[snapplebobapple]

This doesn't contradict my claim at all. This is and should be a criticism of the system because the system has an ambiguity of outcome built in. If I can hire the same lawyers and skew my outcome to the better for me side then we are all still operating under the same rules. I do agree with you that it would be nice to fix this so that the only difference between hiring the 50 dollar an hour and the 2000 dollar an hour lawyer is spending an additional 1950 dollars. I don't really see a way to fix this without also losing the ambiguity that makes other aspects of the system work though (i.e. the ability to do illegal things like same sex marriage/relationships enough that the overton window moves in the population enough to allow a legislative change to allow those things).

[ModernMech]

> If I can hire the same lawyers and skew my outcome to the better for me side then we are all still operating under the same rules.

First, this the same logic as "the law is equal because the rich and poor are both equally barred from sleeping under bridges." Moreover, no, you cannot hire the same lawyers and that's the point, because what Musk got wasn't through the law, but throwing $300 million dollars at an autocrat. This isn't about $50 vs $2000.

Can you do that and buy your own government agency and a pseudo-cabinet position that circumvents senate confirmation? No? Neither can I. We're not under the same rules they are.

Your point same sex marriage doesn't make sense to me you'll have to explain it better.

[snapplebobapple]

You missed my first point. You get a different outcome because you can hit a different price point securing your outcome and that outcome is still constrained by law. If you make a few hundred billion like Elon did you too can do that. My point was that this mechanism is a criticism of the system, not of Elon. Elon is not doing something wrong here (at least not provably wrong yet in a court of law, see what happens as the horse he bet on loses political clout and the various institutions take a look at what was done with a different political foot on their throat).

The second point was the ambiguity in outcome is what allows societal change and I don't want to lose that because there is still a lot of stupid enshrined in our legal code and institutions. We need enforcement to be lax enough to allow people to break stupid laws and the legal code to be ambiguous enough that, when enough people's opinions have changed by the law breakers breaking the law and nothing bad happening/ the law breakers being closer friends and family of enough people that you can get a big change to the law through, either via the courts deeming the law unconstitutional or the congress critters changing the law. It's a fine line on multiple fronts there between effective changing to suite current needs and too much corruption and I don't see a way to change the system that decreases corruption without also decreasing flexibility for change so I am very cautious on that front.

[ModernMech]

If the rule is that you can get extraordinary access to state power if you are rich enough, then no, we are not meaningfully operating under the same rules. Saying “like Elon, you too can do that” is like saying anyone can influence housing policy by buying every apartment building in town. Hypothetically yes. Practically, not true and also not desirable as a system.

The problem is that wealth can buy a level of political access that ordinary citizens cannot realistically obtain at all. Once someone can spend hundreds of millions helping elect a president or pay people a million dollars to vote their way, and then get a quasi-governmental role with influence over federal agencies, then the system is no longer a system but instead a service.

Saying the system allows the ultra-rich to do this because of builtin ambiguities does not mean therefore no billionare is blameworthy for using it. If a loophole lets billionaires buy political influence, them exploiting that loophole is still part of the problem.

Your defense of him seems to reduce to: the system is corrupt, and if you were rich enough you could exploit it too. I agree that this describes how power works, but I just do not see how it defends it.