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by philwelch 5362 days ago
In this particular case, the housing and higher education bubbles required significant proportions of the population to buy into them. Bubbles that do little but draw poor investment from the already wealthy aren't as problematic.
1 comments
Jgrubb 5362 days ago
I see what you're saying, and I agree. Those bubbles were not the systemic issue I'm specifically fired up about, though. Those are more like branches of the tree rather than the root.

The root, to me, is corporate money and influence in Washington to such a degree that it effectively shuts out democracy. I lay fault for that systemic problem at the door of "the 1%" and the politicians they influence.

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CWuestefeld 5361 days ago
The root, to me, is corporate money and influence in Washington to such a degree that it effectively shuts out democracy.

I see another layer to the onion. Inside of your problem is a deeper one, which is that so much power is concentrated in such a small place.

While we might wish for our government officials to be better, at the end of the day they're people just like us. In giving them so much power, we're also expect them to exhibit a super-human degree of self control. When the possible rewards to them for "selling out" are so high; when any one act of selling out may not have much impact; and when in many cases, the morality is fuzzy and it's not clear that what they're doing is selling out at all; I think it's too much to expect that they'll keep to the straight-and-narrow.

It seems to me that these cries about "too much corporate money" contain an unspoken assumption of a need for greater governmental oversight. But if you see my point about the danger of the concentration of power in Washington, then it should be obvious that vesting the government with greater oversight powers is just adding fuel to the fire.

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philwelch 5361 days ago
The only reason campaign finance is an issue is because voters vote based on television advertising. So the real root cause is a lazy and easily manipulated electorate, which can further be pinned on things like useless public schools.

I don't think this is a good idea, but I think if you actually restricted the vote to the so-called "1%" you might even get better government. There's no conspiracy by rich people to ruin the country for everyone else.

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