Who Owns America?
- Thread starter Don
- Start date
Why do you, who so strongly believes that money and power are not central to the cultural mindset of the American people, have so little faith in them to vote for people without that mindset?
Unfortunately, the problem is as much the people as the government. It is the mindset of the people that allows a democratically-elected government its exploitations. It's basic anthropology.
I'm all up for the abolishment of the market.
When do they get a chance to vote for people without that mindset? Most people are busy leading productive lives, and have no interest in running for office. Most competent politicians are in the game because they want to exercise political power, just as most competent doctors want to practice medicine, most competent teachers want to teach, and most competent carpenters like to work with wood. Most competent politicians make a career of it, because it takes practice to master a craft, just as doctors, teachers and carpenters understand.
Those few non-politicians who want to run face off against party-approved and party-financed candidates with whatever meager publicity and funding they can scrape up from the general public, or garner support from moneyed interests that expect quid pro quo. The occasional candidate who gets past those hurdles generally gets less-than-stellar support from their own party, and if they manage to get elected they're often shut out of the existing power structure and end up as one-term wonders.
At the national level, the Reps and Dems control who runs in the primaries and actually own the debates, and do what they must to assure that none but their two candidates "qualify" for the debates. You could put all the press that third-party candidates get on a bumper sticker. And in a nod to NT, those parties are each owned by their own group of special interests.
If candidates were selected by lottery, you might have a valid argument. When they're pre-vetted by two powerful political machines, claiming the voters have a real choice is myopic. IMO. The voters get to pick from the oligarchy-approved person in the red tie and the oligarchy-approved person in the blue tie. Some choice.
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And what allows those machines to exist? Money, and the love of it.
Edit: I suppose can I understand how that might not the case if you see federal government itself as something that must be abolished. But if you remove it, then something else must take its place. The question is what?
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No, the rulebook allows those machines to exist. The rules exist as they do because those who write the rulebooks have been purchased, lock, stock and barrel.
The buyers get the rulebooks they want, but that's because somebody claims the authority to write the rulebooks, and few question that authority.
The system works the way it does because 545 people write the rulebook. Again, in a nod to NT, those 545 write the rules they do because that's what their owners want. But the supposed legitimacy of the rulebook springs not from the buyers, but from the bought.
Few people would obey a book of laws handed down by the Koch brothers without government standing behind them with courts, prison cells, and guns to enforce their wishes, and a magical "social contract" to legitimize their claim to initiate force.
Now who's being myopic.
Without government, the Koch brothers would be even more free to hand down their own laws instead of relying on the government to do it for them, and they could rely on force to legitimize their claim to initiate force.
The Koch brothers and their ilk would simply be our new government.
If you don't want that, you have to do more than just get rid of the government. You have to replace it.
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No, if you don't want that, you have to severely limit the power of government. Otherwise you get what you have today, or you get your nightmare of Kochopolis.
Here's a little thought experiment. If FedGov were restricted to the enumerated powers listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, how much would a federal politician be worth? Not a whole hell of a lot, except maybe to some road contractors.
Roll a whole bunch of power over all aspects of the economy into a few hundred hands, and those folks are worth billions to those who want to game the economy.
Here's a little thought experiment. If FedGov were restricted to the enumerated powers listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, how much would a federal politician be worth? Not a whole hell of a lot, except maybe to some road contractors.
Roll a whole bunch of power over all aspects of the economy into a few hundred hands, and those folks are worth billions to those who want to game the economy.
How does that prevent Kochopolis?
You're assuming in the absence of government, companies will be unable to become powerful, because today it is governments that make them powerful. The reality is that today companies must resort to using government to become powerful, because it was government that was standing in their way in the first place.
What's that saying small-government types are always quoting?
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."
Well, the reverse is also true. And the "you" applies equally to big business.
How do you design a government big enough to provide an effective check to the exploitations of big business that isn't also big enough to be worth being bought by them?
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I wonder how government is standing in the way when it grants all sorts of privileges and tax breaks to corporations, and even bails them out when they crash because they're "too big to fail." That hardly sounds like standing in the way to me. Indeed, it sounds like an active roll in making them more successful against other forms of organization.
If big business is the primary concern, the first thing you'd have to do is strip away all the privileges granted to big business by the government. Get rid of all the subsidies and tax breaks. Dismantle the legal fiction of the corporation, including corporate personhood and all that entails. Some form of contractual partnerships would still exist, I'm sure, but limited liability would be a thing of the past.
Comb through regulations and decide which truly protect the consumer, and which were put in place as barriers to entry to prevent competition, or intentional inefficiencies that mega-corps can afford to absorb but would squash a small-business competitor.
Perform the same process on all banking regulations and the charter of the Federal Reserve. Personally, I'd recommend a new system based on some form of hard money, but that would be a tough sell. At least I'd like to see financial instruments substantially more grounded in reality. It should not be possible to increase one's financial worth simply by swapping pieces of paper around, claiming they have increased in worth on each cycle.
Comb through the regulations again and make it easy for new producers and new material products to gain a place in the economy without garnering boatloads of permissions. Think computers in the earliest days, one of the most recent mostly-free markets we've seen lately. If FedGov approved operating systems, we'd probably still be on Unix.
Now set up some form of citizen oversight that has teeth. Catch a piece of legislation that's greasing some special interest's palm or protecting somebody's market, report it to the right email address, and get two free tickets to the trial of all the crooks involved, business and political, as well as a hefty reward. Have a National Snitch Awards and make heroes of the best guard dogs.
Stop socializing the costs of transportation and government-owned utilities for commercial interests. Make sure they pay their full share of the costs of roadways, airways, waterways, and mail delivery. Make sure they pay their full share of utilities where utilities are either government-owned or rate-controlled. Don't hide any of their costs in taxes from general funds so that taxpayers are discreetly getting stuck with their bills.
There's just a few ideas. I can think of plenty more. Take the value out of government for big business, and the price of politicians will go down. You get rid of the benefits that make purchasing politicians worthwhile.
What you end up with out of all that is regulations that truly protect the consumer, and a marketplace where new entries and small businesses could compete on a more level playing field. That's the whole purpose of regulation, IMO.
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In the context of the discussion, sure. Any reduction in government is a plus, IMO.
It's already worked out. There actually exist Congresscritters such as Sen. Bernie Sanders who don't feed at the trough with all the other piggies.
Don said:
Yeah, well Richard Martinez shares your disdain for the 535 (not 545), but since he's not a fan of our lax guns laws, it's unlikely you'll win him over to Ralph Nader's lib/libetarian wet dream.
There is. You are looking in the wrong jungle.
I disagree. The problem with American politics isn't that there too many greedy politicians with price tags around their necks looking for a few millionaires and billionaires to buy them. The problem is the system is set up to encourage corruption, corporations and the wealthy have more free speech and access to politicians because a conservative majority on the Supreme Court says money is speech, and we the people have so much disdain for politics, we allow those who see opportunity where we see failure.
We get the politicians we deserve and tolerate. Blaming them for being bad at their job makes no sense when we give it to them in the first place.
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There sure would be a lot more people like that...
Also, I really do think that if everyone in this country voted, consistently, we'd see a lot of shake ups. But that'd require people to stop banging on that people's votes don't matter...which, personally, I think is one of the most insidiously harmful facets of modern politics.
Guys, if voting didn't matter, why would parties be working so damn hard to control voting through gerrymandering and voter IDs?
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To be fair, I'm not sure of that. A lot of people, left or right, think the government is a dysfunctional shitshow that people who bang on about party loyalty continue to enable. Unfortunately, due to the sheer dysfunction of the govt, people left and right are divided on how to fix it. Even further, both left and right have different schools and thought in their spheres of ideology on how to fix it.
To tie that up, the outliers of Democrat and Republican recognize a problem, but aren't united in their idea of a solution enough to defeat establishment votes. I'll use an example. Sure, Libertarians (the real ones, anyways) and Socialists (again, the real ones) alike realize that there's something horrendously wrong with the government, but they disagree about how to fix it. Since their votes don't run with the mainstream, their opposing votes for candidates are miniscule enough to contribute no real threat to Democrat v. Republican.
As for the whole "You have no right to complain if you didn't vote" thing, I'm gonna go ahead and be all contrary there, too. Our two main political parties have become so close in ideology (though they play their few differences as a matter of life and death) that many people realize that their votes are so conflicting with other dissenters that nothing will get done in the face of Pub/Dem bases. Sure, give the third partiers a Ron Paul v. Elizabeth Warren (leaving scandals aside), and you'll probably see a much larger turnout since the two are actually a legitimate conflict of debatable ideology rather than two people debating on what point they'll bomb Iran for threatening Israel. But as long as the elections remain "Romney v. Bush Light (Pres. Obama)", everyone's gonna (rightfully) see their votes as too inconsequential to really impact the system. Bottom line, both parties have forgotten what they stand for, and have moved towards the sweet spot of undecided voters in an effort to recruit them while forgetting their principles. Establishment votes and undecided voters combined, outliers have no chance of matching those numbers since outliers are a fractured group.
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Disagreeing about how to fix something just means that you have twice as many possibilities, and twice as many possibilities for compromise.
Remember compromise?
It was kind of the cool thing about the founding of this country.
Remember compromise?
It was kind of the cool thing about the founding of this country.
Well, my point was that outliers' conflicting votes (I'm mostly Libertarian in all but economics, but I'm approaching this specific issue as objectively as possible) on how to resolve these problems can't create much turmoil in the face of the mainstream two party votes. Sure, outliers to the two main parties agree there are problems, but we disagree on how to fix them. As a result, the minority of voted representatives pose no real threat to Pubs/Dems.
I approach these things in good faith. Many people's politics are simply a difference in what they hold more valuable, and there's nothing wrong with that whether you fall left or right of the center. In fact, it's a healthy debate. But it's a healthy debate that ultimately will have no effect on the future of politics, since flagwavers have dominated the polls.
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Once again, the two parties are only so similar in ideology if you're a white heteronormative male.
Damn, dude. You so OLD.
Compromise? Compromise is such a quaint, old-fashioned idea. You give a little and I give a little and neither one of us gets everything we want but both of us get some of what we want and we split the difference, shake hands and part knowing we have done both our jobs and some good for the folks back home and our nation as a whole.
Yeah...not so much anymore. Too many forces both internally and externally view compromise as surrender.
Here's an example. Trish Causey is a Democrat running to unseat an incumbent Republican congressman. Causey describes herself as "pro-choice, pro-living wage, pro-marriage equality, pro-union, pro-GMO labeling, pro-immigration reform, pro-marijuana legalization, and pro-sensible gun legislation" and she holds these views while running for Congress in Mississippi!
Causey is running uphill in a conservative state trying to beat a first-term Republican, but she has made it clear she isn't running to be elected Miss Congeniality.
It's rather unlikely Ms. Causey will get a chance to play either role in the U.S. Congress, but even if she were to win, does she sound like someone who wants to go to Washington to find the middle ground with Michelle Bachmann?
Nope.
