A 2014 Princeston study found that the opinions of interest groups and the wealthiest 10% drive decisions in congress. The interests of the rest of the country are pretty much irrelevant.
I suspect that an updated study would find the same trends. The elites who run things view the rest of the country as a resource to exploit. Average Americans are viewed as a threat that needs to be suppressed and fooled with lies and propaganda.
The rich and powerful have always had big say in the political system. Originally voting rights were limited to white male landowners. The centuries have greatly expanded suffrage, but it looks like the vast majority of the country have virtually no say in the government.
Is it just becoming more apparent that the system is rigged?
Or has there been a real shift towards oligarchy and away from representative democracy in recent decades?
Recent decades have seen a massive increase in the capabilities for electronic surveillance by the government and large corporations. The ability of the government and it corporate allies to control and intimidate the population is far greater than anything that existed in the past.
There was a time when wiretaps required tape recording devices and electromechanical switches. Reading someoneās mail required a court order. Now every phone conversation, every email, every internet search, is recorded and stored by the government in cooperation with Big Tech companies.
The ability of the government and large corporations to surveille and intimidate has greatly increased. At the same time the size of the military and surveillance state has greatly increased since the WW2.
The study showed that 90% of the population have effectively zero voice. Is that a good thing?
The system is rigged. That is obvious. Ask the people of East Palestine.
A cabal of the elites and special interests even bragged about rigging it. Of course they claimed it was a good thing; they were āsaving democracyā.
TIME refers to the effort as āa well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.
My current most wanted bill is, no advertising directed at minors and no social media for minors. Itās ridiculous that we let corps research and model kid psychology to sell them soda and skittles.
And now the feds are claiming obesity is a disease in kids to be treated with drugs and surgery. Madness. When will you blue people pull away in horror?
Oops harsher then I wanted but what the actual f word.
A lot of people didnāt get the memo, most psych experiments arenāt reproducible. Was a big scandal in the psych field a while back, mostly forgotten now.
Completely unrelated to funding. Peter Singer is one of the few people to take utilitarianism to its logical conclusion. We should keep him in the public as a horrible warning for others, especialky economists.
Having recognized this obvious fact, maybe we can agree to push for legislation that overturns citizens united? Federalize election funding to keep money out of politics?
