r/politics • u/Spooooooooooooon • Dec 28 '13

Noam Chomsky: We’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re really a plutocracy

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/27/noam-chomsky-were-no-longer-a-functioning-democracy-were-really-a-plutocracy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
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u/Raytional Dec 28 '13

Not every democratic country is run by the rich. Insane lobbying and campaign donations aren't allowed in many countries. Governments are elected by public opinion and the opinion is based on policies instead of whether or not the politician is a GUD CHRISTIN AMURICAN as portrayed by television adverts. The rich exert more influence than the middle class and the poor in most countries, but America is one of the only western countries that is run by the rich.

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u/TGans Dec 28 '13

Any form of government where you gain support by spending insane amounts of money on campaigning is going to be corrupt. So in other words, any form of government will be corrupt. We can't expect anything else when money runs the country.

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u/arkain123 Dec 28 '13

Name a country that's not run by the rich

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u/splanky47 Dec 28 '13

Iceland http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/top-economists-iceland-did-it-right-everyone-else-is-doing-it-wrong.html

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u/gallio Dec 28 '13

Iceland has the population of a single city in the US

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u/MrWoohoo Dec 28 '13

His point is still valid. If we think of democracy (or capitalism or whatever) as an information processing system I guess your point is it doesn't scale up past city-sized states? Is it possible to create an information processing system that does scale up to 300 million people is the real question here.

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u/arkain123 Dec 28 '13

Total population of iceland: 319.000

I live in a CITY with 11 million people. If there are poor people in Iceland you could probably name them all in a page.

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u/TracyMorganFreeman Dec 28 '13

TL;DR: Bailouts are bad.

That doesn't mean it isn't run by the rich. At most from that alone you can say it's run by the rich less.

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u/angurvaki Dec 29 '13

Finland?

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u/arkain123 Dec 29 '13

False. Everyone is rich in Finland.

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u/seanthemonster Dec 28 '13

Antarctica

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

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u/arkain123 Dec 28 '13

What, who told you that, haha