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My basic problem with the 'capitalism is anti-democratic' is that it denies people's agency. Campaign contributions matter because they can be used to convince people to vote in a particular direction. So, the election is, in some sense, a legitimate expression of the people's will. The idea that people's opinions are mailable could be used as a legitimate criticism of the idea of democracy. Maybe we should govern ourselves by something other than people's votes. (Though, most alternative plans come off, "If only we gave power to me, or someone like me...") To call capitalism 'anti-democratic' a person pretty-much needs to claim that everyone's stated preferences somehow don't count. Sure, a random red-state voter will swear up and down that they're voting their conscience. But our anti-capitalist knows better. Someone they are the clear-eyed ones who've somehow been unaffected by their culture's influence. They're the ones above marketing. And if only everyone shared their privileged vantage point, then all those other people would agree with the conclusions.
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Apr 29, 2014 02:53
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rudatron posted:The two have always been in conflict, hence the aversion of the US founding fathers to direct democracy (which they pejoratively called "mob rule"). I'm saying that the anti-capitalist critique is that public policy is too mailable with respect to public opinion. People can make that critique if they want. But 'anti-democratic' is the wrong word for it.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:14
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Badera posted:You just made my argument for me. Money is influence. I think you're buying into your own rhetoric too much. Ultimately, people (not dollars) vote. So, public opinion is influence. And money is useful for shaping public opinion. You can call this a lot of things. Maybe it's too easy to move public opinion. But I don't see how a system that was less responsive to people's stated desires could possibly be called 'more democratic'. If you're looking for a rule by The Right Sort of Person, perhaps people who are Educated On Important Topics, then that's an oligarchy. Perhaps a benevolent one. But an oligarchy none-the-less.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:23
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Badera posted:Well, you've got me there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that democracy doesn't exist in a vacuum--that the dominant class in society (in your example, non-slave, perhaps property-owning men) is going to be the only class that is meaningfully enfranchised. Rome is a good example of that. The government responds to votes. This is why money works. So, the only way to claim the government works for one class (as opposed to voters) is to claim that you know a class's interests better than its members. And hey, maybe you do. Maybe religion is the opiate of the masses. Maybe the masses would be better off if they adopted your perspective, and your view that economic issues should outweigh various social or identity-based distractions. But at that people you're setting yourself up as a Shepherd, who'd like to guide the masses for their own benefit -- even if it means temporarily restraining them from the things they think they want. That can be utilitarian if you're convinced of your own rightness. But I don't see how it's conceivably 'democratic'.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:28
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OwlBot 2000 posted:You seem to think the problem is that people vote for the wrong candidates, when in reality its that their voting doesn't have a meaningful effect on policy as compared to throwing huge sums of money at politicians. By and large poor people and minorities vote for the lefter party and rich white people vote for Republicans. Campaign finance is probably a smaller issue than being able to control any politician of any political orientation once he or she takes office. I just disagree with you. Money matters to politicians only in as far as they can pocket it (as straight-up bribes) or use it in an election campaign. And it only matters in election campaigns only in as far as it gets votes. Collecting money is just a proximate goal for politicians. The ultimate goal is votes. When we stop conflating the means (money) with the ends (votes) the bold line becomes: their votes don't have a meaningful effect on policy as compared to the ability to deliver their votes [via money] And I'm saying this is a distinction without a difference, given that everyone feels that their ballot-box preferences are sincere.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:40
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Job Truniht posted:You can create an oligarchy by having everyone equally uninformed about their own interests. The problem is that the public is complacent towards their own cognitive dissonance in regards how they should treat the upper class. People perceive meritocratic values as having access to wealth in society, but refuse to delve further into the coddling that goes in Washington. This is you saying that people have wrong-preferences. Maybe they do. Maybe your preferences are better. But wanting the system to ignore the majority in favor of you is not a call for increased democracy.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:42
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Rob Filter posted:Democracy is a system. The system has a goal; ensure that the actions of the government best represent the will of the people. Actually, yes. The argument seems to rely on a premise that people have a 'true' will, distinct from that they merely think they want. And you appear to be judging systems based on how close they get to that 'true' goal. I disagree in that I'm not convinced that this true will exists. And I don't think the metric is a good way to measure democracy. Problem with the metric is that we could imagine some Oracle that would answer the question, "What party would I vote for if I had full-information and arbitrary time for contemplation?" We run an election. The Green-Party wins the majority of human votes. The Yellow-Party wins the majority of Oracle's simulated votes. A system which chooses the Yellow-Party might be a better outcome. It might be a better representation of what people's preferences would be if they were different. But I don't think we can call it 'more democratic'.
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Apr 29, 2014 04:10
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Care to provide some sources for that, that they don't care about money, only votes? Politicians who play nicely with corporations get board positions, speaking tours, and much more access to wealth and power after the leave office. This is true of appointees as well, who are not elected and don't have to worry about votes but still wield a great degree of control and can get high-paying positions after they leave their posts. Please read that study that was posted, poor people do know what they want, politicians just don't care because there's no money in it for them. Here's a study that finds the opposite: http://cori.missouri.edu/pages/seminars/AES_JEP_2003.pdf Abstract posted:We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals, not special interests, are the main source of campaign contributions. Moreover, we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good, dependent upon income, and campaign contributions as a percent of GDP have not risen appreciably in over 100 years: if anything, they have probably fallen. We then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators' votes. Finally, we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects, there is little relationship between money and legislator votes. Thus, the question is not why there is so little money politics, but rather why organized interests give at all. We conclude by offering potential answers to this question. I'm going to take a bit to really read through the paper you linked. (I'm also looking for some literature reviews to avoid the temptation to cherry-pick studies based on their conclusion) While I do, I'd like to see if we have agreement on a narrower point: I'll claim that campaign donations are valuable in as far as they're able to influence people's votes. And I'll stay that this happens via changing people's perceived preferences over candidates. Do we agree? Again, I'm walking back to just campaign donations and PAC spending.
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Apr 29, 2014 04:27
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I'll read that article as well, but one obvious response to "why there is so little money in politics" is because it just doesn't cost that much.. If companies really expect a 77,500% ROI on their lobbying-investments, why not keep going? If any other investment had returns like that, we'd expect it to be flooded with cash until companies started to crowd each other out.
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Apr 29, 2014 04:39
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ColoradoCleric posted:OWS had some big issues with capitalism being potentially undemocratic. How so? OWS was a bunch of people who shared a political position. They wanted other people to agree or vote accordingly. So they set up a demonstration and some outreach. Ultimately, they didn't shift an election. This seems like democracy-in-action. These people are guaranteed a right to vote, and the chance to try and convince other people. But democracy doesn’t (and can't) guarantee a few thousand people the right to win elections. Especially when those few-thousand are taking a position like, "The 90%+ people who vote for a mainstream party are wrong: All those guys are fundamentally wrong and should be removed."
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May 1, 2014 03:20
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