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Honestly, I don’t see how that is compatible with a capitalist society. Money is power and politics is the exercise of power.

asacrowflies 2y ago
Considering how NEW citizens United United is...and how every other democracy seems to be able to handle this somewhat sanely... Why is it so hard to imagine? It wasn't like this even in 1995...
- Gormo 2y ago
  Well, 1995 was seven years before Congress passed the statute that the FEC was misinterpreting in the Citizens United case. The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier. Contrary to the misinformation spread through the media, the court did not rule that "money is speech", but ruled almost exactly the opposite: it was the FEC that was attempting to argue that "speech is money" -- that using resources to speak in a way that might persuade voters was equivalent to donating those resources directly to a candidate -- and therefore they had the right to restrict the publication of "electioneering communications". The court ruled that no, speech is not money, and is protected by the first amendment under all circumstances. So the ruling put things back the way they were in 1995, before the FEC had ever gotten the idea that they had the power to censor speech.
  - asacrowflies 2y ago
    This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
    - vlan0 2y ago
      This is a good point. No matter the intent, we must also focus on the real world outcomes of said policy. The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech, its decision enabled the flow of money into the political system in a way that is effectively treated as free speech under the First Amendment. Far from "restoring the status quo," Citizens United created a system where the wealthy can now spend unlimited amounts of money to sway elections, a shift that has drastically altered democratic representation.
      - Gormo 2y ago
        > While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech The court did the exact opposite, and repudiated the attempt by the FEC to equate money with speech. The FEC were effectively arguing that "speech is money" and that their authority to regulate campaign donations allowed them to censor the direct expression of political opinions by organizations that weren't associated with candidates in any way, under the theory that the expenditure of resources in a way that might influence voters' opinions is equivalent to directly donating the monetary value of those resources to whichever candidates might benefit from shifts in opinion. Prior to the FEC's attempted enforcement of the 2002 BCRA, this wasn't even an issue at question -- the right of individuals and organizations alike to express their own opinions with their own resources was never in doubt.
    - Gormo 2y ago
      No, it didn't. There's gaslighting going on, but I'm afraid you've been gaslit by the media here. CU was not about campaign donations, despite the frenzied attempts by various factions to pretend otherwise. No donations of money to political candidates were involved in the facts of the case or in the ruling in any way whatsoever. There was no century old precedent at stake at all. The case, and the ruling, was about the FEC attempting to use a 2002 statute to censor the release of a movie in 2008, invoking a concept ("electioneering communication") that did not exist at all prior to the 21st century.
kennysoona 2y ago
The answer is regulation.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    Regulation works fine - you can observe it working fine in every other first world country directly mitigating and resolving many of the problems still present in the US.
    - Gormo 2y ago
      I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances -- I can't see behind-the-scenes corruption or measure superior alternatives that were suppressed in favor of locking in a marginally mitigated version of the status quo ante. I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.
      - kennysoona 2y ago
        > I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances. Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.
arp242 2y ago
"Capitalist society" can have many different meanings. Pure 100% capitalism does not exist and has never existed, and no serious capitalist thinker has ever argued for it.
- Gormo 2y ago
  I'd argue that what critics of "capitalism" use the term to describe is essentially a straw man that has never accurately represented any real-life economy.

asacrowflies 2y ago

Considering how NEW citizens United United is...and how every other democracy seems to be able to handle this somewhat sanely... Why is it so hard to imagine? It wasn't like this even in 1995...

Gormo 2y ago
Well, 1995 was seven years before Congress passed the statute that the FEC was misinterpreting in the Citizens United case. The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier. Contrary to the misinformation spread through the media, the court did not rule that "money is speech", but ruled almost exactly the opposite: it was the FEC that was attempting to argue that "speech is money" -- that using resources to speak in a way that might persuade voters was equivalent to donating those resources directly to a candidate -- and therefore they had the right to restrict the publication of "electioneering communications". The court ruled that no, speech is not money, and is protected by the first amendment under all circumstances. So the ruling put things back the way they were in 1995, before the FEC had ever gotten the idea that they had the power to censor speech.
- asacrowflies 2y ago
  This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
  - vlan0 2y ago
    This is a good point. No matter the intent, we must also focus on the real world outcomes of said policy. The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech, its decision enabled the flow of money into the political system in a way that is effectively treated as free speech under the First Amendment. Far from "restoring the status quo," Citizens United created a system where the wealthy can now spend unlimited amounts of money to sway elections, a shift that has drastically altered democratic representation.
    - Gormo 2y ago
      > While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech The court did the exact opposite, and repudiated the attempt by the FEC to equate money with speech. The FEC were effectively arguing that "speech is money" and that their authority to regulate campaign donations allowed them to censor the direct expression of political opinions by organizations that weren't associated with candidates in any way, under the theory that the expenditure of resources in a way that might influence voters' opinions is equivalent to directly donating the monetary value of those resources to whichever candidates might benefit from shifts in opinion. Prior to the FEC's attempted enforcement of the 2002 BCRA, this wasn't even an issue at question -- the right of individuals and organizations alike to express their own opinions with their own resources was never in doubt.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    No, it didn't. There's gaslighting going on, but I'm afraid you've been gaslit by the media here. CU was not about campaign donations, despite the frenzied attempts by various factions to pretend otherwise. No donations of money to political candidates were involved in the facts of the case or in the ruling in any way whatsoever. There was no century old precedent at stake at all. The case, and the ruling, was about the FEC attempting to use a 2002 statute to censor the release of a movie in 2008, invoking a concept ("electioneering communication") that did not exist at all prior to the 21st century.

kennysoona 2y ago

The answer is regulation.

Gormo 2y ago
Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  Regulation works fine - you can observe it working fine in every other first world country directly mitigating and resolving many of the problems still present in the US.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances -- I can't see behind-the-scenes corruption or measure superior alternatives that were suppressed in favor of locking in a marginally mitigated version of the status quo ante. I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      > I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances. Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.

arp242 2y ago

"Capitalist society" can have many different meanings. Pure 100% capitalism does not exist and has never existed, and no serious capitalist thinker has ever argued for it.

Gormo 2y ago
I'd argue that what critics of "capitalism" use the term to describe is essentially a straw man that has never accurately represented any real-life economy.