Oligarchy

overthinkpodcast.com

4 pointsBiraIgnacio2 comments

Is Trump’s presidential reign turning the US into an oligarchy? Or did the US fall into oligarchic rule many years ago? In episode 127 of Overthink, David and Ellie dive into what an oligarchy looks like, the dangers of a country’s power being in the hands of the wealthy few, and whether or not oligarchic rule is new for the US. They look to the ancient Greeks for ideas on which form of government is conducive to the good life and explore how Aristotle’s notion of pleonexia relates to the current state of the US. Your hosts investigate how oligarchy morphs into tyranny, and try to answer the question, “How can we resist an oligarchy?” In the bonus, Ellie and David look at the four different types of oligarchy discussed by Jeffrey Winters.

Timothy Snyder also recorded a 15 minute talk about oligarchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA

I believe Lawrence Lessig also, in all but direct language, explained how citizens united was a revolution against the constitution that literally turned us into a plutocracy, a government where money votes for candidates. Once people with money choose candidates, those people can vote for candidates that let them consolidate power and make more money, which gives them more political power until power is centralized enough a few major players that own media and intelligence companies can rival the states ability to communicate information or perform "intelligence" tasks.

The purpose of intelligence could be said to find terrorists, but to someone like Peter Thiel, a journalist is a terrorist, so intelligence capabilities in private hands work against anyone fighting power held by private individuals.

If an intelligence apparatus is a function of state, then privatized intelligence is unfortunately indicative of private individuals with state like capabilities.

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