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A comment on Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment. Parent comment

Re:Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train... by ly3xqhl8g9 on Tuesday February 14, 2023 @02:38PM (#34794775)
One thing on the ontology of capital: once enough capital (billions, trillions) is gathered in one single control point there is a phase transition: from a means towards an end (build X, destroy Y) it becomes a manner of escaping reality: with enough (crony or not) capital you can keep afloat a business no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous the products. Not that 'there is no skin in the game', but there is no skin, there is no game anymore.
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Re:Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train... by eastbound on Tuesday February 14, 2023 @04:18PM (#34796130)
Whereas with government, you can keep afloat a government no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous it is. Except, as opposed to a company, it can’t crash like Enron or be threatened by competition. It doesn’t even need to fight to stay afloat.
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Re:Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train... by ly3xqhl8g9 on Tuesday February 14, 2023 @04:42PM (#34796526)
By control point you can understand a corporation or a government, no need for false dichotomies: in the age of capital there is no beyond.

Enron was a weak company, nowhere near the escape reality velocity: at peak, in 2000, they had a market capitalization of $60 billion, at the same time Microsoft was at $600 billion [1].

Also, any company worth their capital knows very well that "competition is for losers" [2] and dreams of the ultimate consolidation [3].

[1] The Largest Public Companies by Market Cap (2000–2022), https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/largest-companies-from-2...

[2] Competition Is for Losers, https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

[3] The Consolidation Curve, https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve

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Re:Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train... by kelseyfrog on Tuesday February 14, 2023 @04:27PM (#34796284)
You can't. At some point disaster and dumb leadership conspire to push the people and elite to revolution. We're no where near that now, but don't be fooled that governments are untoppable. They aren't. Every ancien régime had its peak.
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