8 ms·

Power corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody shoul

Power corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.

tirant 8mo ago
Fully agree on the root cause, but not on the solution. We should strive for extremely limited power by our public representatives, so their corruption impact is reduced to a minimum. But not only limited power, but also limited budget access, as an extension to limit that power. And that actually means reduced taxation. But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice. Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. Government has no say in that. That is unless companies break the law, and that's why a strong Justice system is necessary. With a reduced size of the state there's also way less risk of private companies and individuals to corrupt public representatives. Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
- gib444 8mo ago
  > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant I'll have some of whatever you're smoking. It's not that useful separating public and private when there are revolving doors and the people who run the companies bribe — sorry, lobby — politicians. It's an incredibly intimate relationship
  - whatever1 8mo ago
    Politicians also go to the private sector after they retire.
    - gib444 8mo ago
      Yeah that's the revolving door
- cumshitpiss 8mo ago
  [dead]
- pintxo 8mo ago
  > But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice. The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch. > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. As we have seen in the past, we have the same, if not worse, power imbalances in private companies as in the public sector. I would therefore not call it irrelevant, but agree that the Justice system can help here if appropriatly staffed. > Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows). Do you have a single example for a company who did not over time monetized its monopoly power to the detriment of the customer?
  - technothrasher 8mo ago
    > The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch. If you don't give that entirely separate branch any executive power, it cannot enforce its rulings. If you do give it separate executive power, there is nothing to rein it in when it becomes corrupt.
    - rayiner 8mo ago
      Correct. If you conceive of the “rule of law” as being the operating system kernel on top of which the rest of society runs, then there are no checks on the law enforcers and interpreters. This is not a theoretical problem. Prosecuting politicians is a preferred approach in dysfunctional democracies, like Pakistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o
    - vharuck 8mo ago
      I was thinking about this yesterday. For the US system, what if the top roles of an independent Prosecutorial Branch were appointed by the Judicial Branch, but Congress would control them by using the budget and impeachments? The President could still work with the appointees on setting the overall agenda and priorities. Executive control could be enforced with allowing or denying cooperation with executive agencies. But Prosecutorial would have to be its own branch to avoid the current SCOTUS crushing on the "unitary executive" theory.
- fzeroracer 8mo ago
  Are you just completely unaware with what's going on in the US or something? The reason why we're here is because of corruption within private companies leading to mass accumulation of wealth which has reality-bending effects on politics. Trump and the cronies is as much a symptom as it is a cause; related to the way billionaires bought literally all of news and social media over 30 years and weaponized it for their own personal propaganda. You're not going to solve this problem with a 'strong justice system', you're going to solve it by making sure no one can get that wealthy in the first place. I mean we're literally in a topic about Jeffry Epstein who is so deeply connected to everything that it would make your average TV show seem like a hack.
- lp4v4n 8mo ago
  I always laugh when libertarians propose all kinds of mechanism to prevent the concentration of power in the public administration but at the same time see no problem with a few individuals concentrating exponentially the most important and corrupting of the powers: wealth. God forbid a representative being reelected but there is no problem with a billionaire destabilizing dozens of democracies and around the world. Libertarianism is just the blind worship of people who have money.
  - srean 8mo ago
    Yes. With enough money, power can be bought, judges can be bought, laws can be ...
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  Wouldn't limiting power also mean limiting their effectiveness? A government (at any layer) needs to have a certain amount of power, else they're just civilians. As for budget, a country needs money to do stuff; if they don't have money they can't do stuff. Stuff can range from having the world's biggest army (several times over) to providing free education to everyone (the great social equalizer IMO, as in social mobility). As for your justice argument, it depends - if power corrupts, wouldn't giving more power to justice corrupt them as well? You see what's happening in the US with various law enforcement branches getting A Lot Of Money - militarization of local police force for example, meaning they have the means to apply more violence. TL;DR, governments and justice systems need a clear description of what they can and cannot do, and checks, balances and consequences when they don't. > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. This ignores the vast majority of anyone involved in a private company - the customers. Or even the not-customers that are still affected by what a private company does (think e.g. pollution), but that's where as you say the law should come in.
- thrance 8mo ago
  Weak public servants mean strong private actors: that's what's currently eating the US republic from the inside. You have a few billionaires (Trump, Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg...) able to buy their way into power and keeping the opposition down. Reducing taxation only makes these people even more powerful, and worsen the situation. You can't have democracy when some people are able to get this much richer and more powerful than the rest, it's as simple as that.
- addicted 8mo ago
  > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. And a few millions of people suffering because they're being misled into buying "wellness" solutions. And a few hundreds of millions of people around the world suffering the effects of local pollution and clean water laws being skirted. And a few billion folks who are gonna suffer the effects of climate change. etc... Other than the 6-7 billion humans who suffer due to private company corruption, it's basically only the shareholders.
- dauertewigkeit 8mo ago
  It's fundamentally still a problem of asymmetry of power and connections. Try to put yourself in the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with investigating this same case. The accused are very wealthy very powerful people with deep pockets. They can and will take action against you, if you're revealed to be chasing after them. Plus, their network of allies is so vast, that you cannot even trust your superiors or other government agencies to back you up. And indeed that is exactly what happened here.
myrmidon 8mo ago
I do agree with this. If you followed this approach consistently, you would need back pressure against individual and company wealth growth. This could be quite good for competition, but would probably hurt sectors a lot that have high fixed costs/barriers of entry and need to compete with (foreign) unlimited-size companies. I do think that this could fix or at least vastly improve some really difficult problems: The whole judiciary is IMO blatantly unjust right now, because higher wealth can basically buy you better outcomes, democratic representation is flawed because wealth/donations buy you access to politicians (or allows you to enter politics yourself) and even national public opinion on anything is essentially for sale to a degree via profit-driven media. Such wealth-gap limiting could be possibly achieved by progressive taxation that rises logarithmically with revenue for companies and individual wealth (giving a strong incentive to split up wealth, and no leeway via declaring zero profits): Think 1% of revenue under 1M, 2% under 10M, ... I'm very curious how a nation that made strong efforts in that direction would fare.
a-french-anon 8mo ago
> end of story. Is it? Here's another version I like even more that unsettles democracy dogmatics: power attracts the corrupt.
- actionfromafar 8mo ago
  Shouldn't it unsettle King dogmatics just as much?
  - A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
    Not really, because aristocrats and monarchs don't seek power in most systems; rather, they're simply born into it. Those modes of government don't actively select for the power-hungry. (Granted, in e.g. the Ottoman Empire and Imperial China, it was frequently the case that there were dozens of princelings who were, de facto, pitted against each other in contests for the throne. That definitely selected for ambition, brutality, and a willingness to get one's hands dirty.)
    - actionfromafar 8mo ago
      In theory, born into it. That was just a foil to put an air of legitimacy over the institution. In the real world, there was (and is!) an incredible power game over who decides over what, who gets to live, who must abdicate, how much the real power lies with the King and how much with aristocracy or the Church and so on. It's a constant rebalancing of power factors.
      - A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
        Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. One can point to dozens of historical examples of well-run and stable monarchies, just as one can point to "monarchies" where the power rested with power-hungry and corrupt eunuchs, bishops, or chancellors -- or where the entire process of succession was as red in tooth and claw as anything in nature. The trouble with representative democracy is that it always selects for the most power-hungry of its denizens. And now we're in the midst of a situation that Polybius would immediately recognize: The crossroads where one path leads to rule by entrenched and corrupt oligarchs, at least as bad as any of the court eunuchs of old, and where the other path leads to ochlocracy. I'd take my chances with the latter, especially in this era where direct democracy is possible, but I'm afraid that's not likely how things are going to turn out.
7sigma 8mo ago
There is another saying from Robert Caro: "Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals". The more power, the more their flaws are amplified.
baxtr 8mo ago
It’s probably a vicious cycle I’d say.
YetAnotherNick 8mo ago
Isn't it the opposite? If someone can change "democracy, taxation and anti-monopoly regulation" across the country, they have substantially more power than Elon Musk.
pooper 8mo ago
> Power corrupts, end of story. Not all corruption is obvious though. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing, "just need to bend the rules slightly over here". It is all for a "good cause". I feel like I am as much worried about people who are the righteous wrong, as much as people who are just out there trying to grift to make a buck.
veunes 8mo ago
I'd rephrase it as: nobody should be trusted with unchecked power, especially when it's exercised quietly and indirectly
alphazard 8mo ago
Taxation is the mechanism that moves power from the people to the government, and increasingly politicians and their specific interests. Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Every government goon doing authoritarian dirty work collects a paycheck and wouldn't do their job without it.
- palata 8mo ago
  I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. > moves power from the people to the government In a functioning democracy, the government is the people. If the government is against the people, it's not a functioning democracy. And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
  - alphazard 8mo ago
    > I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they lose their power), then they are going to have to meet the wealthy half way. Idealism is the enemy of the the common sense, rational, self-interested move. > And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work. Yes, democracy is a good idea precisely because imperfect implementations of it work well. If it worked in theory and not in practice, then it wouldn't be a good idea. Contrast it to communism, which is literally an info-hazard. If you try to bring it in to existence, you won't achieve your goal, and the system you do create will be much worse for you. Even if it works in theory, it's a bad idea because it doesn't work in practice.
    - felixgallo 8mo ago
      I'm having difficulty parsing what you're saying in your first paragraph. What is it to 'meet the wealthy half way'? Did the ultra wealthy meet the middle class or the poor half way when they essentially ended their tax obligations and legalized mass influence buying in Citizens United? What's the 'half measure' that is going to rein all that back in?
havblue 8mo ago
I was under the impression that Epstein was powerful because he was corrupt, not the other way around.
carlosjobim 8mo ago
> taxation Taxation is the system where innocent people are forced to pay enormous amounts of money to the rich, powerful, corrupt. The whole basis for the Babylon system is taxation. Epstein and associates are able to thrive thanks to taxation. It has always been from the poor to the rich, never the other way around. Why do you think kings invented taxation in the first place?
- ogogmad 8mo ago
  If not for taxes, how would you fund prisons, police, the army, etc? Not to mention other things.
  - carlosjobim 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      > President Roosevelt rejected funding the war with taxes, and went instead with war bonds. War bonds covered about half the costs. Roosevelt was not shy about taxation, before or during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1... "A 5% Victory tax on all individual incomes over $624 was created, with postwar credit."
      - carlosjobim 8mo ago
        He wasn't but in the decision between more taxes and war bonds, he chose bonds, against his advisors' wishes. And the population proved that they are willing to make massive contributions to important causes, without having to be forced at gun-point with taxation.
wslh 8mo ago
I would add strong and fast consumer protection biased to big companies. Also, the elephant in the room: a modern, and not impossble expensive, legal system.
thrance 8mo ago
Billionaires should be taxed away from existence. This much wealth and power is hugely detrimental to society. It's not even good for themselves, with how miserable and wretched they look and behave.
ghtbircshotbe 8mo ago
There was a big long article in the Atlantic recently called "what happened to Pam Bondi?" The answer is obviously corruption, and you probably don't need to read a big long article to see it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump-doj-independence/685663/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump...
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Yep. It corrupts those people and makes them disconnected. Then they go on to do worse things. The only fix is to change tax policy to not allow billionaires. Redistribute wealth above some amount. One billion seems fine as a starting point.
- m0llusk 8mo ago
  This obsession over a billion as a marker is toxic nonsense. Having nine hundred something million is not that much different. The main way to deal with this is progressive taxation of both income and wealth which should provide increasing resistance to growth, a mechanism that needs to particular breaking point or limit and is stronger because of that. One of the best businessmen I have known is Paul Orfalea, broadly known as Kinko. When he couldn't hold a job he started a company, he focused on trying to make things work for employees and customers alike, and it grew. When he sold Kinko's Copies it had a record of serving not only individuals well, but also the broader society as capitalist enterprise ideally should. And he got five billion out of that deal, which he shared with this family. Now I am supposed to believe that this is all a horrible tale of darkness cursing us all because there was some boundary that he accidentally blew through with his extensive business success. In all honesty the one who sounds corrupted and disconnected here is you.
yboris 8mo ago
Sortition may be what you're looking for: "sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e. by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample". No one can amass power because it's short term and random. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
  Do this but with technocracy. Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.
  - wtallis 8mo ago
    That link says the Bertrand paradox only applies when the domain of possibilities is infinite. That doesn't seem to cover tasks like randomly selecting people from a finite population.
    - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
      Its not number of people, but number of ways to slice the situation. In this case: Do we use IQ tests? Do we use random numbers and allow babies to win? If you want to be traumatized about statistics, I like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0
  - HappMacDonald 8mo ago
    Man, that video was disappointing. My factory produces squares, and every square is between 1ft and 3ft in side length. Now what is the probability that the next square it outputs will be between 1ft and 2ft long? The probability is zero percent, of course. Because my factory only produces squares with a side length of exactly 2.5ft (to within a micrometer tolerance, hooray!), day in and day out. And as anyone can easily verify, every single one of those squares is between 1ft and 3ft in side length. Notice how I didn't have to even begin to talk about areas? The video's thesis is simply that "Talking out of your ass when you have insufficient information has the capability of backfiring sometimes: oh the horror" and I find the subject approximately as uninteresting as the fact that different interpolation methods (nearest neighbor, bicubic, "ask AI image gen to fill in the gaps", etc) are capable of inventing completely different false details into an image or dataset. But I probably only find it equally uninteresting due to the claims being isomorphic. When you don't have enough data, guessing at what is missing can be incorrect, and guessing in different ways can be incorrect in different ways, and you have to allow that to wash out as enough genuine data arrives (which means washing out the differences between potential methods of interpolation) and maintain your error bars correctly in the meantime instead of throwing them away. So to loop back to the start: the probability that the next square will be between 1ft and 2ft is 50% plus or minus 50%, which is just an over-engineered way of saying "there is literally not enough information yet offered to make a guess of any trustworthiness at this point".
sdellis 8mo ago
We can see that the two-party democracy in the United States has been one of the primary power tools of the 1%. They buy politicians from both parties and then sit back and laugh on their yachts while everyone else goes red in the face, outraged, arguing, and distracted. We are indeed the suckers yet again, but maybe, just maybe this time will be different?
tehjoker 8mo ago
Limited terms are anti-democratic. They were instituted for the U.S. presidency after FDR won 4 terms and scared the rich into making sure that if that ever happened again, it would be more limited in scope.
victorbjorklund 8mo ago
Yea, more power to the politicians. Because not a single politicians seems to be involved in the Epstein case. /sarcasm

tirant 8mo ago

Fully agree on the root cause, but not on the solution. We should strive for extremely limited power by our public representatives, so their corruption impact is reduced to a minimum. But not only limited power, but also limited budget access, as an extension to limit that power. And that actually means reduced taxation. But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice. Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. Government has no say in that. That is unless companies break the law, and that's why a strong Justice system is necessary. With a reduced size of the state there's also way less risk of private companies and individuals to corrupt public representatives. Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).

gib444 8mo ago
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant I'll have some of whatever you're smoking. It's not that useful separating public and private when there are revolving doors and the people who run the companies bribe — sorry, lobby — politicians. It's an incredibly intimate relationship
- whatever1 8mo ago
  Politicians also go to the private sector after they retire.
  - gib444 8mo ago
    Yeah that's the revolving door
cumshitpiss 8mo ago
[dead]
pintxo 8mo ago
> But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice. The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch. > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. As we have seen in the past, we have the same, if not worse, power imbalances in private companies as in the public sector. I would therefore not call it irrelevant, but agree that the Justice system can help here if appropriatly staffed. > Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows). Do you have a single example for a company who did not over time monetized its monopoly power to the detriment of the customer?
- technothrasher 8mo ago
  > The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch. If you don't give that entirely separate branch any executive power, it cannot enforce its rulings. If you do give it separate executive power, there is nothing to rein it in when it becomes corrupt.
  - rayiner 8mo ago
    Correct. If you conceive of the “rule of law” as being the operating system kernel on top of which the rest of society runs, then there are no checks on the law enforcers and interpreters. This is not a theoretical problem. Prosecuting politicians is a preferred approach in dysfunctional democracies, like Pakistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o
  - vharuck 8mo ago
    I was thinking about this yesterday. For the US system, what if the top roles of an independent Prosecutorial Branch were appointed by the Judicial Branch, but Congress would control them by using the budget and impeachments? The President could still work with the appointees on setting the overall agenda and priorities. Executive control could be enforced with allowing or denying cooperation with executive agencies. But Prosecutorial would have to be its own branch to avoid the current SCOTUS crushing on the "unitary executive" theory.
fzeroracer 8mo ago
Are you just completely unaware with what's going on in the US or something? The reason why we're here is because of corruption within private companies leading to mass accumulation of wealth which has reality-bending effects on politics. Trump and the cronies is as much a symptom as it is a cause; related to the way billionaires bought literally all of news and social media over 30 years and weaponized it for their own personal propaganda. You're not going to solve this problem with a 'strong justice system', you're going to solve it by making sure no one can get that wealthy in the first place. I mean we're literally in a topic about Jeffry Epstein who is so deeply connected to everything that it would make your average TV show seem like a hack.
lp4v4n 8mo ago
I always laugh when libertarians propose all kinds of mechanism to prevent the concentration of power in the public administration but at the same time see no problem with a few individuals concentrating exponentially the most important and corrupting of the powers: wealth. God forbid a representative being reelected but there is no problem with a billionaire destabilizing dozens of democracies and around the world. Libertarianism is just the blind worship of people who have money.
- srean 8mo ago
  Yes. With enough money, power can be bought, judges can be bought, laws can be ...
Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
Wouldn't limiting power also mean limiting their effectiveness? A government (at any layer) needs to have a certain amount of power, else they're just civilians. As for budget, a country needs money to do stuff; if they don't have money they can't do stuff. Stuff can range from having the world's biggest army (several times over) to providing free education to everyone (the great social equalizer IMO, as in social mobility). As for your justice argument, it depends - if power corrupts, wouldn't giving more power to justice corrupt them as well? You see what's happening in the US with various law enforcement branches getting A Lot Of Money - militarization of local police force for example, meaning they have the means to apply more violence. TL;DR, governments and justice systems need a clear description of what they can and cannot do, and checks, balances and consequences when they don't. > Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. This ignores the vast majority of anyone involved in a private company - the customers. Or even the not-customers that are still affected by what a private company does (think e.g. pollution), but that's where as you say the law should come in.
thrance 8mo ago
Weak public servants mean strong private actors: that's what's currently eating the US republic from the inside. You have a few billionaires (Trump, Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg...) able to buy their way into power and keeping the opposition down. Reducing taxation only makes these people even more powerful, and worsen the situation. You can't have democracy when some people are able to get this much richer and more powerful than the rest, it's as simple as that.
addicted 8mo ago
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. And a few millions of people suffering because they're being misled into buying "wellness" solutions. And a few hundreds of millions of people around the world suffering the effects of local pollution and clean water laws being skirted. And a few billion folks who are gonna suffer the effects of climate change. etc... Other than the 6-7 billion humans who suffer due to private company corruption, it's basically only the shareholders.
dauertewigkeit 8mo ago
It's fundamentally still a problem of asymmetry of power and connections. Try to put yourself in the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with investigating this same case. The accused are very wealthy very powerful people with deep pockets. They can and will take action against you, if you're revealed to be chasing after them. Plus, their network of allies is so vast, that you cannot even trust your superiors or other government agencies to back you up. And indeed that is exactly what happened here.

myrmidon 8mo ago

I do agree with this. If you followed this approach consistently, you would need back pressure against individual and company wealth growth. This could be quite good for competition, but would probably hurt sectors a lot that have high fixed costs/barriers of entry and need to compete with (foreign) unlimited-size companies. I do think that this could fix or at least vastly improve some really difficult problems: The whole judiciary is IMO blatantly unjust right now, because higher wealth can basically buy you better outcomes, democratic representation is flawed because wealth/donations buy you access to politicians (or allows you to enter politics yourself) and even national public opinion on anything is essentially for sale to a degree via profit-driven media. Such wealth-gap limiting could be possibly achieved by progressive taxation that rises logarithmically with revenue for companies and individual wealth (giving a strong incentive to split up wealth, and no leeway via declaring zero profits): Think 1% of revenue under 1M, 2% under 10M, ... I'm very curious how a nation that made strong efforts in that direction would fare.

a-french-anon 8mo ago

> end of story. Is it? Here's another version I like even more that unsettles democracy dogmatics: power attracts the corrupt.

actionfromafar 8mo ago
Shouldn't it unsettle King dogmatics just as much?
- A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
  Not really, because aristocrats and monarchs don't seek power in most systems; rather, they're simply born into it. Those modes of government don't actively select for the power-hungry. (Granted, in e.g. the Ottoman Empire and Imperial China, it was frequently the case that there were dozens of princelings who were, de facto, pitted against each other in contests for the throne. That definitely selected for ambition, brutality, and a willingness to get one's hands dirty.)
  - actionfromafar 8mo ago
    In theory, born into it. That was just a foil to put an air of legitimacy over the institution. In the real world, there was (and is!) an incredible power game over who decides over what, who gets to live, who must abdicate, how much the real power lies with the King and how much with aristocracy or the Church and so on. It's a constant rebalancing of power factors.
    - A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
      Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. One can point to dozens of historical examples of well-run and stable monarchies, just as one can point to "monarchies" where the power rested with power-hungry and corrupt eunuchs, bishops, or chancellors -- or where the entire process of succession was as red in tooth and claw as anything in nature. The trouble with representative democracy is that it always selects for the most power-hungry of its denizens. And now we're in the midst of a situation that Polybius would immediately recognize: The crossroads where one path leads to rule by entrenched and corrupt oligarchs, at least as bad as any of the court eunuchs of old, and where the other path leads to ochlocracy. I'd take my chances with the latter, especially in this era where direct democracy is possible, but I'm afraid that's not likely how things are going to turn out.

7sigma 8mo ago

There is another saying from Robert Caro: "Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals". The more power, the more their flaws are amplified.

baxtr 8mo ago

It’s probably a vicious cycle I’d say.

YetAnotherNick 8mo ago

Isn't it the opposite? If someone can change "democracy, taxation and anti-monopoly regulation" across the country, they have substantially more power than Elon Musk.

pooper 8mo ago

> Power corrupts, end of story. Not all corruption is obvious though. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing, "just need to bend the rules slightly over here". It is all for a "good cause". I feel like I am as much worried about people who are the righteous wrong, as much as people who are just out there trying to grift to make a buck.

veunes 8mo ago

I'd rephrase it as: nobody should be trusted with unchecked power, especially when it's exercised quietly and indirectly

alphazard 8mo ago

Taxation is the mechanism that moves power from the people to the government, and increasingly politicians and their specific interests. Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Every government goon doing authoritarian dirty work collects a paycheck and wouldn't do their job without it.

palata 8mo ago
I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. > moves power from the people to the government In a functioning democracy, the government is the people. If the government is against the people, it's not a functioning democracy. And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
- alphazard 8mo ago
  > I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they lose their power), then they are going to have to meet the wealthy half way. Idealism is the enemy of the the common sense, rational, self-interested move. > And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work. Yes, democracy is a good idea precisely because imperfect implementations of it work well. If it worked in theory and not in practice, then it wouldn't be a good idea. Contrast it to communism, which is literally an info-hazard. If you try to bring it in to existence, you won't achieve your goal, and the system you do create will be much worse for you. Even if it works in theory, it's a bad idea because it doesn't work in practice.
  - felixgallo 8mo ago
    I'm having difficulty parsing what you're saying in your first paragraph. What is it to 'meet the wealthy half way'? Did the ultra wealthy meet the middle class or the poor half way when they essentially ended their tax obligations and legalized mass influence buying in Citizens United? What's the 'half measure' that is going to rein all that back in?

havblue 8mo ago

I was under the impression that Epstein was powerful because he was corrupt, not the other way around.

carlosjobim 8mo ago

> taxation Taxation is the system where innocent people are forced to pay enormous amounts of money to the rich, powerful, corrupt. The whole basis for the Babylon system is taxation. Epstein and associates are able to thrive thanks to taxation. It has always been from the poor to the rich, never the other way around. Why do you think kings invented taxation in the first place?

ogogmad 8mo ago
If not for taxes, how would you fund prisons, police, the army, etc? Not to mention other things.
- carlosjobim 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    > President Roosevelt rejected funding the war with taxes, and went instead with war bonds. War bonds covered about half the costs. Roosevelt was not shy about taxation, before or during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1... "A 5% Victory tax on all individual incomes over $624 was created, with postwar credit."
    - carlosjobim 8mo ago
      He wasn't but in the decision between more taxes and war bonds, he chose bonds, against his advisors' wishes. And the population proved that they are willing to make massive contributions to important causes, without having to be forced at gun-point with taxation.

wslh 8mo ago

I would add strong and fast consumer protection biased to big companies. Also, the elephant in the room: a modern, and not impossble expensive, legal system.

thrance 8mo ago

Billionaires should be taxed away from existence. This much wealth and power is hugely detrimental to society. It's not even good for themselves, with how miserable and wretched they look and behave.

ghtbircshotbe 8mo ago

There was a big long article in the Atlantic recently called "what happened to Pam Bondi?" The answer is obviously corruption, and you probably don't need to read a big long article to see it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump-doj-independence/685663/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump...

SilverElfin 8mo ago

Yep. It corrupts those people and makes them disconnected. Then they go on to do worse things. The only fix is to change tax policy to not allow billionaires. Redistribute wealth above some amount. One billion seems fine as a starting point.

m0llusk 8mo ago
This obsession over a billion as a marker is toxic nonsense. Having nine hundred something million is not that much different. The main way to deal with this is progressive taxation of both income and wealth which should provide increasing resistance to growth, a mechanism that needs to particular breaking point or limit and is stronger because of that. One of the best businessmen I have known is Paul Orfalea, broadly known as Kinko. When he couldn't hold a job he started a company, he focused on trying to make things work for employees and customers alike, and it grew. When he sold Kinko's Copies it had a record of serving not only individuals well, but also the broader society as capitalist enterprise ideally should. And he got five billion out of that deal, which he shared with this family. Now I am supposed to believe that this is all a horrible tale of darkness cursing us all because there was some boundary that he accidentally blew through with his extensive business success. In all honesty the one who sounds corrupted and disconnected here is you.

yboris 8mo ago

Sortition may be what you're looking for: "sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e. by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample". No one can amass power because it's short term and random. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
Do this but with technocracy. Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.
- wtallis 8mo ago
  That link says the Bertrand paradox only applies when the domain of possibilities is infinite. That doesn't seem to cover tasks like randomly selecting people from a finite population.
  - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
    Its not number of people, but number of ways to slice the situation. In this case: Do we use IQ tests? Do we use random numbers and allow babies to win? If you want to be traumatized about statistics, I like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0
- HappMacDonald 8mo ago
  Man, that video was disappointing. My factory produces squares, and every square is between 1ft and 3ft in side length. Now what is the probability that the next square it outputs will be between 1ft and 2ft long? The probability is zero percent, of course. Because my factory only produces squares with a side length of exactly 2.5ft (to within a micrometer tolerance, hooray!), day in and day out. And as anyone can easily verify, every single one of those squares is between 1ft and 3ft in side length. Notice how I didn't have to even begin to talk about areas? The video's thesis is simply that "Talking out of your ass when you have insufficient information has the capability of backfiring sometimes: oh the horror" and I find the subject approximately as uninteresting as the fact that different interpolation methods (nearest neighbor, bicubic, "ask AI image gen to fill in the gaps", etc) are capable of inventing completely different false details into an image or dataset. But I probably only find it equally uninteresting due to the claims being isomorphic. When you don't have enough data, guessing at what is missing can be incorrect, and guessing in different ways can be incorrect in different ways, and you have to allow that to wash out as enough genuine data arrives (which means washing out the differences between potential methods of interpolation) and maintain your error bars correctly in the meantime instead of throwing them away. So to loop back to the start: the probability that the next square will be between 1ft and 2ft is 50% plus or minus 50%, which is just an over-engineered way of saying "there is literally not enough information yet offered to make a guess of any trustworthiness at this point".

sdellis 8mo ago

We can see that the two-party democracy in the United States has been one of the primary power tools of the 1%. They buy politicians from both parties and then sit back and laugh on their yachts while everyone else goes red in the face, outraged, arguing, and distracted. We are indeed the suckers yet again, but maybe, just maybe this time will be different?

tehjoker 8mo ago

Limited terms are anti-democratic. They were instituted for the U.S. presidency after FDR won 4 terms and scared the rich into making sure that if that ever happened again, it would be more limited in scope.

victorbjorklund 8mo ago

Yea, more power to the politicians. Because not a single politicians seems to be involved in the Epstein case. /sarcasm