None of these articles comes to grips with the USA abandoning free market solutions.
Doesn't this de-legitimize success to some degree? Your product succeeded because one guy liked it, not because everyone liked it. Bill Gates can pull all the newcomer's chains because Windows won on the marketplace on merits, while new products win because some cryptocurrency appeared in a shell company's wallet.
JohnFen · 7h ago
I think it depends on what you consider "success". Different people and entities define it differently. I'm guessing that there are lots of people that define it as "being wealthy and powerful", and how they get there means nothing to them.
MentatOnMelange · 7h ago
Probably because free market solutions were as much an ideology as it was an economic system. The average joe has been told since Reagan that lower taxes for the wealthiest businesses and people, deregulation and cutting back social programs will trickle down to benefit them. This has turned out to be wrong, and whether it was an intentional lie or a genuine plan that failed, we need to acknowledge it.
The fact Trump's main message was tarrifs, and yet his polling numbers go down the more tarrifs are in the news now, should tell you something. People are looking for solutions and when there's a lack of good ideas, they vote for the bad idea over the status quo
ai_critic · 7h ago
I'm incredibly not a fan of loyalty tests and picking winners and losers. At the same time, it doesn't seem surprising that the pendulum pulled over by companies earlier (for example, Twitter deplatforming) and the previous administration's actions (for example, what amounts to harassment of SpaceX as a matter of principle) wouldn't now swing back the other way. This is the problem with normalizing that sort of politicization of commercial spaces--your guy ain't always gonna be in power.
(Now, Trump's enough of an asshole to perhaps have done this anyway, but this certainly made it easier to sell.)
Doesn't this de-legitimize success to some degree? Your product succeeded because one guy liked it, not because everyone liked it. Bill Gates can pull all the newcomer's chains because Windows won on the marketplace on merits, while new products win because some cryptocurrency appeared in a shell company's wallet.
The fact Trump's main message was tarrifs, and yet his polling numbers go down the more tarrifs are in the news now, should tell you something. People are looking for solutions and when there's a lack of good ideas, they vote for the bad idea over the status quo
(Now, Trump's enough of an asshole to perhaps have done this anyway, but this certainly made it easier to sell.)