It's a pretty good example of the point I'm trying to make that my post is being downvoted, presumably by people of the mindset of the other reply, i. e. "Nope. U STUPID. Burn all politicians". I completely agree that Citizen United is atrocious. But blanket hate and cynicism is the surefire way to populism, and the ensuing wide lurches across the political spectrum.
It just seems far too many people think everything is so bad it's time to get out the guillotines. That proposition strikes me as rather shortsighted, considering today still would seem to be the best time in history to be alive.
A revolution acts a lot like random shuffling. If you consider society as a puzzle, which is not done, but more complete than ever before, throwing it in the air and letting the pieces fall where they may seems unlikely to produce a more perfect arrangement, just by the principles of entropy.
I'm not advocating revolution, having seen the end result of one first hand, but to say that revolution is shortsighted entirely misses the forrest for the trees. All complex systems, be they biological organisms or deep learning neural networks, need randomness injected into them or they will fail to respond to the randomness of the environment around them. In the case of societies and organisms, that could very well mean extinction.
It's a risk-reward calculation like any action.
Relevant videos (IMO)
First Past The Post Voting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
Range Voting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3GFG0sXIig
Single Transferable Vote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI
Alternative Vote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
Mixed-Member Proportional Representation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU
Bonus video
This video will make you angry - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
Donating to a campaign buys influence. That politician is keen to keep a good relationship to the donators do keep the money flowing, and get good deals outside the campaign, get positions that pays him/her directly ect. In really bad cases a donor can blatantly say "I have this new boat, since I've used it once it's only worth half of the original sales price - want to buy it? And completely omit that it was actually build for the donatee". That is just some of the examples of indirect payment involved in blatant corruption.
I think this is complete nonsense. Where you see nuances I see direct conflict of interest. There are no pragmatic approaches to be made here, because they would simply not be beneficial in any case but for involved parties.
Strong condemnation and punishment of corruptions is very viable to drive up the price. For every little penny.
The more outgoing form of cynism is taking it up the... and fighting corruption isn't some inquisition to the next revolution. That is a strawman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
I can show you the increase in politicians turning into lobbyists over the years or you can research it. I know which documentary shows the number (Saving Capitalism) but don’t have time to look it up at this moment.
> Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence. Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. (...) Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. (...) All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.
What Citizens United wanted to do was distribute a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton.
If someone feels that Citizens United was wrongly decided, then I would encourage that person to read through the case in detail to understand the issues evaluated by the court - specifically, the contradictions in reasoning, chilling effects, and violations of precedent that would result from deciding the case in the alternative. Difficult topics would need to be untangled such as: why should it be unlawful for Citizens United to distribute a political documentary when it's OK for media producers like Fox News or CNN or 60 Minutes or Netflix to do so? They engage in political speech whenever critiquing a policy position or candidate.
One must consider the sweeping consequences of what it would mean to restrain corporations, including the news media, from engaging in political speech. How does journalism and freedom of the press remain in this world, or what bright line distinguishes Citizens United from any other producer of documentaries like e.g. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11)?
if something is wrong and illegal, you just change the law to make it legal and then it's not wrong, see. so these 'bribes' you are talking about arent really bribes, because they are legal.
obvious. duh.