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points by _heimdall 4 days ago | 0 comments

Completely agree it will be a huge slap in the face to the public, unfortunately that's a common solution.

When everyone is afraid the market will collapse, or more likely distracted because the market collapsed just enough to hurt the average person, the government will bail them out and either people won't notice or will welcome it as a solution to huge levels of fear.

Voting isn't usually much of a solution after the fact, the political machine doesn't allow for candidates that would fix anything to have a chance at any office that matters. There's a reason our politicians today all seem to have roughly the same goals and all seem to become extremely wealthy while in office.

[–] psd1 4 days ago

Government trying to manage financial markets is like trying to steer a rampaging rhino; finance is stronger than government, and can wreck it. But some politicians want to increase regulation and some want to reduce it. Some cynicism is fair, but you've overstated the case. Elections do not offer infinite choice, but the choices are distinct.

[–] InsidiousWombat 3 days ago

But why would they bail them out ? Stock value will drop regardless of what govt does and having the borrowers (the private companies that already made billions on selling the shovel) get stuck with the unclaimable debt is far better option, and those are not hiring average blue collar workers in hundreds of thousands so any job loss would be minuscule too

[–] _heimdall 3 days ago

For the same reason the government bailed out the banks, they're too big to fail.

Two companies account for most of the frontier R&D, and something like 7 companies account for a huge portion of growth in the stock market. The government, especially under Trump, is very focused on continuing to see those numbers go up.

I also expect the government is pretty bought in on AI being the future and on us being in a race with China. They'd have to bail out the labs for those reasons alone.

Lastly in my opinion, Trump has a pretty socialist bent to him and regularly talks about a sovereign wealth fund owning portions of companies. He'd love to have take a partial stake in AI companies, and a bail out is a great way to do that.

[–] velcrovan 4 days ago

A bailout would be a slap in the face when the correct solution is to nationalize them. If they are too big to fail then the government gets a controlling share of equity and we finally start the sovereign wealth fund we should have started decades ago.

[–] _heimdall 3 days ago

Nationalization is fundamentally different from a bailout. It tends to go poorly when a government begins taking over the means of production.

Though I agree with you a bailout is a slap in the face. In my opinion bailouts shouldn't be legal, governments should pro actively be making sure individual corporations don't become so large that a failure would wreck the economy or national security.

[–] _heimdall 3 days ago

Why is it you see a sovereign wealth fund as the right answer? Why should the sovereign own the means of production, and why should the people creating and enforcing laws be the same as those in charge of our economic future?

[–] wtch98 4 days ago

How does that work when the official strategy is "Socialise the losses, privatise the profits"

[–] fourthark 4 days ago

Maybe you should try voting harder.

[–] _heimdall 4 days ago

Meaning what? Cast more than one ballot?

I live in a state that votes heavily in one direction, most states are the same. Its fine for me to vote, but the winner of a majority of states is pretty well decided before a ballot is cast (by strong majority, I'm not claiming fraud).

[–] daveguy 4 days ago

If everyone who threw up their hands actually voted, the outcome would change. See also, the elections musk tried to buy in the last 18 months or so since he doged up the place.

[–] _heimdall 4 days ago

Sure, and I hope that (a) everyone votes and (b) most of them agree with me. Bit what is your point exactly?

[–] daveguy 3 days ago

Point is, nothing changes if you're just sitting on the internet complaining.