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Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, nothing in US politics is going to get any better until we are able to completely outlaw non-individual campaign contributions.

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Three of the individuals standing behind the president at inauguration have more wealth than the bottom 50% of people [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHH-KI2yk8s

The bottom 55% of global population holds 1% of the wealth. The top 1% hold 46% of all wealth. As of 2020. Global wealth was $418 trillion. So 1% is $4.18 trillion. I'm not sure any three people hold that much money.

This was about the US specifically.

It's more of a pyramid, lots of different layers are interested in upholding the existing system because they all benefit

And one of them makes much of his fortune from government contracts and will literally get a personal office inside the white house.

It doesn't get any more kleptocratic than that. This sort of both sides of the buy/sell conflict of interest would get you fired from any properly ran company, but there's nothing that will be properly ran going forward.

And that's not even in the top five problems with him.

There is no coming back from this to be honest. America has been a silent Oligarchy (a government by the few, for the benefit of the few) for a long time and now its just mask off... and unfortunately, the large majority of Democrats have had no interest in making meaningful change, let alone undoing these highly damaging policy changes like Citizens United and everything after that.

Kakistocracy: Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens - also comes to mind here. No one in the upper levels of government care about anything other than enriching themselves at the behest of corporations, and at the expense of everyone else's wellbeing and livelihood. Instead we get vapid shallow identity politics and "culture war" garbage, and every once in a long while we get a gutted out compromised bill that addresses 1/1000th of the problem... only to be later overturned despite it being wholly ineffective.

I just don't see the government, in this state, ever having the faculties or incentive to "fix itself." These institutions and "norms" are irreparably broken, and some people still insist on holding them in the highest regards like they are some infallible mandate.

You do realize that the United States is a Federal Republic??

There are 51 Governments inside the US. You realize we have had Oligarchs before? The Senate used to comprise so many millionaires that purchased their seats from their State Legislature that it was called "The Millionaires Club" - obviously they were all about themselves.

Americans are like the camel - our backs are so full of straw that we don't realize only one more piece of it and our backs will break. We will play along until the very day, the very hour that we don't.

Right, but we've already got limits on individual contributions, so even if you have a bunch of money, you can't have outsized influence through your individual contributions.

Individual campaign contributions are limited but wealthy individuals can still exercise outsized influence through other means such as unlimited donations to Super PACs.

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...

Well, agreed for the common Joe, but that still allows someone with a net worth in the tens of Billions to throw money around. Especially because these people have a clear conflict of interest.

They should ban money contributions completely. Each party gets the same budget (say 10M$ and you run your campaign until you have money and that's it).

You as a citizen wants to donate? Go and collect signatures, spread the word or stuff like that, but no money (IMHO).

Japan gives every candidate an equal amount of time on TV. Its just one example of something that other countries do to make elections more fair. You could limit resources and give everyone a standard platform as a baseline so that anyone outside of the deeply entrenched dual-party system has a chance to win.

Doesn't the US have similar TV laws with cable networks?

We used to have the fairness doctrine but it was repealed

This is the one I was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule#:~:text=The%20....

> nothing in US politics is going to get any better until we are able to completely outlaw non-individual campaign contributions

Banning corporate campaign donations is a good idea. It would have no effect on this news.

Even then nothing will get better.

How much can you give in relation to Kelcy Warren? Or Diane Hendricks? Or Linda McMahon?

And that's before we even get to Bezos or Musk.

We could definitely improve the arrangement of chairs on the deck of the Titanic, but we can't even get 50% of the country to recognize the most obvious grift in American history.

They will after tho - that rage is when we take Mush and Bezos rainy day funds we've allow d them to manage for us for awhile.

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