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>corporations shouldn't be able to engage in political speech Corporations should be able to engage in political speech, as long it is done through their CEO o

by pikzen 9y ago

>corporations shouldn't be able to engage in political speech Corporations should be able to engage in political speech, as long it is done through their CEO or anyone that represents them officially, who then would be nothing more than just another citizen who happens to own a company, defending its interests. By all means, have an interesting debate, explain your point of view, reason as to why you'd like X or Y. Money is _not_ speech. By allowing those citizens to contribute financially, in an effectively unlimited way through superPACs and other setups, you are throwing away the very foundation of democracy and equality amongst citizens when it comes to being represented. >unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech Go ahead, same thing, debate! Make yourselves heard, in the streets or on television. But, once again, money can fuck right off.

jimmyk 9y ago
>you are throwing away the very foundation of democracy and equality amongst citizens when it comes to being represented. There is no such foundation. You're lying to yourself. At the very least, the owners of media outlets have far more influence than other citizens due to their ability to set the conversation. There is literally nothing you can do to achieve your ridiculous ideal of equality, or to even come anywhere close to it. All you can do is change what rich people have to do to get what they want, and maybe make it more expensive. And by the way, making it more expensive just means the richest get even more of a say. >money can fuck right off. So I can't pay someone to build a website that (directly or indirectly) promotes a candidate?
- pikzen 9y ago
  Or maybe your terrible political system has made you jaded and not realize that democracy is still a thing of the people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yes, whoever owns CNN can use up all his airtime telling you that X is the greatest vandidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine. Impose limits, educate people. You'll see that things will improve. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it takes some time. But you can either do that, or slump in your apathy and watch your country descend ever lower into the depth of intelligence and be the butt of everyone's joke even more than it is right now.
  - jimmyk 9y ago
    >Yes, whoever owns CNN can use up all his airtime telling you that X is the greatest vandidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine. Interesting logic. Let's try applying it to the completely obvious parallel: "Yes, whoever owns boatloads of money can use up all his money buying TV ads telling you that X is the greatest candidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine."
    - pikzen 9y ago
      You are kind of ignoring the second paragraph, which goes hand in hand with the first.
      - jimmyk 9y ago
        Nothing goes hand in hand with the first. The first is a failed attempt at rationalizing away the fact that there will always be people that have vastly more influence over politics than others do, and that there is no such thing as equality in politics. The second paragraph as far as I can tell boils down to "educate people" as the answer. Who should be doing the educating?
bzbarsky 9y ago
I think you just ignored my questions about how the specifics of this work. Again, say the CEO decides to create a video to explain his point of view. Is that a problem? Is it a problem if he pays for production of that video? Is it a problem if he gets several people together to pay for the production of that video? Where do you, personally, draw the line? Making yourself heard on television commonly takes the form of TV advertising, which is all about money, unfortunately.
- pikzen 9y ago
  >Making yourself heard on television commonly takes the form of TV advertising, which is all about money, unfortunately. Like I answered in your other post, equality of air time for each candidate. I know, you've had twenty something candidates, and it would be hard to make that work. Tough luck, that's the price to pay for a fairer election. I don't envy your ridiculous two year long campaigns, but at least you'd get some diversity, unlike your two-candidates-blow-100-million-in-total-and-bombard-you-for-months current way of doing it. And who knows, that might even bring you to reform your woefully outdated political system.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    > equality of air time for each candidate Where "air time" means "time across all possible cable channels", right? And presumably equality of "youtube time" too? How do you even measure this? Seriously, we're way past there being 5 broadcast TV networks and nothing else where you could try enforcing some sort of mandate. Keep in mind that Citizens United wasn't even "for" some particular candidate. It was against a particular candidate and wanted to show its movie at a point in time when it wasn't even clear who the candidate's opponents would be. Assuming you imposed the "equality of air time" doctrine in this situation, who's air time would the movie come out of, exactly? It's easy to just claim the system is broken; figuring out how to fix it sanely is much harder. (And for the record, I agree that the current campaign lengths and costs in the US are ridiculous. What I don't see is how to make them less so without imposing some pretty totalitarian speech controls, which would immediately get coopted by those in power to completely shut down anything resembling third party candidates.)

by pikzen 9y ago

jimmyk 9y ago

>you are throwing away the very foundation of democracy and equality amongst citizens when it comes to being represented. There is no such foundation. You're lying to yourself. At the very least, the owners of media outlets have far more influence than other citizens due to their ability to set the conversation. There is literally nothing you can do to achieve your ridiculous ideal of equality, or to even come anywhere close to it. All you can do is change what rich people have to do to get what they want, and maybe make it more expensive. And by the way, making it more expensive just means the richest get even more of a say. >money can fuck right off. So I can't pay someone to build a website that (directly or indirectly) promotes a candidate?

pikzen 9y ago
Or maybe your terrible political system has made you jaded and not realize that democracy is still a thing of the people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yes, whoever owns CNN can use up all his airtime telling you that X is the greatest vandidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine. Impose limits, educate people. You'll see that things will improve. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it takes some time. But you can either do that, or slump in your apathy and watch your country descend ever lower into the depth of intelligence and be the butt of everyone's joke even more than it is right now.
- jimmyk 9y ago
  >Yes, whoever owns CNN can use up all his airtime telling you that X is the greatest vandidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine. Interesting logic. Let's try applying it to the completely obvious parallel: "Yes, whoever owns boatloads of money can use up all his money buying TV ads telling you that X is the greatest candidate that's ever lived and yes, he will reach more people than I ever will. Yet, his vote has the exact same value as mine."
  - pikzen 9y ago
    You are kind of ignoring the second paragraph, which goes hand in hand with the first.
    - jimmyk 9y ago
      Nothing goes hand in hand with the first. The first is a failed attempt at rationalizing away the fact that there will always be people that have vastly more influence over politics than others do, and that there is no such thing as equality in politics. The second paragraph as far as I can tell boils down to "educate people" as the answer. Who should be doing the educating?

bzbarsky 9y ago

I think you just ignored my questions about how the specifics of this work. Again, say the CEO decides to create a video to explain his point of view. Is that a problem? Is it a problem if he pays for production of that video? Is it a problem if he gets several people together to pay for the production of that video? Where do you, personally, draw the line? Making yourself heard on television commonly takes the form of TV advertising, which is all about money, unfortunately.

pikzen 9y ago
>Making yourself heard on television commonly takes the form of TV advertising, which is all about money, unfortunately. Like I answered in your other post, equality of air time for each candidate. I know, you've had twenty something candidates, and it would be hard to make that work. Tough luck, that's the price to pay for a fairer election. I don't envy your ridiculous two year long campaigns, but at least you'd get some diversity, unlike your two-candidates-blow-100-million-in-total-and-bombard-you-for-months current way of doing it. And who knows, that might even bring you to reform your woefully outdated political system.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  > equality of air time for each candidate Where "air time" means "time across all possible cable channels", right? And presumably equality of "youtube time" too? How do you even measure this? Seriously, we're way past there being 5 broadcast TV networks and nothing else where you could try enforcing some sort of mandate. Keep in mind that Citizens United wasn't even "for" some particular candidate. It was against a particular candidate and wanted to show its movie at a point in time when it wasn't even clear who the candidate's opponents would be. Assuming you imposed the "equality of air time" doctrine in this situation, who's air time would the movie come out of, exactly? It's easy to just claim the system is broken; figuring out how to fix it sanely is much harder. (And for the record, I agree that the current campaign lengths and costs in the US are ridiculous. What I don't see is how to make them less so without imposing some pretty totalitarian speech controls, which would immediately get coopted by those in power to completely shut down anything resembling third party candidates.)