Companies aren't meant to care about you, yet we have to care about them for health insurance, livable salaries, etc. They must make choices to stay in the green, but to the point of ruining lives and making products objectively worse. Can you be competitive without being immoral? Why is it so rare to see companies actually care for the thing they represent or have a CEO that doesn't have contacts coded in green? Did anyone ever see this coming or think this whole set up was a good idea? It seems so backwards to me.

I understand that shareholders want a return on their investments, but it gets to a point where its a little excessive? Growth shouldn't be FORCED to increase, companies should be allowed to take risks. Leftover profit would still be allowed but not guaranteed. Why do they always get their return but we get ripped off? And again, we have no choice but to be beholden to these systems.
It should go like:
Company: "we are interested in getting investment in this product"
Investor: "Okay, we will give you X amount"

Company: "Okay, we we are going to try to make the best product we can but we aren't going to take ANY MEANS NECESSARY to get it back"

And that's what it is. A RISK. Not an automatic win. If any investor has faith in an idea, they should believe it will sell, and the product will speak for itself. So why is the system set up so that product quality and consumer trust often go by the wayside? Sorry to sound like a broken record, but it bears repeating: did anyone see this coming?

We spend so much time focused on Epstein and his inner circle -and rightly so. But the wealthy are inherently predatory, a self engineered aristocracy that sees themselves as above us, above the law and above such notions as morals and ethics. It's nearly impossible to get rich while being a good person - about the only way a good man or women can become rich without (usually) metaphorical blood on their hands is to win the lottery.

Epstein was only the most famous of these monsters who lurk among the ruling class. His almost flamboyantly flippant disregard for human decency and utterly shameless gall and malevolence even after being released from prison gave people of every political persuasion a truly vile monster to hate and a cause to share -one that was a incredibly rare in that it was truly bipartisan among the electorate.

But Epstein wasn't t the only dragon that needed slaying in struggle to end the power and domination by the wealthy over our country that: there are countless predators among there numbers that are still out there, raised to believe they are our lords simply by virtue of the birth lottery, that most of them revel in treating us like serfs to be abused and discarded for their amusement should come as no surprise: that they should grow up to be these creatures of unearned, undeserved power and wealth, irredeemably warped and deranged by it. Perverted psychologically into something less than human, devoid of empathy, morality and ethics After all, to them we're NOKD, "not our kind, dear'.

Monstrous individuals like these three, the Tate brothers, Epstein, Trump, Matt Gaetz and Elon Musk, plus far, far too many more we've yet to hear of... they don't happen in a vacuum. They happen because we let them get away with it, rarely facing real consequences on an individual level. And that's to say nothing of the fact that this incompetentce of this greed and power addicted ruling class as a whole never faces faces ANY consequences for the widespread harm they cause by sub ertong democracy to their will, running the economy into the ground when their shareholder value obsessions eventually kill large corporations from unsustainable greed and exploitatiom, or when in their avarice they utterly mismange the financial system by turning banks into doomed to fail predatory institutions while they gamble with our money to facilitate the greed of themselves and their peers. When they fail and collapse, they are rewarded with bailouts. And little ever changed to stop it, any meaningful regulations dutifully stripped on their orders by their GOP servants, mboldening these self appointed nobles to continue repeating the cycle of economic rape and pillage that under the Trump administration has reached heights not seen since the Gilded Age. Heights that vastly exceed even that era.

The public has now become the only body in this country willing and able to expose their crimes and force the courts to hold them accountable. The Federal government is not only no longer working for us, the people - it is in their full control, a wholly owned subsidiary and enabler. Trump made no effort to hide it, he quite publicly stopped federal agencies from investigating and prosecuting white collar crimes, pardons for any and all offenses are on sale now (!) by a president who admires corruption as the divine right of the wealthy and powerful.

Did I mention that he too is an adjudicated rapist and convicted thief of state secrets for personal gain?

The call isn't just coming from inside the house, America. It's coming from the very room! The rooms you, I and everyone else is in right now. And unlike the Gilded Age, there is no Teddy Roosevelt waiting in the wings to bring these people down and restart the cycle of the progressive eras that so fundamentally changed the US for the better. That is until Reagan and the GOP began the long, slow destruction of nearly every reform, labor protection, laws governing corporate oversight and regulation, all but destroying the social safety nets, welfare/assistance programs and every other great achievement made by TR, FDR and LBJ that they can get away with.

These people are all predators and we are their prey. The worst of them are complete, irredeemable monsters like these Alexander brothers - and there are many, many more out there hiding in plain sight. But we remain at the mercy of the rest and always will until we finally collectively decide enough is enough. Trump will stymie every Democratic attempt at reforms and systemic changes with his veto, backed by his bought-and-paid for Executive Branch courtesy of Elon Musk on behalf of Peter Thiel's Silicon Valley Yarvinite cabal.

Fuck conspiracy fantasies and those who perpetuate them: have always been a means of distracting the public with fantastical bullshit from what's long been blatantly happening right in plain sight. Fuck the two tiered justice system that makes them feel invincible, fuck the tax codes that allow them to pay less taxes than I do (if any), fuck the GOP (and even many past and present Democrats) for selling the country out to these people. And most of all, fuck the collaborators who sell out their countrymen just so they can hurt people they don't like.

This country is sick. These assholes are just a symptom of an almost incomprehensibly bigger problem. Either we force this to end, preferably peacefully, through relentless pressure and weight of numbers or we can keep ben victims.

I pledge allegiance to the economy,
and to the markets for which I labor,
one nation, under capitalism,
indebted, with bills and taxes for all.

With liberty and justice
for those who can afford them.

I pledge to work until my body gives out,
to measure my worth in productivity,
to call exhaustion ambition,
and obedience discipline.

I shall earn my right to live,
compete for the privilege of security,
and call it freedom when I am allowed to choose
between the options I can afford.

I shall not question why survival has a price,
why the wealthy inherit freedom,
or why the rest of us must spend our lives
trying to buy what they already own.

I shall stand, hand over heart,
reciting words about freedom
while surrendering my time to survive,
mistaking the right to choose
for the freedom to refuse.

And I shall teach my children to do the same,
until they mistake rules for reality,
routine for destiny,
and the system for human nature.

I shall call this opportunity.
I shall call this responsibility.
I shall call this the American Dream.

May I one day earn enough freedom points
to afford the freedom
I was promised at birth.