I'd like people to understand that this is a form of corruption. We've normalized many like it. LI knows that the only way to force them to fix the issue is to go through a drawn-out legal process, save a spate of bad press (RIP 60 Minutes), so of course they won't.

"So, why not now?" I dunno. Something about temporarily embarrassed trillionaires. Everyone seems afraid to dole out the kind of humiliation that would change elite behaviors, under the mistaken impression that what we're dealing with is not just "a tough job market" or "adulthood" or whatever, but our own measure of unnecessary (but politically effective) humiliation, drizzling down from on high.

That said, there is a tendency for a system to drift away from this predictability as it's subjected to "review" by people who really, really want a particular outcome, regardless of the systemically-proscribed conclusion. "Bespoke" judgments for edge cases undermines the principle of predictability, which makes a return to "random" "coercion" desirable for some (as those who coerce in anarchy generally have less absolute power than a large system does).

But then, how do you show mercy (people are driven to do so) in a zero-tolerance environment?

This is the tension.

>COVID restrictions

>The state of the economy

>The state of culture, broadly-speaking

>Letting a black man become president, and the attendant ramifications (intrinsic and extrinsic, cause and effect)

I'll leave it to readers to judge. (You can probably guess what I, as a progressive, think of these impetuses, in driving half-ish of the country to vote for everything Trump embodies. And, frankly, what drove the other half-ish of the country to vote for Biden and Harris.)

The novel maneuvers "Reckless" Ben Schneider took were... amusing, at the very least.

The only way to end up with a loss is a coordinated attack by owners and potential buyers: to intentionally understate the value, and then to hold off ANYONE attempting to purchase before the market sale price is below the compelled price. So multiple rich people lose their houses in a naked gambit to bankrupt the government. I mean... I guess it could happen? But at that point, it's open class warfare.

You could also just look for examples of officials trying to explain why they won't bring charges against banking officials.

https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx...

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-havent-bankers-been-p...

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137789065/why-prosecutors-don...

I should state that this reply is mostly for other people reading our comment thread, as I can think of no adult American who would present your argument in good faith.

The issues at hand seem distinct but related.

Remember when "Google" used to be a synonym for "search"?

Except... the game is ALSO about how time, and the shifting (lost) priorities and understandings of an ideology, are often at the source of violence disconnected from reason. The game is full of people doing things divorced from the original rationale, a veil of manufactured righteousness thrown over it all (patriotism, revolution, a debt that must be repaid), and taking their behavior to an extreme because they don't really understand the true core of why they're doing what they're doing. Kind of like... playing a game that attempts to say something meaningful and sophisticated about society, but that's built on the bones of a gameplay loop that originated with full-throttle demon-slaying action. (Well, actually, Nazi-slaying. Hmm...)

...I don't know how clear I'm being, but the gist of it is that I think Infinite knew what it was doing a lot more than people give it credit for. It's kind of a jumble on purpose.

Suffice it to say, it was not a response to "the very ideas" of those fields, but to their state "In America, in 2026". GP suggests that people working in them automatically assume a sort of virtue just because they overpaid for an advanced degree, and I reject that, in light of how they've operated for most of my life.

>you're making things worse and creating cover for unethical people

This is, ironically, my own point about what GP said.

Watching PBS as we speak.

>Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism

In America, in 2026, this is a particularly dark joke.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-imm...

We are trying to avoid another situation where "resource wealth" goes uncompensated, producers remain poor while processors, marketers, and merchants reap all the benefit. Unless your aim is something else, in which case you should state it.