This lobbying means that the politicians might be elected by "us" but they work for "them" - the "lobbyists."
Does this answer your question sufficiently?
One is a bribe the other is a health insurance program.
I can’t speak to UBI but it’s not a common platform anyways.
Also re: AI, how do we not fall behind those who are willing/on the same team as Anthropic, OpenAI, X... SOTA models are currently fully captured by ideologies I would consider to be willfully and gleefully violating nearly all human rights.
Consider all of the sources of the available tracking data on a person in the United States. If you don't have a cell phone, don't drive a car, don't walk around outdoor networked cameras, don't patronize businesses that have networked cameras, don't use a credit card, how exactly are you interacting with this society?
Now they can just chip away at whatever regulation is left, and create mistrust in oversight bodies and the rigging of the game is complete.
Better than communism, the government hardly even has to pretend to work for the benefit of the people, because the wealth imbalance has a closed circuit of money between private entities and elections. They can bring suitcases of cash, walk in the front door literally holding a chainsaw and prune off every olive branch extended toward the citizens.
These election "investments" are clearly paying off at high multiples now. Why spend your money in a capitalist competition when you can more efficiently spend it in public elections to eliminate competition, divert tax revenue directly into your businesses and eliminate any responsibility you should have? Do a Nazi salute for the whole world to see, and watch the propagandized twist themselves into whatever shape pretzel you ask them to.
Whether you see that as good or bad or something which needs to be checked and controlled is a separate discussion, but it's an obvious and expected result.
You can argue the warrant was poorly justified (and I'd agree!), but I don't see a plausible world where "ISPs aren't allowed to do connection analysis on their own networks" is going to help anyone. Well, anyone except spammers. They'd love that.
I guess you can pretend Liz Warren, Ron Wyden, Patty Murray, dozens of house reps and thousands of Democratic legisltators in statehouses and towns around the country don't exist and just vote for the "party that lowered my taxes" again , right?
Sometimes they miscalculate. Mitch McConnell once had to filibuster his own bill because he didn't mean for it to pass.
The internet era has brought about the rise of small dollar donors making an outsized impact (for better or worse - it's not always a good thing)
This has given rise to more forms of populism (left and right, benign and toxic)
In any case, it does provide some counter weight to large donor class.
Money tends to have diminishing returns past a certain point, when it comes to elections.
And I think people underestimate what dopes many large donors are - that just get milked by the party people pumping them full of sweet talk and don't really get much in return
They also see it like an insurance payment. Kick some amount to both sides in the hope that they leave you alone.
He’s basically proof of the power of the common man’s vote in the US.
He still spent the least and publicly eschewed donations. His skill was being able to connect with the voters that matter (unfortunately).
As far as I can tell, donations after he was elected in 2016 are simply bribes.
What I meant was the 2016 Repub primaries are evidence that the common man votes for who they want, not who the large donors want. The Repub party leadership and previous decision makers were usurped, and hence the idea of MAGA supplanting the Republican Party. More evidence is Dick Cheney and the Bush family becoming quickly irrelevant.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/trump-shrugs-off-campa...
>Trump has spent much of the race so far breaking the mould of a traditional campaign, defeating a crowded field of primary opponents who vastly outspent him in ads and staff.
>During the Republican primary race, he often told his supporters not to contribute money and ridiculed opponents for accepting cash from special interest groups and wealthy contributors.
>He has so far showed little interest in calling donors to ask for money for his general election battle. He only began holding in-person fundraisers in late May.
Of course, both of these funding models should be banned which would mean dismantling the Citizens United decision spearheaded by the now-known-to-be-fully-corrupt Roberts court, which might require a constitutional amendment.
I’m voting against the face eating leopard party every time. I’m not voting for someone. I would like very much to be voting for someone instead of against someone.
And I also think of it as pretty esoteric to the mainstream, TBH.
The GDPR comes from the opposite direction - you own the data about yourself.
Because of FUD spread about data protection laws… such as the GDPR?
The only FUD here is you pretending this is FUD.