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> it's not truly corruption I'm not taking a position on whether or not type 1 corruption is "truly corruption". That's just pointless quibbling over terminol

• lapcat 3y ago
  Wow, and I considered myself to be extremely cynical, as evidenced by my previous comment, but you take the cake. Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive. I'm afraid that we live in different realities and cannot usefully communicate any further with such disagreement about basic facts. > I've seen no evidence whatsoever that politicians were "holding back" in their level of "type 1" corruption before Citizens United > Have you looked? It's not hard to find. e.g. > https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/citizens-united-corruption-pacs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/citizens-united-c... I think you're missing my point. To take the first example, Paul Ryan was not somehow magically transformed in the year 2010 from a principled saint into a unprincipled villain by Citizens United. The ruling of course allowed much mischief to take place, but mischief requires the mischievous. It merely provided an opportunity to those who were already inclined to take advantage of it, like a kid in a candy store.
  • lisper 3y ago
    > Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive. I didn't say any of those things. You came close on the third item, but the operative word there was "free", not "competitive". There are competitive markets, but they aren't free. If you want to dispute that, give me a counterexample. But if you're going to raise straw men then yes, perhaps it is time to call it a day.
    • lapcat 3y ago
      >> Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive. > I didn't say any of those things. Uh, you did: > I don't like type 1 corruption any more than you do, but the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it -- because that includes every democratically elected official in the country. >> everyone in business must be unethical, because unethical businesspeople are more likely to succeed > Yes, I think that's probably true. >> What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market > ROTFL. There are no free, competitive markets. Even in commerce the vast majority of industries are dominated and controlled by a very small number (often just two, sometimes one) of major players. So yes, you did say all of those things. > There are competitive markets, but they aren't free. If you want to dispute that, give me a counterexample. I don't even know what you mean by competitive but not free. I'm not interested in finding out, though, because you've already blatantly lied about what you said. I don't believe you're arguing in good faith, and thus it is indeed time to call it a day.
      • lisper 3y ago
        > Uh, you did: No. You are reading my words through the lens of your own opinions and prejudices. When you re-stated my positions, you changed the words, and when you did that, you changed the meaning in significant ways. > Nobody in politics is ethical What I said was that type 1 corruption is ubiquitous. I took no position on whether or not it is ethical. This is a complicated question. The only reason I'm using the word "corruption", with all of its pejorative connotations, to describe it is because English doesn't have a better word. I could call it "campaign finance". Private campaign finance is ubiquitous. Is it unethical? Reasonable people can disagree. Personally, I would prefer to have publicly financed campaigns, but we have this annoying First Amendment that makes it tough to implement. > nobody in business is ethical I didn't take a position on that either. What I said was to pose a rhetorical question: if a business person is unethical, how would you know? Because if a business person does something unethical they will generally try to conceal it. There probably are ethical people in business, but I think they are probably rare. But that is neither here nor there. What matters is that you would have a very hard time demonstrating their existence since you would have to somehow demonstrate that they were not successfully concealing their unethical behavior. I think there are probably ethical people in politics too, and I think Joe Biden is probably about as close to that as you're going to get, at least at the national level. Do you have a better example? > no market is competitive. What I said was that there are no free competitive markets. The operative word was "free", not "competitive". Obviously there are competitive markets, and politics is one of them. There is no substantive difference between the dynamics of political markets and the dynamics of any other market where the nature of the product is such that there can be only one winner (e.g. large construction projects).