For … well, it seems like for ever, I’ve heard leftists complain about Wall Street and its obsession with the next quarter. Instead of basing our economy on short term profits, we need to base it on politics.
Then you can call taxes “investments”. Because Congress and Presidencies always take the long view.

Well, not really, of course, but let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that politicians aren’t worried as much about profits as doing the right thing. That would be great, wouldn’t it?

It would be sort of like Amazon is doing.

Except that when a private enterprise acts that way, it’s “terrifying“:

what makes Amazon not just amazing but downright dangerous is that as a financial matter it has something even better than profits—the boundless faith of the investment community. … Wall Street is on board with an Amazon business strategy that doesn’t require it to actually make profits as long as it increases sales volumes. And if you’re in any line of business where you compete with Amazon–and Amazon is in a lot of businesses, and seems to get into new ones each year—that should terrify you.

It’s this “tails you lose, heads I win” thing — goalpost moving at its most obnoxious — that I find most objectionable about conversations with leftists, and why, increasingly, I just assume there’s no point.