> A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery. To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”. But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery. When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a pr…
> Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.
Alright then what should it be called, because it's also not democracy.
I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it. There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret. We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hidin…
The only war is class war, but those at the top spend a lot of money creating new culture wars instead to keep us busy.
> To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me. Everyone says this kind of stuff, but honestly I don't think I agree. Everyone says that you have to be nice to these people to attract them, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for people like Trump or any of the other demagogues that have popped up in the last decade or so. These peop…
One fictional character that I think is helpful to bring is Luke Skywalker. It’s not about politeness, but about genuinely knowing why people behave the way they are and then offering them alternative other than QAnon. Listening to QAnon is a desperate attempt to understand the world after every other mainstream figure of authority failed that person. What I am talking about is not politeness. Politeness is tone mana…
I agree with what you’re saying while also thinking you’re underestimating the appeal of the destruction he’s leading them to.
It’s easier to tempt someone into getting a pizza with you than starting a diet, because pizza is more fun than diets. All that to say: the same mechanisms by which the alt-right is tempting people with cruelty aren’t going to be as effective when employed towards pro-social activity.
It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.
As someone from genx I can definitively confirm this is how it always worked. If you're younger do not delude yourselves into thinking this is all somehow new and things were better in the past. They weren't.
We used to have laws like that, but apparently our supreme court believes that bribing politicians is political speech, and curtailing that speech is unconstitutional, so... It's so broken.
Are you aware that the Citizens United case was actually about a movie? It wasn't about handing someone a stack of cash. When I see perspectives like yours, I wonder what you would say is the right way to handle the question of whether someone can make a movie that portrays a candidate in a positive or negative light. It seems to be pretty clearly a matter of free speech (first amendment), so unless there's some othe…
Before CU, "issue ads" were constrained not to mention a candidate. They could talk about the issues, and strongly hint at which candidate did what they wanted, but it couldn't instruct you on who to vote for.
Now all that's required is a thin fig leaf that you're not actually directly coordinating with the actual campaign. And even that much is never enforced. It almost completely undoes campaign limits.
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery. A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up. This is new. And now people need to decide how t…
> A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
I agree, but coding that up in law turns out to be tricky. Americans are reluctant to pass laws about how you can spend your money, especially if that money is being spent to express your opinion.
We used to have some limits on it, but now it's trivial to bypass those limits because the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment isn't limited (except for all of those other limits.)
PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of authoritarian states work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though.…
china attract zero capital in the sense being discussed here, which would be VC. it attract lots of capex expenses like factories.
Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
I am not convinced. Lots of people in Europe were connected to Epstein's network and engaged in corrupt practices - it is allegations of these that lead to the two high profile arrests in the UK. Norway has just charged a former Prime Minster (also a former Secretary General of the Council of Europe) with corruption. The US is probably more corrupt that the most developed European countries, but they have also been b…
wow. you're comparing EU: crimes happened, were exposed, people suffered consequences, with USA: no criminal suffered anything, president joining on a genocide for real state deals bribe, etc.
This is too naive. A lot of voters were eager and happy to vote for hurting other people on the premise that it was somehow going to turn into personal benefit. They are only now upset because it turns out they're being hurt too. An dpeople have short memories when it comes to this stuff. If the USA somehow manages to survive this and Trump and his allies are peacefully voted out and removed from power, I'd bet $250…
> This is too naive. A lot of voters were eager and happy to vote for hurting other people on the premise that it was somehow going to turn into personal benefit. They are only now upset because it turns out they're being hurt too. That is literally exactly what Leopards Eating People's Faces Party means. > "'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Part…
Right, but my point is that the people who vote for leopards eating faces in the first place aren't thinking critically about the leopard ended up eating their face. Conservatives are angry at Trump specifically, and they are completely missing the big picture that the entire movement of conservatism is controlled by powerful interests in service of furthering along the corporate feudalism project. They are voting emotionally with a narrow focus on whatever issues are right in front of them, unaware how extensively their attention and focus is manipulated by propaganda and the media, both mainstream and alternative. That is why people keep voting for the leopards eating faces over and over.
PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.