It's absurd if you believe the point of government is to be by, for, and of the people.
If you see government as a way to enhance the ability of the owner class to enrich themselves, it makes perfect sense.
If you see government as a way to enhance the ability of the owner class to enrich themselves, it makes perfect sense.
I guess you get the government you vote for.
It also explains why blue collar Americans vote for tax breaks for billionaires and union busting legislation.
We did not have an almost daily turmoil of shit happening in 2021-2024.
that's all terrible stuff but the reality is all that has been happening almost non-stop since the 50s. US foreign policy has always been a shit-show.
what we're seeing today is an extra thick layer of daily bshit on top of the usual layer
> a threat to the American public that if we didn't allow business as usual to continue unabated, we would experience domestic hardship through Trump
which turned out to be even more true than anyone thought was possible
Yes, that's why I said as usual and typical.
> what we're seeing today is an extra thick layer of daily bshit on top of the usual layer
No, as far as foreign politics it's really same shit different day, we're siding with dictators and meddling with other countries' affairs, economically bullying other countries... Just more out in the open now, and with a somewhat different set of dictators. The only material difference is that Trump's mission is to weaken our global supremacy, which is a mixed bag, as some of that supremacy should indeed go away, but tariffs etc are not the fucking answer.
> which turned out to be even more true than anyone thought was possible
I thought it was going to be even worse. We still have 4 years to find out how bad it gets.
1: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/10/ftc-delays-enforcement-of-...
It seems like you're looking to fight on the internet - would you consider a different activity instead?
No I actually think it's important for people to square views like "government is a way to enrich the owner class" with actual reality, such as the fact that the government when administered by a different party did the exact opposite.
Those economic theories are not proper economic theories. As in, mainstream economists don't support them. That theory is propaganda in service of some specific political parties.
> I don't see the contradiction between the two propositions "government is for the ruling class" and "there have been some progress".
"There has been some progress" is a gross understatement considering the age we're living in. There has been tremendous progress and the lifestyle difference between the poorest members of a developed country and the richest ones is much, much smaller than that between the poorest and richest members of a country 200+ years ago.
It's better to think about it in terms of "people who choose to pursue positions of power to benefit themselves financially while cosplaying as wanting to help the average person".
Further having 100m at 40 doesn’t suddenly bring the kind of social connections that going to the right schools and the right parties would. At the extremes, the average lottery winner is surrounded by people asking for help, the average Fortune 500 CEO’s social circle aren’t. So if they suddenly fall on hard times the lottery winner is stuck but that CEO may very well claw their way back.
It’s still possible for poor people to succeed and 3rd+ generation wealth to fail, but the odds are wildly different.
This is not so when it comes to the poor. Once in power they are no longer poor so the incentive to fix any issue related to this almost entirely evaporates.
There now it’s both. They want to own agency if the idea of owning stuff is too gauche for modern audiences.
A $200k NW individual gets 2x cost and $2k gain.
A $3M NW individual gets 2x cost and $30k gain.
A $6B NW individual gets 1x cost and $60M gain.
A $400B NW individual gets 1x cost and $4B gain.
If it wasn't obvious, these numbers correspond to the Median American, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk. People whining about focus on ownership and complaining that all politicians are bad are drawing this equivalence across 3-6 orders of magnitude of incentive to do evil.
In contrast, I argue that incentives matter and that high NW individuals in politics have uniquely misaligned incentives. The focus on ownership doesn't just matter, it matters more than it ever did before.