Visa's marketing opt-out has been down for over a week. Is this a legal issue?

My guess is the number of complaints resolved is tied to somebodies bonus.

The "late" meant something like the type of capitalism that emerged out of ww2, characterized primarily by post-colonial global trade networks. That's quite a bit in the past for us, but "late" by the standards of an ideological tradition that started in the 1800s. Even still, of all your questions, this is the one that has changed meanings perhaps the least in the last 80 years or so. That's because a lot of the things that characterized "late stage capitalism" in the mid 20th century are still with us, and perhaps intensified. If it helps, think of "late stage" as "post-colonial + globalization + financialization". In contrast to the much more mixed political economies of Europe in the 1800s. Or, for an even more modern usage, you might read it as "jet-setting billionaires and the MBAs that manage their factories and open offices". That's the vibe it's supposed to give off, I think.

The "collapse?" and "what's next?" questions sort of have standard Marxist answers (or, at least, standard delineated lines of debate within mid-century Marxism, from what I understand). Careful dispassionate reading the Communist Manifesto... like, the way you would read Plato or Hegel or whatever... can give you a general sense for why "collapse" plays an important role in Marxist theories and what Marxists generally suspect is "next". (Namely, alienation of workers and a resulting violent revolution of the working class against folks who own/control capital.)

nb, I'm not really sure that most people using the term now have much -- if any -- background in Marxist economics/philosophy. I think for the average user, these terms function roughly the same way as "critical race theory" does on the social right. If that makes sense.

So, the "late" retains real descriptive meaning relative to 1800s/early 1900s capitalism, but the "collapse" and "what's next?" have sort of drifted from their original answers and probably play a more rhetorical than literal role these days. Like CRT. No one knows what they mean. They are shibboleths for "change is needed and inevitable", with no specifics for what or how.

Hope that helps.

The way power evolves from ancient times, to middle ages, to modern times and finally contemporary times, how the institutions of capitalism are different in form, but not in essence from the institutions of feudalism and other themes are a central topic of Marxist theory.

You seen to agree with him about the root of the exploitation problem, but GP is also right in that there are differences on how the institutions operate and how advanced they are in comparison to those of the past. These new institutions and techniques and dynamics require different tools for analysis.

I certainly think so. I think many of the way in which modern institutions exert power over individuals are of a fundamentally different nature compared to, say, slave economies, or the pre-reformation Catholic church, or the Aztec empire, or whatever. In particular:

> If anything, it seems like there are more ways that power is limited in current America than 16th century Europe or the USSR.

I half-agree here. I don't really think "power" is a one-dimensional scale where you can strictly order societies in terms of the degree to which it exists. Take, for instance, the way in which advertising companies are able to leverage their understanding of psychology and their fine-grained control over media content to directly shape our desires and emotions; these are tools which flat out didn't exist 100 years ago, and represent a mode of control which seems orthogonal to, say, a monarch ordering a summary execution of one of their subjects. These aren't theoretical distinctions, either: recognizing them can help point us in the right direction when trying to imagine what a better world looks like, and is useful for understanding what the available avenues of resistance and change even are.

Quite simply everytime one of these stories comes up big corp breaks the law...is anyone going to do anything about it...The answer is pretty much always no not even fines...

Even something where a CEO admits intentionally breaking the law not much has happened. No talk of jail time? https://www.ft.com/content/3fbc5918-ad04-4003-8e09-3df12d7dc...

I think maybe I'm jaded with 'it's illegal'. If the law is not enforced it doesn't matter.

For example, a $10 fine to a company w/ a net loss but $1B in revenue is clearly not a large fine.

No dont do it with profit. You can just reinvest all your actual profits in the business and then on paper have a very small profit or even show a loss.

The magstripe is there for old POS systems and the off chance the chip can’t be used (dirty contacts), but the reader has to allow you to use the strip. And that only happens after multiple (about 3) failures.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+amex+doing+wrt+russi...

American Express Suspends Operations in Russia and Belarus