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While I've been meaning to read Noam Chomsky's: "Understanding Power" I ran across the documentary: "Requiem for the American Dream" over the weekend and this i

While I've been meaning to read Noam Chomsky's: "Understanding Power" I ran across the documentary: "Requiem for the American Dream" over the weekend and this is clearly showcased within the first 5 minutes as he begins to describe "The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power" and starts out with this infographic: http://imgur.com/QVcagot http://imgur.com/QVcagot. Quoting Chomsky from this portion of the film: "Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power. Particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets which forces the parties into the pockets of major corporations. And this political power directly translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth. So fiscal policy like tax policy, deregulation, rules of corporate governance, and a whole variety of measures - political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power, which in turn yields more political power to do the same thing." The documentary has spurred me to start reading the book, but falls in line with what's coming to light in the mainstream media today unfortunately. Edit: Honest question - why the downvote? Directly falls in line with the original post.

golergka 11y ago
Regardless of political meaning, it's not the infographic, it's a sad excuse for a caricature. _Info_graphics are supposed to have much more actual information that that.
- kjdal2001 11y ago
  I agree. Thats a political cartoon, not an infographic.
  - windexh8er 11y ago
    Sorry for the mixup of terminology. While I will agree it's not an infographic it's a representation of the ideas being explained in the context of that portion of the film. It's not a "cartoon" by any means and it does represent, at a very high level, the distinct notion of the original content of the thread. Money yields power and power yields legislation that yields money. My point is that I found it interesting Chomsky has succinctly been defining these problems for quite some time.
    - kjdal2001 11y ago
      It not a big deal. Calling something a political cartoon isn't an insult. Political cartoons are meant to illustrate a position, not support one. An infographic is a visual presentation of data that supports an argument. Political cartoons aren't bad, but they don't substitute for supporting evidence.
tim333 11y ago
It's changed so much since Carter's day: >Carter compared elections now-a-days to those when he was running for office, saying, “In those days when I ran against Gerald Ford, who was incumbent president or later Ronald Reagan, who challenged me, we didn’t raise a single penny to finance our campaign to run against each other. We just used the $1 per person checkoff that every taxpayer indicates at the end of his or her income tax return." Guess things could be changed back?
- bdavisx 11y ago
  With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.
  - agrover 11y ago
    With Scalia gone you still think it's unlikely?
    - BookmarkSaver 11y ago
      Regardless of the ideology of the court majority, they very rarely directly overturn previous decisions. It's not impossible (Brown vs. Board of Education) but it isn't just a matter of getting a challenge before a liberal court. The previous decision is binding, they would have to justify why they would be going against authority equal to their own.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      I don't claim to understand SCOTUS - but they are extremely conservative institution. I mean dictionary definition of conservative - upholding the status quo. And they prefer to not get involved in the day to day affairs of the country. So even a bad SCOTUS decision could stay on the books for a long time - just to save face and uphold the credibility of the institution. They look to rock the boat the least. Even in their current hyperpartisan state.
davesque 11y ago
Maybe the downvote is because the linked image isn't very helpful?
objectivistbrit 11y ago
If wealth and power are being concentrated anywhere, it's in the hands of the state: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t.png http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t....
- hfourm 11y ago
  Oligarchy
- ihsw 11y ago
  There's a point where the distinction between the state and the super-wealthy blurs or disappears entirely, and there are many cases where the super-wealthy dictate policy to the state rather than vice versa.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    Which gets to the core of what libertarians really want: not to abolish the state per se -- but to winnow it down and neuter it to a point where it is more pliable to their interests.
    - ihsw 11y ago
      > their interests Please don't tell me you're this naive. They argue that the state is inherently a corrupt institution and that nobody should have that kind of power.
      - kafkaesq 11y ago
        I've been observing that crowd for a very long time. And have prudently concluded that it's best to assess their ideology based on the actions they've chosen to take (specifically, the political alliances they have formed in the past 20 years, after it became manifestly clear to them that both their platform and their candidates were basically unelectable on their own) -- and the goals they can realistically hope to achieve through these actions -- rather than on the sentimental platitudes they pretend to believe in.
Kiro 11y ago
Downvoted because of the edit.
guscost 11y ago
People can always find reasons to downvote opinions they disagree with. I think it's officially discouraged but impossible to prevent.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
I suppose because these arguments always assume the premise - that money everywhere and always corrupts politics - that they then conclude. Chomsky's old enough to know better, too. All this being said, short of that, Chomsky's scholarship is otherwise impeccable and a great place to get a larger view of the vents of history. But even going back to Vietnam, accusing the US of imperialism just because of the French doesn't hold up very well. In the case of the Dulles Brothers' coups in South and Central America in the 1950s, the documentation that this was the case is intact; in Vietnam it simply isn't. If it were well known that money always corrupts, then regulatory legislation would involve a debate on those costs rather than just going ahead with it. And what you'll find is that it nearly never does. Chomsky and Howard Zinn are important to read, but please understand that nobody's able to empirically line up all the "facts" There's very thin slice of speculative fiction at the end of the derivation of those arguments.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  Hah! Yeah, right. Money corrupts more than you think. Just look at Ricky Hendon, for example. He contracts his "services" to mayoral candidates and charges a heavy, heavy penny. Hell, there's a conversation on facebook where he talks to Dock Walls and Willy Wilson in the same post about how he worked at getting Amara Enyia kicked out of the election. He did this after Enyia's team kicked him out of their offices because of his incredibly shady practices and stopped paying him. The inside folk I talked to at the time all agreed - he's a scumbag, ex Senator who should've been sent to jail for corruption charges. So, because of his selfish, monetary reasons, Chicago's candidate pool completely thinned. You can make the argument, "Yeah, that's just one person.", sure. But that one person fucked Chicago's election. Later on in that election, Bob Fioretti, who used Amara's campaign manager, dropped out of the race and gave his public support to Rahm - Because he received 50k to do so. Even though throughout that entire election, he was a hugely public critic of Rahm. If anyone thinks that money doesn't corrupt, or that it doesn't have strong negative influence, they're a god damn naive fool. "It never does", my ass.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    I'm taking the skeptical line. There's an old saw - "the plural of anecdote is not data." Those are extremely good examples but in the larger picture, the effects aren't nearly measurable. This could be nothing more than a lack of reporting. But social scientists have never been able to thoroughly prove that money matters in significant ways. And I never said "it never does." That'd be foolish. My point is more subtle - we don't much know. Actual stories of corruption are rare enough to be noteworthy.
api 11y ago
Power accretes and wealth flows uphill. Seems a settled thing at this point.
cjarrett 11y ago
I'm also in the process of reading 'Understanding Power'. Interesting indeed, my friend!
Synroc 11y ago
I have trouble finding the documentary, do you mind letting me know how to get access to it?
- mkhalil 11y ago
  http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/the-film/ http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/the-film/ It's in select screenings and available on-demand via the popular pay-to-stream video services. Bluray + DVD coming this August according to Amazon.

golergka 11y ago

Regardless of political meaning, it's not the infographic, it's a sad excuse for a caricature. _Info_graphics are supposed to have much more actual information that that.

kjdal2001 11y ago
I agree. Thats a political cartoon, not an infographic.
- windexh8er 11y ago
  Sorry for the mixup of terminology. While I will agree it's not an infographic it's a representation of the ideas being explained in the context of that portion of the film. It's not a "cartoon" by any means and it does represent, at a very high level, the distinct notion of the original content of the thread. Money yields power and power yields legislation that yields money. My point is that I found it interesting Chomsky has succinctly been defining these problems for quite some time.
  - kjdal2001 11y ago
    It not a big deal. Calling something a political cartoon isn't an insult. Political cartoons are meant to illustrate a position, not support one. An infographic is a visual presentation of data that supports an argument. Political cartoons aren't bad, but they don't substitute for supporting evidence.

tim333 11y ago

It's changed so much since Carter's day: >Carter compared elections now-a-days to those when he was running for office, saying, “In those days when I ran against Gerald Ford, who was incumbent president or later Ronald Reagan, who challenged me, we didn’t raise a single penny to finance our campaign to run against each other. We just used the $1 per person checkoff that every taxpayer indicates at the end of his or her income tax return." Guess things could be changed back?

bdavisx 11y ago
With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.
- agrover 11y ago
  With Scalia gone you still think it's unlikely?
  - BookmarkSaver 11y ago
    Regardless of the ideology of the court majority, they very rarely directly overturn previous decisions. It's not impossible (Brown vs. Board of Education) but it isn't just a matter of getting a challenge before a liberal court. The previous decision is binding, they would have to justify why they would be going against authority equal to their own.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    I don't claim to understand SCOTUS - but they are extremely conservative institution. I mean dictionary definition of conservative - upholding the status quo. And they prefer to not get involved in the day to day affairs of the country. So even a bad SCOTUS decision could stay on the books for a long time - just to save face and uphold the credibility of the institution. They look to rock the boat the least. Even in their current hyperpartisan state.

davesque 11y ago

Maybe the downvote is because the linked image isn't very helpful?

objectivistbrit 11y ago

If wealth and power are being concentrated anywhere, it's in the hands of the state: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t.png http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t....

hfourm 11y ago
Oligarchy
ihsw 11y ago
There's a point where the distinction between the state and the super-wealthy blurs or disappears entirely, and there are many cases where the super-wealthy dictate policy to the state rather than vice versa.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Which gets to the core of what libertarians really want: not to abolish the state per se -- but to winnow it down and neuter it to a point where it is more pliable to their interests.
  - ihsw 11y ago
    > their interests Please don't tell me you're this naive. They argue that the state is inherently a corrupt institution and that nobody should have that kind of power.
    - kafkaesq 11y ago
      I've been observing that crowd for a very long time. And have prudently concluded that it's best to assess their ideology based on the actions they've chosen to take (specifically, the political alliances they have formed in the past 20 years, after it became manifestly clear to them that both their platform and their candidates were basically unelectable on their own) -- and the goals they can realistically hope to achieve through these actions -- rather than on the sentimental platitudes they pretend to believe in.

Kiro 11y ago

Downvoted because of the edit.

guscost 11y ago

People can always find reasons to downvote opinions they disagree with. I think it's officially discouraged but impossible to prevent.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

I suppose because these arguments always assume the premise - that money everywhere and always corrupts politics - that they then conclude. Chomsky's old enough to know better, too. All this being said, short of that, Chomsky's scholarship is otherwise impeccable and a great place to get a larger view of the vents of history. But even going back to Vietnam, accusing the US of imperialism just because of the French doesn't hold up very well. In the case of the Dulles Brothers' coups in South and Central America in the 1950s, the documentation that this was the case is intact; in Vietnam it simply isn't. If it were well known that money always corrupts, then regulatory legislation would involve a debate on those costs rather than just going ahead with it. And what you'll find is that it nearly never does. Chomsky and Howard Zinn are important to read, but please understand that nobody's able to empirically line up all the "facts" There's very thin slice of speculative fiction at the end of the derivation of those arguments.

bpchaps 11y ago
Hah! Yeah, right. Money corrupts more than you think. Just look at Ricky Hendon, for example. He contracts his "services" to mayoral candidates and charges a heavy, heavy penny. Hell, there's a conversation on facebook where he talks to Dock Walls and Willy Wilson in the same post about how he worked at getting Amara Enyia kicked out of the election. He did this after Enyia's team kicked him out of their offices because of his incredibly shady practices and stopped paying him. The inside folk I talked to at the time all agreed - he's a scumbag, ex Senator who should've been sent to jail for corruption charges. So, because of his selfish, monetary reasons, Chicago's candidate pool completely thinned. You can make the argument, "Yeah, that's just one person.", sure. But that one person fucked Chicago's election. Later on in that election, Bob Fioretti, who used Amara's campaign manager, dropped out of the race and gave his public support to Rahm - Because he received 50k to do so. Even though throughout that entire election, he was a hugely public critic of Rahm. If anyone thinks that money doesn't corrupt, or that it doesn't have strong negative influence, they're a god damn naive fool. "It never does", my ass.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I'm taking the skeptical line. There's an old saw - "the plural of anecdote is not data." Those are extremely good examples but in the larger picture, the effects aren't nearly measurable. This could be nothing more than a lack of reporting. But social scientists have never been able to thoroughly prove that money matters in significant ways. And I never said "it never does." That'd be foolish. My point is more subtle - we don't much know. Actual stories of corruption are rare enough to be noteworthy.

api 11y ago

Power accretes and wealth flows uphill. Seems a settled thing at this point.

cjarrett 11y ago

I'm also in the process of reading 'Understanding Power'. Interesting indeed, my friend!

Synroc 11y ago

I have trouble finding the documentary, do you mind letting me know how to get access to it?

mkhalil 11y ago
http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/the-film/ http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/the-film/ It's in select screenings and available on-demand via the popular pay-to-stream video services. Bluray + DVD coming this August according to Amazon.