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the way I think about what's happened in the USA is that primarily by means of "lobbying" it happened that the public (i.e. the citizenry) stopped being made ou
by bsedlm 5y ago
the way I think about what's happened in the USA is that primarily by means of "lobbying" it happened that the public (i.e. the citizenry) stopped being made out of human individuals and became corporations and other large businesses.
this implies that giving out public goods is actually about giving tax breaks and subsidies to campaign donnors and lobbyists both of which are really for-profit companies.
...or something like that.
- JohnBooty 5y agoYeah, that makes sense. There's kind of a dance our politicians have to do. They have to keep the corporations and PACs happy first and foremost, but they also have to... well, not necessarily keep the people happy, but say the right things so that people will actually go vote for them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fallingknife 5y agoBasically yes. About 20% of the population is highly politically engaged and partisan (mostly the upper-middle class). The rest are neutral or lean Republican or Democrat, but are really more concerned with day to day things. If you piss of your ideological base in the 20%, you will get primaried. If you screw something up so badly that it affects the day to day life of the other 80%, you will be destroyed in the general election. So the winning strategy is to go as far as you can to please your base without pissing off the main population too much. An example of this is "defund the police." Perfect for the Democratic base, but absolutely toxic to the unengaged middle watching SF shoplifting videos on Youtube. See how quickly they backed off that?
- dragonwriter 5y ago> See how quickly they backed off that? The Democratic Party never adopted it at all. The activists that did were largely outside of the Party and opposed by the elected Party officials from day one.