captainDave
mark47n: I understand what you are saying about the definition of plutocracy. However, just because Trump is a successful businessman instead of a politician doesn’t automatically make the situation a plutocracy. If Trump’s primary objective were to build his own businesses, he would have been much better off donating $100 million to Hillary and getting the benefit of her political favors that have been proven to enrich her elite donors. I define Hillary’s situation as a plutocracy based on her track record of “selling” her power to dominant corporations and wealthy individuals specifically for the purpose of control and profit. Your narrative that Trump has become president just to make more money for himself doesn’t make sense when he is decentralizing power in many respects, rather than centralizing it.
JoB: The Center for Media & Democracy has a heavy liberal bias (https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/12-center-for-media-democracy/ ) The first clue was in the first sentence that incorrectly described Trump’s agenda as “far right”. The article does raise some interesting issues about “dark money” but fails to make any mention of the horrendous amounts of dark money on the left.
JTB: I am not sure why it is so difficult for people on the left to understand the automatic income leveling effect of fair market competition. Back when I was in the engineering and development business, I had lots of competition. I paid some of my employees more than I made because they had many opportunities to work elsewhere if I didn’t. When you make it easy for people to compete, capital doesn’t get stagnant–it generally erodes away from the people who don’t keep their wages high and their prices low. I don’t like the .1% wealth accumulation any more than you do. But I know that capitalism, when managed properly, works far more effectively than compulsory redistribution of wealth under socialism. The reason I hate the socialist model is that there is little incentive to innovate, improve and advance. You just end up creating a worker drone society that gradually declines while the elite take more and more profit until there is a bloody revolution to reset things. Also, big government always breeds the corruption and cronyism that further reduces real productivity.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by captainDave.