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You are completely missing the direction in which this happens! The US government itself has little power, it is a shell that represents the interests of severa

You are completely missing the direction in which this happens! The US government itself has little power, it is a shell that represents the interests of several capitalists. The best known are: the oil industry, the financial industry, the war industry (which works together with the other two), the pharmaceutical industry, along with several rich families like the Koch family, the Walton family, etc. These powerful interests write laws and control the country's assets. They don't want to be bothered by an individual actor like Zuckerberg. That's how congress moves, to protect the interests of the majority of the capitalist oligarchy in this country.

NoGravitas 5y ago
Yes; another way of looking at it is that the US government represents the "dictatorship of Capital". Its job is to represent the interests of the capitalist class as a whole. This includes managing conflicts between individuals, firms, or industries that might otherwise threaten the stability of the system, even if they have to step on particular individuals, firms, or even industries in order to do so. That's how we got the New Deal; even though many big capitalist opposed it, their representatives as a whole saw it as necessary to prevent a Communist revolution, and therefore worth the cost.
- handrous 5y ago
  > Yes; another way of looking at it is that the US government represents the "dictatorship of Capital". When you consider that the driving question of the conflict behind the American War for Independence, and so essentially the founding idea of our state, was, "should aristocrats have most of the political power, or should rich businessmen have most of the political power?" this is what one would expect, really.
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    I mean, the bourgeois revolutions were progressive in the context of their time.
    - handrous 5y ago
      True. And some of the US founders seem to have genuinely believed that having money was a nice, legible, reasonably accurate proxy for merit & general fitness, and so, that they were founding a meritocracy. It's not as if everyone was setting out to do something bad, or even that, in the context of the time, what they did was particularly bad.
      - coliveira 5y ago
        > seem to have genuinely believed that having money was a nice, legible This is traditional right wing ideology, it has always been like this, only the excuses have changed.

NoGravitas 5y ago

Yes; another way of looking at it is that the US government represents the "dictatorship of Capital". Its job is to represent the interests of the capitalist class as a whole. This includes managing conflicts between individuals, firms, or industries that might otherwise threaten the stability of the system, even if they have to step on particular individuals, firms, or even industries in order to do so. That's how we got the New Deal; even though many big capitalist opposed it, their representatives as a whole saw it as necessary to prevent a Communist revolution, and therefore worth the cost.

handrous 5y ago
> Yes; another way of looking at it is that the US government represents the "dictatorship of Capital". When you consider that the driving question of the conflict behind the American War for Independence, and so essentially the founding idea of our state, was, "should aristocrats have most of the political power, or should rich businessmen have most of the political power?" this is what one would expect, really.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  I mean, the bourgeois revolutions were progressive in the context of their time.
  - handrous 5y ago
    True. And some of the US founders seem to have genuinely believed that having money was a nice, legible, reasonably accurate proxy for merit & general fitness, and so, that they were founding a meritocracy. It's not as if everyone was setting out to do something bad, or even that, in the context of the time, what they did was particularly bad.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      > seem to have genuinely believed that having money was a nice, legible This is traditional right wing ideology, it has always been like this, only the excuses have changed.