Comment by roymurdock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roymurdock | Hacker News Reader

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Voting is only a small part of the power equation. Money and influence is a much larger one.

Captains of business, finance, and education make a lot of important decisions and use money to influence the political process through lobbying and litigation. As corporations grow in power, gaining more rights and representation, so does this channel of political influence, which is controlled almost exclusively by an older cohort.

The article calls this out in detail: casino interests played a huge role in destroying Sydney's nightlife in order to funnel drinkers to the casino bars that were exempt from shutdown laws.

Notable exceptions would be Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Evan Spiegel. But they are just that: exceptions. And I wouldn't exactly consider any of them role models or champions for a younger generation.

Dont forget the power of the media! Newspapers, internet websites, public TV and radio stations. The they tell the "truth". The truth of the baby boomers.

I'm not sure the problem with the media is an age thing as much as a wealth thing. Wages for journalists are at rock bottom at the moment, and media publications are losing a fairly large amount of money due to the increased use of adblockers and competition from free internet sites. So the only people who can afford to become part of the established 'media' are the already well off types.

So the people who'd argue for change can't afford to live on the wages provided, leaving only the people with a decent amount of money in the bank (and who usually trend towards having more conservative or authoritarian views). It might also be why journalism isn't particularly diverse in terms of who works in the field (despite what some of them like arguing about), because non minority candidates tend to have the support networks to fall back on to continue working in the field.

If there's a predominance of older people at the higher levels in the media world on the other hand, I suspect it's because getting rich in this industry was a lot easier before the internet was a big thing. Most of these people started when anyone wanting visibility had to go through the old media gatekeepers...

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