Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[trappedslider]

It's year 2024. Our country is 248 years old, and The Buttonwood Agreement (now the New York Stock Exchange) has been around for more than two centuries. Why are people today still clutching their pearls in shock and disbelief when they learn that businesses only want to make money? This isn't exactly news.

But how else can we come up with new words to describe the outrage/behavior?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Great news, everyone! A stranger on the internet said that all the stuff we were finding to be a big problem for us is actually all in our imaginations and we should just zip our lips and deal with everything without complaint."

 

[Ryujin]

Ren, for me is a once in a generation talent (well in my five and half decades of life it is) that continues to amaze me each release. He released a studio version of this song (with an accompanying video) one year ago and it was sublime. His version of this song is not really a cover, more of a retake/remix and this live version just hits different.

I know this is just a vocal from him, but he is a multi-instrumentalist, multi-genre, artist. He can do it all. This is just the latest thing to drop (about 2 hours ago, today).

Hope he doesn't get sued by The Rolling Stones.

 

[Ryujin]

Except that businesses today don't act like they did historically. There was a massive coordinated campaign of deregulation in the 1980s, both in the US and around the world.

That has meant that businesses that were once happy to have X level of profit -- it kept the doors open, everyone employed, kept up with inflation and gave everyone periodic raises -- are now rapacious monsters seeking to generate profit for the shareholders at all costs, even if it destroys their communities and employees.

(This has been followed by a concerted propaganda campaign by lobbying groups to define this behavior as "normal and how it's always been. Please don't read any history books.")

The scorched earth behavior is what most people are objecting to. Very few people think the world should be run by non-profits or not-for-profits (which are more complicated than their names make them appear).

It is not unreasonable, even today, to run a business that just seeks to survive and be fine. But the people running most companies today grew up after the 1980s deregulatory wave. And the type of people likely to run companies tend to be the ones who feel like Gordon Gecko was unfairly maligned in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.

That we measure a country's prosperity by the condition of the relatively wealthy, rather than the mean, means we'll never know what the true health of a nation's economy is.

The DOW is up.

The TSE is up.

The Hang Seng is up.

People can't afford food or rent.

 

[billd91]

I agree completely, but my point still stands: the 1980s were 45 years ago. That now-standard business growth model isn't a new revelation. I'm not saying it's a good thing--I'm just saying it's not news, and not particularly shocking.

I'd say it's not only not a new revelation, it's positively old school - as in Gilded Age Old School. The push for deregulation and, now, the SCOTUS gutting regulatory law, is a reaction to the increased regulation in the 20th century as people started cottoning on to the idea that government for, of, and by the people can be used as a counterweight to corporate exploitation and dominance. Of course, the capitalist class wasn't keen on taking that lying down - it just took some time to get their pieces in place, develop the Federalist Society of judicial vandals, and bribe, sorry... TIP enough SCOTUS justices to get their way.

 

[payn]

Welp, we are down a rabbit hole...I believe this is the point Peter Griffin would cut to Conway Twitty.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I'm not saying the system isn't broken. I'm just saying if I'm prevented from buying my seventh megamansion on grounds formerly held sacred by a minority ethnicity, I'm burning the whole thing down and damn the consequences. In other words, if I have to, I'm nuking the whole thing from orbit.

 

[Ryujin]

I'm not saying the system isn't broken. I'm just saying if I'm prevented from buying my seventh megamansion on grounds formerly held sacred by a minority ethnicity, I'm burning the whole thing down and damn the consequences. In other words, if I have to, I'm nuking the whole thing from orbit.

... from my seventh megamasion.... on MARS!

 

[payn]

... from my seventh megamasion.... on MARS!

Nobody ever went broke selling weapons. Cousin Gallick owns a moon!

 

[Saracenus]

Hope he doesn't get sued by The Rolling Stones.

You mean the Verve? The bass player, Simon Jones, gave him a guitar after he released the first one.

I think you are conflating Bittersweet Symphony with this song by the Stone's: