Hacker News Reader

"Private companies paying for government employee saleries? The government agencies even looking for private funding for employees? How can that not raise all sorts of crazy ethical alarm bells?!"

It gets even better: Facebook financed the 2020 election in some counties: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/943242106/how-private-money-f...

... I'm lost for words. The crazyness about this is not so much that they got money from Zuckerberg, but that they had to look for it! I'm showing my lack of knowledge about the US political system now, but did the founding fathers not provision somehow that the elections as the central element of the democratic process must have guaranteed adequate funding, without influence from any other government entity?

One thing is that elections are up to the states to organize as they see fit.

The other thing is that US politics has reached a point where the political parties care only about winning. They don't care about functioning institutions.

This is an aspect of liberalism not democracy. It seems paradoxical until you realize liberalism is anti-democratic. The original intent of liberalism was to protect the private interests of the land-owning class, who were and are a small minority, although now any minority can buy into the franchise. The majority is openly hated, and the resentments of the minority against the majority is cloaked in language about love and democracy.

The US is a republic of 50 states, a federal district (capital), and other territories. Otherwise known as a federation where states dictate their individual representation at the federation. States can do as they please from that regards, mostly.

Elections were left up to the states to figure out.

> To me it also illustrates why people should never be able to become this wealthy.

What’s the maximum level of wealth allowed in your ideal world?

> For someone from outside the US this is an insane read ... It destroys the whole notion of democracy. So even if they are only interested in the "good for the country" it is specifically not the good as determined by the democratic process. Instead they circumvent the democratic process (using the immense wealth) to push their own notion.

In fields where US tech industry precedent can influence non-US markets, there is the potential for even higher returns on lobbying investment.

It's like regulatory capture on steroids.