It’s the government’s job to prevent this anticompetitive behavior but corporate lobbyists have been interfering and will until lobbying is illegal
All donations... public. All meetings... recorded and public. Air it all out. Disinfect it with sunshine.
Making it illegal will just make it hidden. It will be worse.
In fact, I've often suggested that the real solution is this. Elections and the electoral system are in the public interest, so why not fund it 100% publicly? The FEC sets aside a budget for anyone who gets a certain number of signatures of endorsement. They can spend that, and only that. They get a set amount of time on all TV stations. Nobody is allowed to donate publicly or privately. Elections are argued on their merits not on their budgets.
If it's shown to benefit a candidate, it's a crime, and you face civil and potentially criminal penalties.
That’s naive. Media is owned by a few folks. There’s nothing to stop Murdoch from broadcasting/publishing the names of only the person that Murdoch wants to win. And you’ll never hear about the little Green Party lady that YOU want to win, and you can’t donate to help her out.
You can cap TV time for funded spots, but the talking heads on radio and TV will just keep mentioning how great Candidate Y is.
Yes, there is, make it illegal.
> You can cap TV time for funded spots, but the talking heads on radio and TV will just keep mentioning how great Candidate Y is.
I'm sure after the FCC issues the first few fines they'll settle right down.
At the end of the day, all of these roadblocks can be bowled over, its just a matter of how much you want it.
My opinion is that someone should file the proper case(s) that would eventually lead to SCOTUS overturning the Citizens United ruling. Then we should move to publicly-funding races. And we should DEFINITELY remove PAC money from justice races (why is that even a thing?).
But this country has a long history of increasingly corrupt government cranking out pork barrel projects and ignoring us little people. That will not change any time soon unfortunately, without a massive revolution.
The fact that capitalism inevitably converges towards monopoly (and therefor the concentration of wealth and power) with out the intervention of the government (which is often very vulnerable to corruption at the hands of concentrated power and wealth) is effectively a fatal flaw.
This is why I am an advocate of free market socialism - a market system where companies are democratically run by their workers and the financiers are limited to a regulated return on the form of interest on their loans.
Democratic ownership can counter act the tendency to grow and absorb competitors, because each new worker who gets a vote waters down the votes and control of their fellows. Plus the bigger the organization gets, the slower and less responsive it will get. And a democratic organization run by its workers will have a myriad of motivating factors to balance, other than chasing infinite profit or return for the investors.
All of these factors will act to keep companies from growing to big and help keep the market in balance. Which benefits the consumers.
And in the meantime the fact that the workers call the shots will prevent the kinds of labor abuses that have plagued the capitalist system since its inception.
Jokes aside they may have edited their comment. HN not showing 'edited' on comments except if you specifically add 'Edit' to your post is a pet peeve of mine. You replied within 9 minutes, edits are common in that time period.
The explanation doesn't actually address anything:
> Democratic ownership can counter act the tendency to grow and absorb competitors, because each new worker who gets a vote waters down the votes and control of their fellows.
It's like saying no one will want to buy shares of a large conglomerate or vote to have it merge with another one because the shareholder's votes will be watered down. Empirically false, happens regularly in practice. Especially when the larger company with less competition could pay higher dividends/wages.
> Plus the bigger the organization gets, the slower and less responsive it will get.
Which doesn't really stop it once it merges to a monopoly and has no competitors.
> And a democratic organization run by its workers will have a myriad of motivating factors to balance, other than chasing infinite profit or return for the investors.
But being a monopoly provides more resources to tackle those other issues, at the expense of the customers, and why do the employees care about them any more than the shareholders would?
> It's like saying no one will want to buy shares of a large conglomerate or vote to have it merge with another one because the shareholder's votes will be watered down. Empirically false, happens regularly in practice. Especially when the larger company with less competition could pay higher dividends/wages.
No it isn't. Shareholder capitalism is one-share-one-vote, but those shares can and usually are concentrated under the control of a small number of people. The GGGP seems to be talking about a system of one-worker-one-vote, which would prevent that kind of concentration and therefore have a different dynamic. Also, shareholders tend to monomanically pursue maximization of dividends + capital gains over some time horizon, while I'd imagine a worker would care a more diverse range of things.
The distinction you're making doesn't appear relevant. If you're an employee and your company merges with one of equal size, your vote is diluted by half. If you're a shareholder and your company merges with one of equal size, your vote is diluted by half. It's true whether you own one share or a million.
> Also, shareholders tend to monomanically pursue maximization of dividends + capital gains over some time horizon, while I'd imagine a worker would care a more diverse range of things.
=> But being a monopoly provides more resources to tackle those other issues, at the expense of the customers, and why do the employees care about them any more than the shareholders would?
This discussion wasn't about mergers. Amazon isn't merging with anyone. They're outright buying their competition.
But the dynamic and motivations of the actors in the two systems would be different. In every company I have shares of, my ability to influence company policy with my votes literally rounds down to nothing because I own such a small fraction of shares, so I don't care about that getting diluted. 0 * 50% is still 0. Even in contemporary companies, one-worker-one-vote would give the smallest actors massively more say, and in such a system I'd imagine there'd be incentives for companies to remain smaller so each individual worker feels like they have more say over their day-to-day life.
Having a say in your area in important, and for instance (IIRC) the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram quit Facebook after it became clear that their previous assurances of maintaining control over their creations despite their dilution was a lie.
How is that not the same thing when you're dealing with companies that have thousands of employees and each individual's vote would also already be ~0%?
> and in such a system I'd imagine there'd be incentives for companies to remain smaller so each individual worker feels like they have more say over their day-to-day life.
That would only apply to companies that aren't already big. But then you're subject to the same dynamic as is already present where the larger company has greater economies of scale and undercuts the smaller company on price until they go out of business. Walmart didn't get where they are by buying all the smaller competing retailers.
Non-sequitur
And a democratic organization run by its workers will have a myriad of motivating factors to balance, other than chasing infinite profit or return for the investors.
If lobbying applied to Congress is already dirty, imagine applied to less transparent orgs.
All of these factors will act to keep companies from growing to big and help keep the market in balance. Which benefits the consumers.
Another non-sequitur
IANAL so I’m not sure why you can’t just donate it all directly to a candidate, perhaps a different section of the constitution?
Yeah and constitution needs to be changed to subject the supreme court to confirmation by the voters every so often.
I don’t have Jeff Bezos’ resources, but if I buy a single television ad to advocate for my position I should be regulated?
I don’t see a difference between media companies publishing material and overt partisans buying advertisements.