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Someone needs to go to jail

edwardelson.substack.com

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61–70 of 76 posts

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#61

Post by jmye »

bobomonkey wrote: post #60
mingus88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convince me that the solution is not to remove money from the process entirely. I’m just spitballing here but why don’t we have a system where every candidate gets the same allocation of money for ads and it is outlawed to use your own fortune to bankroll your candidacy In a world where social media companies are all run by billionaires, let them pollute the feeds with their candidate of choice. This only speedruns t…

Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage. In my opinion, this isn't a easy problem if you value freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of people to spend their own money.

> Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage.

Or buy Twitter.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#62

Post by voisin »

Caius-Cosades wrote: post #28
outside1234 wrote: post #11

We are in a battle of top 0.01% vs. the bottom 99.99% where the top 0.01% has convinced us that our enemy is the "right" or the "left" such that we are distracted from our actual oppressors.

Yeah, remember occupy wallstreet? They got spooked and pretty much whipped up the whole identity-politics thing overnight in response. And unfortunately it did work.

Identity politics was the primary agenda well before occupy wall street. Think about the religious right in the early 90s pushing abortion and gay marriage as primary political issues to drive voters.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#63

Post by actionfromafar »

deathanatos wrote: post #57
actionfromafar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this "Black Lives Matter" running for President?

Is this "Citizens United" running for President? Obviously neither is running for president. But collective groups of people may wish to support certain causes, bills, or even candidates who support such things. Do I prevent all collectives of people — and since everyone's favorite punching bag is the evil corporation — including non-profits and unions (which is what the original case was about!) — from spending mone…

Citizens United has tax ID 91-1433368 and is a 501(c)(4) in Washington, D.C.

Where is "Black Lives Matter" headquartered?

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#64

Post by Tadpole9181 »

bobomonkey wrote: post #60
mingus88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convince me that the solution is not to remove money from the process entirely. I’m just spitballing here but why don’t we have a system where every candidate gets the same allocation of money for ads and it is outlawed to use your own fortune to bankroll your candidacy In a world where social media companies are all run by billionaires, let them pollute the feeds with their candidate of choice. This only speedruns t…

Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage. In my opinion, this isn't a easy problem if you value freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of people to spend their own money.

And fix: a functioning government would make a law that outlaws such flagrant abuse of a media company.

What, if making murder illegal was hard would you just throw your hands and give up and make murder legal? Why is it that suddenly, when it's about corporations to do whatever they want - including destroy democracy itself - we're little babies who can't possibly lift a single finger to stop it?

But that guy who sold an eighth? Implement the full extent of mass surveillance and send a tactical SWAT team to the wrong house to arrest him for 40 years!

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#65

Post by judahmeek »

throwaway87543 wrote: post #48
deathanatos wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people hate Citizens United, but to me, if the debate on this is ever to progress: what's the alternative? Say I and a bunch of my friends donate money to promote some cause; let's say "Black Lives Matter", for the sake of argument. Is that also off the table? Is there to be no ability for people to associate & collectively argue for change (e.g., by buying an ad to raise awareness)? Or, is it fine when I do i…

Campaign finance laws were set up tell you where the line is. There needs to be a line because the amount of reach you have should not grow with your wealth. But Citizens United made the money as speech an unlimited right. Spending $250 is a completely different category than spending $250 million.

But where's the line between political contribution & opinionated news article about a political candidate?

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#66

Post by UncleMeat »

deathanatos wrote: post #40
Animats wrote: post #25

It begins to look like Citizens United [1] cost us democracy. "That government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich shall not perish from the earth." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

I know people hate Citizens United, but to me, if the debate on this is ever to progress: what's the alternative? Say I and a bunch of my friends donate money to promote some cause; let's say "Black Lives Matter", for the sake of argument. Is that also off the table? Is there to be no ability for people to associate & collectively argue for change (e.g., by buying an ad to raise awareness)? Or, is it fine when I do i…

The alternative was what we had between McCain-Feingold and Citizens United, which was not a hellscape of limitations on collective action.

This isn't some hypothetical world. We had it.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#67

Post by UncleMeat »

tomhow wrote: post #52
outside1234 wrote: post #11

We are in a battle of top 0.01% vs. the bottom 99.99% where the top 0.01% has convinced us that our enemy is the "right" or the "left" such that we are distracted from our actual oppressors.

Please don't make grand sweeping proclamations on HN. We're here for curious conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think that this is ridiculous. The idea that grand sweeping proclamations cannot be curious is plainly false. We can look at numerous excellent works of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that produce grand sweeping proclamations that are nevertheless backed by years of archival or scientific research performed by experts.

While I don't agree with the poster that left/right is a distraction from class conflict, the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#68

Post by tartuffe78 »

judahmeek wrote: post #65
throwaway87543 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campaign finance laws were set up tell you where the line is. There needs to be a line because the amount of reach you have should not grow with your wealth. But Citizens United made the money as speech an unlimited right. Spending $250 is a completely different category than spending $250 million.

But where's the line between political contribution & opinionated news article about a political candidate?

Having unlimited funds to make sure everyone sees your opinion.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#69

Post by pickleglitch »

actionfromafar wrote: post #63
deathanatos wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this "Citizens United" running for President? Obviously neither is running for president. But collective groups of people may wish to support certain causes, bills, or even candidates who support such things. Do I prevent all collectives of people — and since everyone's favorite punching bag is the evil corporation — including non-profits and unions (which is what the original case was about!) — from spending mone…

Citizens United has tax ID 91-1433368 and is a 501(c)(4) in Washington, D.C. Where is "Black Lives Matter" headquartered?

It's in the same building as antifa headquarters, duh.

Re: Someone needs to go to jail

#70

Post by judahmeek »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #68
judahmeek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where's the line between political contribution & opinionated news article about a political candidate?

Having unlimited funds to make sure everyone sees your opinion.

In the age of LLMs, separating money from speech on the internet (where the most desired sociodemographics live) is literally impossible.

You restrict ads, they just create more bots or even pay actual people to express certain opinions.

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