Your tax money

The assurance that no matter how much they mess up, they will have government backing.

You’re more right than you may know.

An actual city wall existed on the street from 1653 to 1699. During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site, and from 1703 onward

Functionally, there’s no such thing. In a system that gives the most power to the company that makes the most money, that company will seek to maximize its profits. Part of maximizing profits is eliminating competition. So in a “free” market, the most successful will subvert the freedom of their competition thus eliminating the freedom in the market.

Self-correction in a market is an illusion crafted people either desperate to salvage a broken system, or those who seek to exploit them.

A ten percent stake in the company and suddenly those concerning Chinese ties Trump mentioned aren’t a thing.

I feel bad for laughing at this

I wonder what things would look like today if the government had taken some portion of control over all the auto manufacturers, airlines, banks, etc it has bailed out over the years instead of just giving them unsecured loans

Would look like normal capitalism of the early XIX century, give or take. Bad, but not atrocious. Bailouts definitely wouldn’t be abused as much, because, eh, they wouldn’t be free.

And the old argument that public sector management is inefficient - well, it’s not always a bad thing. It would then make sense for the government to re-privatize some of those shares, and use others for a source of income and a lever. And the companies bailed out this way would sink in power (which is good for competition), but not completely (which is good for their employees and economical stability). And, of course, I’ll repeat about source of income. Perhaps there will be no more raising taxes with such a system in place. Perhaps even some taxes it’ll be possible to simplify - any complex tax system works in favor of those who can afford to apply expertise, so those richer, and not poorer.

Also partial or full nationalization may sometimes work to good outcomes, while nationalized companies are less efficient, they also tend to retain institutional knowledge better, have more people working long on the same positions, follow labor regulations. For the telephone company or the train company or the central heating company or the public bus company it makes sense to be nationalized.

you raise interesting questions. how do you stop some asshole president from using infinite taxpayer money to manipulate the price of a stock?

Yes. It is.

Excalty like China.

10% is a controlling share. The government (Trump) owns enough to make major decisions about how the company is run.

By your maths it’s 10/50.01=19.99% nationalised, actually. :P

Their biggest problem is that people don’t want to buy their stuff because it’s bad, they can worry about their backdoory image later

Intel never deserved trust. They rigged the game by cheating on benchmark tests and deserve the karma they are currently enjoying.

I guess the average consumer would not be very aware of Intel being so shitty, but now everyone has a reason to be wary of them.

Yeah… no one who this matters to thought that anyway. Either you get Chinese or US backdoors in your hardware. This has always been true. Theoretically Intel could make some backdoorless chips for government use though, but we won’t have access to that.

For real, this just further cemented me not wanting to buy any new Intel devices.

There’s literally Intel Management Engine or how is it called.

And they are literally an American corporation that has always benefited from American governments pressuring competitors from other countries, and that was important for MIC since 70s.

So that kind of trust was a clear no since long before I was born.

Intel is a us corporate they do as the US spooks tell them to do.

That’s national security laws.

B-b-but Starlink doesn’t build infrastructure for normal broadband, does it? So they basically got a load of free money for doing nothing on a state level, just their satellites flying someplace above? I mean, there are Starlink ground stations, so there is infrastructure, just how many people would use it instead of a normal service. You know, GPON to the door, no antenna suffering in bad weather, no exorbitant prices.

You’re as bad as centrists/swing voters