[twixfel]

We ought to avoid repeating your mistakes, no? Maybe unlimited campaign donations and so on, all this wonderful "American free speech (money = speech)" is a fundamentally bad idea. Worked exceedingly well for ~225 years, now it has lead to the implosion of the empire by electing a sociopathic retard to the presidency. Yes to free speech, no to whatever fucked up shit the US, its billionaire "libertarians" and Christian nationalists are pushing for us to adopt here in Europe.

If the likes of JD Vance are pushing for us to adopt his idea of free speech, you can be sure it's a bad idea.

[mapt]

The American political system didn't implode until its system of capitalism had the conditions necessary to escape its popular control. That wasn't necessarily an eventuality. We had a semi-functional campaign finance system in living memory.

Without the protections the Americans tried to shove into the First Amendment (which did not include anything about corporations at the time, as they did not exist) being enshrined into law, I worry that your issues with capital-government overreach will arise even faster than ours.

[osiris88]

I don’t disagree with you but I disagree on a point of history.

> Without the protections the Americans tried to shove into the First Amendment (which did not include anything about corporations at the time, as they did not exist) being enshrined into law

If I recall correctly, Britain had joint stock companies from the 1600s, and Adam Smith and all that. They also even before this had “trusts” and “trusts which own trusts” which had certain rights, and the court of chancery had established precedent around these.

The French also had a massive state stock company in this time, and it became a massive bubble which imploded in XXXX. This attracted a lot of attention and commentary and it’s impossible that the American Founders were ignorant.

The Brit’s never had a freedom of speech, but in English common law, companies had property rights, standing to sue, and so on. Most activities a business person could take, they could take on behalf of their company instead.

So in the American context, it seems that the founders were likely aware of corporations. Why they didn’t put explicit limits in the first amendment, who knows. Maybe it just didn’t seem important at the time.

[worik]

The USAnian system imploded dreadfully in 1861

It came very close in the 1930s, it is arguable that the New Deal headed off revolution

The USA should have been considered a pariah state since the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, now it is rapidly becoming one

The USAnian system has been a corrupt oligarchy with only trappings of democracy since it's inception. Those "trappings" run deep, but are not allowed to unseat the true source of power: money

The Founding Fathers [sic] gave that a lot of thought and worked very hard to make it that way from the very beginning