4 ms·

Yes it's the definition of conflict of interest. It's insane that this is allowed

• sneak 6y ago
  I think it's working as intended and that it's insane that people are surprised it's set up this way. The state and large corporate interests in the USA are very tightly integrated and have been for at least an entire generation.
  • skohan 6y ago
    But this is so cynical. Not to be naive, but if we can't at least start from the framework that the government should serve primarily the interests of the people and be outraged when it doesn't, then the American project is pretty much over
    • sneak 6y ago
      I'm not sure that has ever been true, or ever been the goal. The American government does serve the interests of the American people: the American people who own the bulk of the land and the largest companies. George Washington was the largest landowner in the colonies when the revolution started.
      • hpkuarg 6y ago
        But Washington also shocked the ruling elites of the world by stepping down when he did. Clearly, he was cut of a different cloth than other largest landowners in their respective countries.
      • kelnos 6y ago
        Right, and in the very beginning, only some single-digit percent of the people living in the US were eligible to vote. Women, slaves, non-landowners, etc. did not have the right to vote. The idea that the US was originally founded "by the people, for the people" is not at all what happened. I guess we could say that the government they created was progressive for its time, at least.
        • jcranmer 6y ago
          > Right, and in the very beginning, only some single-digit percent of the people living in the US were eligible to vote. Women, slaves, non-landowners, etc. did not have the right to vote. Slaves would not have been a large proportion of the country as a whole--about 20% at their height. While the early US did require landownership for adult free males to vote, the US also had unusually high landownership rates. It's estimated that ~60% of free adult males had the right to vote (contemporary Britain had about 15-20% of free adult males having that same rate). So ultimately you end up with about 25% of the current franchise rate, or somewhere in the mid-high teens after taking into account the existence of children who still cannot vote.
        • api 6y ago
          The US was more democratic after the revolution than before. Since then the trend has been in that direction, largely because those kinds of principles are baked into the constitution.