Nobody has made a compelling case that HFT has any real net impact on retail investors or anyone making an IPO or issuance.
Maybe nobody you've read. There have been plenty of articles and papers walking even the dumbest person through the negative side effects of high frequency trading.
As for IPOs, someone created a visualization of trades for the first day of Facebook's IPO and points out where the HFTs show up and start arbitraging enormous volumes of stock right around the $38 price floor that was being defended by Morgan Stanley (lead underwriter). Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrkH_WQxxEA
It is transfer but its really only transfer between Wall Street Entities.
[Citation Needed]
There is a great deal of hand ringing about HFT but I don't see much evidence it does anything to your typical retail investor.
Your typical retail investor is executing trades and getting pennies skimmed by the HFTs. Your Pension or 401K isn't as profitable as it could be, because HFTs are skimming pennies off those trades. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (calpers) is the biggest pension fund in the country. Are they "Wall Street Entities" or representatives of the "typical retail investor"?
This isn't hard: everyone that isn't a HFT loses. This includes your typical retail investor and the most savvy of traders.
In the end, HFTs have created a marketplace that is efficient but not competitve. And there's no point in having a market if it isn't competitive.
What they are doing is consuming the service to the detriment of other users, and extracting a tax with their unfair advantage over other users, while contributing exactly nothing back.
Technically they contribute liquidity to the market. It's just that the benefits of extra liquidity don't outweigh the negative costs.
That's why, (drum roll please), we have crimes of strict liability. For example, possession of stolen property. Doesn't matter if you knew it was stolen. Doesn't matter if you checked all the registries for stolen products, the serial numbers -- there is simply no defense in cases of strict liability. It was found on your person or on your property and ta-da, guilty.
At the Federal level, knowledge is required for a guilty verdict. At the State level, your mileage may vary.
You must live in one of those asshole States where proving knowledge is not required.
FYI - Receiving is what happens when you get something you know is stolen. Possession is what happens if you find out, after the fact, that you got something stolen. Not all States make this legal distinction or they do, but it's covered under the same law.
And, as with many things under the law, being really really drunk is a legitimate defense against intent.
PS. do you count traditional notebooks (15" and bigger screens) as desktop computers? (I do.)
No. 15" is still a jigsaw puzzle of bits and pieces with a best-effort coolings system. 17" can be considered a desktop replacement, and is sometimes cheaper than a 15" laptop.
But really, a laptop is not a desktop. Even the slimmest non-mini desktops have more options and cooling power than a 17" laptop.
No. My point is that if no one votes, the government does not have the consent of the people and consequently lacks any legitimacy to govern. This is the end state of voter apathy, not loud minorities running rampant over the rest of the non-voting electorate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_United_States
I don't care if I'm the only one who votes, if it means I get my way.
If you're the only one that votes, I sure hope you write yourself in for President. It wouldn't matter, but that's what I'd do.
No, it's a vote for apathy. That's how politicians interpret it. And they will ignore you.
Imagine if an election was held and nobody showed up to vote. Is that apathy or a defacto vote of no-confidence in the government?
Just like you'd call into question an election with 105% turnout, an election with 5% turnout is equally meaningless. So somewhere between the current voter turnout and zero, is a turnout rate that means the government does not represent the people.
As a Libertarian, I spent many years preaching that people should vote for a third party. Over time, I started to realize that it wasn't really so much of a social problem as a technical problem. Specifically, plurality voting has a known weakness, and it is gamed by considering only the two most-likely parties, and picking among only them.
The technical problem in the USA is that the two dominant parties have rigged the system against third parties. It's a sad and sordid affair that involves everything from redistricting to creating the current bipartisan Presidential Debate Commission in order to shut out third parties.
The only reason Ross Perot got into the '92 debates is because Bush & Clinton wanted him there. The Republican and Democratic led debate commission tried to keep Perot out and failed. In '96, 3/4s of the country wanted Ross Perot in the debates, but he was excluded... because the candidates wanted him out.
Unfortunately, this problem isn't likely to be reformed from the inside, as it has the support of most politicians, or from the outside, as they have no real power to effect change.
Only if you are one of those people who thinks that the Democrats are not equally pro-corporate-system as the Republicans are.
When was the last time the Republican Party thought regulating anything other than abortion or gayness was a good idea?
I'm not disputing that both parties have significant agreements on fundamental policy issues that we both seem to disagree with, but most of those issues would be a complete disaster if "right wing pro-corporate fascists" were allowed to deregulate.
Amusingly European cars generally have faster top speeds than American cars, despite the smaller engines. Some years ago I took an American on a road trip (along with other people) and he was amazed that my 1.8L Ford Escort could achieve 135mph.
Most American cars are not geared for 135 mph and, more importantly, aren't fitted with tires capable of safely sustaining such speeds.
Rest assured, there will likely be a strong inquiry concerning the manufacture and design of the engine fairing that failed, causing the pressure drop, and engine shutdown.
You've got the chain of events backwards. A loss of fuel(?) pressure forced an engine shutdown, which caused a pressure drop at the engine's nozzle, which caused the engine fairing to fail.
As an aside I was talking to a truck driver as I loaded him up (45 tonnes of bulk) and he said with the new generation of big diesel rigs with scads of horsepower (600 is typical) and lots of torque (pulling along at 1500 rpm is easy) that he gets fantastic fuel economy. On flat roads while crusing, he gets about 6 mpg! That's amazing fuel economy for a big rig!
The modules still survived the g forces and vibrations during the launch. Which are multiples higher than the one g that you'll have during rotation.
You really don't seem to understand what's being discussed here. The Apollo Module was designed mainly to handle stress in one direction. Curiously enough, this direction is the same whether the craft is exiting the atmosphere or re-entering.
When you spin an object in zero g, it suddenly has to deal with a different set of forces, and, as another post pointed out, you have to deal with issues relating to rotational stability.
There are solutions to all these problems, but those solutions are heavy and in space, heavy is expensive. It costs between $4,500 and $11,000 per pound to get something into orbit. It's cheaper to R&D zero-g surgical techniques than it is to design and launch a spinning space habitat.
1) Moving the spinning thing is not a huge problem
The reason we haven't set up spinning habitats in space is because of weight. If you want something to spin, it must be strong. Strength means weight and weight means cost and the cost is prohibitively high or we'd have done it already.
In contrast research into space surgery in zero g is a waste of time and resources- this and most zero g research is basically like researching into dealing with bad stuff because you keep doing things wrong in the first place.
The human body keeps doing things wrong in the first place. Things like appendicitis, ingrown hairs/nails, wax build up in your ears, and a thousand other things that happen. How did this nonsense get modded up?
You don't have to go full conspiracy mode to see patterns of misconduct and odd legal choices in the Piratebay, Assange, and Megaupload cases. Whether its the US Government or the **AA, someone has been exerting significant outside pressure.
It's a shame that the USA was built on principles of democracy and due process, but chooses to influence foreign events in ways that are contrary to those founding principles.
What I find interesting is that the concept has received government support and direction as part of a push to develop the "U-Society" (which I suppose is mean to be an abbreviation for "ubiquitous computing society"). In Korea, this is governmental industrial policy with the goal of making Korean industry a leader in producing "ubiquitously networked" products of all kinds. On the other hand, here in the United States,
The United States is a bit bi-polar when it comes to government direction of industry. On the one hand, businesses want the government to set goals and priorities, as it allows them to all pull in the same direction, with the knowledge that government funds will also be along for the ride.
On the one hand, we have a vocal group of people that want no government involvement in anything business related.
The end result is a fractured public policy that prevents us from having a coherent national plan for where the country and go and how it can succeed. For countries that don't currently have this form of bipolar disorder, they can achieve great things because everyone is focused in the same direction.
P.S. This can also work under 'free' market economic systems, for varying definitions of free.
China is funding a rail system in Turkey for $35 billion.
I was listening to the radio and they were talking about China's foregin aid. In the context of Egypt, the policy wonks were saying that China likes to hand out infrastructure money, but that they send Chinese workers over to direct and build the project from start to finish. The end result is a finished product, but with no local jobs or expertise used or gained.
Don't forget payroll taxes, fuck this doublespeak. The implication is that they don't pay any taxes, this needs to be actively combated.
FFS. Payroll taxes and State taxes do not go towards paying down the Federal Deficit. GE does not do its part in paying the tax that would prevent the bankruptcy of America.
On the other hand, it is compulsory, so maybe I'm being pedantic.
Only somewhat pedantic. The difference is worth being mentioned, but the outcome is exactly the same.
In any event, the sewers should last - at the least - 40 years. So that is amortized over a loooooong time. There is no way I pay anything approaching $4 per flush.
It's not really possible to calculate the long term cost of this system without more information. If we knew how much the servicing cost and the expected lifespan & replacement cost of components, we could compare it to the cost of a normal 20~40 year municipal waste bond.
There's also an issue of scale. Infrastructure is one of those things that, if scaled correctly, can usually be brought down to a reasonable price/person. Toilets out in the middle of nowhere do not fit that criteria. So in a sense, it's not an equal comparison.
My main goal was to point out that your water & sewer bill at the end of the month doesn't begin to reflect all the money that goes into the average person's 7 flushes per day.
General Electric's (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.
Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), "GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any." But don't worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), "our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital's recovery."
As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE's effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.
"I don't think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE's long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be 'normal,' " said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. "But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid."
Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.
GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010." The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero -- or less -- in federal income taxes in the last three years. The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/.
The difference between the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes and GE, is that GE makes billions of dollars per year.
High barriers to entry are there because the resources necessary to set up shop are hugely expensive and often of a massive scale. High barriers to entry become even higher when there are already established players in a space because you will be utterly incapable of competing against them unless you can match their resources. Nothing at all to do with political influence.
It helps that corporations get to influence the rules which keep out start ups. In some industries, businesses like expensive regulations, since they add an extra barrier to entry.
The GP has a bit of a point about having the right political friends. A friend of a friend shared with me the tale of a product they had designed for the rail industry. It replaced a piece of hardware (that required regular maintinence) with a wireless box that only needed power. The stumbling block was, after passing all the tests and getting all the certifications, they couldn't get a waiver of liability, meaning this small company would have to get insurance coverage on the unlikely chance that their product caused an accident. Why? Because they didn't have the right contacts to push the waiver through, not that their product had any problems.
And in the natural world, the biggest, strongest wolf gets to stay that way by eating first (and the most) while the runt of the litter eats last.
In the natural world, the alpha male dies younger than healthy betas because of the stress of maintaining his dominant position. In the corporate world, the alpha essentially lives forever unless brought down by scandal, hubris, unforced errors, or uncounterable shifts in society.
Have you ever priced out the cost of your civilized flush? If you start with the cost of pipes in the ground and end with water treatment plants, it adds up fairly quickly, though the infrastructure can be amortized across tens or hundreds of thousands of users and tens of years.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody has made a compelling case that HFT has any real net impact on retail investors or anyone making an IPO or issuance.
Maybe nobody you've read. There have been plenty of articles and papers walking even the dumbest person through the negative side effects of high frequency trading.
As for IPOs, someone created a visualization of trades for the first day of Facebook's IPO and points out where the HFTs show up and
start arbitraging enormous volumes of stock right around the $38 price floor that was being defended by Morgan Stanley (lead underwriter).
Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrkH_WQxxEA
Look to my other post in this discussion [...]
As the HFTs have shown us, high volume != right.
It is transfer but its really only transfer between Wall Street Entities.
[Citation Needed]
There is a great deal of hand ringing about HFT but I don't see much evidence it does anything to your typical retail investor.
Your typical retail investor is executing trades and getting pennies skimmed by the HFTs.
Your Pension or 401K isn't as profitable as it could be, because HFTs are skimming pennies off those trades.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System (calpers) is the biggest pension fund in the country.
Are they "Wall Street Entities" or representatives of the "typical retail investor"?
This isn't hard: everyone that isn't a HFT loses.
This includes your typical retail investor and the most savvy of traders.
In the end, HFTs have created a marketplace that is efficient but not competitve.
And there's no point in having a market if it isn't competitive.
What they are doing is consuming the service to the detriment of other users, and extracting a tax with their unfair advantage over other users, while contributing exactly nothing back.
Technically they contribute liquidity to the market.
It's just that the benefits of extra liquidity don't outweigh the negative costs.
That's why, (drum roll please), we have crimes of strict liability. For example, possession of stolen property. Doesn't matter if you knew it was stolen. Doesn't matter if you checked all the registries for stolen products, the serial numbers -- there is simply no defense in cases of strict liability. It was found on your person or on your property and ta-da, guilty.
At the Federal level, knowledge is required for a guilty verdict.
At the State level, your mileage may vary.
You must live in one of those asshole States where proving knowledge is not required.
FYI - Receiving is what happens when you get something you know is stolen.
Possession is what happens if you find out, after the fact, that you got something stolen.
Not all States make this legal distinction or they do, but it's covered under the same law.
And, as with many things under the law, being really really drunk is a legitimate defense against intent.
PS. do you count traditional notebooks (15" and bigger screens) as desktop computers? (I do.)
No.
15" is still a jigsaw puzzle of bits and pieces with a best-effort coolings system.
17" can be considered a desktop replacement, and is sometimes cheaper than a 15" laptop.
But really, a laptop is not a desktop.
Even the slimmest non-mini desktops have more options and cooling power than a 17" laptop.
Your genius plan is to get no one to vote?
No. My point is that if no one votes, the government does not have the consent of the people and consequently lacks any legitimacy to govern.
This is the end state of voter apathy, not loud minorities running rampant over the rest of the non-voting electorate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_United_States
I don't care if I'm the only one who votes, if it means I get my way.
If you're the only one that votes, I sure hope you write yourself in for President.
It wouldn't matter, but that's what I'd do.
No, it's a vote for apathy. That's how politicians interpret it. And they will ignore you.
Imagine if an election was held and nobody showed up to vote.
Is that apathy or a defacto vote of no-confidence in the government?
Just like you'd call into question an election with 105% turnout, an election with 5% turnout is equally meaningless.
So somewhere between the current voter turnout and zero, is a turnout rate that means the government does not represent the people.
As a Libertarian, I spent many years preaching that people should vote for a third party. Over time, I started to realize that it wasn't really so much of a social problem as a technical problem. Specifically, plurality voting has a known weakness, and it is gamed by considering only the two most-likely parties, and picking among only them.
What? No! Much of Europe is run by coalition governments
The technical problem in the USA is that the two dominant parties have rigged the system against third parties.
It's a sad and sordid affair that involves everything from redistricting to creating the current bipartisan Presidential Debate Commission in order to shut out third parties.
The only reason Ross Perot got into the '92 debates is because Bush & Clinton wanted him there.
The Republican and Democratic led debate commission tried to keep Perot out and failed.
In '96, 3/4s of the country wanted Ross Perot in the debates, but he was excluded... because the candidates wanted him out.
Unfortunately, this problem isn't likely to be reformed from the inside, as it has the support of most politicians, or from the outside, as they have no real power to effect change.
Only if you are one of those people who thinks that the Democrats are not equally pro-corporate-system as the Republicans are.
When was the last time the Republican Party thought regulating anything other than abortion or gayness was a good idea?
I'm not disputing that both parties have significant agreements on fundamental policy issues that we both seem to disagree with,
but most of those issues would be a complete disaster if "right wing pro-corporate fascists" were allowed to deregulate.
Amusingly European cars generally have faster top speeds than American cars, despite the smaller engines. Some years ago I took an American on a road trip (along with other people) and he was amazed that my 1.8L Ford Escort could achieve 135mph.
Most American cars are not geared for 135 mph and, more importantly, aren't fitted with tires capable of safely sustaining such speeds.
Let's try that again.
One thing is universal: everyone hates the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act
"Business leaders" against accounting reform and investor protection?
How... unsurprising.
Rest assured, there will likely be a strong inquiry concerning the manufacture and design of the engine fairing that failed, causing the pressure drop, and engine shutdown.
You've got the chain of events backwards.
A loss of fuel(?) pressure forced an engine shutdown, which caused a pressure drop at the engine's nozzle, which caused the engine fairing to fail.
As an aside I was talking to a truck driver as I loaded him up (45 tonnes of bulk) and he said with the new generation of big diesel rigs with scads of horsepower (600 is typical) and lots of torque (pulling along at 1500 rpm is easy) that he gets fantastic fuel economy. On flat roads while crusing, he gets about 6 mpg! That's amazing fuel economy for a big rig!
Daimler (of Daimler-Benz) has been working for years on a 10mpg tractor trailer.
They've finally managed 9+mpg under real world conditions and 10+mpg using a streamlined trailer on a test track.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-30/daimler-unveils-big-rig-50-percent-more-efficient-than-average.html
Part of the magic is extensive aero tweaks and the other part is a fancy diesel engine from Detroit (tm)
The difference between 6mpg and 9mpg is 50%, which is an enormous amount of savings for a trucking company or a driver who owns his own truck.
The modules still survived the g forces and vibrations during the launch. Which are multiples higher than the one g that you'll have during rotation.
You really don't seem to understand what's being discussed here.
The Apollo Module was designed mainly to handle stress in one direction.
Curiously enough, this direction is the same whether the craft is exiting the atmosphere or re-entering.
When you spin an object in zero g, it suddenly has to deal with a different set of forces,
and, as another post pointed out, you have to deal with issues relating to rotational stability.
There are solutions to all these problems, but those solutions are heavy and in space, heavy is expensive.
It costs between $4,500 and $11,000 per pound to get something into orbit.
It's cheaper to R&D zero-g surgical techniques than it is to design and launch a spinning space habitat.
1) Moving the spinning thing is not a huge problem
The reason we haven't set up spinning habitats in space is because of weight.
If you want something to spin, it must be strong. Strength means weight and weight means cost and the cost is prohibitively high or we'd have done it already.
In contrast research into space surgery in zero g is a waste of time and resources- this and most zero g research is basically like researching into dealing with bad stuff because you keep doing things wrong in the first place.
The human body keeps doing things wrong in the first place.
Things like appendicitis, ingrown hairs/nails, wax build up in your ears, and a thousand other things that happen.
How did this nonsense get modded up?
You don't have to go full conspiracy mode to see patterns of misconduct and odd legal choices in the Piratebay, Assange, and Megaupload cases.
Whether its the US Government or the **AA, someone has been exerting significant outside pressure.
It's a shame that the USA was built on principles of democracy and due process, but chooses to influence foreign events in ways that are contrary to those founding principles.
I saw the word "matrix" and had flashbacks to the movie Office Space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2_Yi-1Ryf4&t=16s
The MBAs really need to learn how to dial back the jargon when they're talking to anyone who isn't part of their clan.
What I find interesting is that the concept has received government support and direction as part of a push to develop the "U-Society" (which I suppose is mean to be an abbreviation for "ubiquitous computing society"). In Korea, this is governmental industrial policy with the goal of making Korean industry a leader in producing "ubiquitously networked" products of all kinds. On the other hand, here in the United States,
The United States is a bit bi-polar when it comes to government direction of industry.
On the one hand, businesses want the government to set goals and priorities,
as it allows them to all pull in the same direction, with the knowledge that government funds will also be along for the ride.
On the one hand, we have a vocal group of people that want no government involvement in anything business related.
The end result is a fractured public policy that prevents us from having a coherent national plan for where the country and go and how it can succeed.
For countries that don't currently have this form of bipolar disorder, they can achieve great things because everyone is focused in the same direction.
P.S. This can also work under 'free' market economic systems, for varying definitions of free.
China is funding a rail system in Turkey for $35 billion.
I was listening to the radio and they were talking about China's foregin aid.
In the context of Egypt, the policy wonks were saying that China likes to hand out infrastructure money,
but that they send Chinese workers over to direct and build the project from start to finish.
The end result is a finished product, but with no local jobs or expertise used or gained.
Don't forget payroll taxes, fuck this doublespeak. The implication is that they don't pay any taxes, this needs to be actively combated.
FFS. Payroll taxes and State taxes do not go towards paying down the Federal Deficit.
GE does not do its part in paying the tax that would prevent the bankruptcy of America.
Your pedantry does nothing to advance a solution.
On the other hand, it is compulsory, so maybe I'm being pedantic.
Only somewhat pedantic.
The difference is worth being mentioned, but the outcome is exactly the same.
In any event, the sewers should last - at the least - 40 years. So that is amortized over a loooooong time. There is no way I pay anything approaching $4 per flush.
It's not really possible to calculate the long term cost of this system without more information.
If we knew how much the servicing cost and the expected lifespan & replacement cost of components,
we could compare it to the cost of a normal 20~40 year municipal waste bond.
There's also an issue of scale.
Infrastructure is one of those things that, if scaled correctly, can usually be brought down to a reasonable price/person.
Toilets out in the middle of nowhere do not fit that criteria. So in a sense, it's not an equal comparison.
My main goal was to point out that your water & sewer bill at the end of the month doesn't begin to reflect all the money that goes into the average person's 7 flushes per day.
http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/02/press_release_general_electric.php
General Electric's (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.
Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), "GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any." But don't worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), "our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital's recovery."
As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE's effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.
"I don't think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE's long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be 'normal,' " said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. "But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid."
Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.
GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010." The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero -- or less -- in federal income taxes in the last three years. The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/.
The difference between the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes and GE, is that GE makes billions of dollars per year.
[Citation Needed]
History shows us that magical free markets tend towards consolidation and monopolies.
And no, "it" did not take care of "it."
High barriers to entry are there because the resources necessary to set up shop are hugely expensive and often of a massive scale. High barriers to entry become even higher when there are already established players in a space because you will be utterly incapable of competing against them unless you can match their resources. Nothing at all to do with political influence.
It helps that corporations get to influence the rules which keep out start ups.
In some industries, businesses like expensive regulations, since they add an extra barrier to entry.
The GP has a bit of a point about having the right political friends.
A friend of a friend shared with me the tale of a product they had designed for the rail industry.
It replaced a piece of hardware (that required regular maintinence) with a wireless box that only needed power.
The stumbling block was, after passing all the tests and getting all the certifications, they couldn't get a waiver of liability,
meaning this small company would have to get insurance coverage on the unlikely chance that their product caused an accident.
Why? Because they didn't have the right contacts to push the waiver through, not that their product had any problems.
And in the natural world, the biggest, strongest wolf gets to stay that way by eating first (and the most) while the runt of the litter eats last.
In the natural world, the alpha male dies younger than healthy betas because of the stress of maintaining his dominant position.
In the corporate world, the alpha essentially lives forever unless brought down by scandal, hubris, unforced errors, or uncounterable shifts in society.
4$ per flush. That's pretty steep!
Have you ever priced out the cost of your civilized flush?
If you start with the cost of pipes in the ground and end with water treatment plants, it adds up fairly quickly,
though the infrastructure can be amortized across tens or hundreds of thousands of users and tens of years.
Taxes are what we use to buy civilization.