3 ms·

American Oligarchs? Elon, Twitter, and Unnatural Elites

14 points by aww_dang 5y ago

bklaasen 5y ago
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mises-daily/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mises-daily/
- aww_dang 5y ago
  How is this relevant to the content?
  - 4oo4 5y ago
    I guess we should just dismiss it based on that it comes from right-leaning people, rather than evaluate it on its merits.
    - bklaasen 5y ago
      Fair point - I ought to have stated my intention along with the "Media Bias Fact Check" (MBFC) link. I'm unconcerned with the political position of the site, but I am concerned out the "mixed" quality rating. There's as awful lot of content out there, and MBFC provides a quick-and-dirty evaluation of whether you might want to engage more deeply with any given (new to you) source.
      - 4oo4 5y ago
        That's fair, and this is an interesting resource for evaluating bias, thanks for sharing it. And research institutes like this can definitely be used to launder oligarch policy preferences with academic legitimacy, so being critical of things like this is always a good thing. To me, it's really interesting that a right-leaning libertarian capitalist publication would have overlapping ideas with the socialist left, so I think the discussion has merit even if the people presenting it here may be tainted by bias.
        aww_dang 5y ago
        Who doesn't have a bias? Aren't subjective views just part of the human condition? Couldn't we say that there is a bias in those calibrating the bias? At the end of the day, I am more interested in hearing from users and how they evaluate the content on its own merits as you suggested, rather than a predigested bias warning. If anything this may serve to bias readers before they go into the content itself.
shrimp_emoji 5y ago
Calling people with no institutional power that Congress can call in and berate "oligarchs" is to not understand/respect the meaning of the word.
- 4oo4 5y ago
  What meaning of the word are you looking at? Institutional power is not necessary to be an oligarch, and in fact most oligarchs are as powerful as they are because they are not subject to institutional constraints or electoral/democratic pressure, but can still exert outsize influence as if they were directly elected. "Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy The US very much has an oligarch problem, the main difference between our oligarchs and Russia's is that Russia's oligarchy must appease only one man for its power, whereas the American oligarchy is more distributed and decentralized, so in that sense one could argue that it's more democratic. However, I think corruption is still corruption, and that we shouldn't have double standards depending on which country we're looking at. Check out this study that shows that policies really don't change very much no matter who's in power, showing the illusion of choice that comes from this corruption: "We show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero." - https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.00587 https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.0... - https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/the-biggest-secret-in-political-science https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/the-biggest-secret-in-p... Sure, there is distinction in terms of social issues between democrats and republicans (such as choosing whether to dehumanize trans people or not), but on many core issues (imperialism, tax fairness, maintaining our campaign finance system that's based on graft) there is tacit agreement, despite solid majorities of voters across ideological lines wanting these things changed. Democrat and Republican voters are very much in agreement on our country being corrupt, but usually just differ on who to blame and who they think will help. This double standard on domestic versus foreign corruption also prevents them from seeing the problem more clearly and keeps people in partisan bubbles. That being said, I agree with you that Congress' approach to dealing with this corruption is really just berating oligarchs in public hearings for PR value, versus doing anything to actually curb their power and make our institutions less vulnerable to corruption. That's because they are on the take from a variety of different oligarchs via campaign contributions (so they can berate one oligarch in public but then maintain their relationships with other oligarchs), so they have no incentive to reform the system.

14 points by aww_dang 5y ago

bklaasen 5y ago

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mises-daily/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mises-daily/

aww_dang 5y ago
How is this relevant to the content?
- 4oo4 5y ago
  I guess we should just dismiss it based on that it comes from right-leaning people, rather than evaluate it on its merits.
  - bklaasen 5y ago
    Fair point - I ought to have stated my intention along with the "Media Bias Fact Check" (MBFC) link. I'm unconcerned with the political position of the site, but I am concerned out the "mixed" quality rating. There's as awful lot of content out there, and MBFC provides a quick-and-dirty evaluation of whether you might want to engage more deeply with any given (new to you) source.
    - 4oo4 5y ago
      That's fair, and this is an interesting resource for evaluating bias, thanks for sharing it. And research institutes like this can definitely be used to launder oligarch policy preferences with academic legitimacy, so being critical of things like this is always a good thing. To me, it's really interesting that a right-leaning libertarian capitalist publication would have overlapping ideas with the socialist left, so I think the discussion has merit even if the people presenting it here may be tainted by bias.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        Who doesn't have a bias? Aren't subjective views just part of the human condition? Couldn't we say that there is a bias in those calibrating the bias? At the end of the day, I am more interested in hearing from users and how they evaluate the content on its own merits as you suggested, rather than a predigested bias warning. If anything this may serve to bias readers before they go into the content itself.

shrimp_emoji 5y ago

Calling people with no institutional power that Congress can call in and berate "oligarchs" is to not understand/respect the meaning of the word.

4oo4 5y ago
What meaning of the word are you looking at? Institutional power is not necessary to be an oligarch, and in fact most oligarchs are as powerful as they are because they are not subject to institutional constraints or electoral/democratic pressure, but can still exert outsize influence as if they were directly elected. "Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy The US very much has an oligarch problem, the main difference between our oligarchs and Russia's is that Russia's oligarchy must appease only one man for its power, whereas the American oligarchy is more distributed and decentralized, so in that sense one could argue that it's more democratic. However, I think corruption is still corruption, and that we shouldn't have double standards depending on which country we're looking at. Check out this study that shows that policies really don't change very much no matter who's in power, showing the illusion of choice that comes from this corruption: "We show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero." - https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.00587 https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.0... - https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/the-biggest-secret-in-political-science https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/the-biggest-secret-in-p... Sure, there is distinction in terms of social issues between democrats and republicans (such as choosing whether to dehumanize trans people or not), but on many core issues (imperialism, tax fairness, maintaining our campaign finance system that's based on graft) there is tacit agreement, despite solid majorities of voters across ideological lines wanting these things changed. Democrat and Republican voters are very much in agreement on our country being corrupt, but usually just differ on who to blame and who they think will help. This double standard on domestic versus foreign corruption also prevents them from seeing the problem more clearly and keeps people in partisan bubbles. That being said, I agree with you that Congress' approach to dealing with this corruption is really just berating oligarchs in public hearings for PR value, versus doing anything to actually curb their power and make our institutions less vulnerable to corruption. That's because they are on the take from a variety of different oligarchs via campaign contributions (so they can berate one oligarch in public but then maintain their relationships with other oligarchs), so they have no incentive to reform the system.