Comment by 0110101001 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0110101001 | Hacker News Reader

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The authors of that study started by filtering down a giant list of survey responses to those where there's a significant difference in responses between the "donor class" and everyone else. I forget exactly how often that happened, but it's a small number.

So, just in the premise the study, by needing to throw away almost all the survey responses where everyone agrees and get the policies what they want, actually goes a far way to debunking the populist premise that "economic elites" and "the People" are opposing factions with inherently different political opinions.

Further, the study considered the group as "disagreeing" if the margin in survey answers was at least 10%. So if 90% of one group wanted something and 80% of the other, that was considered as them disagreeing.

When a follow-up study further filtered responses to questions where more that margin spans the 5% mark, i.e. most people in each group disagree, then the effect completely disappears and it's more or less a coin toss which way policy goes.

> The authors of that study started by filtering down a giant list of survey responses to those where there's a significant difference in responses between the "donor class" and everyone else. I forget exactly how often that happened, but it's a small number.

> So, just in the premise the study, by needing to throw away almost all the survey responses where everyone agrees and get the policies what they want, actually goes a far way to debunking the populist premise that "economic elites" and "the People" are opposing factions with inherently different political opinions.

Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that "when the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone gets what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy, nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what they want anyway."

> When a follow-up study further filtered responses to questions where more that margin spans the 5% mark, i.e. most people in each group disagree, then the effect completely disappears and it's more or less a coin toss which way policy goes.

So you're saying that when like, 90% of the rich people wanted A and 90% of the poor people wanted B, then it was a coin toss? That would make a good argument if so. Can you link to the study?

EDIT: Actually now that I think about it, it doesn't really make a good argument, because the donor class is so much smaller than the non- that if 90% of donors want A and 90% of the poor want B, B should prevail easily. So if it's a coin toss, that's extremely biased, no?

> Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that "when the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone gets what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy, nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what they want anyway."

That's how I read it too.

>Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that "when the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone gets what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy, nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what they want anyway."

Not the GP, but I think that the interests of the general public are actually much more closely aligned with those of "the elite" far more than people would like to believe. If for 90% of the issues the elite are just as likely to disagree amongst themselves than with the general public, it would be absurd to conclude that "democracy is a sham."

When Roe v. Wade got overturned, a lot of people on the internet were proclaiming this was an act by "the elite" who want cheap workers. In reality, virtually every billionaire who has a vocal opinion on abortion is pro-choice, and several have donated hundreds of millions towards the cause.

> Not the GP, but I think that the interests of the general public are actually much more closely aligned with those of "the elite" far more than people would like to believe. If for 90% of the issues the elite are just as likely to disagree amongst themselves than with the general public, it would be absurd to conclude that "democracy is a sham."

Sure, that may or may not be true, but we're discussing a study that claims that when the two groups disagree, the smaller one wins.

> When Roe v. Wade got overturned, a lot of people on the internet were proclaiming this was an act by "the elite" who want cheap workers. In reality, virtually every billionaire who has a vocal opinion on abortion is pro-choice, and several have donated hundreds of millions towards the cause.

RvW was overturned by the supreme court, but I think the effect we're discussing applies to laws enacted by the legislature. This article references the paper: https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...

> the interests of the general public are actually much more closely aligned with those of "the elite" far more than people would like to believe

If that were true corporate lobbying wouldn't exist, so this theory is obviously false.

We're talking about the money here.

Issues like guns, abortion, gay marriage -- social issues -- are used to divide and distract the public from the financial issues which our uniparty in DC almost always goes the same way on, and which the public generally does Not support.

Big pharma, the banks, the arms industry, big agriculture -- I mean do we really have to list every industry? All of them profit by subverting the interests of the public and they do, to the tune of trillions of dollars. "absurd to conclude that "democracy is a sham" -- not absurd, obvious.

> In reality, virtually every billionaire who has a vocal opinion on abortion is pro-choice, and several have donated hundreds of millions towards the cause.

The first part of this is just false, you're being tremendously selective about which billionaires you're including. There are plenty of stinking rich anti-abortion people who have poured huge amounts into their cause.

Now, as to which group is larger, or richer, I leave that for someone with the time to look at the data, but it is not as open and shut as you're suggesting.

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