@yogthos so the government funneling your money to a private entity is capitalism?
@mister_monster of course, the reason the government is funneling your money to private entities is because it's owned by these entities. When the capitalists own majority of the wealth in the country they get to buy your government.
@yogthos OK, that's one take on it. I'm gonna go with Occam's razor on this one and say its because people in Chicago elected a bunch of corrupt pieces of shit, the flaws in the political system notwithstanding.
@mister_monster but for them to be able to be corrupt somebody has to be able to bribe them. The root problem here is that some people have vastly more wealth than others, and this allows them to subvert the government to their own ends.
Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with unbounded financial inequality. A person like Bezos literally has more say than millions of people combined.
@yogthos for them to be corrupt there has to be someone to bribe them? The people selling you out would otherwise be perfectly fine people without someone buying their influence?
We have a fundamental disagreement. I do not believe that the corrupt influence comes from money, I believe it comes from political power. I believe they would act out their corruption in other ways. Rather than take bribes they would just take by force. I believe history shows this to be true.
@mister_monster the people selling you out wouldn't be in office in the first place otherwise. Who do you think got them in there in the first place exactly?
The rich are the ones funding their campaigns, playing ads for them in the media, and bribing them.
And you don't have to take my word on it, here's what actual research shows https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader
@yogthos in a democracy someone gets elected. Without money for funding campaigns people still get elected. Are you telling me those elected people would never be corrupt because their campaigns weren't paid for by wealthy people? That the only reason we elect corrupt individuals is campaign funding? Corrupt people are attracted to positions of power, I don't believe for a second that eliminating the money rather than the position of power would eliminate corruption in government
@mister_monster I'm telling you that it's much easier to have checks and balances in a society where some people don't own billions time more wealth than others. I'm not sure what part of that you're having trouble with to be honest.
Whatever other sources of corruption you might have, capitalism is clearly a major contributor to the problem. No solution is possible without addressing capitalism first.
@yogthos I'm having no trouble understanding, I just think you're wrong. And I do not believe that eliminating capitalism would better the problem at all. I believe history shows that. The source of the problem is the position of power, without capitalism you'd have the powerful acting on their own behalf rather than as mercenaries on behalf of others. Eliminating the position of power eliminates the problem entirely, that's better than any theoretical major contributor.
@yogthos OK, well I'd say that there's no way you have any idea what I know and understand from just this back and forth, I'm not going to learn much history from a twitter thread and if your response to a disagreement is that I am somehow ignorant I'd say you haven't spent a whole lot of effort learning what those that disagree with you believe or why they believe it.
@mister_monster you can read the actual study linked in the twitter thread, since it's paywalled I linked to the thread that gives the highlights
@yogthos Do you think it will change my mind?
Your supposition, "any learned person would agree with me, therefore of they disagree they must be ignorant" is a common belief. You can probably guess that I feel the same way about what I believe. Calling someone ignorant accomplishes nothing, other than protecting oneself from having to try to understand the other point of view. That's why I don't do it.
There's nothing for me to learn from that thread. Your agitation is showing.
@mister_monster honestly I don't care, you have access to the same information I do, and if you choose to believe what you believe there's likely nothing I can say to change your mind anyways
@yogthos well we can finally agree on something.
@mister_monster well then you're just ignorant of history https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1136693839526223872