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You call a system a democracy where corporations can spend tens of billions on propaganda. And conclude that our brains are the problem.
by avgcorrection 4y ago
You call a system a democracy where corporations can spend tens of billions on propaganda. And conclude that our brains are the problem.
- patrickthebold 4y agoOf course people's brains are the problem. Who do you think is deciding things?
- avgcorrection 4y agoGoing by the amount of money spent: the corporations, obviously.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoCorporations don't just run themselves.
- avgcorrection 4y agoCorporations are run as command economies by a small handful of people. Corporations indirectly run society. Hence a small number of people run society. Which means that democracies are not run by the people. Hence democracy in name only.
- hyperhopper 4y agoGiven the incentive structures of society, they pretty much do. Employee tries to go against the flow? Management replaces them Management tries to go against the flow? Ceo replaces them. Ceo tries to go against the flow? Board replaces them. Board member tries to go against the flow? They are outvoted or stock price crumbles.
- warning26 4y agoSure, so how do you stop that? As long as it’s possible for individuals to decide things via voting, there will be an incentive to convince those individuals to vote in particular ways.
- avgcorrection 4y agoI don’t get why this is hard to understand^W communicate. Corporations have tens of billions to spend on marketing. To put things in perspective: what do regular people have in terms of a propaganda budget in order to target corporations? The very fact that corporations have these kinds of budgets to just point at regular people—and regular people have no recourse other than “don’t be stupid”—betrays the fact that ours are democracies in name only. If a nation had a population of millions and a handful of billionaires who just bought off the politicians then the real fundamental problem would be the massive wealth disparity, not the fact that the billionaires could de jure buy off politicians (they could have done that de facto if there was no such explicit law).
- refurb 4y agoBloomberg spent $1B of his own money to become US President and never even had a good showing in the primary. I think you over estimate the power of money on people’s thoughts and opinions.
- avgcorrection 4y agoAm I supposed to respond to the collective opinion drift caused by a new person responding to me in this thread at every sub-level? The original claim was that our brains are broken because we respond to propaganda. I don’t have the inclination to address the opposite claim as well.
- anigbrowl 4y agoOne spectacular failure doesn't disprove the argument. If advertising weren't effective businesses and campaigns wouldn't spend money on it. You might as well argue that commerce isn't real because some products bomb and lose money.
- refurb 4y agoThere are numerous examples. Trump outraised Biden in the last election. AOC defeated a career Democrat in NYC with a far smaller war chest. Sure it works...to a degree. But if people don't like you or your ideas, all the money in the world won't change that.