Hacker News Reader

Comment by dlp211 | Hacker News Reader

The Democratic establishment is more pro-corporate than the Republican establishment? In what reality is this. Like I don't get where this idea comes from that you have to be pro-business or anti-business. I can be both pro-worker and pro-business, it's not black and white, it's shades of gray.

View on HN

> The Democratic establishment is more pro-corporate than the Republican establishment?

It depends on the company in question.

And, yes, Republicans right now are much more likely to be skeptical of Silicon Valley giants than are Democrats, who have been very cozy with Democrats since 2008.

> And, yes, Republicans right now are much more likely to be skeptical of Silicon Valley giants than are Democrats

That wasn't the claim raised or addressed.

The biggest and most powerful corporations in the world right now are tech companies, of which Republicans are increasingly skeptical and with which Democrats are increasingly cozy. So of course it's relevant to a question about how Democrats could be seen as pro-corporate.

> The biggest and most powerful corporations in the world right now are tech companies,

Not even close to true. JP Morgan, ExxonMobil, Citi, Chevron, ATT, Comcast,, Walmart, GE, GM, Berkshire Hatahway, Pfizer, Johnson & Jhonson... I could go on. Yes, Apple, MS, FB, Google are huge tech companies, but they are not the most common and not by any means "the most powerful".

The difference is none of the companies you listed have the same amount of control over the internet. SV giants are the new gatekeepers of information.

Exactly. Those companies are more of a "you buy things from them" than the "your knowledge and view of the world is filtered through it" of Google. Google yields tremendous power over people just by what results it shows them when they search for things.

But a better alternative to measure power could be lobbying efforts and spending, which the tech companies are lagging in.

... do you actually believe that?

AT&T is more powerful than Google?

Johnson & Johnson is more powerful than Apple?

The most clear and objective way to compare corporations is market capitalization, and the seven corporations with the biggest market cap in the world are all tech companies.[1]

How powerful a company is a bit harder to judge, but if anything tech companies punch above their weight when it comes to political power. Johnson & Johnson has ten times the market cap of twitter, but much less political power.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...

> I can be both pro-worker and pro-business

That's exactly what a establishment Democrat would say.

You're a libertarian, aren't you? Frankly, business's interests and worker interests are fundamentally at odds solely because labor is so expensive and having to accommodate workers' needs is expensive.

In what reality are you living in that Obama didn't give corporate America billions of dollars in hand-outs in the aftermath of 2008? Republicans aren't any better, but Democrats like to pretend they care about workers, when all they really care about is enriching the wealthy.

In my, and many realities, the Democratic and Republican establishments are the same establishment.

Not wanting to destroy your countries industries and creating a balance between workers and businesses is not the same as believing that today's large businesses are over regulated and workers have too much power.

If you are anti-capitalist, fine, but your complaint isn't the Dems are pro-business, the argument is that they are still capitalists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com