Major Study Finds the US Is an Oligarchy (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Major Study Finds the US Is an Oligarchy (2014)

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49 pointsdlcmh14 comments

The U.S. has legalized what is considered corruption in most other western democracies. Campaign finance reform is needed.

People should not be able to give money to politicians they are not eligible to vote for, i.e. rich people buying politicians on the other side of the country.

Companies, unions and trade associations are not people and should not be able to give money to politicians.

It is my understanding that the U.S. is definitely the outlier. Other countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, etc don't allow money to influence politics like in the U.S.

More information: Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it | Larry Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

Do other countries also have elections where the results take multiple days to come back??

Yeah, the Swedish elections were two months ago, and took 6 days for the official results to come in.

Not sure, but in France we get results the same day normally, unless something unexpected happens. However we only vote for one thing, municipal and national elections are not done at the same time.

It really depends on how much has to be manually counted, and when the manual counting starts.

Most states in the US used to start validating and counting mail-in and early-voting ballots as they came in (keeping the running total confidential), and only release the numbers once the on-day polling was well under way.

But under severe pressure from the "stolen vote" crowd (primarily republicans), most states are now forbidden to start counting these until after polls close, so yeah, it will take days and days to count all the mail-in ballots.

Especially if (as is common these days) a large portion of the electorate votes by mail-in or early ballots.

This is not a big issue if the number of mail-in ballots cannot significantly affect the result - you could "call" the return early - but for close races, yeah, you have to wait until the end.

Especially because the mail-in and early-voting ballots tend to be distributed very differently from day-of-election (walk-in) ballots (demographics, political leanings, etc.)

It depends if 1. the powers need to adjust undesired election results, and 2. it's technically made possible to change the desired outcome.

There is no need for an expensive Manufacturing Consent (buying all the press), when you can easily Manufacture Results.

> Other countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, etc don't allow money to influence politics like in the U.S.

Oh, they do. Money talks everywhere. It's just a little less obvious and in-your-face than in the U.S.

I mean it's pretty obvious to anyone that's paying attention. I suppose it's nice to have some data to confirm the state of affairs.

Not holding my breath for any kind of change though. Well change that gives more power to the people anyway, a furter slide towards authorianism seems likely unfortunately.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it

- George Carlin

For those who don't know, and a very pithy quote.

This is why I’m hopeful that we get over this Republic hump and, like Rome, blossom into Empire. It’s really inevitable. The only question is, do we have a serene God-King with divine grace? Or a Caligula.

Such medieval views! I hope you understand, authocracy rarely functions to your benefit

The basic promise on which pretty much every dictator gets elected is that they will subjugate and marginalize (or exile, if foreign) those who are holding society back therefore leading to prosperity.

Is that sarcasm? Otherwise what advantage do you see in living under a dictatorship?

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