[andy_ppp]

I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for.

I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.

[xyst]

System is broken af. Politicians don’t want to reign in on campaign financing because it will hurt their own re-election and campaign fundraising.

Republicans have bought/installed the SCOTUS which allowed for favorable decision in Citizens United v FEC.

This corporation dominated landscape is quite awful. Corporations have more rights than woman right now.

[terminalshort]

Citizens United was the correct decision. I don't understand how you can legitimately restrict political activity. The constitution contains the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Why should certain groups of people not have this right? The constitution also contains the right to freedom of the press. Why should the government get to decide who gets to exercise this right?

[kmeisthax]

Because democracy is "one person one vote", not "one dollar one vote".

Around the same time Citizens United was decided, we also got McCutcheon v. FEC, which invalidated campaign contribution limits basically completely. If we take the logic of Citizens United at its word - that money is speech - then letting someone drop billions of dollars to change an election is like firing a sonic weapon at a bunch of protesters to silence them. So, right off the bat, we have a situation where protecting the "speech" of the rich and powerful directly imperils the speech of everyone else.

But it gets worse. Because we got rid of campaign financing limitations, there has been an arms race with campaign funding that has made all speech completely, 100% pay-to-play. We have libre speech, but not gratis speech.

This isn't even a problem limited to merely political speech. Every large forum by which speech occurs expects you to buy advertising on their own platform now before you are heard. If you, say, sell a book on Amazon or post a video on TikTok, you're expected to buy ads for it on Amazon or TikTok. You are otherwise shut out of the system because discovery algorithms want you keep you in your own bubble and you're competing with lots and lots of spam.

[terminalshort]

But it is still one person one vote. Money doesn't allow you to buy votes, but it does make it easier to persuade them. Freedom of the press has always guaranteed you the right to print or otherwise publish what you want, but it never said everyone will have the same amount of printing presses or the same amount of ink. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you an audience.

You think you are reducing the influence of the rich, but you are actually just raising the price of entry. A millionaire can donate to a PAC and buy TV ads, but a billionaire can buy or start a newspaper, TV station, or social media network. What are you going to do then, tell the newspapers what they are allowed to print?

[ethbr1]

There's a fundamental difference between allowing an unlimited amount of opaque money to support arbitrary political campaigns and buying a media company.

The latter does business under its name, is regulated by the FCC, and if publicly traded has financial disclosure requirements.

The former is effectively anonymous, unregulated, and has no requirement to disclose any of its finances.

If folks want post-Citizens, fine -- just require public, transparent disclosure of what individuals are spending on political speech, above a floor ($10,000?).

[andy_ppp]

Every other country on earth has spending limits, the constitution isn’t perfect and it’s being dismantled by the current regime. Maybe it could be updated to say covering up for pedo billionaires should carry extremely harsh sentences, for example…

[nullocator]

Not sure that would be enough given the regime and specifically the current supreme court. Such amendments to the constitution would be met with interpretations like "ackshually this country has a long and honored tradition of protecting pedos and the major questions doctrine (a thing we kinda just made up) says that we gotta ignore the text of the constitution and instead just vibes decide that pedos are a-okay in our book" [applies to literally any subject]

[barney54]

Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.

[ralph84]

Politics in the US is a $11 trillion per year business. Money is inherent.

[assimpleaspossi]

You are spot on about rich people buying influence this way but it has nothing to do with how great democracy is.

[yndoendo]

Eat the rich.

I do so by taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving him a penny. Also by not supporting restaurants that have a Wall-street ticker nor any alcohol producers that have a Wall-street ticker.

[etrautmann]

What does this mean? are you employed by Amazon and phoning it in, or how are you extracting money from Bezos?

[yndoendo]

I work in automation. We sell solutions to businesses such as Amazon and a number of others like them. They demanded millions in free engineering labor because they are too big not to do business with. Companies are so big in the USA that you become slave labor.

I rarely support business that have Wall-street tickers. I have not personally financially supported Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, ... for years.

I also do not buy any beverages from a Wall-street provider. No Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ...

Ultra wealth are just terrible humans that do not deserve respect for how they treat everyone below them in the economic ladder. I no longer want to help fund the CEO of McDonald's with his golden parachute while they support non-living wages.

[UncleMeat]

Garry doesn’t even really believe in democracy. He’s gone full CEO-king.

[RickJWagner]

Don’t forget celebrity.

Celebrities can take minutes of time stolen from an audience to make a one-sided argument for their pet political issues. It’s intolerable.

One person, one vote. Equal platform.

[supjeff]

I agree with you, in spirit, but I think the true issue lies elsewhere.

Rich people can spend money to influence elections, yes, but how can they do it? through political donations, super-pacs and bribes. Bribes are already illegal. political donations and super-pacs can give politicians the juice they need to get their messaging out, but getting the message across isn't enough to win an election. The people need to vote. Billionaires can spend as much money as they want to support candidates, but a billionaire still only has one vote to cast.

My point is, billionaires can pay for all the political campaigns in the world, but the electorate gets the final say. It's up to us to A) run for office and B) vote for the best candidate (but tell that to the 64% turnout in the 2024 presidential election)

[aylmao]

Elections are important, but they're just one part of the political system. A lot of machinations and politics occurs outside the scope of elections or even of the public eye.

Money doesn't just buy ads. It influences the decision of who is a candidate in the first place. It buys operational range. It pays salaries for the right friend of X, the right family member of Y, etc. It buys other bribes, etc.

[bayindirh]

Consider watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOmUWd-OII

[donblanco]

"we need to get money out of politics"

Then Congress will need to pass legislation to that extent that would also survive a challenge based on the precedent established by the Citizens United case. Or a Constitutional Amendment that would weaken the 1st Amendment.

IOW, it is unlikely to happen in your lifetime. Focus your efforts elsewhere...

[andy_ppp]

One person using their “free speech” to stop many others from having free speech nets out to negative free speech.

If this doesn’t change the United States will fail or become an oligarchy, or both, so I’d consider it.

[bpodgursky]

If rich techies had too much influence in California, the state government would not look like what it does. I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.

[andy_ppp]

You cherry picked California which is very much an outlier compared to the rest of the country? Are you denying the effect of money affecting political outcomes, the rich wouldn’t spend their money on media and PACs if it didn’t work would they?

[bpodgursky]

> Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches group to influence CA politics

I'm talking about the actual issue being discussed! Garry Tan isn't launching a group to influence Wyoming politics.

[refulgentis]

What about my comment? :)

[andy_ppp]

I think this is completely missing the point… are you really saying California would be improved by more rich people being able to game the system? I think CA would benefit from more visionary politicians (i.e. not paid for) and more people at the bottom end being able to have homes in the big cities and less wealth accumulation, maybe reducing the gap between power and poverty means we could have better societies. I’m not talking about crazy change btw, reducing billionaires wealth to that of the nineties would allow us to rebuild a lot of great things and employ a lot of people. Putting money into stocks, real estate and crypto does not create wealth.

[refulgentis]

> I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.

Graybeard here: took me a while to get it, but, usually these are chances to elucidate what is obvious to you :)* ex. I don't really know what you mean. What does the California state government look like if rich techies had even more influence? I can construct a facile version (lower taxes**) but assuredly you mean more than that to be taken so aback.

* Good Atlas Shrugged quote on this: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check [ED: or share, if you've moseyed yourself into a discussion] your premises."

** It's not 100% clear politicians steered by California techies would lower taxes ad infinitum.

[throwaway-blaze]

There's simply no way to look at the governing going on in California and think this is what the tech industry or movie industry or (formerly) oil industry wants for one of its traditional homes.

The government there has suffered since it went to basically one-party rule. There's no counterbalance for any bad policy ideas.

[refulgentis]

Tbh I think its awesome here, arrived 6 weeks ago. (both of these comments suffer from...I think begging the question?...basically, like, what's so clearly _not_ what tech/film/almond growers/whatever want in California?)

[terminalshort]

How do you define "manipulate" here?

[andy_ppp]

There are great tools available that I’m sure you could use to give you a synopsis of how money is used to manipulate political outcomes and entrench wealth and power.

[array_key_first]

Any action which may be done to influence political outcomes, such as elections, regulation, and enforcement, for personal or business enrichment.

For example, lobbying. Or, posting on social media. Or, creating a social media. Or, controlling a social media algorithm. Or, in the Trump administration, signalling loyalty via donations with the intention of less-strict enforcement (see: every tech company right now).

You'll notice most new regulations like tariffs have specific exemptions carved out for tech companies. The reason that exists is because tech companies have quid-pro gave Trump hundreds of millions of dollars and, in exchange, they have written the laws to get themselves out of jail.

This is sort of just what happens when you allow money to buy decisions. This sucks morally, obviously, but it also sucks economically. Our economy is on the verge of imploding. The only reason it hasn't is because it's being artificially propped up by the regulatory landscape, i.e. the oligarchy is writing the laws such that they will survive, and their competition will not. This also goes hand-in-hand with protectionist policy which, surprise surprise, is the name of the game for this administration.

[timmytokyo]

How coincidental that I was just reading something related [0] before seeing this post.

"Silicon Valley is bad at politics. If nothing else during Trump 2.0, I think we’ve learned that Silicon Valley doesn’t exactly have its finger on the pulse of the American public. It’s insular, it’s very, very, very, very rich. [...] I expect it to play its hand in a way that any rich 'degen' on a poker winning streak would: overconfidently and badly."

And...

“People don’t take guillotines seriously. But historically, when a tiny group gains a huge amount of power and makes life-altering decisions for a vast number of people, the minority gets actually, for real, killed.”

[0] https://substack.com/home/post/p-187592016

Nate Silver often annoys the hell out of me, but I think he's right about some of the possible political impacts of AI.

[fainpul]

Every "democracy" I know, has become a plutocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

[femiagbabiaka]

This is an underrated point because the U.S. failure to rein in the excesses of the ultra-wealthy is not just impacting our domestic politics but actually the politics of every country on earth. Imagine if Jack Ma had eventually personally intervened in U.S. congressional elections? That's pretty much exactly what U.S. oligarchs do to other countries regularly.

[terminalshort]

You are using a lot of obfuscated and loaded language. What, specifically, are the "excesses of the ultra-wealthy" that need to be reigned in? What do you mean by "personally intervened in U.S. congressional relations"?

[femiagbabiaka]

I'm commenting on one such excess. Here is another: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/31/elon-musk-2026-elec.... The Nazification of X and federal subsidies for Elon's companies are another. There are many more examples.

s/relations/elections/ -- because Elon et. al don't just intervene in the elections of the country they live in, but actually any country he's interested in -- and uses the U.S. as a bludgeon in that effort, see U.S.-U.K. and U.S.-South Africa relations

[terminalshort]

How is Elon's editorial control of X something the government needs to (or even should have the power to) "reign in?" How is that not freedom of the press just like the owner of the New York Times having editorial control over his newspaper? Same goes for his donation to the PAC. What is the nefarious activity they are engaged in? Why are they not allowed to exercise their freedom of the press in the same way as any other company?

[amarcheschi]

He allowed child porn to proliferate for days on the platform

[Teever]

What's wrong with a sovereign nation taking steps to reduce or eliminate the influence of a non-citizen who they feel is acting against the best interests of that nation?

If a nuclear capable country like France decides that someone like Elon Musk is acting against the best interests of their country they can ask him nicely to stop and if he continues they can use force to reduce the perceived threat.

This all seems completely in line with the day-to-day norms of contemporary society as well as historical norms.

[terminalshort]

He is a citizen of the US and has full political rights. There is only one legal distinction between a foreign born citizen and a natural born citizen and that is that he can't serve as president. France is absolutely capable of using force against Elon Musk up to and including their nuclear arsenal. However, they would need to decide whether it is worse for their interests to tolerate Elon or to detonate a nuke on US soil, and that's a pretty easy choice.

[JuniperMesos]

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.

Well I've been against this regardless of owners. Honestly, this stuff is really concerning. I spent a bunch of years working in social media, and back then I was sceptical that algorithmic content selection should be regarded as publication, but given how easy it is to shift the Overton window with changes here, I think that it probably needs to happen.

I do think that this will cause lots of downstream impacts that I like, but this much power is bad in anyone's hands, regardless of how much I agree with them.

[femiagbabiaka]

1. X is not, and has never been, "the press". 2. If you were to have categorized them this way previously, botting and pay-for-reach have made it definitely not that way now. 3. It is bad when any individual can shift the politics of the entire globe simply because they have enough money. Feel free to insert your most hated left-wing billionaire instead of Elon, I still believe the same thing.

[oulipo2]

Exactly.

We should tax billionaires away.

[abtinf]

> we need to get money out of politics.

We need to get the power out of politics.

[cjs_ac]

Politics is about deciding who gets to exercise power and what they get to do with it. Politics detached from power is just pointless squabbling.

[mothballed]

It's not, since voluntary transactions can happen as a result of said squabbling without resorting to the violence of 'power.' Maybe we need more of that and less of ramming decisions down the throats of the powerless.

[andy_ppp]

Yeah I sometimes think you could have a government you select, e.g. each state could have its own rules and laws and the federal government should not have the power to overrule them. Then you could choose if you wanted immigration or lower taxes or whatever, seems like a good system who can suggest it?

[mothballed]

Yes the 10th amendment was supposed to ensure a lot of that that but it was largely waived away during the progressive era and in acts related to the civil war. But cuz slavery for some reason it also has to apply to all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with slaves or even civil rights (in the sense of negative rights) and you are racist or love slaves or something for pointing this out.

[Tarq0n]

Not really a solution for large-scale collective action problems.

[nkmnz]

So how about exercising less power?

[8note]

i dont see how that would change the ultimate "money grants too much power"

if the government exerts less democratic power, money will still exert too much capitalist power

[CodingJeebus]

What is money if not a proxy of power? If money didn't buy power, no one would be interested in attaining billions in wealth.

[limagnolia]

What is politics if not a means of exercising power? If there were no power in politics, no one would be interested in politics.

[RobotToaster]

That power is supposed to be exercised to enact the will of the people, for the good of the people.

[limagnolia]

Is it? In the US, our constitution is setup to prevent absolute democracy from occurring. The idea of an absolute democracy where the government always acts on the will of the majority as an ideal is hardly a universal value.

[CodingJeebus]

How does a government without power work? How do you take power out of the process of governing?

[limagnolia]

Yes, that is my point. You can't take power out of politics, and you can't take money (which is one form of power) out of politics. Best you can do is manage it.

[cess11]

"no one would be interested in attaining billions in wealth"

Sounds good to me.

[terminalshort]

They are obviously related, but it is a very loose correlation. If a billionaire (who does not pay me) gives me an order I will laugh in his face. If a traffic cop gives me an order, I will comply.

[aylmao]

This doesn't mean money has no power over you.

Perhaps the billionaire can't buy your willingness to do something, but they can very much affect the material world around you, and therefore, you.

If you rent they can probably find a way to kick you out of your apartment. If someone around you _is_ willing to take an order, influencing what people around you do very much influences you. If they want something from you, and you're not willing to sell it, there will be people willing to steal it, etc.

Money very much is proxy of power. Perhaps not everything can be bought, sure. But money gives you operational range to attempt to impose your will when it doesn't.

[TFYS]

> (who does not pay me)

You're answering a comment saying money is power by saying that it isn't if it's not used?

Even if the billionaire doesn't pay you, they can pay someone else to force you to do what they want.

[terminalshort]

Who is he going to pay an how is that person going to force me to comply?

[mystraline]

Pinkertons. And the US national guard.

Its happened before, over labor disputes and unionization.

A LOT of people died, both in anti-union and union sides.

And thats why we have, well, had, the National Labor Relations Board. It was to make a peaceful way to negotiate worker rights.

Maybe if it did go away completely, and the violence comes back, that people in power would be reminded WHY we had union structure and law in the federal government to begin with. It wasn't for the warm fuzzies.

[Barrin92]

>What is money if not a proxy of power?

for a lot of people in the newly rich class, a kind of virtual currency best compared to a high score in a videogame. Symbolic and representing status. It's why when they attempt to translate it into power this particular class thankfully fares fairly badly, from the article:

"TogetherSF, a similar nonprofit backed by venture capitalist Michael Moritz, crashed and burned after the 2024 elections when its $9.5 million ballot measure to reform the city charter lost to a progressive counter-measure backed by about $117,000."

[Daishiman]

Power exists whether you like it or not and when power gets away from decisionmaking you just generate a power vacuum.

Power needs to be placed in the hands of better decision-makers. That starts from getting money out of politics.

[snihalani]

I wish we had direct voting on important decisions

[jandrewrogers]

This has proven to be a disaster in practice. See also: California.

[Gud]

It’s working fantastic here in Switzerland.

[w4yai]

Wrong.

It has actually been scientifically proven otherwise in crowd theory : with the right setup, the crowd is more effective to take a good decision that the top1 best decision maker.

Exemple : a crowd playing chess may beat the top1 chess player, even though the crowd individually cannot beat him.

[a_t48]

A crowd playing chess can absolutely not beat a top chess player.

[dmoy]

Yea in fact this thing has been done before multiple times as exhibitions (Kasparov vs 50k, Carlsen vs 132k, etc).

And yea, no surprise, the masses do not win. Even when in the latter case, a huge chunk of the 132k was obviously using stockfish cranked to the gills (though the did get a draw out of it?).

[ajam1507]

The crowd elected Donald Trump -- twice.

[podgietaru]

Brexit.

[Analemma_]

Hell no, California has this and it’s a catastrophe. Prop 13 is one of the worst policies enacted by a democratic polity in the 20th century, and has been wrecking the state for decades.

[terminalshort]

So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy.

[biophysboy]

Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects.

[thomassmith65]

If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.

Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.

Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.

[jemmyw]

That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone?

[chr1]

If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?

You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.

But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.

[drecked]

Democracy != Direct voting.

It’s never meant that.

So people can “believe” in Democracy just fine and still think direct voting is bad.

Also, Democracy doesn’t even mean “if a majority of people believe X, therefore X”.

[lvass]

False, cf. ancient Athens.

[chr1]

Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way.

Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person.

If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1).

This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level.

The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid.

[f30e3dfed1c9]

"Voting should be done without anonymity..."

This is a spectacularly bad idea.

[chr1]

Why is it a bad idea? Can you describe one bad consequence of it, if it is implemented in combination with the other ideas above?

[mystraline]

Dumbest idea ever.

Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing.

[chr1]

What we have now is a politician saying vote for me and i'll pass laws that will give you 10k in next 4 years, people vote for the politician who then takes money from scamazon gives 10 to voters and takes 10mln to get elected again.

Eliminating the middleman makes things better already.

But more importantly with vesting time, large number of votes, ease of reversing a decision in a new vote, take $10 and vote for something that costs you more simply won't work.

[mystraline]

Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote".

And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.)

Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases.

When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA.

[zozbot234]

If you think you've incurred damages due to a company's illegal actions, you can go to court already. If the company is liable and its assets do not suffice to pay full compensation, it enters bankruptcy proceedings and ultimately gets dissolved, just like you're saying.

[mystraline]

15 years ago, I worked at Walmart. Note the poverty income, no unions, no real savings. Basically average US citizen, not the HN bubble.

I got injured with a malfunctioning pallet jack. Went to ER and got Xrays.

Week later, was fired. My paperwork explicitly said I got fired for getting injured at work and costing the company money.

Went to 6 different lawyers. Had to ask for pro-bono. I couldn't afford a lawyer.

All refused. Why? None of them could deal with a Walmart lawsuit. None.

I had them dead-to-rights with a wrongful termination. Double manager signature. Even recorded their termination on my phone, on the sly (in single party state). They even admitted to forging a different manager. None of it matters.

[Gud]

Having some random vote is hardly direct democracy, though.

Parts of the US is mature enough to implement a similar system as Switzerland, which has a superior form of democracy.

[asdff]

Prop 13 is a nothingburger. Median homeownership period in california vs nationally is only like 2 years longer. It shouldn't be affecting costs that much in other words since median property is back to market rate every 15 years or so.

And what costs are we talking about anyhow? Tax shortfalls for local government? Decades later that has been rectified through other taxes and funding mechanisms and we still get new roads and schools in california. Housing costs increasing? I would say the fact that cities today are zoned within a few percentage points of present population levels (vs zoned for 10x present population levels pre 1970) is the actual source of that sucking sound from the chest.

[zozbot234]

That's not really the point. Prop 13 is known to be a huge disincentive to efficient transfers in home ownership - people will strenuously avoid selling their homes and buying something that's closer to the kind of shelter they actually prefer, because they might have to pay a higher assessed property tax if they did that. These effects are very real and well documented.

[asdff]

Prop 13 wouldn't lead to those incentives if property prices didn't increase so aggressively. Once again comes back to zoning as the root cause. Is prop 13 bad? Only in the face of inappropriate zoned capacity, it seems. Which begs the question of what prop 13 removal would even do in such a situation? Zoning capacity isn't changing so prices will still go up beyond what is affordable for the median worker. The only thing changing is people won't be insulated from that rise at the end of their life when they are on a fixed income is all. Does that solve the housing crisis? No, but it does ensure more people are regularly displaced from their homes.

[mothballed]

Courts can just overturn direct vote anyway like they did prop 8.

[xixixao]

All reactions are taking this comment seriously, but I think it can be also read as "money equals power" (which I strongly believe - there's some power without money and sometimes money without power, but mostly those two are fungible) - and then pointing to the futility of getting money out of politics, since politics is about power.

But really what people mean is "prevent paid political advertisement of all kinds", which seems about as hard as "get rid of all kinds of advertisement" - at some point, you're back to power, communication, attention.

Hard problems. Probably there's a reason all ancient democracies did not survive.

[bigyabai]

Once you figure that out, get to work on the flying pig.

[scoofy]

Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections. If it really did, Hillary Clinton would have been president twice. It's just that candidates with a ton of support tend to raise a ton of money.

Low-information elections are where money seems to help. I think we can throw that on the pile of 'your democracy is only as good as your electorate', and we have an electorate where most people can't even name their US House rep, much less their representatives in state and local politics.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections.

Politics does not start and end with elections.

[whattheheckheck]

Yeah if money didn't matter what's up with the $2billion price tags

[scoofy]

Obviously campaigns need money to operate. The question is whether a random firehose of money will win an election, or if the reason we see that money is because the campaign already has a lot of supporters who want to contribute.

The underlying effects of where the money comes from seems to matter a lot more that that the money exists. If a campaign does not have money, they likely that that campaign does not have supporters. However the opposite is not true. If a campaign has money, it is still not certain whether or not that campaign has any supporters, because that money could all be coming from narrow interest groups.

[johnea]

This is total bullshit.

Or maybe a statement of just how much the US population is uninformed/misinformed.

If the later is true, the US 'electorate' really is dumb as dirt...

[scoofy]

From 1994: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764

From 2024: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440241279659

Consistent results indicate that, yes, money tends to matter, but it's the source of that money that tends to be doing the heavy lifting.

[ohbleek]

“Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections“

Your earlier statement, in which you claim that “money doesn’t effect result” followed by a useless distinction of high or low info elections. You’re really trying to dance a fine line of nonsense here.

“ We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between campaign expenditure, campaign contributions and winning probability.”

From the same article you posted and the first academic journal result if you Google “studies on how money influences elections”.

[scoofy]

>Our finding is in line with existing results in the literature regarding the US House elections that incumbent candidates gain less from spending, compared to their contender counterparts. This is due to diminishing returns that occur at a certain point, after which incumbent candidates can increase the winning probability only marginally (Green & Krasno, 1988). However, this finding is in contrast with other studies considering electoral systems in Brazil, Japan, or India, where spending effectiveness is equally applicable for both incumbents and contenders (Johnson, 2013; Lee, 2020; Samuels, 2001).

So yea, sorry for providing two scholarly journal articles from two different political eras that support my thesis.

I didn’t realize that this was a bad faith discussion. Now I know.

[johnnyanmac]

These studies fail to consider the nature of US politics the last 30 years or so. We had a breakneck election tie broken by the Supreme court in 2000 for some reason. We've had 2 out of 3 times in the hist of the US where the electoral college defied the popular vote.

You don't need to win most states in the US, nor most people. Just target 5-6 swing states and throw billions into the most wishy-washy voters in the country.

[TFYS]

It's not enough to only look at elections. The topics that the media discusses, and therefore the options that people are aware of and the issues people base their vote on are decided by mostly privately owned and increasingly consolidated media companies. Nobody will know about candidates that are not approved by some part of the elite in this media landscape. Any opinions that go against the interests of the media owning elite will not see much coverage. Sure, maybe money during elections does not matter that much, but elections are the very last step of the process of picking leaders, and the preceding steps matter as well.

Also, if money did not matter during elections, I doubt we'd see so much spending on them. Studies are being funded by companies and the wealthy as well, so a study or two saying money doesn't matter is not definitive proof.

[root_axis]

> we need to get money out of politics

Not really possible. There's at least 40 more years of citizens united before any practical ability to restrict money in politics becomes constitutional again.

> we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy

Not true. The plurality that voted in the current administration are generally pleased with the state of things. Democracy is working as expected. It was close, but this is what more people wanted.

[johnnyanmac]

> but this is what more people wanted.

You haven't even tried checking 2026 approval ratings, have you?

[root_axis]

His approval has been hovering around 40%, which is pretty typical for him and is still higher than his lowest levels in term one. He has a lot of opposition, but most of those are people who voted against him. Those that did vote for him are generally pleased.

[johnnyanmac]

On the surface, pretty much any polling you can point to will have trump close to his global minima, despite only being 25% through his term. While he started his polling in the high 40's/low/50's (as usual).

Losing 10 points in a year is pretty radical change. About the same change as term 1, but it did rise after that. I'm not so certain it's rising this time between the dozen Watergate level scandals in the wild.

----

Now, under the surface, the makeup of the approval is more polarized than ever. D's started abysmally and sunk to single digit levels. R's started 90 percent and fell some 4-5 points in comparison, but is still extremely high. The real dips really come from the fallout of Independents cratering like a rock. Maybe I need to review more polling numbers, but that sort of split was truly eye opening. The Independent numbers definitely suggest that there's some voter regret at work in such a short time