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> "The difference is that any power you give the government is automatically amplified." that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ul

> "The difference is that any power you give the government is automatically amplified." that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ultimately rests collectively in the people. you'd expect the power expressed is exactly the accumulation of the tiny amounts each of us delegate to government. it's not perfect, but all the little divisions and mechanisms of check and balance are there specifically to prevent undue amplification. certainly the government has coercive power and we must be vigilant, but make no mistake, corporations are power structures that collaborate with and coerce the government into offense against the less powerful (minorities, women, etc.). who but the moneyed owners do you think try to distort and amplify their voice through government? it's not the average person that citizen's united benefits. the indirection of the corporate form is designed specifically to make it difficult to parse out their influence (and mistakenly place trust in them). they're designed specifically to insulate owners, to the benefit of no one else (governments be damned where they can get away with it). that there are assholes everywhere, including every corporation, who would discriminate against trivial shit is exactly why you want dispersed power across any structure or institution.

scarface74 6y ago
> that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ultimately rests collectively in the people. you'd expect the power expressed is exactly the accumulation of the tiny amounts each of us delegate to government. it's not perfect, but all the little divisions and mechanisms of check and balance are there specifically to prevent undue amplification. Two issues: Power doesn’t rest in the hands of “the people”. It rests in the hands of the Electoral College - which doesn’t represent the people. As evidenced by the different outcome of the popular vote and the electoral vote. It rests in the hands of the Senate which also doesn’t represent “the people” it represents “the states” regardless of the population. The Senate also puts unelected judges on the bench with lifetime appointments and heads of government committees like the FTC, FDA, etc. that write regulations and are also unelected. The President - that doesn’t represent “the people” because of the electoral college also has undue power over the Justice Department, FBI and CIA - none of whom are elected. Even if we did have a government that represented “the majority”, that hasn’t worked out well if you aren’t part of the majority. Coercive power allowed Jim Crow, making homosexual sex (sodomy) a criminal offense and making interracial marriage (miscegenation) a criminal offense.
- clairity 6y ago
  yes, those are valid criticisms of the distortions wrought on our representative democracy by elitism. people with money and power wanted that layer of indirection (at least since the 1700s) because they feared that the people would actually get what they want, which could include adverse actions against the elite. it was an unfortunate but unavoidable compromise at the time. that, and true direct democracy was practically impossible until the past few decades for a polity the size of a country. to be clear, i'm not arguing that governments are bastions of fairness and enligthenment, just that they're not much different from other power structures in that any institution (and especially the confluence of those institutions) is a threat to individual liberties and civil rights. however, governments are the primary mechanism of protecting and extending rights and liberties. the cause of discriminatory injustices like jim crow is not simply the representative form, but rooted in the people themselves--the collective us--as expressed by our differential power and influence. the wealthy simply have outsized influence over all policy, for no discernably valid reason. why should we ever give people who are particularly greedy the power to largely control social policy too?
  - scarface74 6y ago
    I would much rather trust people who are motivated by greed than ideology. People who are motivated by greed don’t take rights away from people because of their religion, race, or sexual preference as do people who are motivated by concerns of an invisible being reining hellfire and damnation on the country if they allow “race mixing” and “sodomy”. I have been in the tech industry for 25 years and never once did I worry that I wouldn’t get a job I was qualified for because of the color of my skin. I’ve interviewed successful at everything from small companies with less than 100 people as “adult supervision” (my current company) to one of the “FAANGs” as a customer facing “cloud consultant” (the company I start at in less than a week). The tech industry has enabled everyone to have a camera in their pocket to record video and a platform to spread the video to keep police accountable. The government consistently tries to pass laws to make that illegal. It has allowed people to organize against governments in the US via encrypted channels. The government wants a backdoor. We already saw what the government does when it can intercept communications - look no further than what the FBI did during the civil rights movement. Right now, the President is trying to “shut down Twitter”. But still in 2020 when my son walks down the street in our neighborhood in the burbs, he’s looked at suspiciously by the police. So who should I trust more the government or the tech companies?

scarface74 6y ago

> that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ultimately rests collectively in the people. you'd expect the power expressed is exactly the accumulation of the tiny amounts each of us delegate to government. it's not perfect, but all the little divisions and mechanisms of check and balance are there specifically to prevent undue amplification. Two issues: Power doesn’t rest in the hands of “the people”. It rests in the hands of the Electoral College - which doesn’t represent the people. As evidenced by the different outcome of the popular vote and the electoral vote. It rests in the hands of the Senate which also doesn’t represent “the people” it represents “the states” regardless of the population. The Senate also puts unelected judges on the bench with lifetime appointments and heads of government committees like the FTC, FDA, etc. that write regulations and are also unelected. The President - that doesn’t represent “the people” because of the electoral college also has undue power over the Justice Department, FBI and CIA - none of whom are elected. Even if we did have a government that represented “the majority”, that hasn’t worked out well if you aren’t part of the majority. Coercive power allowed Jim Crow, making homosexual sex (sodomy) a criminal offense and making interracial marriage (miscegenation) a criminal offense.

clairity 6y ago
yes, those are valid criticisms of the distortions wrought on our representative democracy by elitism. people with money and power wanted that layer of indirection (at least since the 1700s) because they feared that the people would actually get what they want, which could include adverse actions against the elite. it was an unfortunate but unavoidable compromise at the time. that, and true direct democracy was practically impossible until the past few decades for a polity the size of a country. to be clear, i'm not arguing that governments are bastions of fairness and enligthenment, just that they're not much different from other power structures in that any institution (and especially the confluence of those institutions) is a threat to individual liberties and civil rights. however, governments are the primary mechanism of protecting and extending rights and liberties. the cause of discriminatory injustices like jim crow is not simply the representative form, but rooted in the people themselves--the collective us--as expressed by our differential power and influence. the wealthy simply have outsized influence over all policy, for no discernably valid reason. why should we ever give people who are particularly greedy the power to largely control social policy too?
- scarface74 6y ago
  I would much rather trust people who are motivated by greed than ideology. People who are motivated by greed don’t take rights away from people because of their religion, race, or sexual preference as do people who are motivated by concerns of an invisible being reining hellfire and damnation on the country if they allow “race mixing” and “sodomy”. I have been in the tech industry for 25 years and never once did I worry that I wouldn’t get a job I was qualified for because of the color of my skin. I’ve interviewed successful at everything from small companies with less than 100 people as “adult supervision” (my current company) to one of the “FAANGs” as a customer facing “cloud consultant” (the company I start at in less than a week). The tech industry has enabled everyone to have a camera in their pocket to record video and a platform to spread the video to keep police accountable. The government consistently tries to pass laws to make that illegal. It has allowed people to organize against governments in the US via encrypted channels. The government wants a backdoor. We already saw what the government does when it can intercept communications - look no further than what the FBI did during the civil rights movement. Right now, the President is trying to “shut down Twitter”. But still in 2020 when my son walks down the street in our neighborhood in the burbs, he’s looked at suspiciously by the police. So who should I trust more the government or the tech companies?