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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

SOP in Washington. LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War made his corporate sponsors an absolute fortune.

More recently, Theresa May's backing for military action in Syria pumped the stock price of British Aerospace, which happens to be part-owned by a capital fund that employ's Theresa May's husband.

The real problem with politics is that very few people understand how absolutely amoral and cynical it is. LBJ still had some interest in public service, but for a terrifying number of modern politicians the public service ethos is a fig leaf.

The real morality is narcissism and greed. As long as money keeps rolling in no one cares how it's made or who gets damaged in the process.

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One has to be extra careful with distinguishing correlation from causation.

For anyone in top of politics they are likely going to be connected to people who are top in either corporations or organisations.

Theresa May isn't a dictator and can't just decide what she wants to without being in agreement with the rest of her politicians.

Insinuating that there is some causational relationship here is just as much part of the problem.

That said, there definitely are cases where the relationship seems very suspicious, but it's not a rule and I wish people would be more careful to prove their claims rather than just putting them out there. But maybe I am missing something here.

>Theresa May isn't a dictator and can't just decide what she wants to without being in agreement with the rest of her politicians.

This is true, to the extent where I wish people would stop individualizing problems that are obviously endemic to the entire system. The damage caused by individual conspiracies isolated in history is negligible to the scale of systemic issues in modern political economy. Applying some abstract thinking would help us understand that May isn't a dictator, but capital is.

What do you think of going for worker-owned-and-directed-cooperatives replacing traditional corporations as a first step in combating capitalism?

I think the idea is, to distribute power to the people. These cooperatives would generally make decisions that benefit the majority. Unlike what we have today where mega corporations (dictated by a handful few) keep doing whatever they can for 'growth' even if that means destroying people's lives and our planet.

You are right that "dictatorship" or "conspiracy" are the wrong ways to look at this sort of corrupting influence. The actuality is far more pernicious - it doesn't take Bond-villain plotting, just people making decisions that are shaded by their own social connections. They don't need to be doing it deliberately or conciously, but even indirect connections to, for example, the defense industry or certain players in the finance industry will lead to decisions that benefit those to whom the decider is biased.

Philip May is a relationship manager for a company that among other things, manages mutual funds. While I don't doubt that some of those funds own BAE (as it's a component of the FTSE100, more funds will own it than not) this is a very silly link to make.

The older I get the more stunningly obvious and apparent the corruption is. It is endemic.

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