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That's because the seat of power in the west is not with governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up being there to keep them happy and avoid confl

That's because the seat of power in the west is not with governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up being there to keep them happy and avoid conflicts between them. They've mostly stripped themselves of the ability to do anything they could be bribed over.

FredPret 2y ago
I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of months what the biggest companies are worth in total. According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth around one month of government spending. How can a whale be beholden to a flea? [0]: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function [1]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  How much of that is defense? How much is security & policing? A bulk of that spending is to keep the market going, and to protect business interests.
- tehjoker 2y ago
  The government is designed for rich people from its foundation, it's a cozy revolving door for the elites and functions to repress popular movements. Officials identify with business and owners and can pick up do-nothing or interesting jobs after their government services. US elections are some of the most expensive in the world and politicians rely on donations to win their campaigns. The connections between business and government are a spider web. Business also isn't a set of individual companies, they in fact cooperate on public policy through think tanks such as the chamber of commerce and the business round table. Furthermore, since business controls the commodities and processes that sustain life, business holds a veto over economic policy with "capital strikes". Government could seize these properties, but our left wing is very weak. Think about it another way, why do you assume that elected officials have any obligation to the public when there is essentially no recourse except through elections and elections generally require oodles of money to win?
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Right. It is worth noting that the total allowable cost of the recent UK election was 54k per seat per party, meaning that a political party could only spend 34M GBP contesting every Parliamentary seat. It would only take the top three House fundraisers to outstrip this number: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/fundraising-totals https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/fundraising-t...
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      I don't disagree with the idea of limiting funding, but this is a bad comparison. You're talking about a campaign to reach about 50m voters, vs about 300m voters. You should probably at least adjust your UK figure accordingly, to make it reasonable.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        The actual cap is 54k per seat, so it can scale. You can bring that number up or down as needed to adjust for the seat representation size in the US, but it is significantly below, say, Hakeem Jeffries raising $17M and Mike Johnson $13M. The other bit is that the Parliament has more constituencies than the US House despite the House representing more people, so the number of people per House member is quite high. And that's not actually specified in the Constitution but a law that could be changed by Congress at any time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        > The other bit is that the Parliament has more constituencies than the US House I was thinking of the total, not the per-seat amount, for this reason.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Because government is not a singular entity, but made up of lots of individual people. And the overall electoral process of using a silver tongue to convince millions of people that you agree with all of them on everything, especially on things they disagree with each other on, and/or that the world will end if the other guy gets elected, ensures you select away from any sort of pesky things like values or ethics. The wildest thing, to me, is just how cheap it is to buy a politician. Senator Menendez [1] made it a bit too overt and ended up getting convicted so there's no speculation involved there. International/country level corruption of a senior Senator, who was also the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including getting him to directly interfere in criminal cases? Less than a million bucks. I guess it's more of a buyer's market, which is pretty 'funny' in and of itself. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegations_of_corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegations_of_co...
devjab 2y ago
It’s rarely that sinister on the political level in my experience. Having worked a decade in the Danish public sector with access to the higher echelons of decision making I’ve never really witnessed influence or blatant corruption amongst the elected official. Well, there is influence but it’ll typically be along the lines of getting better road access or being allowed to expand in zones that weren’t really meant for it. Not because of personal gain but because jobs are just so valuable to a political administration. Where things get more complicated is typically with the unelected administration. Basically you can view most political decision making as an administration working out action plans and presenting them to politicians. Which is a good concept, until people stop participating in things like public hearings. Because the officials who work in the administration are professional and politicians in cities are often… well you or me. This means that it’s sort of easy for officials to influence decision making by writing and presenting the different action plans in ways where they know which are more likely to be selected. This is sometimes influenced by corruption, and usually that gets caught eventually around here. It’s much more often that it’s simply influenced by the different silos protecting themselves. Which will lead to bad decision making. Now, I mentioned things like public hearings earlier and these are actually immensely influential because most politicians are actually very open to hear from the public. The big issue is that most of the people who attend or respond to public hearings are either fanatics or crackpots. When regular people actually participate in their local democracy they can have a huge influence, much more so than both administration and business, but people don’t. I’m not a saint myself, it’s been more than a decade since I even bothered to read the proposals which are sent to me. To make things even worse, fewer and fewer people register as members of political parties which means they give up their influence on selecting candidates and when it’s time to vote, many simply vote on a party, not on a specific candidate. So we’re gradually giving over power to anyone who actually does participate, which is often going to be business.

FredPret 2y ago

I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of months what the biggest companies are worth in total. According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth around one month of government spending. How can a whale be beholden to a flea? [0]: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function [1]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
How much of that is defense? How much is security & policing? A bulk of that spending is to keep the market going, and to protect business interests.
tehjoker 2y ago
The government is designed for rich people from its foundation, it's a cozy revolving door for the elites and functions to repress popular movements. Officials identify with business and owners and can pick up do-nothing or interesting jobs after their government services. US elections are some of the most expensive in the world and politicians rely on donations to win their campaigns. The connections between business and government are a spider web. Business also isn't a set of individual companies, they in fact cooperate on public policy through think tanks such as the chamber of commerce and the business round table. Furthermore, since business controls the commodities and processes that sustain life, business holds a veto over economic policy with "capital strikes". Government could seize these properties, but our left wing is very weak. Think about it another way, why do you assume that elected officials have any obligation to the public when there is essentially no recourse except through elections and elections generally require oodles of money to win?
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Right. It is worth noting that the total allowable cost of the recent UK election was 54k per seat per party, meaning that a political party could only spend 34M GBP contesting every Parliamentary seat. It would only take the top three House fundraisers to outstrip this number: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/fundraising-totals https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/fundraising-t...
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I don't disagree with the idea of limiting funding, but this is a bad comparison. You're talking about a campaign to reach about 50m voters, vs about 300m voters. You should probably at least adjust your UK figure accordingly, to make it reasonable.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      The actual cap is 54k per seat, so it can scale. You can bring that number up or down as needed to adjust for the seat representation size in the US, but it is significantly below, say, Hakeem Jeffries raising $17M and Mike Johnson $13M. The other bit is that the Parliament has more constituencies than the US House despite the House representing more people, so the number of people per House member is quite high. And that's not actually specified in the Constitution but a law that could be changed by Congress at any time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        > The other bit is that the Parliament has more constituencies than the US House I was thinking of the total, not the per-seat amount, for this reason.
somenameforme 2y ago
Because government is not a singular entity, but made up of lots of individual people. And the overall electoral process of using a silver tongue to convince millions of people that you agree with all of them on everything, especially on things they disagree with each other on, and/or that the world will end if the other guy gets elected, ensures you select away from any sort of pesky things like values or ethics. The wildest thing, to me, is just how cheap it is to buy a politician. Senator Menendez [1] made it a bit too overt and ended up getting convicted so there's no speculation involved there. International/country level corruption of a senior Senator, who was also the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including getting him to directly interfere in criminal cases? Less than a million bucks. I guess it's more of a buyer's market, which is pretty 'funny' in and of itself. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegations_of_corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegations_of_co...

devjab 2y ago

It’s rarely that sinister on the political level in my experience. Having worked a decade in the Danish public sector with access to the higher echelons of decision making I’ve never really witnessed influence or blatant corruption amongst the elected official. Well, there is influence but it’ll typically be along the lines of getting better road access or being allowed to expand in zones that weren’t really meant for it. Not because of personal gain but because jobs are just so valuable to a political administration. Where things get more complicated is typically with the unelected administration. Basically you can view most political decision making as an administration working out action plans and presenting them to politicians. Which is a good concept, until people stop participating in things like public hearings. Because the officials who work in the administration are professional and politicians in cities are often… well you or me. This means that it’s sort of easy for officials to influence decision making by writing and presenting the different action plans in ways where they know which are more likely to be selected. This is sometimes influenced by corruption, and usually that gets caught eventually around here. It’s much more often that it’s simply influenced by the different silos protecting themselves. Which will lead to bad decision making. Now, I mentioned things like public hearings earlier and these are actually immensely influential because most politicians are actually very open to hear from the public. The big issue is that most of the people who attend or respond to public hearings are either fanatics or crackpots. When regular people actually participate in their local democracy they can have a huge influence, much more so than both administration and business, but people don’t. I’m not a saint myself, it’s been more than a decade since I even bothered to read the proposals which are sent to me. To make things even worse, fewer and fewer people register as members of political parties which means they give up their influence on selecting candidates and when it’s time to vote, many simply vote on a party, not on a specific candidate. So we’re gradually giving over power to anyone who actually does participate, which is often going to be business.