Corporate Wealth Growth should fund Infrastructure Improvements

[Kooky]

Reread your own post and it should be fairly obvious to you what I was commenting on. You claim that people have never been capable of cleaning up the ever-present political corruption by voting for better candidates. This is false.

Do you have counterexamples?

Such corruption is not ever-present, nor is it impossible to eliminate it through concerned voting.

I did not call it "ever present" and did not want to imply that it was. I simply stated that you cannot get rid of systemic corruption simply by voting in the 'correct' people. That doesn't mean we cannot do anything at all. It is a serious flaw in the thinking of many citizens of democracies that you only ever change society with elections, or that elections are even the predominant or most effective way to change society for the better. They are not; they are simply one tool in a revolutionary's toolbox - not to be willfully discarded, certainly, but also not to be overly relied on, unless the situation specifically calls for its usage.

I agree that our capitalist economic system causes and feeds the current runaway political corruption. But that's the 'tail wagging the dog'. The purpose of government was never supposed to be to serve the whims of commerce (human greed). It was supposed to be to oversee the whims of commerce, so as to protect us all from each other, economically. Capitalism gives all commercial control to the capital investors, exclusively, which rewards wealth with more wealth. And that means that the wealth piles up under the control of the most aggressive and greedy few among us, enabling them to use some of that massive wealth to corrupt and control the government. Hence, the 'tail wagging the dog'.

Au contraire, the purpose of government has always been to serve the ruling class first and foremost.

Any further benefits for the masses have been the result of extended political struggles and the exertion of massive pressure on elected officials and unelected elites both. We can see this in the Reaganization/Thatcherization of Western social states from the late 1970s on, when as soon as the threat of a communist takeover was off, governments started cutting brutal swathes through previously guaranteed labor rights and welfare programs.

The solution is end or limit capitalism so that the wealth cannot pile up under the control of the most aggressive and greedy few, but that can't happen until the dog gets control of it's tail. And since it will not do so of it's own accord (the politicians can't refuse the bribery) we have to do it for them. And the ONLY means we have of doing that is through the vote, or through violent overthrow.

There are deeper underlying reasons why politicians take corporate donations/bribes, this is not just due to their failing morals or the corrupt nature of certain politicians, but the economics inherent to this system, economics that need to be challenged themselves, and this needs to start long before elections are up, at the point when campaigns are being organized and funds are being raised.

At this point, there are two approaches that have been shown as effective in circumventing the existing corporate donation economy:

• The first is the Trump approach of candidates simply being independently wealthy and outright buying their own campaign (though it has also been shown that this has the exact opposite effect on political corruption than people have been hoping for).
• The second is simply avoiding corporate financing in favor of increasing the sheer amount of private citizen donations to a campaign, as demonstrated by Social Democratic candidates like Sanders or Occasio-Cortez.

Of course, both of these methods have serious drawbacks and weaknesses, and are ultimately band-aids and stop-gap measures to avoid addressing the elephant in the room, which is an enormous wealth disparity that allows the wealthy a disproportionate amount of power to influence both elections and candidate policies.

 

[PureX]

I did not call it "ever present" and did not want to imply that it was. I simply stated that you cannot get rid of systemic corruption simply by voting in the 'correct' people.

But of course, we can. Bribery was once illegal in the U.S. legislature. Now it is not. This change happened because the legislators themselves decided to make bribery legal. And the right set of future legislators could even more easily make it illegal, again. All we have to do is vote in legislators that are willing to do that. But to do that we have to stop buying into the reps/dems, libs/cons, endless division, and start voting en masse. If we simply vote out every incumbent in every election regardless of party unless and until we get someone who is will to act to end the legalized bribery, we could get it done in a fairly short time. But awe have to vote en masse to do this. We have to stop buying into the division that the current politicians and the media have been pushing us into for 40 years, now.

Au contraire, the purpose of government has always been to serve the ruling class first and foremost.

That kind of cynicism is not helpful. It just serves to enable the corruption.

There are deeper underlying reasons why politicians take corporate donations/bribes, this is not just due to their failing morals or the corrupt nature of certain politicians, but the economics inherent to this system, economics that need to be challenged themselves, and this needs to start long before elections are up, at the point when campaigns are being organized and funds are being raised.

At this point, there are two approaches that have been shown as effective in circumventing the existing corporate donation economy:

• The first is the Trump approach of candidates simply being independently wealthy and outright buying their own campaign (though it has also been shown that this has the exact opposite effect on political corruption than people have been hoping for).
• The second is simply avoiding corporate financing in favor of increasing the sheer amount of private citizen donations to a campaign, as demonstrated by Social Democratic candidates like Sanders or Occasio-Cortez.

Of course, both of these methods have serious drawbacks and weaknesses, and are ultimately band-aids and stop-gap measures to avoid addressing the elephant in the room, which is an enormous wealth disparity that allows the wealthy a disproportionate amount of power to influence both elections and candidate policies.

Having rich candidates is a non-starter. It only fuels the bias and corruption. Publicly supporting the campaigns is what we used to do, in the past, and is what we should be doing in the future. Along with some SERIOUS campaign methodology reforms. Meaningless advertisements that cost a fortune should be eliminated, and more effort put into public interviews, discussions, and debates, which actually cost very little. In years past, the networks were obliged to provide air time for these.

All that is missing is the will, and only the people, en masse, can create that.

 

[Revoltingest]

Telling ourselves that corruption is eternal, and inevitable, only serves to condone it.

Wrongo pongo.
Corruption is an emergent property of being a human
with any power. Human nature won't just go away.
So this should motivate eternal vigilance against it.

 

[Kooky]

Wrongo pongo.
Corruption is an emergent property of being a human
with any power. Human nature won't just go away.
So this should motivate eternal vigilance against it.

Hence, anarchism.

 

[Revoltingest]

Hence, anarchism.

Until we have anarchy, & I can with impunity
just shoot any corrupt malefactors, we could
try voting them out of office.

 

[PureX]

Corruption is an emergent property of being a human
with any power. Human nature won't just go away.
So this should motivate eternal vigilance against it.

That's what governments were intended for. So when they become corrupt, they have failed their purpose, and must either be fixed, or replaced.

Our government has failed it's purpose. It has become corrupted by the very criminal greed and selfishness it was intended to control, and protect us against. So it needs to be either fixed or replaced. Excusing it by claiming that all humans are greedy and selfish is just stupid excuse-making, and enabling. We know all humans are greedy and selfish, that's WHY WE CREATE GOVERNMENTS. But the governments are run by humans, so they have to be set up just right, and watched over very carefully, to keep those humans involved from becoming corrupted by their own greed and selfishness. They need to be made to serve rather than rule. To represent rather than dictate. And that means we all have to watch and participate in it's functioning. We have to act together for all our best interest to keep our government on course and functioning as it is supposed to.

We have failed in this. And we are continuing to fail in this, because we have allowed ourselves to be divided against each other by corporate criminals who now control the government, the media, and the minds of far too many of us.

 

[Revoltingest]

That's what governments were intended for. So when they become corrupt, they have failed their purpose, and must either be fixed, or replaced.

Our government has failed it's purpose. It has become corrupted by the very criminal greed and selfishness it was intended to control, and protect us against. So it needs to be either fixed or replaced. Excusing it by claiming that all humans are greedy and selfish is just stupid excuse-making, and enabling. We know all humans are greedy and selfish, that's WHY WE CREATE GOVERNMENTS. But the governments are run by humans, so they have to be set up just right, and watched over very carefully, to keep those humans involved from becoming corrupted by their own greed and selfishness. They need to be made to serve rather than rule. To represent rather than dictate. And that means we all have to watch and participate in it's functioning. We have to act together for all our best interest to keep our government on course and functioning as it is supposed to.

We have failed in this. And we are continuing to fail in this, because we have allowed ourselves to be divided against each other by corporate criminals who now control the government, the media, and the minds of far too many of us.

All governmental systems will have failures....at least as
long as humans operate them. All we can do is design
the best system we can, one with minimum deleterious
effects due to human failures. Eternal vigilance will be
necessary for any government.

 

[PureX]

All governmental systems will have failures....at least as
long as humans operate them.

I don't see how you think this point is salient.

Of course no human system is perfect. But that doesn't alter the fact that we create governments to protect us from each other's imperfections (greed, stupidity, and selfishness). If the government has become so corrupted by these that it can no longer do this reasonably effectively, then it's a failed government, and it needs to be fixed or replaced.

All we can do is design the best system we can, one with minimum deleterious effects due to human failures. Eternal vigilance will be necessary for any government.

It's not about doing the "best we can". It's about "it works or it doesn't". Accepting failed government because it's the "best we can do" is idiocy. And way too many Americans seem to have fallen into this idiotic mind-set. Which only enables the failure and the damage it does to us all.

That's why I don't see why you keep interjecting the acceptance of failure as inevitable. Imperfection is inevitable and must be accepted. But failure is not inevitable and should not be accepted.

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't see how you think this point is salient.

It's a useful premise.

That's why I don't see why you keep interjecting the acceptance of failure as inevitable. Imperfection is inevitable and must be accepted. But failure is not inevitable and should not be accepted.

To think it can be entirely prevented is to deny reality.
It must be managed....minimized.

 

[PureX]

It's a useful premise.

To think it can be entirely prevented is to deny reality.
It must be managed....minimized.

Why this weird emphasis on "entirely"? Are you trying to claim that we must accept government corruption because we can't "entirely" eradicate it? Is that your argument, here? Because, you know, even though perfection is an unattainable ideal, it's still a very good and useful ideal to pursue. While making excuses for imperfection is a very dangerous and slippery slope to be dancing on.

 

[Revoltingest]

Why this weird emphasis on "entirely"? Are you trying to claim that we must accept government corruption because we can't "entirely" eradicate it? Is that your argument, here? Because, you know, even though perfection is an unattainable ideal, it's still a very good and useful ideal to pursue. While making excuses for imperfection is a very dangerous and slippery slope to be dancing on.

Don't accept corruption.
Work against it.

 

[PureX]

Don't accept corruption.
Work against it.

VOTE against it!

We need to stop voting for known criminals because we think they'll serve our agenda with their criminality instead of the "other guys" (greed, stupidity, and selfishness). We need to realize that they are ALL criminals until and unless they are willing to ACT to stop the legalized bribery and corruption that has rendered our government a near total failure.