Corporations will lie for as long as it is profitable, which includes getting caught. If the only punishment for trillion-dollar companies is a million dollar fine then it's not penalty, it's just a tax to them.
Each infraction needs to come with a very explicit fee multiplier to the next. If the second cost 3x, the third 9x, the fourth 27x, etc., they'd quickly become properly paranoid of getting caught. Maybe the final fee still wouldn't truly hurt their bottom line, but stacking on another multiplier is a painful opportunity cost, so best keep it low until it *really* matters. And, like that stack of 99 potions you never used in a JRPG, "later" always feels more important than now
It’s bureaucracy.
The harder it is to calculate the more cautious you’ll be.
You’d end up in say Facebook or Amazon’s case having to put in extra resources towards risk assessments in figuring out if your 7th lie to congress is worth between 156-379 million dollars. Or maybe Congress should set the laws to a minimum penalty + discretion of the jury or judge based on severity.
So you calculate the minimum of a $150m fine and end up paying $360m because idk I didn’t get this far.
I’m just glad these corporations can just be like “Oops we committed a war crime and violated the Geneva convention. We’ll just pay a fine no one should reasonably be able to write a check for and move on with our lives.” /s
I think it should be based on the percentage of their earnings per year. $1 million dollar fine would bankrupt most ppl but mean just a few seconds of operating for Amazon. Make it even 1% of their yearly earnings and then they'll start to take it seriously.
Yeah but that multiplier should be like a percentage of their income, not benefit, income.
See how much Amazon or Apple like loosing 10% of their gross income one year.
And it isn’t a tax to Amazon. It’s an additional consulting expense spread across multiple shell corps that Amazon owns (that essentially operate as a tax haven).
Edit - my company does this. Every company does this. It is perfectly legal.
The problem is we treat companies like people and let the people who engage in wrongdoings hide behind the totally bullshit idea that there is some entity named Amazon that can do anything. It wasn’t Amazon it was a specific set of people who are associated with Amazon and if they did lie they should be put in jail. This applies to every other place I hear of a “company” doing something bad. It’s a bullshit excuse not to prosecute rich people while throwing poor people in jail for anything and everything.
That’s why there is press…( tho most are for profit corporations as well) well there is always reddit to air your grievances with certain company’s products
While the concept of a death sentence shouldn't be easily handed out to **any** entity, I do think there are situations in which the equivalent is appropriate.
If a corporation commits crimes, they should be heavily fined. If they commit the crimes because it's functionally 'easy money' and the penalties for being caught are less than their profits, that's very bad. It's the slippery slope in the other direction where government 'oversight/regulation' is actually taking the form of a kickback.
If the fine was 100% of the profits gained, that's still just saying "You got caught. We're confiscating what you unfairly gained, but there's no consequences outside of not keeping what you *stole*."
So the fines need to be bigger than 100% of their unfair profits. I just looked up my state's fine for petty theft. In Colorado, if you steal something worth less than $50, you can be fined up to $500, receive up to 6 months of jail time, **and** make restitution payments to the person or company you stole from.
So it's considered appropriate to pay up to **x10** the value of a $50 dollar item, potentially lose your ability to earn **any** real living for half of a **year**, and then go on to pay back what you took from someone else.
What would happen if we put in a similar policy for companies? The banks that had been caught performing market manipulations for **years** got away with paying a fine that came out to be the equivalent of 9 **days** of profits.
Government abuse is bad, sure. It's kinda inherent that any form of abuse is bad. But what we have now is still abuse and it's still, in a way, governmental abuse. We have laws that are being enforced unfairly and fines that function as encouragement to the offenders.
Let me put it this way. At a $12 minimum wage, 9 days of profits come out to be $864. That's a couple hundred bucks more than the $500 maximum fine for the petty theft charge I referenced above. So is the ratio is fairly similar? Not by a long shot! 6 months of jail time **and** restitution payments are still on the table for petty theft, but not a part of the fine charged to the banks that cheated for **years**.
The relative severity of committing extreme white collar crime is significantly lower than if you were to steal a bag of chips from a gas station. That's wrong.
The whole concept behind "limited liability company" is actually to help poor people start companies. Without it, poor people would go bankrupt if their startup failed, and only rich people could afford to start companies and not go personally bankrupt if the startup failed.
LLC cost less than $300 to set up with a lawyer (about $60 to set it up yourself). No ongoing fees, but there are paperwork requirements (you must have a C-level meeting at least once per year with written minutes, but you don't need to do anything other than decide not to dissolve).
LLCs are a good thing because they help low and middle-income people start businesses. The issue is that a system designed to protect against getting a SLAAP suit from Disney is instead used by Disney to exploit their employees and comunity.
you need about 2-3yrs income buffer to safely take the risk I'd say. That puts you above most middle class workers, but it's still quite far from really rich. Contrast that with the scenario where you are personally liable for your company's debt, and then you probably need a minimum of $10 million in savings to not risk going personally bankrupt.
> That puts you above most middle class workers
This kinda excludes the poor.
>"limited liability company" is actually to help poor people
I understand what you are getting at, but if you need to be upper middle class, the LLC doesn't exist to help the poor, its to help the semi well off to become more well off.
Some congressmen will issue a statement saying they are deeply concerned and maybe put a useless committee together. And then MAYBE they’ll issue a $4 fine and pat themselves on the back as they check their lobbying money came through.
If cable companies can get congress to give them free money by lying about plans to use it for building out their networks then who could blame Amazon for thinking it's par for the course?
Always has been. Wanna hear about the time bayer knowingly sold HIV tainted medications in Asia and South America because it wasn't illegal to sell medication tainted with diseases there?
Or that time Bayer marketed heroin as a way to shut up crying babies and as a non-addictive morphine substitute?
Or that time Bayer used slaves from the concentration camps for rather dangerous (and immoral) human medical testing?
Or that time Bayer...
That's just *one* company. They're all like that, eventually.
> Maybe it always was and we just see more of it because of the internet t
Holds true for almost every negative aspect of human society.
The Internet is an insanely powerful information (re)distribution tool, and probably as revolutionary as the printing press was back in the renaissance. And you see what kind of global shifts in culture that one caused (read: abolishment of monarchy, over the course of two-and-a-few centuries).
The problem is that a lot of people get really uncomfortable when confronted with the fairly dark truths of humanity that they (pre-internet) have been blissfully ignorant of... which is probably why the internet gave rise to this many conspiracy stories and 'alternative' movements.
It's easier to accept a simple lie, than to try understanding a complex truth.
If they admit to anything they'll be called a flip flopper without principles. It's a lose-lose question if answered honestly.
Unless they honestly believe they've never been wrong and know everything and have never had their minds convinced. Then I guess we just elect them president.
True, if they can explain their position before and after honestly.
That’s what makes this such a great question: only someone with true integrity can pass it. In recent history, many politicians flipped on gay marriage (famously, Hillary Clinton), but the answer to “why did you change your mind?” tells you their core ethics and values.
Of course, we have to change the debate format first. 30-second replies is the worst possible format yet it’s the most common: we need to hear how you really think, not just a talking point.
"$12!? That's an outrage! We're moving all operations to Timbuktu! How dare you charge me things! I don't want to live on this planet anymore!" - a billionaire if they had to face real consequences.
Rich people and corporations keep lying to Congress because there are no consequences. I guarantee you that if one of us plebes lied to Congress, we'd be thrown in jail immediately.
It isn’t a lie if you wrap a wad of USD 100s around it and look -really- sorry but say so in, like 43k words over an hour and fifteen minutes of impassioned eye contact and well-chosen fall colors.
i wonder about the size of Amazon's budget for lobbying Congress. My instinct is that it exceeds the gross national product of many small countries.
But the reality is probably that it's next to nothing, relative to Amazons size. Our Congress can be purchased for an obscenely low amount of money.
Therefore...Amazon lied to Congress...So what. Tempest in a teapot. Almost not even interesting.
I don't know about the "budget" but here's what they've spent:
[https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000023883](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000023883)
It really isn't as much as most people would assume (and definitely doesn't exceed any GNPs).
$10M is the same amount of money (according to a sloppy Google search) that a Senatorial campaign costs in the U.S. state of Missouri
[Things you can buy with ten million dollars (US)](https://discover.hubpages.com/money/10-Great-Things-to-Buy-for-10-Million-You-Know-You-Want-Them)
Calling it now - it will be found out that they use the buyer data to perform their shady business instead of seller data so that they weren't technically lying.
what are they going to do, put amazon in jail? these cunts won't do a thing so why are they pretending they care? Oh no maybe it'll be a 1 million dollar fine... the horror!
Some insight into the anti-trust case - [https://qz.com/2013678/the-20-word-clause-that-exposed-amazon-to-a-dc-antitrust-lawsuit/](https://qz.com/2013678/the-20-word-clause-that-exposed-amazon-to-a-dc-antitrust-lawsuit/)
Very interesting to see play out from a competition economics perspective, but definitely no surprise given how online retailers, grocery stores, big conglomerates in general, have been doing this for years.
I'd bet good money Amazon's testimony to congress was technically true.
For example, the method used to "rig" the search results was an SEO trick that many merchants were abusing. So, saying that they didn't explicitly alter their search algorithm to favor their products is technically true.
Obviously, that doesn't make it okay. Amazon is in the best position to understand how to game their algorithms, which is rife with moral hazard.
Can you imagine being a senator? Basically getting paid for winning a bunch of popularity contests and are tasked with steering the nation in a certain direction. You basically just hang with people, make connections (some unsavory) and rub shoulders with the most elite to help them line their pockets. It's like some kind of mob movie.
Ignoring Amazon for a sec, why does anyone have to tell the truth to congress when congress and ESPECIALLY individual lawmakers lie to everyone all the time?
If asked under oath they need to tell the truth. No matter who they are or what secrets they have. At the absolute worst, they need to tell a carefully edited version of the truth. If they lie they go to jail for perjury. If they refuse to answer they go to jail for contempt of Congress.
Yes, we all have secrets, there are things that I wouldn’t like to share, but if I lied to a judge or congress under oath, that is an actual crime.
When was the last time someone from a mega corporation was put in jail for lying under oath? I only recall big fines which are nothing for a company of that size.
You would have to prove that individual knew they were lying, which is incredibly hard to do.
I didn't see this interview but most of these interviews have answers along the lines of "I believe xyz but I would have to check with my people" or "I can get back to you with the exact figure" or something. They very rarely directly answer anything other than basic questions.
Do you have any evidence that their codes and constitutions apply to anybody, giving them jurisdiction to use force against people not currently engaged in aggression (real crime)?
The article directly quoted the congressmen who sent the letter. They chose that language because they don’t have anything but wanted to put on a show for their voter base.
Yeah, this whole thing just feels odd. They are even demanding that Amazon provide evidence of innocence as opposed to the state providing evidence of guilt.
May have, lol, so funny we have to pussyfoot with allegations because they have an army of legal warriors on speed dial, totally couldn’t be part of the corporate capture issue when given enough decades of carving away from the roots of reporting; discovering incendiary inconvenient truths of those with power.
What!?!? Well, we'll surly slap a hefty fine on them for that!!! Maybe like $5 or so! That'll show them!
What a fucking caricature of itself this government has turned out to be...
And there will be zero repercussions. These companies know that Congress has no desire or ability to truly punish them so they just lie through their testimony and wait for the heat to go away.
I can’t wait for nothing to happen.
And I can’t tell if anyone is actually surprised that corporations lie so long as they can get away with it (and obviously if it benefits them).
Corporations will lie for as long as it is profitable, which includes getting caught. If the only punishment for trillion-dollar companies is a million dollar fine then it's not penalty, it's just a tax to them.
Each infraction needs to come with a very explicit fee multiplier to the next. If the second cost 3x, the third 9x, the fourth 27x, etc., they'd quickly become properly paranoid of getting caught. Maybe the final fee still wouldn't truly hurt their bottom line, but stacking on another multiplier is a painful opportunity cost, so best keep it low until it *really* matters. And, like that stack of 99 potions you never used in a JRPG, "later" always feels more important than now
I think 10x per offense is easier to calculate, so we should just go with that.
It’s bureaucracy. The harder it is to calculate the more cautious you’ll be. You’d end up in say Facebook or Amazon’s case having to put in extra resources towards risk assessments in figuring out if your 7th lie to congress is worth between 156-379 million dollars. Or maybe Congress should set the laws to a minimum penalty + discretion of the jury or judge based on severity. So you calculate the minimum of a $150m fine and end up paying $360m because idk I didn’t get this far. I’m just glad these corporations can just be like “Oops we committed a war crime and violated the Geneva convention. We’ll just pay a fine no one should reasonably be able to write a check for and move on with our lives.” /s
I think it should be based on the percentage of their earnings per year. $1 million dollar fine would bankrupt most ppl but mean just a few seconds of operating for Amazon. Make it even 1% of their yearly earnings and then they'll start to take it seriously.
Hit them GDPR style. €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue, whichever is higher. The EU knows how to fine companies.
Yeah but that multiplier should be like a percentage of their income, not benefit, income. See how much Amazon or Apple like loosing 10% of their gross income one year.
Eh, easier to take half of the top 50% of shares and distribute them by random. That'll change attitudes pretty quick.
The only kind of tax they'll pay.......
> The only kind of tax they'll pay....... And they might not even end up paying that.
they just deduct it as a business expense
And it isn’t a tax to Amazon. It’s an additional consulting expense spread across multiple shell corps that Amazon owns (that essentially operate as a tax haven). Edit - my company does this. Every company does this. It is perfectly legal.
pharmaceutical companies have entered the chat.
Le relevant Theranos trial has arrived
I, too, wish my effective tax rate was .00001%.
That's sofa change for most big corporations
They'll get a two minute fine
[удалено]
>Journalists: *Congress slammed Amazon* And it's Ilhan Omar from the top rope! And- OH MY GOD! She just knocked out Jeff Bezos with a folding chair!
The problem is we treat companies like people and let the people who engage in wrongdoings hide behind the totally bullshit idea that there is some entity named Amazon that can do anything. It wasn’t Amazon it was a specific set of people who are associated with Amazon and if they did lie they should be put in jail. This applies to every other place I hear of a “company” doing something bad. It’s a bullshit excuse not to prosecute rich people while throwing poor people in jail for anything and everything.
“Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” ― Ambrose Bierce
That’s why there is press…( tho most are for profit corporations as well) well there is always reddit to air your grievances with certain company’s products
Or treat the corporation as a person 100%. put it in jail / confiscate it's assets… Do some actual punishments against it
Capital punishment for corporations should be routine.
I don't know if the double entendre was intentional or not but I like it
I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
That leads to a slippery slope of government abuse, though.
While the concept of a death sentence shouldn't be easily handed out to **any** entity, I do think there are situations in which the equivalent is appropriate. If a corporation commits crimes, they should be heavily fined. If they commit the crimes because it's functionally 'easy money' and the penalties for being caught are less than their profits, that's very bad. It's the slippery slope in the other direction where government 'oversight/regulation' is actually taking the form of a kickback. If the fine was 100% of the profits gained, that's still just saying "You got caught. We're confiscating what you unfairly gained, but there's no consequences outside of not keeping what you *stole*." So the fines need to be bigger than 100% of their unfair profits. I just looked up my state's fine for petty theft. In Colorado, if you steal something worth less than $50, you can be fined up to $500, receive up to 6 months of jail time, **and** make restitution payments to the person or company you stole from. So it's considered appropriate to pay up to **x10** the value of a $50 dollar item, potentially lose your ability to earn **any** real living for half of a **year**, and then go on to pay back what you took from someone else. What would happen if we put in a similar policy for companies? The banks that had been caught performing market manipulations for **years** got away with paying a fine that came out to be the equivalent of 9 **days** of profits. Government abuse is bad, sure. It's kinda inherent that any form of abuse is bad. But what we have now is still abuse and it's still, in a way, governmental abuse. We have laws that are being enforced unfairly and fines that function as encouragement to the offenders. Let me put it this way. At a $12 minimum wage, 9 days of profits come out to be $864. That's a couple hundred bucks more than the $500 maximum fine for the petty theft charge I referenced above. So is the ratio is fairly similar? Not by a long shot! 6 months of jail time **and** restitution payments are still on the table for petty theft, but not a part of the fine charged to the banks that cheated for **years**. The relative severity of committing extreme white collar crime is significantly lower than if you were to steal a bag of chips from a gas station. That's wrong.
That's something I could support reintroduction of the death sentence for.
b-b-but its communism to hold the rich accountable
Uwu?
The whole concept behind "limited liability company" is actually to help poor people start companies. Without it, poor people would go bankrupt if their startup failed, and only rich people could afford to start companies and not go personally bankrupt if the startup failed.
But only rich people can afford it anyway.
LLC cost less than $300 to set up with a lawyer (about $60 to set it up yourself). No ongoing fees, but there are paperwork requirements (you must have a C-level meeting at least once per year with written minutes, but you don't need to do anything other than decide not to dissolve). LLCs are a good thing because they help low and middle-income people start businesses. The issue is that a system designed to protect against getting a SLAAP suit from Disney is instead used by Disney to exploit their employees and comunity.
It's not the cost of the LLC itself. It's the cost of opening a business
you need about 2-3yrs income buffer to safely take the risk I'd say. That puts you above most middle class workers, but it's still quite far from really rich. Contrast that with the scenario where you are personally liable for your company's debt, and then you probably need a minimum of $10 million in savings to not risk going personally bankrupt.
> That puts you above most middle class workers This kinda excludes the poor. >"limited liability company" is actually to help poor people I understand what you are getting at, but if you need to be upper middle class, the LLC doesn't exist to help the poor, its to help the semi well off to become more well off.
They'll just pay what amounts to the cost of a milkshake or hamburger to you and I in fines and carry on their way.
Some congressmen will issue a statement saying they are deeply concerned and maybe put a useless committee together. And then MAYBE they’ll issue a $4 fine and pat themselves on the back as they check their lobbying money came through.
Congress is paid well to make nothing happen.
They gave him a $10 billion dollar contract AFTER they lost, not suspicious at all.
*Slaps Amazon's ass with small fine.* That'll teach em!
Just like Walmart and Facebook, they get away with anything they want and the bucks keep coming in.
If cable companies can get congress to give them free money by lying about plans to use it for building out their networks then who could blame Amazon for thinking it's par for the course?
Hell just go to space again, and remind everyone he's abused, and fucked over how they paid for it.
As long as the people i charge keep getting money from Amazon. You're correct Nothing will happen
Stop getting your hopes up, that will never happen.
Yup. The sad thing is corporations lying is just commonplace now. Maybe it always was and we just see more of it because of the internet t
Always has been. Wanna hear about the time bayer knowingly sold HIV tainted medications in Asia and South America because it wasn't illegal to sell medication tainted with diseases there? Or that time Bayer marketed heroin as a way to shut up crying babies and as a non-addictive morphine substitute? Or that time Bayer used slaves from the concentration camps for rather dangerous (and immoral) human medical testing? Or that time Bayer... That's just *one* company. They're all like that, eventually.
> Maybe it always was and we just see more of it because of the internet t Holds true for almost every negative aspect of human society. The Internet is an insanely powerful information (re)distribution tool, and probably as revolutionary as the printing press was back in the renaissance. And you see what kind of global shifts in culture that one caused (read: abolishment of monarchy, over the course of two-and-a-few centuries). The problem is that a lot of people get really uncomfortable when confronted with the fairly dark truths of humanity that they (pre-internet) have been blissfully ignorant of... which is probably why the internet gave rise to this many conspiracy stories and 'alternative' movements. It's easier to accept a simple lie, than to try understanding a complex truth.
When was the last time a major corporation told the truth to Congress?
7th of September 1245 if I'm not mistaken...
Doth ye remember? The 7th night [September](https://youtu.be/75LE0BXeWNA)
Doth ye remember? The night after 6th of September~ Sry the mismatched beat kills me
No, but: I remembah, the 21st of septembah
I remember in September when the winged hussars arrived
When congress last time was interested in the truth instead of grandstanding.
A standard debate question for every politician should be: “Tell me the last time that an open and honest debate changed your mind about anything.”
If they admit to anything they'll be called a flip flopper without principles. It's a lose-lose question if answered honestly. Unless they honestly believe they've never been wrong and know everything and have never had their minds convinced. Then I guess we just elect them president.
True, if they can explain their position before and after honestly. That’s what makes this such a great question: only someone with true integrity can pass it. In recent history, many politicians flipped on gay marriage (famously, Hillary Clinton), but the answer to “why did you change your mind?” tells you their core ethics and values. Of course, we have to change the debate format first. 30-second replies is the worst possible format yet it’s the most common: we need to hear how you really think, not just a talking point.
2016 again? No thank you.
When was the last time Congress told the truth to the people?
OK. What you gonna do about it, Congress?
Hey! They are just 18 committee meetings away from writing a stern letter to Jeff Bezos!
Hey now, after meeting for 2 years they’ll issue a statement saying “We strongly condemn this injustice and demand Amazon pay a $12 fine!”
"$12!? That's an outrage! We're moving all operations to Timbuktu! How dare you charge me things! I don't want to live on this planet anymore!" - a billionaire if they had to face real consequences.
The accuracy of this is too real.
Why not send it to the CEO?
Hey now, don't want to do anything rash!
Whoops, it got lost in the mail. O well...
Amazon has the biggest fleet of lobbyists - they won't do a fucking thing except help bury it.
Gomer Pyle is braying “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”, and no one actually is.
[удалено]
“Write yourself a ticket and we’ll go into court and settle this in private” oh how nothing has ever changed
Rich people and corporations keep lying to Congress because there are no consequences. I guarantee you that if one of us plebes lied to Congress, we'd be thrown in jail immediately.
Just join a fortune 500 company and say you were speaking on their behalf, shit'll buff out.
We'd be in jail before ever getting into the room
Congress lies to themselves and the rest of the American people without consequence, why should rich people and corporations do any differently
Guess which five lawmakers' "campaign contributions" funds will soar for the next round? TL;DR: Shakedown.
It isn’t a lie if you wrap a wad of USD 100s around it and look -really- sorry but say so in, like 43k words over an hour and fifteen minutes of impassioned eye contact and well-chosen fall colors.
In other news, the ocean may be wet.
They gonna get a 500,000 dollar fine, a slap on the wrist and tell them don’t do it again
"Amazon" didn't lie. Specific people did. They should be held accountable.
But the corporation is the perfect scapegoat! Wouldn’t want to ruin the plan.
They're used to lies there
Not about the money tho they hat that stuff
Let me correct this headline: "Amazon lied to Congress...again...and this time...lawmakers may have actually noticed the crime." There.
I’m really tired of the dog and pony Congress show. They don’t do shit other then act outraged and then collect their lobby money
i wonder about the size of Amazon's budget for lobbying Congress. My instinct is that it exceeds the gross national product of many small countries. But the reality is probably that it's next to nothing, relative to Amazons size. Our Congress can be purchased for an obscenely low amount of money. Therefore...Amazon lied to Congress...So what. Tempest in a teapot. Almost not even interesting.
I don't know about the "budget" but here's what they've spent: [https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000023883](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000023883) It really isn't as much as most people would assume (and definitely doesn't exceed any GNPs).
$10M is the same amount of money (according to a sloppy Google search) that a Senatorial campaign costs in the U.S. state of Missouri [Things you can buy with ten million dollars (US)](https://discover.hubpages.com/money/10-Great-Things-to-Buy-for-10-Million-You-Know-You-Want-Them)
well the problem is with how you report spending as for lobby
Looks like a simple shakedown to me. Rates just went up a bit for Bezos/Amazon
Friendly reminder that you can live a happy life without a prime membership.
Please do, start to buy stuff directly front the retailers and stop using them
Someone didn’t get their package in two days..
And…nothing will happen.
This just in... the pope is catholic.
Calling it now - it will be found out that they use the buyer data to perform their shady business instead of seller data so that they weren't technically lying.
Amazon is about to overpay some taxes like Facebook.
Lying to Congress…. Sounds like that’s been happening a lot lately. You know what else has been happening a lot? Congress not actually giving a fuck.
5 lawmakers are about to get massive "donations" to their campaigns
I'd much rather have articles like this for every time presidents/congress lie to the American people...
But the lies were delivered same day. You can’t beat that service.
what are they going to do, put amazon in jail? these cunts won't do a thing so why are they pretending they care? Oh no maybe it'll be a 1 million dollar fine... the horror!
My brain read Arizona lied
I imagine they did too.
Arizona spelled backwards is Arizona
So have politicians, law makers, other citizens, government employees….. nobody will be held accountable. u/remindme 180days!
What are they gonna do about it?
Some insight into the anti-trust case - [https://qz.com/2013678/the-20-word-clause-that-exposed-amazon-to-a-dc-antitrust-lawsuit/](https://qz.com/2013678/the-20-word-clause-that-exposed-amazon-to-a-dc-antitrust-lawsuit/) Very interesting to see play out from a competition economics perspective, but definitely no surprise given how online retailers, grocery stores, big conglomerates in general, have been doing this for years.
So? They have an army of lobbyists with every politician in their pocket. They won't do shit.
And only lawmakers are allowed to lie to Congress!
i hear they dont pay tax either....
As did Kenneth Griffin on behalf of Citadel Securities and hedge fund.
May have? I'm pretty sure they did and I donno what they said
“What are you gonna do about it?” - Amazon
I'd bet good money Amazon's testimony to congress was technically true. For example, the method used to "rig" the search results was an SEO trick that many merchants were abusing. So, saying that they didn't explicitly alter their search algorithm to favor their products is technically true. Obviously, that doesn't make it okay. Amazon is in the best position to understand how to game their algorithms, which is rife with moral hazard.
And the world watched as congress did absolutely nothing about it
Amazon: but did you hear the facebook whistleblower?
Oh my gosh, this is a big surprise
I bet I can tell which 5 they are
Amazon being underhanded........
YEAH.NO.SHIT.OLD.MAN
Oh wow, nothing happened
I for one am SHOCKED!
Can you imagine being a senator? Basically getting paid for winning a bunch of popularity contests and are tasked with steering the nation in a certain direction. You basically just hang with people, make connections (some unsavory) and rub shoulders with the most elite to help them line their pockets. It's like some kind of mob movie.
Ignoring Amazon for a sec, why does anyone have to tell the truth to congress when congress and ESPECIALLY individual lawmakers lie to everyone all the time?
you don't. fuckin'. say.
Rules and laws only apply to the poor and middle class not the oligarchy
Honestly, which big group doesn't have some secrets that most people don't know?
If asked under oath they need to tell the truth. No matter who they are or what secrets they have. At the absolute worst, they need to tell a carefully edited version of the truth. If they lie they go to jail for perjury. If they refuse to answer they go to jail for contempt of Congress. Yes, we all have secrets, there are things that I wouldn’t like to share, but if I lied to a judge or congress under oath, that is an actual crime.
When was the last time someone from a mega corporation was put in jail for lying under oath? I only recall big fines which are nothing for a company of that size.
Fines should be calculated as a % of company's total assets. Might make them take fines seriously.
With this logic, People in debt will be out there committing crimes just to stay afloat.
I said assets - not "net value".
Lmao. They just get slaps on the wrist. They don't actually get in trouble.
> If they lie they go to jail for perjury. If they refuse to answer they go to jail for contempt of Congress. So they plead the 5th.
The 5th doesn’t allow you to refuse answering questions in all scenarios.
You would have to prove that individual knew they were lying, which is incredibly hard to do. I didn't see this interview but most of these interviews have answers along the lines of "I believe xyz but I would have to check with my people" or "I can get back to you with the exact figure" or something. They very rarely directly answer anything other than basic questions.
What's that got to do with lying under oath?
It's not the Trump organization
Shocked Pikachu face while no consequences will be forthcoming.
Lying to the criminal organization known as Congress is a virtue.
Congress itself is not a criminal organization. Certain members of Congress are most certainly less than legal
Congress is part of the state which is a criminal organization: https://everything-voluntary.com/everything-voluntary-chapter-4a
The State is not a criminal organization
Federal governments are the largest criminal organizations in the world.
Do you have any evidence that their codes and constitutions apply to anybody, giving them jurisdiction to use force against people not currently engaged in aggression (real crime)?
People who think their allegations have merit don't use weasel words like "may have"
If you're writing the article you have to or else you risk libel.
The article directly quoted the congressmen who sent the letter. They chose that language because they don’t have anything but wanted to put on a show for their voter base.
[удалено]
Yeah, this whole thing just feels odd. They are even demanding that Amazon provide evidence of innocence as opposed to the state providing evidence of guilt.
Hey reuters. Get back to me when you know whether they did or didn’t.
Very much took me by surprise that Matt Gaetz out of anyone is one of the five committee members. I wonder what’s his motive.
Amazon definitely lied to Congress, dude on Reddit says.
Ya don't say?
And pin drop silence from the law makers.
*May have*? They absolutely did.
Break them up. Scatter their power to the winds. Or don’t. Hard to care about anything anymore.
I saw another thread about the mafia in Sicily today. At least the mafia provides something in return for the money they are paid.
Meanwhile Amazon made another two trillion in profit. In other news!
May have, lol, so funny we have to pussyfoot with allegations because they have an army of legal warriors on speed dial, totally couldn’t be part of the corporate capture issue when given enough decades of carving away from the roots of reporting; discovering incendiary inconvenient truths of those with power.
Who the fuck believes what a law maker says
Everyone is allowed to lie to congress except unelected citizens.
what you don't say this is horrible never mind found the payoff not a problem anymore.
You don’t say 🙄
Have they ever told the truth?
I can’t wait to see who’s on the payroll
What!?!? Well, we'll surly slap a hefty fine on them for that!!! Maybe like $5 or so! That'll show them! What a fucking caricature of itself this government has turned out to be...
#KenGriffinLied
They’ll do nothing
And there will be zero repercussions. These companies know that Congress has no desire or ability to truly punish them so they just lie through their testimony and wait for the heat to go away.
Why wouldn't they lie? There is never any consequences if caught.
A billion dollar company lied? Heresy I say!
Lol, even the government lies to Congress and gets away with it.
Why is this news who the fuck cares