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by anigbrowl
3377 days ago
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They've been doing this for years. When I grumble about capitalism this is the sort of thing that annoys me. People say government is bad because it doesn't have competition and is a van intrinsically violent monopoly, but here we see an example of private actors spending money to make government unresponsive or outright antagonistic to people's needs so as to profit by serving those needs. The argument goes on that it's government's fault for allowing itself to be influenced, but that rests on an increasingly common fallacy of composition as if government were a monolithic entity, which (especially in the United States) is so far from being the truth as to be a lie. The fact is that many actors in government have been corrupted by campaign donations, and that the mechanistic application of an unlimited first-amendment concept of political speech Does Not Work. A basic problem particular to the United States, in my view, if that while the Constitution treats of both law and equity, law has gained primacy and some parties are heavily invested in keeping it that way, arguing that the courts should be no more than mechanistic deciders rather than moral agents in their own right, most often summarized as 'we're a nation of laws!' - a curious statement from people who pledge allegiance to the idea of a Republic with liberty and justice for all, as if there could never be any such thing as unjust laws. It would be interesting to see which members of Congress are most heavily influenced by lobbyists, and examine their public statements to see whether this correlates with hostility towards the judicial branch that checks their 'work.' |
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Is this a problem with capitalism or government? If a company tries to get the gov't to block competition, the correct response is "piss off".