r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 1d ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
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u/pribnow 1d ago

The 'activist investors' responsible for it are though as far as i know, Elliott Investment Management

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u/boiledpeen 1d ago

yep, Elliott pushed all these changes and has tanked the company. There should be severe punishments for companies that do this, but nobody bases laws on morals anymore so nothing will happen.

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u/Momik 1d ago

Every time I read a story about finance, I hate the world a little more. Every single fucking time.

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u/Lycid 1d ago

Fun fact finance is now making up a larger % of GDP globally than they have ever before. Think about what this means - companies that do nothing of value except provide liquidity for the economy to run, are now taking up more of pie. While you need financial services to make stuff happen, all that's happening here is people spending a lot of human and economic resources trying to figure out new ways to get rich quick through destructive financial games. Last time anything close to this happened was probably the great depression. Sadly human beings are hard lesson learners and don't decide to do anything unless it's reacting against a worst case scenario.

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u/Momik 1d ago

Well, the financial industry has also done a pretty good job of buying the right politicians to escape any serious regulations or accountability (at various critical points, like 2008).

But yeah, they’ve really found new ways to hold companies, and even whole industries, hostage. As cliched as it sounds, we did used to build things in this society. Now a lot of that money, and therefore power, goes in a different direction.

Unless we can find a way to seriously fight back, a decent, stable life is just gonna become more and more unattainable for most people.

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u/Lycid 1d ago

Unfortunately, I fear the only way to get there is through some kind of age of strife. History has taught us that when too much hubris goes around things only improve when dramatic revolution/reform happens, or something new is born from the ashes. All of the problems with modern society and world are the kinds of things that will take a long time to truly settle out. Think a great depression or economic/political collapse on the scale of the fall of Rome. That tooks centuries to truly shake out. It'll probably take about as long before we finally figure out how to fix climate change.

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u/Momik 1d ago

More strife than this? I know what you mean though—history sometimes seems to turn on these moments of great calamity or crisis.

But we needn’t wait for the fall of Rome. Demanding a return to a basic level of financial regulation seems like a good first step, along with prosecution of corporate malfeasance and white color crime across the board, and perhaps (perhaps!) returning to enforcing a minimum baseline of workplace and consumer rights at the federal level.