11–20 of 219 posts
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
It also doesn't work when the media is either striving to uphold the status quo that got us here or actively going out of its way to try and make things worse.
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
Plenty of billionaires all over Europe. Relative to salaries the spread is quite worse. Democracy there is perfect
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
> The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy. The government has billions of dollars. Thankfully government officials are immune to the corrupting influence of billions of dollars.
The true billionaire doesn't have anybody else to ask and can finance the campaign to get somebody (not) elected.
Regardless of what you think of Google or this case specifically, this is an argument for authoritarianism: that it is legitimate for the government to "punish" any company at will, based only on them falling into political disfavor.
> ... the only punishment Google would have to bear from this trial would come after the government won its case, when the judge decided on a punishment (the term of art is "remedy") for Google.
Yes, this is called the rule of law. Punishment comes through the courts, after a guilty verdict. The government has to actually win the argument as to what remedies would be proportionate under the law. In this case the judge didn't buy it. It's fine to disagree with his reasoning (or with the law), but the fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment here is frankly un-American.
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
I have nothing against rich. I have everything against a single person having a megaphone for themselves and a gag for everyone else and still calling it a democracy. We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Having said that, the practical implication is that money needs to loose power and there are very few ways to truly do that other than just take it away. So, I agr…
I think once someone gets to a billion dollars net worth, they should get an AmEx black card, and 99% of their assets moved into a sovereign public wealth fund. They can have anything they want, they lose the power of extreme asset allocation, and if they just like competing, they can start over and try to ring the bell again (and can give the second AmEx black card to a person of their choosing).
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
I have nothing against rich. I have everything against a single person having a megaphone for themselves and a gag for everyone else and still calling it a democracy. We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Having said that, the practical implication is that money needs to loose power and there are very few ways to truly do that other than just take it away. So, I agr…
In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power over others is one where money isn't money.
Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.
This consistently happens in a very specific way. A corporation that dominates a concentrated market becomes excessively large, which makes its early shareholders billionaires.
In other words, if you want to change this, you need to enforce antitrust laws and break up large corporations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have nothing against rich. I have everything against a single person having a megaphone for themselves and a gag for everyone else and still calling it a democracy. We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Having said that, the practical implication is that money needs to loose power and there are very few ways to truly do that other than just take it away. So, I agr…
I'm not sure I understand what distinction you're drawing between ideological opposition to rich people existing and opposition to disproportionately powerful people existing. In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power…
The average person today is much wealthier than many rich people from generations ago, even if they have less social power.
Being disproportionately powerful is tautologically a direct measure of disproportionate influence.
Tin pot dictators of resource-poor nations may not be especially wealthy compared to the very wealthy in the US, but typically have more disproportionate power (within their own country at least).
Can I opt out from having my data shared with other companies? Or will some kind of privacy framework like ATT be applied to it?
Sure, the easiest way you can do that is to move to Europe and petition its regulators to further tighten the screws. They might actually listen.