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Power is fungible. Money can be traded for political power. The existence of multi-billionaires is a threat to democracy because it means power accumulates, as
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Power is fungible. Money can be traded for political power. The existence of multi-billionaires is a threat to democracy because it means power accumulates, as it naturally does, and isn't distributed among all people
I say this because I recently changed my mind on it after seeing president musk buy the election
- wslh 2y agoThere's an interesting contradiction in that capitalism: it ultimately embeds one of the main criticisms of Marxism: the centralization and control of decisions. If we assume power is fungible and the market becomes very imperfect (or virtually non-existent at that scale), then we aren’t really talking about capitalism anymore.
- jakeinspace 2y agoThere is no free-market libertarian argument I've ever seen that fixes the problem of monopoly being a fixed point. Monopolies can out-compete others through economies of scale, and then use that concentrated wealth to exert control. All I'll ever hear in response is that it's the regulatory framework monopolies lobby for which secures their position against competition, and I just don't believe it. It helps, sure, but it's just part of the toolbox. I don't think any system can perfectly ensure that power stays distributed. Marxism-Leninism doesn't, to me, provide any compelling argument that corruption can be avoided when power is concentrated in a bureaucracy, the leap from dictatorship of the proletariat to utopic socialism is extremely tricky. I do at least think that the communists have spent a lot of thought on these things, both in critiquing capitalism and in proposing alternatives, while modern "libertarians" just sound entirely naive on this issue, to my ears.