For once, it doesn’t have to be blackmail. The Zionists have Uncle Sam. Relations between the EU and the US are already not the strongest they’ve been. Risking the ire of a large power like that is not exactly smart diplomacy.
Would it have been the right thing to do? Absolutely.
Not against someone backed by the US
The issue at any scale beyond “local store” is that eventually your customers and transactions become impersonal numbers on a sheet. It’s hard to remember the human on the other side when there’s just too many of them for our brain to actually process as such.
At that point, the drive for profit inherent to our system and essential for subsistence can’t be checked by intuitive empathy alone any more. It requires conscious effort, diligent reflection and the will to be customer-friendly.
When the least scrupulous end up having the most money and owning majorities of private companies, it’s hardly any wonder most of them suck.
Well, I can probably afford a small RC boat or something. Not quite the same caliber that could carry humans on the ocean, but more than nothing I guess.
Dangit, now I want to look up how much a model yacht would cost and if I could afford to brag “I’ve got a small fleet of yachts”…
The reason Steam is less bad is that its president is less of a dick. The reason that works is because he’s not beholden to other shareholders, because he’s the majority owner himself. If they were publicly owned, he wouldn’t have the liberties to make long-term decisions instead of (only) short-term money grabs.
But his decisions most likely aren’t the result of some bleeding heart morality so much as a less shortsighted profit calculation. Newell is still a billionaire, and not just because of the assets Valve owns. He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford. He also owns a custom yacht manufacturing company, which is also a lot more than most people can afford (both the products and the company). He might not be as all-around awful as other billionaires, but you don’t get this rich through your own work alone.
Private ownership isn’t a guarantor of customer-friendly behaviour. It just eliminates one factor forcing companies to prioritise profits, but it can’t replace customer protection regulations and oversight.
Mate’s been huffing his own farts for too long and started thinking they don’t smell
Once that big thing happens, they can no longer milk the anticipation
That’s what I was getting at, yes.
I genuinely believe it might not fix everything, but will go one hell of a long way to making a lot of things easier to fix.
There should be a mechanism to reward artists for their work and enable them to keep creating, but without also allowing a system of vampires to control that mechanism and enslave them in a twisted web of dependency and power.
Legal systems are a necessity as long as there are people willing to do violence to others. Ideally, they’ll constrain the use of violence on behalf of the collective to cases where it’s the only way to stop violence being perpetrated by individuals: To arrest them.
Practically, any human creation will have flaws, and nearly all systems will be biased in favour of the powerful. That doesn’t categorically make it useless for the people.