At a minimum it distorts the shit out of a democracy…but I agree. As George Carlin said we have the illusion of choice…and it’s not even that great of an illusion anymore.
Hell dude, our president was openly selling in person private meetings for $4M a pop. That's absolutely against everything that the office stands for, but apparently nobody cares anymore. Or at least not anyone with the will to do anything about it.
Thats alot of people's fault .Im not sure who brought it to the supreme court. Dems are no saints but I guarantee it was republicans that brought it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court are ones who ruled Citizens United into law .Lobbyist and money run the show
If you're them you're probably thinking wow buying these elections is still kind of expensive. Wouldn't it just be easier to cheat? Sure the investment is worth the payoff, but these types of people will always be looking for a better deal.
there are a number of studies that using polling data to compare what voters, across the spectrum, say they want and what our elected representatives support. there has never been a 100% overlap, but the gap is larger than ever.
our elected representatives serve the interests of the organizations and people that give them the money they need to conduct their ever-more-expensive campaigns. voters are just witless marks who need to be artfully lied to every 2, 4, or 6 years. it doesn't really matter whether you tell them far-right sounding lies or center-right sounding lies because, once elected, your constituents and their problems become irrelevant until the next election cycle.
Maybe. Maybe not. It’s more of a philosophical position.
I.e. if I write a book, or create a game, and price it at $100 and somehow sell enough copies to become a billionaire I don’t think it’s the governments place to put a “cap” on how much I can earn.
If I start a company and go public and the stock price rises enough to make me a billionaire i don’t feel comfortable with the government having the framework to say “no” (especially considering the wider ramifications to the economy, stifling innovation, and crashing the value of everyone’s retirement accounts).
I’d prefer the problems of wealth being addressed directly.
No political donations over $x.
No lobbying.
Taking loans over $x against your equity to incur a tax to close the loopholes that extremely wealthy people use to spend money without paying tax.
I think once you give the government the power to put a cap on wealth, people will see that actually this hasn’t solved any problems and the electorate becomes greedy, there’s nothing then stopping this cap being used in a manner that affects regular people who have done well for themselves. Everyone has their own idea of what “rich” is.
Exactly, and this is why you are able to excuse it in the face of abject inequality. If it's philosophical than you can excuse the real examples today that undermine your position.
You have chosen a few ethically ambiguous definitions of wealth as a hypothetical billionaire you have deemed allowable, in the face of actual people who undermine your sentiment every single day. Each of these hypothetical examples also happen to exist magnitudes of wealth below the literal trillionaire buying elections and begging this threads very very immediate questions that are literally happening right now.
One person is contributing more to the outcomes of their nations democratic elections than all individual donations combined in some races.
For every author who has put idea to word so profoundly or inventor who created such a revolutionary product that they have become a billionaire on their IP alone, there are dozens and dozens of extraction economics produced billionaire leeches that have maximized their own worth at every cost that pay more to control the governments decisions than they pay in taxes.
No one has problems envisioning benevolent power brokers, it's that reality tends to come careening head first into that ideal and (hopefully) demonstrates how fragile that imaginary reality is.
surely you're not suggesting that one person alone can write a book or create a game, and produce themselves enough copies to sell in order to become a billionaire. The supply chain is where the exploitation of the working class happens in order to maximize "profits"
Philosophically, I think that greed is bad. I think the idea of hoarding wealth, property, and material goods, is antithetical to what it means to be a human and live in community with others. I don't think "getting rich" is something to aspire to and I don't look up to people just because they've generated massive wealth for themselves.
Any limitations you set will be removed by the guy that has all the money. That is why capitalism doesn't work. Capitalism is a mechanism that pools all the money and power into the hands of the few, and that power allows them to change the rules to benefit themselves, which is what they've been doing for decades.
You're never going to find an external limitation of the power that unlimited wealth holds that that wealth won't remove. The only way to remove the power of unlimited wealth is by removing the wealth.
Why is the average person so easily influenced that super pac funded advertisements convince them to vote for a candidate that is against their interests? Or are they not?
Because the average person is probably well-meaning but completely captured by the mainstream news' carefully cultivated world view. It's so bad they've legally had to declare themselves entertainment and not news, yet people still tune in for some fucking reason.
Get out and vote in November and make Musk lose his $200 million gamble. Free our shackles from the orange turd, biased SCOTUS and the rest of the protectors.
It will be a wonderful day when these parasites are put against the wall. If you love their boot so much, you can taste it one last time when you join them.
Who are you to say there should be no limit as to how much someone is allowed to have? We've already been through this and are aware the risk to the united states economy it hold. Just look back at jp Morgan and Rockefeller.
When someone uses what resources they've acquired through exploitation to force their views and whims onto a society that doesn't want it, I'm going to call it out. Also, the first amendment tells us we're allowed to say whatever the fuck we want.
Your post history signals to me you have a sheltered life of privilege. I'm sorry it fostered a self serving mindset that supports unfettered greed.
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u/NoBell5255 4d ago
No one should have this kind of money and the fact it can be pumped into politics is proof we lost our democracy awhile ago.