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Bribe all of congress. It's not that expensive for someone with Bezos money. Why let energy companies, telcos, insurance providers, and military contractors get

Bribe all of congress. It's not that expensive for someone with Bezos money. Why let energy companies, telcos, insurance providers, and military contractors get all the action? Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are bigger than they are! For less than the cost of SpaceX they could have just bribed congress to give NASA sufficient funding. For less than the cost of whatever Bill Gates tries to do with education, he could have just bribed congress to fund schools properly. If they really believed in equal rights regardless of gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, race or religion, they could bribe congress to fix those things. If they cared about the environment, you could bribe congress to fund the EPA more. Single payer health care, they can just make it happen. If I had that money, that's sure as hell what I would be doing with it. The fact that they haven't already suggest to me that maybe they don't actually believe in these things as much as they sometimes pretend to. Rich assholes never put their money where their mouth is. And when I say bribe I mean the legal kind. Where you fund their campaigns through SuperPACs. You can outspend those Koch bros. easily. Why not go for it?

throwaway-1209 9y ago
You seem to think money grows on trees. Your suggestions can't be implemented without taxing people like Bezos to death. In fact, I'm pretty sure they can't be implemented at all, no matter who you "bribe".
- yequalsx 9y ago
  Every wealthy nation but the U.S. provides universal healthcare. They all provide much more subsidized higher education. They do theses things without taxing people to death. Do you have any evidence to support your belief?
  - throwaway-1209 9y ago
    They have different cost structures and much higher taxes, and their healthcare couldn't exist without multi billion research efforts US healthcare consumer pays for. How much pharmaceutical innovation is there outside the US?
    - anonymoushn 9y ago
      So your position is that it's good that it's illegal to arbitrage prescription drugs across the US border? I'd love to hear more.
      - throwaway-1209 9y ago
        No. I'd love to see lower drug pricing in the US. One must understand, hovewer that this will cause the prices to rise everywhere else. Which is quite all right with me. About time those folks started paying their fair share. They might even get their own pharma research going if they have to pay through their nose like we do.
    - lawpoop 9y ago
      You're saying the rest of the world is so poor, their health care systems are bouyed as a /side effect/ of the research that companies do, financed by the their average American customer?
      - throwaway-1209 9y ago
        They aren't poor. But for some reason they don't like to pay for drugs, R&D or defense. That's gotta change.
        lawpoop 9y ago
        Why does it have to change? It's a free market, internationally. Perhaps if they don't want to pay for drugs, drug companies should stop selling to them.
    - mbroncano 9y ago
      How's education related to pharmaceutical innovation? How's single payer health care related to it, anyway? It seems the barbarians are certainly at the gates. Oh well, we had a good ride.
      - 9y ago
lyjackal 9y ago
You seem kind of cynical about it, but I like where you're going. Fix lobbying. Seems like an excellent plan
veidr 9y ago
You're effectively saying, become a lobbyist. And you're right. It's a great idea. A sort of white-hat political force (controlling a tangled web of various corporation/non-profit/PAC type entities) that, instead of trying to gain some narrow advantage at the expense of the public, does the opposite. If Bezos really has the balls to spend it, he has enough money; a presidential campaign, the most expensive kind, only costs 1.2 gigadollars or so[1]. You only need 60 senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives to get whatever shit done you want. So doling out $10,000,000,000.00 a year or so in the right places would go a long way. Of course, eight years later you're broke, the patient hegemony of other rich people and corporate interests reasserts itself, and America starts sliding down the path to democratic failure again... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
andrewstuart 9y ago
Isn't owning the Washington Post (as Bezos does) a step in the direction of influencing social outcomes? Rupert Murdoch is the primary backer of all things right wing in the world, and does more to influence elections and governments than Russia ever could. He wields that influence through media ownership.

throwaway-1209 9y ago

You seem to think money grows on trees. Your suggestions can't be implemented without taxing people like Bezos to death. In fact, I'm pretty sure they can't be implemented at all, no matter who you "bribe".

yequalsx 9y ago
Every wealthy nation but the U.S. provides universal healthcare. They all provide much more subsidized higher education. They do theses things without taxing people to death. Do you have any evidence to support your belief?
- throwaway-1209 9y ago
  They have different cost structures and much higher taxes, and their healthcare couldn't exist without multi billion research efforts US healthcare consumer pays for. How much pharmaceutical innovation is there outside the US?
  - anonymoushn 9y ago
    So your position is that it's good that it's illegal to arbitrage prescription drugs across the US border? I'd love to hear more.
    - throwaway-1209 9y ago
      No. I'd love to see lower drug pricing in the US. One must understand, hovewer that this will cause the prices to rise everywhere else. Which is quite all right with me. About time those folks started paying their fair share. They might even get their own pharma research going if they have to pay through their nose like we do.
  - lawpoop 9y ago
    You're saying the rest of the world is so poor, their health care systems are bouyed as a /side effect/ of the research that companies do, financed by the their average American customer?
    - throwaway-1209 9y ago
      They aren't poor. But for some reason they don't like to pay for drugs, R&D or defense. That's gotta change.
      - lawpoop 9y ago
        Why does it have to change? It's a free market, internationally. Perhaps if they don't want to pay for drugs, drug companies should stop selling to them.
  - mbroncano 9y ago
    How's education related to pharmaceutical innovation? How's single payer health care related to it, anyway? It seems the barbarians are certainly at the gates. Oh well, we had a good ride.
    - 9y ago

lyjackal 9y ago

You seem kind of cynical about it, but I like where you're going. Fix lobbying. Seems like an excellent plan

veidr 9y ago

You're effectively saying, become a lobbyist. And you're right. It's a great idea. A sort of white-hat political force (controlling a tangled web of various corporation/non-profit/PAC type entities) that, instead of trying to gain some narrow advantage at the expense of the public, does the opposite. If Bezos really has the balls to spend it, he has enough money; a presidential campaign, the most expensive kind, only costs 1.2 gigadollars or so[1]. You only need 60 senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives to get whatever shit done you want. So doling out $10,000,000,000.00 a year or so in the right places would go a long way. Of course, eight years later you're broke, the patient hegemony of other rich people and corporate interests reasserts itself, and America starts sliding down the path to democratic failure again... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

andrewstuart 9y ago

Isn't owning the Washington Post (as Bezos does) a step in the direction of influencing social outcomes? Rupert Murdoch is the primary backer of all things right wing in the world, and does more to influence elections and governments than Russia ever could. He wields that influence through media ownership.