Hacker News Reader

Comment by SQueeeeeL | Hacker News Reader

>At the beginning of the book, York points to a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Marsh v. Alabama, which held that private entities can become sufficiently large and public to require them to be subject to the same Constitutional constraints as government entities.

We actually live beyond a time where this is possible. The political conditions of the US have basically deteriorated to where any meaningful regulation of corporations can't really happen because of the changing laws around how corporate contributions to political campaigns work. It actively hurts whichever political party attempts to regulate (by reducing finical contributions/increasing them to the other party or rivals in primaries who "stay in their lane".)

The only group who benefits from regulation are individuals who live in the country, which really isn't enough to get laws passed.

View on HN

This is wrong and out-of-date for multiple reasons.

1. Corporate spending in politics has had negligible impact after Citizens United: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30352

2. These days, the ostensibly pro-business party(GOP) gets more of its money from individuals and SME donors than the Democratic party.

Your real problem is public opinion itself. The public in America simply trusts corporations over government institutions(except maybe the military). David Shor has great(but damning for progressives) analyses of this phenomenon.

Ironically the above take about money in politics is so popular that the narrative around it is basically impossible to change at this point (at least among people left of center). I don't think any amount of evidence could change most people's minds, and I've tried many times.

While the article you cite does not identify changes to US state taxation, in this period we've had an incredible reduction in corporate taxation at the federal level, so I'm not sure I find the research paper convincing for the larger point being discussed.

Hint: when you say “Democrat party” rather than "Democratic Party" you are giving away your game too easily. This is what GOP partisans call the party as an intentional slight. The only ordinary people I ever hear use this name are those who habitually watch Fox News.

Context and history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

I didn’t know the history behind the pejorative usage. Thanks for pointing out.

EDIT: I'm a recentish immigrant, so help me out with this inconsistency: Why Democrats and not Democratics? Why Republicans and not Republics?

Democrat is a noun, Democratic is an adjective. Republican is both (depending on context).

"Republican" and "Democratic" are modifying the noun "Party" when referring to the political organizations, so you use the adjective in those cases.

Thanks!

There is no game to be given away, this is not sports and these are not teams to be cheered for or jeered against. The modern version of the Godwin's law is people bringing up dog-whistling in a conversation.

And yet Democrat's party or party of Democrats is entirely correct. How exactly is it supposed to be interpreted as a slight in this day and age?

Seems like tilting at windmills to me.

Republicans are members of the Republican party

Democrats are members of the Democrat party

Your NBER resource is specific only to the impact of corporate spending on state-level tax policy, not "politics" writ large.

> The political conditions of the US have basically deteriorated to where any meaningful regulation of corporations can't really happen because of the changing laws around how corporate contributions to political campaigns work.

I’ve run a US Senate campaign. We raised tens of millions of dollars, and I can confidently say that corporate donations made no impact in any policy decisions - on the campaign or the official side.

That extends to individual donations as well. The caps are ~$10,000 per couple. Considering the cost of a federal campaign, no person or corporation can buy a campaign when costs are in the tens of millions and contribution caps are in the thousands.

It's also probably worth drawing distinctions around the different meanings of "corporate." The sense of "large for-profit, limited liability business entity" has eclipsed all other meanings, which is a shame.

I actually think the biggest hurdle won't be political obstacles but judicial ones. The courts have been reshaped to be extremely deferential to the interests of business/capital. And these court decisions cannot be narrowly interpreted enough to say "These laws apply to Twitter (a website the vast majority of Americans do NOT use), but cannot apply to Walmart (A business a majority of Americans do utilize)"

> meaningful regulation of corporations can't really happen

Isn't that overstating the case?

I agree corporate lobbyists have an outsized and often harmful impact. But just recently we have seen California moving toward ending sales of gasoline-powered cars. Or at the federal level, greenhouse gasses are now legally a pollutant that the EPA can regulate. With just one more Democratic senator, we would have seen the end of the carried-interest loophole. And organized labor, which serves as an important check on corporate power, has been on the rise, in part due to Federal support.

I'll also note that places like Facebook, although not yet particularly regulated, are running scared from a lot of proposed legislation, and so are increasing transparency and reducing harm in hopes of heading it off. That too checks corporate power, and is a strong sign that they don't see themselves as untouchable.

Personally, although the challenges are large, I think there's a fair bit of cause for optimism.

I agree with your assessment as of today, we can accomplish some amazing things by electing different leaders over time though. I read this as a call to activism.

If contributions to both parties get reduced equally, what's the issue?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com