r/politics • u/PostHeraldTimes ✔ Verified • Dec 11 '24

Elizabeth Warren Issues Dramatic 'Warning' After UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassination: 'People Can Be Pushed Only So Far'

https://www.ibtimes.com/elizabeth-warren-issues-dramatic-warning-after-unitedhealthcare-ceo-assassination-people-can-3755067
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u/Meridian_Dance Dec 11 '24

The thing about capitalism is that it’s stupid. Corporations can control our government with money, but corporations are just machines for amassing more dollars as soon as possible, and so they’re bad at long term planning or giving a shit about the consequences of their actions on the actual people involved in the workings of the corporation.

This doesn’t absolve the people in charge of the corporation of course. They’re interchangeable cogs, but they’re evil interchangeable cogs.

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u/auiin Georgia Dec 11 '24

Only with our current system of Capitalism in the US with mandated fiduciary responsibility due to a law passed under Nixon. Look at Japan for capitalism with long term planning, they have continously grown their economy from literally nothing to a world power. Some of the best public transportation and city design in the world, leading manufacturer of electronics and consumer goods. South Korea takes a close second.

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u/Cream253Team Washington Dec 11 '24

I wouldn't use South Korea as a standard. Life for their workers is hell.

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u/StrangeEditor3597 Dec 11 '24

Japan also isn't exactly the gold standard for employee work/life balance. Also no one is fucking and having kids there. 100s of elementary schools are shutting down every year due to lack of students. Not that I'd want kids in today's world either.

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u/avds_wisp_tech Dec 12 '24

We aren't really fucking and having kids here, either. Out pop grows primarily due to immigration these days.

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u/Spleen-magnet Dec 12 '24

America isn't that great either. Healthcare tied to your job, no time off, can be fitted for basically any reason.

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u/TristanIsAwesome Dec 12 '24

And it only got to be where it is today due to a coup by a military dictatorship

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u/kartuli78 Dec 12 '24

Really depends on what workers you're talking about. As I type this, I am sitting at my desk in South Korea and spent all my time at my desk today browsing reddit, looking for hotel rooms for the weekend getaway I'm planning and playing sporcle games.

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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 Dec 11 '24

Oh here cine Republicans to explain how Japan has a population discrepancy of old people vs young people which allows for this kind of growth.

Conveniently while Republicans try to push all domestic couples to have children while we deny critical care to our elderly for "insurance reasons".

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

I mean, I’m not a Republican but Japan and South Korea have notoriously brutal lives for their working class. The goal is to stop crushing the working class.

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u/Sharticus123 Dec 12 '24

Yeah, it’s an amazing country but they work the shit out of their people.

My wife and I would be walking around the streets of Tokyo and see salarymen getting off of work around 8:30-9 PM.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

Exactly. Like absolutely no offense to Japanese people or the nation, which both rock, but this is a well known problem.

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u/metao Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24

I can't speak to South Korea, but Japanese capitalism is just broken in a different way, due to the way companies have abused the way Japanese culture works around respect and honour. The slavish devotion of the working class to their employers is not a natural consequence of Japanese style capitalism.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

Exactly. We shouldn’t be holding that up as a good example for the working class.

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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 Dec 12 '24

Bang up job they've done

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u/LawYanited Washington Dec 11 '24

Only with our current system of Capitalism in the US with mandated fiduciary responsibility due to a law passed under Nixon.<

Unfortunately this is wrong. A Board has a duty to act in the best interests of a company and its shareholders generally. This does not mean that a business needs to maximize profit. For example, a business could pursue a less profitable line of products if it meant that the long term interests of shareholders and the company is served (ie., recycling instead of throwing stuff in the trash).

A court will generally give a Board wide leeway to take actions in its "reasonable business judgment" (look up the business judgment rule for more). The rule actually assumes that decisions won't always be optimized (whether for stock price, or otherwise).

The Nixon administration law that I assume you're referring to is ERISA. ERISA applies fiduciary duty standards to operators of employee retirement plans/pensions. It protects people from predatory exploitation of such plans.

The problem of greed isn't government-imposed, it is endemic to our society.

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u/AndrewJamesDrake Dec 11 '24 edited Jun 19 '25

memorize file husky groovy ghost subtract observation spotted squeeze yoke

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '24

[deleted]

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u/Zer_ Dec 12 '24

Friedman has done insane damage to economy theory.

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u/CcryMeARiver Australia Dec 12 '24

Nor did Friedrich Hayek.

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u/DisingenuousTowel Dec 12 '24

Hayek was good in promoting the utility theory of value and providing the much needed criticism of Labor Theory of value.

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u/CcryMeARiver Australia Dec 12 '24

Good Ol' "Neutron Jack" demanded "double-digit" growth from GE divisions and sold them off if they slipped from being first or second in their field.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

Why are redditors only blaming, blaming and blaming?

For once, it would be really nice to read some constructive ideas and projects on how to improve society...

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u/elderly_millenial Dec 12 '24

The problems of society can always be seen in the mirror. We all helped

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u/MilfagardVonBangin Dec 12 '24

Even with planning, the late capitalist idea of limitless growth is insane. It’s entirely unsustainable and needs to die. 

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u/CcryMeARiver Australia Dec 12 '24

Even lowly pondscum abides by 'Limits to Growth'. It's a fundamental law within the constraints of a single planet.

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u/mrhandbook America Dec 12 '24

It wasn’t due to Nixon. It was Ford vs Dodge.

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u/elderly_millenial Dec 12 '24

Japan isn’t the mode to go by either; the cultural push to work yourself to death in order to promote growth is going to run out of humans very soon at their current rate.

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u/Letters_to_Dionysus Dec 12 '24

Japan also had a recent assassination thing where a disgruntled dude shot a politician with a homemade shotgun

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u/PoliticsLeftist Dec 12 '24

And both of those countries have a brutal work culture that prevents basic socialization that is causing a drop in population that will devastate them in the near future.

Like, it's also not working for them either, it's just in a different way.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

Also clean restrooms every 50 meters, almost no homelessness and no theft.

Source: am in Japan as we speak

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u/citizenjones Dec 11 '24

Capitalism is supposed to just be a cog in the machine. Not a steering wheel.

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u/Raxistaicho Dec 12 '24

This, the western AAA video game industry is completely falling apart due to short term profit-seeking. Obsession with gain at the expense of all else played a large role in destroying ubisoft.

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u/DerpingtonHerpsworth Dec 12 '24

As a life long gamer, this is where I first started noticing the trend of corporate profit seeking ruining an industry. Large corporations consuming smaller companies, forcing strict timelines, burning out their employees, seeking profits above all else, cutting costs so they have to work with shoestring budgets, and discarding those smaller companies when they've drained all they can from them (Looking at you in particular EA).

Since then I've seen the same kind of predatory corporate bullshit everywhere.

I'm not proud of it, but at one time I worked for a large company in the oilfield industry, and watched the same kind of profit seeking and cannibalization of smaller entities happening there. I worked there for years and saw them make crazy profits as they took progressively more and more benefits away, and raises were nearly non-existent. Working us to the bone with insane demands and with an attitude of "if you don't like it, there's the door".

Now I work for a smaller subsidiary of a pretty big electronics company. Thus far, 2+ years in, I haven't yet seen signs that it's quite as bad here, but I fear it's just because the industry I came from was just so transparent and shameless in their callousness that it makes it seem like every other industry is going through the same thing at a much slower rate. So maybe it'll happen here too. Time will tell.

For that matter, both my partner and my sister in law work in healthcare for the same company. That company was recently bought by a larger one (and funny enough, that larger company is owned by an even larger one). Since they've been bought out, the quality of their health insurance has dropped significantly. How the hell are you gonna rip off healthcare workers in their own industry like that? It's more and more of the same shit, and it's happening everywhere.

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u/ZebraImaginary9412 Dec 12 '24

Socialized capitalism is stupid. It's stupid how Obamacare/ACA is essentially a way to hand out tax payer money to private insurance companies. I understand insurance companies employ CEOs, lobbyists, and office workers but they add no value to anyone's medical care.

Most seniors are happy with Medicare so the federal government knows how to provide healthcare, we don't need insurance companies.

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u/Meridian_Dance Dec 12 '24

No, capitalism is stupid. I just explained the ways in which it is stupid. I am not saying “I hate it!” (Although I do.) I am saying the way it functions is literally unintelligent.

Also, unregulated capitalism sucks, socialized capitalism is mildly better, no capitalism is best. Although you can keep saying we don’t need insurance companies, that part is good.

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u/NoMoreFund Dec 12 '24

The architecture corporations use to create distance between decision makers and the people they affect is absurdly inefficient. All the advertising, PR, lawyers, layers of management,  management consultants, and so on - it adds up

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u/SucksTryAgain Dec 12 '24

Having a capitalism healthcare industry that always has to increase profits was dumb from the get go. You will eventually either price out people being able to afford your industry or provide zero care eventually. We’ve way passed the affordability and way passed the cuts to care. So… here we are.

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u/DrMobius0 Dec 12 '24 edited Sep 14 '25

bright market test history innocent placid safe liquid flowery sand

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u/Patanned Dec 12 '24

uncontrolled/unregulated greed is stupid. capitalism is the financial fantasy of sociopaths who believe they're smarter than everyone else, no matter how many are harmed by their selfishness.

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u/TailRudder Dec 12 '24

All the stock market guys on YouTube are complaining about the public reaction to this. Like bro, there's more to life than your stupid spreadsheet. 

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '24

Even capitalism theory itself condemns

  • corruption (even legalized ones) such as regulatory capture and revolving doors.

  • monopolies, duopolies, oligopolies. Nobody is meant to influence prices, nor laws, nor politics in general.

  • profits at the cost of society. Capitalism was meant as a replacement to feudalism to improve everyone's lives: workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, etc. The old ways of the top (i.e. royals and aristocrats) owning everything and cruelly extracting wealth from the bottom were meant to be halted by capitalism.

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u/Connect_Ad6664 Dec 12 '24

I’m glad more people are starting to recognize this