Anti-Corporate Movement
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This community is the first one on lemmy of its kind. It sits between the idea of anarchism/anti-capitalism and left leaning economic policy.
Our goal is to make people aware of the dangers of corporate control, its influence on governments and people as well as the small but steady abrasion of empathy around the world indirectly caused by it.
Current topics this includes but is not limited to:
- Meta's entry into the fediverse
- Game companies putting gambling mechanics in childrens games
- Embracer groups buyout and closing of smaller game studios
- IP trolls destroying small companies and keeping progress back for profit
Feel free to debate this but beware, corporate rhetoric is not welcome here. If you have arguments, bring them on. If its rhetoric trying to defend the evil actions of corporations, we will know and you will go.
Our declared goal so far is to have all companies and individuals worldwide capped at 999 mil USD in all assets, including ownership of other companies, sister companies and marital assets. The reason for this is that companies (and individuals) are not supposed to resemble small(?) countries with a single leader(-board) and shareholder primacy. Thats why we feel like they must be kept in check indefinitely.
But companies will just wander off The argument that large companies will just wander off is valid, which we embrace. We dont need microsoft, apple, google, amazon and other trillion dollar companies. There are small competitors being kept small and driven into brankruptcy by anti competitive behavior of these giants or simply bought up and closed. If starbucks left tomorrow, we would not have an issue with this.
But then we have x little microsofts that all belong to the same person(s) If in fact nobody was allowed to accumulate more than 999 mil in assets, they would not be able to own all these. And like defending agains burglary, it is not about complete defence but time and effort. You only have to keep the thief occupied long enough for them to be caught, give up or make a mistake.
But these giants have tons of IP which would then limit our growth Thats another topic we must touch on. We will (only this one time) take a page out of russias playbook and demand that IP of non complying companies (assets over 999 mil USD) will be declared invalid, which opens them up to be copied.
But then they will "live" in one country that doesnt accept this Correct, and they should be taken into custody the moment they enter the airspace of a country that supports this act.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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This Microsoft-backed AI startup just collapsed after faking its AI services with 700 real engineers
(www.windowscentral.com)
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31431654
OC by @[email protected]
Single core, 32 bit CPU, can't even do video playback on VLC. But it kinda works for some offline work, like text editing, and even emulation through zsnes! It's crazy how Linux keeps old hardware like this running.
Thankfully though, this laptop CPU is upgradable, and so is the ram, so I'm planning on revitalizing and bringing this old Itautec to the 21st century 😄
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31716365
The world is burning, and it's about time you start organizing. To learn how to do it as a tech worker within the tech sector, Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) is the best place to start.
In this session you will discover what TWC is, how you can join a local or global chapter, and the many initiatives going on around the world for you to contribute to.
We have two identical sessions to accommodate different time zones, so please sign up for the one that works best for you — can’t wait to see you there!
Tuesday, June 17th, 2025
Option A is 18:00 CEST / 12PM ET / 9 AM PT Register
Option B is 5PM PT / 8PM ET Register
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31349393
original post: https://mk.moth.zone/notes/a8zer7ypj6uv02ka
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New Report: Employers in the USA Have Stolen Over $50 Trillion From Workers Since 1975
(lemmy.world)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31249181
The Great Heist: How Employers Have Stolen Over $50 Trillion From Workers Since 1975
The largest theft in American history isn’t happening in banks or jewelry stores. It’s happening in offices, factories, restaurants, and construction sites across the country, where employers have systematically stolen over $50 trillion from workers since 1975. This isn’t hyperbole — it’s the documented result of decades of wage suppression, productivity theft, and the deliberate transfer of wealth from workers to corporate owners. The $50 Trillion Theft: Breaking Down the Numbers
The scale of this theft becomes clear when examining multiple forms of wage suppression that have operated simultaneously for nearly five decades: The Productivity-Wage Gap: $2.2 Trillion Stolen Annually
The most dramatic evidence comes from the productivity-wage gap documented by the Economic Policy Institute. From 1979 to 2021, worker productivity grew by 64.6% while hourly compensation grew by only 17.3%. This means workers are producing nearly twice as much value per hour as they did in 1979, but seeing almost none of that increase in their paychecks.
If wages had kept pace with productivity, the average worker would earn approximately $42 per hour today instead of around $23. The Economic Policy Institute estimates this gap costs workers $2.2 trillion per year in lost wages. Cumulatively since 1975, this amounts to well over $50 trillion in stolen productivity gains. Labor’s Shrinking Share: Trillions Redistributed to Capital
Federal Reserve and Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveal another dimension of this theft. Labor’s share of national income has declined from approximately 63% in the mid-20th century to just 56% today, while corporate profits have soared. This 7-percentage-point shift in a multi-trillion-dollar economy represents trillions of dollars redirected from workers’ paychecks to corporate shareholders and executives. The RAND Corporation’s Smoking Gun
A 2020 RAND Corporation study provided perhaps the most damning evidence of systematic wealth theft. Researchers found that if income growth since 1975 had been as equitable as in previous decades, the median full-time worker would earn approximately $92,000 annually instead of around $50,000. The cumulative gap for all workers exceeds $50 trillion in suppressed wages. Direct Wage Theft: The Tip of the Iceberg
While the productivity-wage gap represents the largest component of theft, direct wage theft — employers literally stealing wages already earned — adds billions more to the total. This includes:
$15 billion stolen annually through minimum wage violations, unpaid overtime, off-the-clock work, and tip theft. At least 4 million workers are illegally underpaid each year, losing an average of $3,000-$3,500 annually.
In Los Angeles fast food restaurants alone, 1 in 4 workers are illegally paid below minimum wage, costing each victim an average of $3,500 annually. In Western New York, 1,900 employers withheld $17.1 million from 23,613 workers over a single decade.
$50+ billion in total wage theft annually when including all forms of wage violations, according to Economic Policy Institute estimates. This direct theft adds over $2 trillion to the cumulative total since 1975. The Mechanisms of Theft
This massive wealth transfer didn’t happen by accident. It resulted from deliberate policy choices and corporate strategies: Union Busting and Wage Suppression
Research from Harvard and the University of Washington shows that declining unionization accounts for one-third of the rise in wage inequality. Union membership fell from 35% in the 1950s to just 10% today, eliminating workers’ primary tool for capturing productivity gains. Corporate Profit Maximization
Corporate profits as a share of GDP have doubled since the 1970s while worker wages stagnated. Companies that once shared productivity gains with workers through higher wages now capture those gains entirely as profits for shareholders and executives. Regulatory Capture and Weak Enforcement
Labor investigator staffing has hit a 52-year low, with just 611 investigators for 165 million workers — one investigator per 278,000 workers. This deliberate understaffing ensures that wage theft goes unpunished and employers face minimal consequences for violations. The Real-World Impact
This isn’t just an abstract economic debate — it’s about millions of families struggling to survive while corporate profits soar:
Housing Crisis: If wages had kept pace with productivity, median workers would earn $84,000 annually instead of $42,000, making housing affordable for millions more families. Healthcare Bankruptcy: The $42,000 in annual income stolen from the median worker would cover health insurance premiums and medical expenses for most families. Education Debt: Workers losing $3,000-$3,500 annually to direct wage theft could pay for college tuition or vocational training instead of going into debt. Retirement Security: The $50 trillion stolen from workers since 1975 would have provided retirement security for an entire generation.The Enforcement Charade
The current enforcement system is designed to enable theft, not prevent it. While property crimes worth millions receive massive law enforcement attention, wage theft worth tens of billions goes largely ignored:
Understaffed Agencies: Some states have just one investigator for every 500,000 workers; four states have no investigators based in-state. Weak Penalties: Employers often face penalties less than what they saved by stealing wages, making theft profitable. Retaliation: Up to 98% of low-wage workers subject to forced arbitration never pursue stolen wages, knowing they’ll face job loss and legal costs they can’t afford. Minimal Recovery: Only $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered between 2021–2023, representing less than 1% of the estimated $150+ billion stolen during that period.Corporate Criminals
Major corporations appear repeatedly on wage violation lists, treating theft as a business strategy:
AT&T: 34 different wage and hour violations totaling $140 million in penalties since 2000 Walmart: Hundreds of millions in wage theft settlements Amazon: Systematic wage theft affecting hundreds of thousands of workersFor these companies, wage theft penalties are simply a cost of doing business — a small price to pay for stealing billions from workers. The Bigger Picture: Class Warfare
The $50 trillion theft represents the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history. It’s not a bug in the system — it’s a feature. Corporate America has successfully:
Decoupled wages from productivity through union busting and political influence Captured regulatory agencies to ensure minimal enforcement Shifted national income from workers to capital owners Normalized wage theft as acceptable business practiceThis systematic theft has created unprecedented inequality, with the top 1% capturing nearly all productivity gains while working families struggle with stagnant wages despite producing more value than ever. Reclaiming What Was Stolen
The $50 trillion theft isn’t inevitable — it’s the result of policy choices that can be reversed:
Strengthen Labor Enforcement: Hire thousands of investigators, impose criminal penalties for wage theft, and protect workers who report violations.
Restore Collective Bargaining: Make union organizing easier and require employers to negotiate in good faith.
Link Wages to Productivity: Implement policies ensuring workers share in the value they create.
Criminal Penalties: Treat wage theft like the grand larceny it is, with prison sentences for repeat offenders.
Wealth Redistribution: Use progressive taxation to reclaim some of the stolen wealth and invest in public services that benefit workers. The Crime of the Century
The theft of $50 trillion from American workers since 1975 represents the largest property crime in world history. It has impoverished millions, destroyed communities, and created a feudal economy where workers produce enormous wealth but receive subsistence wages.
This isn’t a natural economic phenomenon — it’s organized theft enabled by corrupt politicians, captured regulators, and a legal system that prioritizes corporate profits over worker rights.
The evidence is overwhelming: productivity gains that should have gone to workers have been systematically stolen by employers for nearly five decades.
The time for polite economic debate is over. American workers have been robbed of $50 trillion, and it’s time to treat this theft with the seriousness it deserves.
Nothing less than a complete restructuring of economic power will restore what has been stolen and prevent future theft on this scale.
Data sources: Economic Policy Institute, RAND Corporation, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Harvard University, University of Washington, and numerous academic studies documenting the systematic theft of worker productivity and wages since 1975.
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Messing With Texas: How Big Homebuilders and Private Equity Made American Cities Unaffordable
(www.thebignewsletter.com)
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Switch to Linux Today to End the Vicious Cycle of Being Forced to Buy New Hardware by Corporations
(lemmy.ca)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/45871149
No more new features for intel macs after 5 years. They will be dropped completely from security patches in 2028.
2028 is going to be another major opportunity to convert Mac users to Linux.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/66447947
Full text to bypass paywall:
A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.
CBP, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it needs this data to support state and local police to track people of interest’s air travel across the country, in a purchase that has alarmed civil liberties experts.
The documents reveal for the first time in detail why at least one part of DHS purchased such information, and comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed its own purchase of the data. The documents also show for the first time that the data broker, called the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), tells government agencies not to mention where it sourced the flight data from.
“The big airlines—through a shady data broker that they own called ARC—are selling the government bulk access to Americans' sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card they used,” Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement.
ARC is owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, other publicly released documents show. The company’s board of directors include representatives from Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and European airlines Lufthansa and Air France, and Canada’s Air Canada. More than 240 airlines depend on ARC for ticket settlement services.
Do you work at ARC or an agency that uses ARC data? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at [email protected].
ARC’s other lines of business include being the conduit between airlines and travel agencies, finding travel trends in data with other firms like Expedia, and fraud prevention, according to material on ARC’s YouTube channel and website. The sale of U.S. flyers’ travel information to the government is part of ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program (TIP).
A Statement of Work included in the newly obtained documents, which describes why an agency is buying a particular tool or capability, says CBP needs access to ARC’s TIP product “to support federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify persons of interest’s U.S. domestic air travel ticketing information.” 404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
The new documents obtained by 404 Media also show ARC asking CBP to “not publicly identify vendor, or its employees, individually or collectively, as the source of the Reports unless the Customer is compelled to do so by a valid court order or subpoena and gives ARC immediate notice of same.”
The Statement of Work says that TIP can show a person’s paid intent to travel and tickets purchased through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories. The data from the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) will provide “visibility on a subject’s or person of interest’s domestic air travel ticketing information as well as tickets acquired through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories,” the documents say. They add this data will be “crucial” in both administrative and criminal cases.
A DHS Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) available online says that TIP data is updated daily with the previous day’s ticket sales, and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel. The document says TIP can be searched by name, credit card, or airline, but ARC contains data from ARC-accredited travel agencies, such as Expedia, and not flights booked directly with an airline. “[I]f the passenger buys a ticket directly from the airline, then the search done by ICE will not show up in an ARC report,” that PIA says. The PIA notes the data impacts both U.S. and non-U.S. persons, meaning it does include information on U.S. citizens.
“While obtaining domestic airline data—like many other transaction and purchase records—generally doesn't require a warrant, there's still supposed to go through a legal process that ensures independent oversight and limits data collection to records that will support an investigation,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told 404 Media in an email. “As with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.”
CBP’s contract with ARC started in June 2024 and may extend to 2029, according to the documents. The CBP contract 404 Media obtained documents for was an $11,025 transaction. Last Tuesday, a public procurement database added a $6,847.50 update to that contract, which said it was exercising “Option Year 1,” meaning it was extending the contract. The documents are redacted but briefly mention CBP’s OPR, or Office of Professional Responsibility, which in part investigates corruption by CBP employees.
“CBP is committed to protecting individuals’ privacy during the execution of its mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity. CBP follows a robust privacy policy as we protect the homeland through the air, land and maritime environments against illegal entry, illicit activity or other threats to national sovereignty and economic security,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. CBP added that the data is only used when an OPR investigation is open and the agency needs to locate someone related to that investigation. The agency said the data can act as a good starting point to identify a relevant flight record before then getting more information through legal processes.
On May 1, ICE published details about its own ARC data purchase. In response, on May 2, 404 Media filed FOIA requests with ICE and a range of other agencies that 404 Media found had bought ARC’s services, including CBP, the Secret Service, SEC, DEA, the Air Force, U.S. Marshals Service, TSA, and ATF. 404 Media found these by searching U.S. procurement databases. Around a week later, The Lever covered the ICE contract.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
Airlines contacted by 404 Media declined to comment, didn’t respond, or deferred to either ARC or DHS instead. ARC declined to comment. The company previously told The Lever that TIP “was established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to provide certain data to law enforcement… for the purpose of national security matters” and criminal investigations.
“ARC has refused to answer oversight questions from Congress, so I have already contacted the major airlines that own ARC—like Delta, American Airlines and United—to find out why they gave the green light to sell their customers' data to the government,” Wyden’s statement added.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have repeatedly turned to private companies to buy data rather than obtain it through legal processes such as search warrants or subpoenas. That includes location data harvested from smartphones, utility data, and internet backbone data.
“Overall it strikes me as yet another alarming example of how the ‘Big Data Surveillance Complex’ is becoming the digital age version of the Military-Industrial Complex,” Laperruque says, referring to the purchase of airline data.
“It's clear the Data Broker Loophole is pushing the government back towards a pernicious ‘collect it all’ mentality, gobbling up as much sensitive data as it can about all Americans by default. A decade ago the public rejected that approach, and Congress passed surveillance reform legislation that banned domestic bulk collection. Clearly it's time for Congress to step in again, and stop the Data Broker Loophole from being used to circumvent that ban,” he added.
According to ARC’s website, the company only introduced multifactor authentication on May 15.
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Google has made it much harder for GrapheneOS & CalyxOS to update to Android 16
(lemmy.giftedmc.com)
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The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice
(blog.documentfoundation.org)
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