[roxolotl]

You can read about the transition from the Gilded Age to The Progressive Era in US history for potential solutions. Anti-trust and political reform is a bit part. Political opinions were controlled undemocratically during that period as well through political machines. Direct election of senators, direct primaries, women’s suffrage were enacted to help with that.

[pocksuppet]

Any political solution (as in voting, bills, laws) will have to start with getting political power. You can't do politics without political power.

[ethanwillis]

And when these things aren't possible?

[XorNot]

The US despite everything still runs a popular vote driven democracy that is clearly capable of implementing on short notice, sweeping changes to policy.

The problem remains that the US voter consistently demonstrates they don't actually care about these problems though, compared to using the state to intentionally inflict misery on subgroups they don't like.

The most radical thing the current administration proves is how unimportant taxes and cost of living actually were to its voters, given the broad support it retains despite overtly and continuously raising or making both those problems worse (read cares as: "understands" - for a group which wouldn't shut up about it, apparently significant changes aren't crippling enough to get them to change their vote in many cases).

[kasey_junk]

I think this administration truly puts paid to the idea that billionaires control the US. Trump was _broke_ now he’s making billionaires the world over kiss the ring.

This happened because he’s consistently harnessed the power of the popular vote. Just today he flexed that muscle in Indiana.

I’m distraught that my fellow Americans keep falling for his circus barking and he’s made it clear that norms don’t matter and gerrymandering may be the end of the republic. But you can’t deny the power of the regular persons vote after him.

[JuniperMesos]

Trump was never actually broke, but his popularity comes from the fact that he took a bunch of public political stances that his political opponents refused to take because they genuinely thought those stances were immoral; and then won elections based on those stances because a lot of the electorate also liked them.

There isn't actually one monolithic class of billionaires that all share the same interests and want the same things; and even though an individual billionaire can be personally influential, they simply do not have the power to unilaterally determine the political direction of a country. But regardless of what political direction a country does go in, there's probably some billionaire who is more or less aligned with that direction. So anyone who dislikes that political direction can point to the nearest-ideologically-aligned billionaire and blame them for influencing politics in that way, despite the fact that if the tables were turned and their side was winning, someone else would point to whatever billionaire aligned with them as an evil influencer.

[Recurecur]

“Trump was never actually broke, but his popularity comes from the fact that he took a bunch of public political stances that his political opponents refused to take because they genuinely thought those stances were immoral”

Um, no. His popularity comes from a willingness to actually do the things that many other politicians said they were going to do, often while campaigning, and never did.

[pocksuppet]

Like cutting taxes on the rich, and invading Iran.

[jbxntuehineoh]

> clearly capable of implementing on short notice, sweeping changes to policy

well, as long as the policy changes in question can be implemented by executive order. good luck doing anything that requires actual legislation.

> The problem remains that the US voter consistently demonstrates they don't actually care about these problems though, compared to using the state to intentionally inflict misery on subgroups they don't like.

what does this mean, exactly? it sounds like you're trying to say that things would have been different, if only those pesky voters hadn't voted for Trump. but they _did_ vote for someone other than Trump in 2020, and that did very little to affect the issues mentioned in the article