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The Mechanism of Theft

Stop Blaming the Scorpion: Why 'Greed' is a Distraction

Hating corporations for making money is childish; the real failure lies with the politicians who built a system where poisoning you is profitable.

The Issue

The Fairy Tale of the 'Nice Company' 🔒

Let us grow up.

There is a pervasive, elementary-school notion in American discourse that pharmaceutical companies and insurers are "evil" because they put profits over people. This is not just wrong. It is boring. It is like being angry at a Great White Shark for eating a seal. The shark is not evil. The shark is hungry. That is its nature.

Business 101: A corporation is a machine built for exactly one purpose: To maximize returns for shareholders.

That is not a conspiracy. It is a fiduciary duty. The CEO of Pfizer or UnitedHealth has a legal obligation to extract as much money from the market as the law allows. If they leave money on the table out of "kindness," they can be sued by their investors.

And who are these investors? They are not just men in top hats smoking cigars. They are the pension funds of teachers. They are the index funds in your grandmother's 401(k). If you want your retirement fund to go up, you are implicitly asking these CEOs to be ruthless.

The Rational Monopolist: In reality, the goal of every competent business is to become a monopoly. To crush competition, raise prices, and capture the market. This is completely rational. Anyone who tells you they started a business to "share the market" is either a liar or a bad businessman.

The Real Scam: The scam is not that companies are greedy. The scam is that your Senators and Representatives pretend to be shocked by it.

When a CEO raises the price of insulin to $600, they are doing their job. When a Senator writes a law that allows them to do it, the Senator is failing theirs.

The Trap: Focusing on the "morality" of a CEO is a distraction. An openly greedy company is not a failure of capitalism. It is a failure of legislation.

The Fix

The SAFECARE Solution: Changing the Physics ✅

We do not ask the shark to go vegan. We build a better cage.

1. Regulatory Alignment The function of government is to align the shark’s hunger with the public good. Regulations are the walls of the maze. If the maze leads to a pot of gold for denying care, the company will deny care. If the maze leads to a prison cell for fraud, the company will avoid fraud.

2. Closing the Loopholes (Section 405) Current laws are Swiss cheese designed by lobbyists. For example, the law currently forbids Medicare from negotiating drug prices. That is not the free market. That is a government-mandated looting. SAFECARE's Section 405 simply removes that protection.

3. The 80/20 Trap (Section 1004) Insurers used the "80/20 Rule" to bloat costs because the regulation was poorly written. SAFECARE's Section 1004 removes the private insurer from the essential tier entirely. We don't regulate their greed. We remove their access to the funds.

4. Penalties that Sting (Section 803) When the penalty for stealing a billion dollars is a ten-million-dollar fine, that is not a punishment. It is a business expense. SAFECARE introduces Federal Felony Penalties for systemic fraud. We change the calculus: Maximizing profit now includes the variable "going to federal prison."

SAFECARE stops expecting impossible benevolence from corporations and starts demanding competence from the government.

Criticism & Rebuttal

myth

"Corporations Have a Social Responsibility"

PR departments spend billions convincing you that their company "cares," and investment giants push "Social Scores" (ESG) to enforce it.

The Reality: A corporation does not have feelings. It has a balance sheet. "Social Responsibility" is a marketing budget line item used to prevent regulation. We watched movie studios burn billions producing "socially responsible" lectures that nobody watched. We saw tech companies remove chargers from phone boxes to "save the planet" (while keeping the price the same). It is not morality. It is cynicism wrapped in a slogan. Consumers despise it because they know that the same company lecturing them on virtue is using slave labor in their supply chain. The solution is not a better mission statement. It is a tighter law.

risk

"Stifling Innovation"

Critics argue that strict regulations will kill the "animal spirits" of the market.

The Reality: The current market is not "spirited". It is rigged. In theory, monopolies have the infinite funds needed for risky R&D. In practice, they are paralyzed by boards that demand steady "maintenance revenue" over unpredictable research losses. Look at the tech giants: Apple and Google locked down their monopolies and immediately stopped innovating. Apple sells us the same phone with a slightly different camera bump every September, while Google forces us to use the same RAM-eating browser that tracks our every pulse. Monopolies stifle innovation because stasis is safer than progress. By breaking the "regulatory capture," we force them to actually compete on value, not just extract rent from a captive audience.

risk

The Lobbying Hydra

Even if we pass good laws, companies will immediately hire lobbyists to drill new loopholes. But let us be clear: Lobbyists are not the problem either. They are mercenaries doing their job. Their strength is only proportionate to the weakness of our Senators and Representatives.

The Mitigation: Regulation is active maintenance. However, by simplifying the system (Single Payer for essential care), we reduce the number of moving parts where lobbyists can hide. Complexity is the lobbyist's best friend. It is the nucleus of corruption. Look at our tax code: only straightforward W-2 payroll workers are targeted for ransom, because they cannot hide. Meanwhile, the wealthy use the complexity (depreciation, offshores, and shells) to camouflage their wealth and pay zero. The complexity is the loophole. SAFECARE is designed to be brutally simple.

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References

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