zlacker

Money is power.

Trump's and the Republican party's whole shtick is deregulation. The financial tumors in the economy love it when the white blood cells look the other way. That's why folks like Ellison and Elon bought this election. These are the types of orders they are happy to comply with for favorable treatment.

If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures.

>>gmd63+(OP)
If you don't regulate, you're just opening the door for the free market to birth a tyrant or cabal that makes up their own power structures.

Perhaps, but right now the only tyrants and cabals I see around me were elected democratically. I don't have to use Facebook or Amazon, but I have to pay taxes to Trump's treasury department.

The fact that stupid people can be easily herded into voting against almost everyone's best interests, including their own, is not an indictment of the free market. If anything, it speaks to the apparently-unresolvable incompatibility of social media and democracy. I'm pretty sure we'll have to give up one or the other before long.

>>Camper+jR
Democracy is not the problem, it's a deliberately misinformed populace shaped by undeserved money that's the core issue. Folks who pollute the information in the market or the political field steer the market away from a symmetrical information equilibrium -- they are huge drains on human potential. Trump did both and evaded trial for sedition because of how much he cheated in business and engaged the law in bad faith, and due to favors he promised to others like Elon and Ellison who had more money. Before he was a "democratically elected tyrant" he was a regular free market one.

>>gmd63+FX
Before he was a "democratically elected tyrant" he was a regular free market one.

Whatever. He wasn't bothering me until the deliberately-misinformed populace gave him power over me... twice.

Again: the problem isn't the money, the problem is the power.

>>Camper+5Y
Money is power. High concentrations of money controlled by few people serve the whims of those people, who use that power to influence politics, in 2024 through one of the most dishonest campaign trails and propaganda operations in my living memory of American politics. I'm surprised you don't see the connection.

>>gmd63+D21
Money is power the way religion is power. Traditionally, religion is what the American right wing has used to herd its supporters, but it wasn't enough by itself to capture the entire electorate. More recently they've found that leveraging social media such as Facebook and friendly "news" outlets such as Fox gives them enough influence to take over national politics completely. If such immense power wasn't up for grabs, the money wouldn't matter.

If I said the problem was religion, I'd rightfully be taken to task. But if I were to call out the effects of evangelical subversion and abuse of protestant Christianity in America, you'd probably find room to agree. It's exactly the same with money.

We aren't going to get rid of either money or religion, but we can say that the Federal government -- and yes, the billionaires behind it -- shouldn't have anything close to this level of power.