At the SVGOP meeting on Wednesday, the topic of Citizen's United came up. A person in the audience asked for an explanation of it, and a gentleman named Charles gave a brief history of it which made it sound far more reasonable than I'd ever heard it explained before. He said basically that regulations had been put into place to limit campaign contributions, which spawned the creation of PACs and Super PACs. Because these groups were independent of the campaigns, there was no limit on how much money could be donated that way. The Citizens United decision basically reaffirmed the legal right for those groups, corporations, unions, etc. to spend as much they wanted, and to be vehicles for unlimited donations.
Being an Occupy/Bernie Sanders guy, I lean strongly the other way, and had to re-examine my beliefs. You could make an argument that PACs should be made illegal, then it would be up to individuals to spend and say what they'd like directly. I don't think limiting the privilege to outrageously wealthy individuals is preferable to limiting the privilege to unions and corporations; then it would just be the Kochs making ads. You could try to limit contributions based on the type of ads produced, but where is the line between political ads and public awareness campaign? You could say money is not free speech, but then the only wealthy people who do the brainwashing would be Rupert Murdoch and Ariana Huffington who do it as a business; is that any better? Could go the way of the alcohol industry, which doesn't allow consumption of the alcohol to occur on tv. It's a bit absurd, but you could make it illegal for non-campaign groups to mention or show specific bills or candidates, limiting them instead to conceptual descriptions and allowing voters to decide for themselves. That idea's maybe not terrible, but seems mighty heavy handed, and would lead to some probably absurd and confusing ads.
I'm used to arguing that money shouldn't be equated to free speech, and I still believe that not all things should be for sale, but that too could be re-examined. It is unfair that the average person is unable to have the same influence as a wealthy person, but does that mean the wealthy should be handicapped to the level of the poor? It's also unfair that mute people can't physically speak at all, but does that mean we should all be handicapped to the vocal powers of a def person? We're not all educated, should we be limited to the vocabulary and sentence making ability of a Donald Trump? Life isn't fair, and never will be. Maybe focusing on freedoms rather than fairness is the right way to think about it. If that's the case, at this time, the only thing I can think to do is to outlaw the purchase of specific things, and maybe types of ads should be one of those things. How effective are those anyway? I would imagine it's mostly the ground game of a campaign that makes a difference.
What do other countries do? I know some countries only allow campaigning and advertising in a single month. I really like the sound of that, but I have no idea how they enforce the rule. It seems incumbents would really be handicapped in that case.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Monday, October 3, 2016
Democratic Fascism
Need to do WAY more research to support these ideas, but wanted to scratch some down while they're fresh in my mind.
I've been watching my KPFA gift DVDs (Capitalism and Untold History of the United States), and now have a reading list about a mile long. Right at the top are Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. From what I gather, Adam Smith's faith in capitalism's ability to succeed was in the context of certain moral values that would ensure that as capital accumulates to the rich, they would in turn use it in a way to benefit society. Marx apparently believed capitalism would lead to massive inequality and collapse on itself once it came to a breaking point.
I'm coming to believe that the pre-requisites for Smith's beliefs are untenable. The more mature an industry, the fewer competitors there will be, the larger the companies at the top will be, and the richer the men at the top will be. This much seems inevitable. So then what? In America, those with money buy power, and use that power to expand business all over the world. So the prevailing system of government in the US seems to be democratic, imperialistic fascism. But doesn't that seem the most probable outcome? What are the odds of having some sort of absurdly benevolent and altruistic upper crust of society that has a deep understanding of the needs of those beneath them? Why would we expect anything other than what we currently have?
It would seem Marx's answer to capitalism has been destroyed by history by those who did not really implement "true communism" -- Mao and Stalin. But as much as they did not adhere to Marx's beliefs, neither did our leaders adhere to Smith's, and we got fascism. So obviously, strict adherence to ideals cannot be the answer, because there will always be greed, corruption, and barbarism to tear these ideals down.
The answer to corruption in our formerly capitalist society was to have democratic checks on power. But as the rich get richer, their influence over those checks grow. Major corporations own the media, own the politicians, own the justices, and own our money. The system of checks and balances is broken. And it again seems improbable to expect any other outcome. To go one step further, there were never any checks for those on the other end of our military conflicts. Attrocities commited overseas can only be stopped by a critical mass of us at home a) knowing about it, b) caring about it, c) doing something about it, and finally d) successfully stopping it. EXTREMELY difficult and slow -- ie:Vietnam and Iraq.
What to conclude? We need to either create another answer to capitalism, as Marx did, or find a way to make fascism livable. If we go the route of the former, there would have to be a revolution here, which I do not think will happen so long as we're the dominant country. So I think it's time to explore how to put checks on fascism to make it livable... ?
I've been watching my KPFA gift DVDs (Capitalism and Untold History of the United States), and now have a reading list about a mile long. Right at the top are Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. From what I gather, Adam Smith's faith in capitalism's ability to succeed was in the context of certain moral values that would ensure that as capital accumulates to the rich, they would in turn use it in a way to benefit society. Marx apparently believed capitalism would lead to massive inequality and collapse on itself once it came to a breaking point.
I'm coming to believe that the pre-requisites for Smith's beliefs are untenable. The more mature an industry, the fewer competitors there will be, the larger the companies at the top will be, and the richer the men at the top will be. This much seems inevitable. So then what? In America, those with money buy power, and use that power to expand business all over the world. So the prevailing system of government in the US seems to be democratic, imperialistic fascism. But doesn't that seem the most probable outcome? What are the odds of having some sort of absurdly benevolent and altruistic upper crust of society that has a deep understanding of the needs of those beneath them? Why would we expect anything other than what we currently have?
It would seem Marx's answer to capitalism has been destroyed by history by those who did not really implement "true communism" -- Mao and Stalin. But as much as they did not adhere to Marx's beliefs, neither did our leaders adhere to Smith's, and we got fascism. So obviously, strict adherence to ideals cannot be the answer, because there will always be greed, corruption, and barbarism to tear these ideals down.
The answer to corruption in our formerly capitalist society was to have democratic checks on power. But as the rich get richer, their influence over those checks grow. Major corporations own the media, own the politicians, own the justices, and own our money. The system of checks and balances is broken. And it again seems improbable to expect any other outcome. To go one step further, there were never any checks for those on the other end of our military conflicts. Attrocities commited overseas can only be stopped by a critical mass of us at home a) knowing about it, b) caring about it, c) doing something about it, and finally d) successfully stopping it. EXTREMELY difficult and slow -- ie:Vietnam and Iraq.
What to conclude? We need to either create another answer to capitalism, as Marx did, or find a way to make fascism livable. If we go the route of the former, there would have to be a revolution here, which I do not think will happen so long as we're the dominant country. So I think it's time to explore how to put checks on fascism to make it livable... ?
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