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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

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...

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...