RepresentUs
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 17 months, 2015–2022
5:51 · 2.3M views · Apr 30, 2015
A short RepresentUs explainer arguing that US politics is shaped by money, citing the Gilens and Page Princeton study on how little average citizens influence policy.
Frequently linked as a compact summary of the Princeton study when commenters argue Congress ignores public opinion.
20 comments from Hacker News
Today somebody on Reddit linked to this video which talks about the process of money influencing politics this video It doesn't discuss the role of the judicial system. It's all about the legislative aspects of US government. It's pretty compelling and well made. Hopefully a bipartisan movement can have some impact. The video was made by [LINK]
I think this video will encourage you. Well actually maybe it will discourage you, but the follow up video will encourage you :D Corruption is Legal in America: this video
It's a tough issue, for sure, because the playing field is just so unequal. To even be able to approach these issues in a more equal way you'd probably have to start a lawsuit and go through a process of discovery because the corporation is bound by all these bizarre legal, financial, and political motives that don't apply when people are interacting with each other. This leads to corporations responding to such requests in a way that's inherently against the interests of the public answering these questions. Without a system in place that further aligns and incentivizes companies interests with their users the only way you can really approach this in a more equal manner is something like a lawsuit. Many times the problem is incredibly complex and while some people, even C level people may be all for providing this transparency it breaks down at scale and the company is at the end of the day beholden to its own interests and perpetuating itself. I recently saw this video on YouTube about some of the shadiness going on with Roblox: [LINK] The official answers they are giving is basically meaningless legalese and that's becoming more and more common. As I said before since Roblox isn't entering into this conversation in good faith the only way to force that conversation would be legal actions. Any kinds of laws further aligning the needs of clients/the general populace against the needs of big corporations/political elite have a really hard time passing because the system is se
Capitalism inherently exploits economically unequal systems, and thus incentivizes them in both the private and public sectors (especially in the US where politicians are basically owned outright[1]). So, yes, it is "companies"... or more specifically, large wealth-owned profit-takers, that are the root cause of the supply-demand curves AND the zoning AND all of the other contributing factors. The fact that there are different sets of capitalists (rent and investment exploiters versus labor exploiters) who have varying influence on politicians is secondary to the fact that the politicians are primarily if not solely doing the bidding of capitalists. Attempts at corporate externalizing of risk happen in multiple contradictory directions, thus causing inconsistent public policy. Regardless, privatized-profit motivated externalization of public risk is the core problem. GDP-centric increases in productivity mean precisely fuckall for working class quality of life until we solve for the fact that the entirety of increased productivity gains have gone to the wealthy in the past 5 decades[2]. I do think as a society we should build more affordable housing in densely populated areas, but allowing capitalists to hold the reins for that would accelerate all of the problems of late stage capitalism. Lastly, Japan has succeeded where others have failed because of a cultural difference which highly values new builds over old homes. They dispose of their homes and rebuild, as often as the
Reminds me of an old science-fiction where all events on the media were computer-generated fakes. There has been no "underestimating" of that potential. "Mind-warping" has been researched and is being research extensively by the CIA for some time. Most of that research is still top-secret, but well known are the extreme psychological manipulations of subjects during the MK-Ultra experiments. I will focus on the CIA and it's influence in the past, as this is more controversial and influential than that of other agencies/countries. The influence of MI5/6 or Mossad is great, but a lot of it is still hidden. The influence of the KGB was different, as the citizens did not really believe much in them to begin with. The Chinese are going a whole different way again. The CIA also did experiments involving the manipulation of the control of subjects in social media, like facebook. But it did not stop there. After the peace-protests during the Vietnam war, the CIA has infiltrated into the press and media and anti-war movements. They now use that influence to bend war and destruction into a peace-giving action. So we had "Freedom fighters" in Afghanistan etc. Which was portrait in the Rambo movie. And the US supported Saddam fighting Iran with US made chemical weapons. Later the US fights the parties that it created and armed. Some strange thing that keeps repeating in the US history. At the same time the CIA has the Phoenix program and other society destructive programs. They worked to