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I don’t know if you’ve spotted this - but money serves a couple of other purposes too. Some people use money to destroy or buy out their competitors. Some peop
by LeonB 5y ago
I don’t know if you’ve spotted this - but money serves a couple of other purposes too.
Some people use money to destroy or buy out their competitors. Some people use money to bribe or corrupt politicians and by extension to corrupt the entire democratic process. Some people use money to influence the media. And in these and many other ways, money can be used to make even more money in a runaway cycle without there being an efficient allocation of resources.
- whatshisface 5y agoOn an abstract level, money can buy politicians, but politicians can redistribute money to buy votes (and maybe save a cut for themselves). I have always wondered why one of those happens but the other does not.
- LeonB 5y agoWait, what? Is there a typo or a missing word there? Both of those happen quite a lot. Bribery, political donations, Lobbying (in its worst forms), campaigning (in its worst forms), and pork barrelling all happen over and over. There are also a lot of harder-to-prove forms of political corruption, such as when a politician uses their power to benefit a company or industry, and then after retiring from politics they are given lucrative work with those same companies or in that industry. (And many many variations on this theme.)
- whatshisface 5y agoThey both happen, but what we hear is not dire warnings of how the public is ransacking corporations, but the other way around.
- LeonB 5y agoWhat percent of the general public would be interested in ransacking corporations? and by this we mean taking money specifically, not just damaging their reputations, nor necessarily locking them up for their crimes. Generally the law makers have made laws against Free agents (ie competitors) from colluding.