument it might effect prosecutorial immunity, presuming someone was a stickler about consistency, but it's tough to say because the justifications are arguably based on a poor historical understanding of how prosecutors took up cases. (Historically prosecutors, even criminal prosecutors, were often private individuals paid by the local government to prosecute a case, or even prosecute a case entirely on their own volition. But today many jurists just assume the prosecutor has always and only been a distinct executive office, which if they're well read enough--but not too well read--might think sometimes had some quirks about who filled the office.)
> The trouble with that logic, as the US courts figured out, was that if the police could be held accountable for misdeeds done while allegedly doing their job then so could other public officials, like judges.
That's not trouble, it's a strong selling point. No public official should be immune from accountability for their crimes. Transparency and accountability would solve a lot of problems. Any public official uncomfortable with the idea of not being able to commit crimes and civil rights violations with impunity isn't fit for the job they have.
You don't see what's confusing, and then you proceed to mention something confusing. If a basic-skills user can't find "missed calls", that's confusing!
The call actually does appear in the Recents list in red, with the time of call, it just doesn't say "missed" explicitly. This matches how the Phone app has looked for the past 20 years.
The "missed calls" list I mentioned would be more of a filter, which is indeed annoying but not fundamental.
HTTP is used by billions of people while SSH is not. It should be pretty apparent. Why do people answer my phone calls and texts but everyone is ignoring my smoke signals?
Right -- I'd already have thought places "couldn't" require people to be any kind of smartphone owner to participate in commerce, but I notice that more and more these days.
Are you saying that you think an event wouldn’t do this because they’d be losing android-owning customers? Or that they couldn’t do it for some legal or regulatory reason?
There are already a lot that require "verified" brands. So iPhone or Android only, maybe recent versions only, and not the hackable Androids like Graphene. Wouldn't be surprised if a more niche place unintentionally required an iPhone.
Well I guess we'll find out if McDonald's bottleneck is indeed hamburger availability, and if they'll be selling their limited hamburger supply for less profit by charging some people less than before, rather than gouging customers.
Oy. I'm no fiscal conservative, but the US federal government absolutely needs to balance its budget. Otherwise, it's bound to either choke on interest payments, devalue the dollar, or both.
Unlike most Trumpists, I see the the problem as a revenue issue, not expenditures; unlike many non-Trumpists, I doubt "tax the rich" is going to be enough to plug the hole.
Government healthcare payments would be a good start -- it seems likely that the amount most employees already (effectively) pay for health insurance could fund equivalent government coverage with some money left over to help pay for other government expenses.
I'm unconvinced that "balance the budget" is the issue here.
Interest rates are a function of inflation and joblessness. Both of which the current administration has created via terrible (for the country; great for the family members of the administration) policies.
The terrible policies are destroying jobs and causing the prices of goods to go up, thus increasing interest rates. The administration could balance the budget, but that would not correct the interest rate problem unless they also stop enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of the country.
How are interest rates a function of joblessness? Do you mean inversely?
My amateur understanding is that prevailing interest rates are more directly a function of supply and demand for capital; I agree that higher prices increase demand for capital. Joblessness would seem to be correlated with lower demand; the unexpected combination of high employment and persistently low interest rates in the 2010s was a source of a lot of commentary, as I recall.
> How are interest rates a function of joblessness? Do you mean inversely?
To copy/paste my other response:
The organization responsible for setting the interest rate, has two mandates: full employment and low inflation. Jobs are an important aspect for that reason.
Low interest rates drive job creation and inflation. High interest rates decrease inflation and decrease job creation.
I'm sure jobs are an important aspect here, but I kind of doubt that we can fix this without also finding a way to refocus our efforts on endeavors that most people approve of. As it is, letting the US succeed is bad and letting it fail is worse. That's unlikely to remain stable forever.
What I mean is, that the organization responsible for setting the interest rate, has two mandates: full employment and low inflation. Jobs are an important aspect for that reason.
It is absolutely a spending problem. The Department of Agriculture has 100k employees and a $500B dollar budget. That’s just one department of many. Throw a dart at the MTS [1] report and you’ll find dozens of other agencies with similar levels of spending.
There are plenty of places to cut spending before we start raising taxes on the W2 wage earners that are contributing the most to federal tax receipts.
How would nationalizing health insurance even make a dent in spending? Ultimately the same amount of healthcare will be consumed. You are truly clueless about the federal fisc if you think these are even remotely serious ideas for fixing the federal budget deficit.
Sorry for misspeaking. What I should have said is that "If you want anything approaching a balanced budget in modern times..."
The facts are that surpluses were routine before the 1960s, under both parties. Since then, not so much.
1998 was the first year the United States government recorded a budget surplus since 1969 [0] (Clinton with a GOP Congress).
Since 1981, the deficit deepened under Republican administrations and shrank under Democratic ones [1]
That aligned with the creation of a right-specific media system where "Republicans don't fight Republicans" - so there can never be any internal accountability.
I don't feel like I "both sides"ed it that much, but I guess reasonable minds can disagree. But: neither party has balanced the federal budget, or even made (sane) noises about doing so, since the Democrats in the 90s. I haven't heard much about it from Democrats this election cycle -- perhaps reasonably so since there are much more critical issues at the moment.
The last Republican to balance the budget was Eisenhower. Yeah, Clinton is pretty old today too, but almost no one alive today was of voting age during the Eisenhower administration.
Sorry, I was not aiming that directly at you, more like an old man yelling at clouds. I kinda give up on all of this. Nobody wants to hear or debate actual policies in the public. Politics is now just an exercise in campism. Nobody plays that game better than the current party.
A good faith cooperate tax would solve most if not all of our deficit, and arguably increase our GDP growth.
A 5% revenue tax on the fortune 500 would get us half way there. I could not quickly get a number for total revenue of more than the fortune 500, but I would not be surprised if a 3% VAT would cover the entire deficit. We lose so much tax revenue due to all the loop holes deliberately left in the corporate tax code.
On top of that, ban stock buy backs entirely, that way more of the record breaking profits have to go to wages or other means of investing in the business.
"A 5% revenue tax on the fortune 500 would get us half way there."
Given that ~20% of that group have net income margins below 5%, how much of such a tax policy would simply be an inflationary tax on consumers? I.e., we know Walmart cannot simply pay a 5% revenue tax, that would instantly make them deeply unprofitable. So they would have to raise prices to afford the tax. And if they know Target, Kroger, Costco, and Amazon also need to pay the same 5% tax, there is less competitive pressure to eat into margin. Even with zero collusion, there is perfect information symmetry regarding the tax.
At their present 3.1% net margin, if Walmart passed a 5% gross-revenue tax entirely to consumers while all else stayed equal, prices would have to rise MORE than 5% -- about 5.44% just to preserve its existing margin. Of course, some of the tax burden likely gets shared between Walmart, its customers, supply chain, vendors etc... In a world where the Fortune 500 (Walmart) has to pay the 5% revenue tax but a supplier of some SKU (not a Fortune 500) does not pay it, I imagine Walmart would lean extra hard on them to eat some of the tax. It all seems like a very messy and inefficient tax.
On the VAT, the CBO has actually studied a 5% VAT tax and modeled that it would raise $330B. That's 16% of the current $2.1T deficit.
Right there’s a lot of easy answers mechanically but they are challenging politically. The longer we wait to do anything the better they’ll look though that’s for sure.
Apple's execs, for instance, definitely had enough monetary and social capital to basically just ignore Trump, and they haven't.
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