Hacker News Reader

Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

I hate corporations being activists so much. That's individuals' role, if you don't vote you don't get to be an activist. In reality this means corporations have loud voices and fat wallets drowning out the small guy's voice and effectively changing democracy to corporocracy. Maybe companies should run for office too then since they are now persons.

But that quote I think is just saying to pick and choose your battles wisely.

You can't blame half of america feeling alienated in their own country when bigcorpo uses their might in every avenue possible to oppose their views (conservatives), despite what you may think of them you still have to share a country with the people you disagree with. People shouldn't have to fight or have political discourse against companies, it should be individuals that debate, discuss and influence political outcomes in a democracy.

Perhaps we are now in a neo-feudalist society?

View on HN

What do you think about the public school teachers union? They present their politics to the kids for a thousand hours a year, for 13 years.

I'm imagining some secret cabal of the wealthy and powerful, making a blunder in their manipulations of society: deciding that US schoolteachers, who naturally will be a formative influence on children, should be educated and underpaid.

Within 2-3 generations of that nurturing of awareness and identification with lower socioeconomic classes, the entire populace ends up inclined to look out for equity for each other, and tears down the cabal.

I guess it's not that simple.

They do so as individuals and school employees not as union members, they do have to follow curriculum as well and I do agree that they should leave their biased political views at the door of the school, this applies to consrvative teachers as well. Parents should raise kids, not teachers.

The teachers unions have an awful lot to do with the curriculum.

> Parents should raise kids, not teachers.

True. But parents do not choose the curriculum, and are not talking at their kids 6 hours a day.

> they should leave their biased political views at the door of the school

Sure, but it's naive to believe that they actually do.

The problem with this line of thinking is the power that media companies have. Media companies have immense power to alter political discourse to fit the narratives they prefer. Which gives immense political power to the owners of media companies, like Rupert Murdoch. Sometimes, enough power to "choose" senators, congresspeople, and even presidents. And this power doesn't have competition unless you allow all other companies to fight for their narratives with money.

What you have at the end is a stinking cesspool, but this cesspool is still better than your country's politicians pledging allegiance to the equivalents of Rupert Murdoch. This is exactly like Churchill's characterization of Democracy - horrible system but better than any other alternative.

You can't make that argument now with the internet where individuals can and do (see HN or reddit front page) reach a wide audience that can compete with the media. But even with old media, individuals are given a platform from opinion pieces to interviewing regular people. But mixing of journalism and entertainment type opinion shows (most of fox and msnbc for example) is not a good thing for democracy.

Are you okay with companies being politically involved when it comes to their business?

I am not, but i am ok with executives doing so as individuals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com