Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

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That is inconsistent with the country's founding: the political system, as founded, is supposed to serve wealthy citizens first. It's a country founded on class, founded on making profit. You are white, you have land, you're a man, then you have a political voice. If you lack one of those, you cannot participate. And it was that way for a longer period of time, than it has been since womens' suffrage and the civil rights act of 1965.

Despite being more democratic today than its founding, there's still present a substantial minority who appear to believe in the proper existence of aristocracy. Family name, bloodline, class, are real things, they define who is better and who is inferior. Better people have more money, and they can buy things inferior people can't, or they can buy better versions: privacy, education, health care, justice, political representation, police protection, tax avoidance. Those things are products.

What most people are trying to do is find a civil way of playing reasonably fair. But aristocrats think money buys everything, so when catastrophe comes along to equalize things, they never see it coming. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...

Grassroots - socialdemocracy that sprung froms scandinavia but has major partial similarities to alot of European countries pre EU when the public sector was larger (around 10%). Through grassroots people achieved greater impact for the state (as represented by the people for the people) through law, regulation and public ownership ("the greater good"). That change was not brought on catastrophically but incrimentally by the poor working class also even partially by what today would be called entrepreneurs (the liberals of those days) that realised that local companies could gain more by increasing the wealth for the local populace who could then produce more efficiently (win/win).

Anyway, when people impact through the national state they have power, when wealth is shifted from nation to private hands is when the public should start to move. I'm still surprised the reality that could be had by the big short (2015) where moody's et al with rubberstamping actively helps in making that shift happen. It seems like hidden plutocrats have greenlit to jump ship more or less...

What people need to do is to organise, activate and put real pressure on those working for as few as possible instead of as many as possible. Once real democratic rule has been established through law and oversight (transparency - means disabling some shadow groups in the gov and right outside it) a more egalitarian and utilitarian (efficient) society will spring forth.

Well when you have a substantial amount of the population voting against their economic interest, do not trust the political system to the degree they like hearing autocratic rhetoric like "so called judges" and "do nothing congress" and "rigged elections" and "fake news media" - that sort of denigration of checks and balances in favor of unity executive is totally the opposite of anything grassroots, or democracy.

It's people who have no trust in those things, and just want to go back to a simple life of one deity, one leader, a small bunch of benevolent aristocrats, and everyone else gets a basic job and they just suck it up and like it.

A significant minority is convinced crony capitalism is real capitalism, and the only reason why it doesn't work perfectly is because of government, gays, and libtards. That's the political reality of ~80% of Republicans who still approve of everything this U.S. administration is doing. That may only be 25% of the eligible voting population, but then a bit over 50% of those eligible voters could not be bothered to participate at all. So you have a sizable minority of anti-democratic people who want a weak autocrat to just fix things and de-Obamafy the country. And a bunch of disinterested people. Ergo 3/4 of the voting eligible population.

It's a problem.

Perhaps the fact that catastrophe is the only thing leads to increased equality (in dollar terms) is a sign that equality (in dollar terms) is a bad heuristic for net social utility.

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