4 ms·

In a society there are may levers (official or not, transparent or not) that the powerful can pull to get politics to lean their preferred way. This is true of

In a society there are may levers (official or not, transparent or not) that the powerful can pull to get politics to lean their preferred way. This is true of all places and all times. The more power is concentrated, the easier it is for a very small group of individuals to have a very large impact on decision making. All the billions poured in campaign funding, lobbying etc. do actually buy a lot of influence albeit not in a direct, transparent way. The same billions can also sway public opinion through deliberate and persistent propaganda in support of certain view points and against others. Nowadays (and probably throughout most of modern history) you have to be highly committed and quite fanatical if you want to develop well grounded opinions that are not very much affected by propaganda. Most people don't have the time and resources for this -> most people are easily swayed by corporate propaganda.

bhupy 7y ago
Unless you provide data or empirical evidence, it's just a vague intuition. There's more than enough evidence to the contrary (as I've provided). At the end of the day, people act as individuals, and they have their beliefs and biases. For example, a small group of wealthy individuals can pour as much money as they want into pro-abortion propaganda, but it's unlikely that it will sway pro-lifers' opinions (especially evangelical Christians). Money doesn't influence opinions directly, it just affords you a platform to try and change someone's mind. The only way to change one's mind is if the message is compelling, and because the US requires broad buy-in for any democratic action, the message needs to be compelling to a broad audience, not just a small group of wealthy people.
- leto_ii 7y ago
  You hardly provided more than enough evidence on the contrary. I can however point you to the work of Thomas Ferguson for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com...
  - bhupy 7y ago
    I'm familiar with Ferguson's work. As with most economic work based on theoretical models, the empirical facts are more than enough to disprove them. The famous IMF rebuttal of Piketty was an exercise in exactly the same. "rich in data, [but] the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain". The same applies to the Investment Theory of Party Alignment. You can make an argument that poor people will follow rich people ideologically, but you can't 1) draw a causal line between the wealth and the influence, and 2) most importantly, you can't prove that poor people would ideologically follow rich people against their own self-assessed interests. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf
- retsibsi 7y ago
  How do you explain presidential campaigns costing billions of dollars[0] in the first place? (And that's just one slice of the pie, when we take into account not only all the other election campaigns, but other sources of propaganda, lobbying, and so on.) If that's what it costs to buy 'a platform to try and change someone's mind', then almost nobody can afford to to so without big money backing. As for the donors' motivations, maybe you'll argue that they are merely supporting the candidates with favourable policies, rather than buying influence with them. But even if that were true, the donations would still be a means of converting $ into desired political outcomes. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States#Campaign_finance_numbers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_Unit...
agensaequivocum 7y ago
>The more power is concentrated, the easier it is for a very small group of individuals to have a very large impact on decision making. So if we remove the federal government's broad involvement in all aspects of life, we can reduce the power of corporations by reducing their vehicle of control. I agree.

bhupy 7y ago

Unless you provide data or empirical evidence, it's just a vague intuition. There's more than enough evidence to the contrary (as I've provided). At the end of the day, people act as individuals, and they have their beliefs and biases. For example, a small group of wealthy individuals can pour as much money as they want into pro-abortion propaganda, but it's unlikely that it will sway pro-lifers' opinions (especially evangelical Christians). Money doesn't influence opinions directly, it just affords you a platform to try and change someone's mind. The only way to change one's mind is if the message is compelling, and because the US requires broad buy-in for any democratic action, the message needs to be compelling to a broad audience, not just a small group of wealthy people.

leto_ii 7y ago
You hardly provided more than enough evidence on the contrary. I can however point you to the work of Thomas Ferguson for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com...
- bhupy 7y ago
  I'm familiar with Ferguson's work. As with most economic work based on theoretical models, the empirical facts are more than enough to disprove them. The famous IMF rebuttal of Piketty was an exercise in exactly the same. "rich in data, [but] the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain". The same applies to the Investment Theory of Party Alignment. You can make an argument that poor people will follow rich people ideologically, but you can't 1) draw a causal line between the wealth and the influence, and 2) most importantly, you can't prove that poor people would ideologically follow rich people against their own self-assessed interests. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf
retsibsi 7y ago
How do you explain presidential campaigns costing billions of dollars[0] in the first place? (And that's just one slice of the pie, when we take into account not only all the other election campaigns, but other sources of propaganda, lobbying, and so on.) If that's what it costs to buy 'a platform to try and change someone's mind', then almost nobody can afford to to so without big money backing. As for the donors' motivations, maybe you'll argue that they are merely supporting the candidates with favourable policies, rather than buying influence with them. But even if that were true, the donations would still be a means of converting $ into desired political outcomes. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States#Campaign_finance_numbers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_Unit...

agensaequivocum 7y ago

>The more power is concentrated, the easier it is for a very small group of individuals to have a very large impact on decision making. So if we remove the federal government's broad involvement in all aspects of life, we can reduce the power of corporations by reducing their vehicle of control. I agree.