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Study Finds US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University have concluded, after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not a democracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance,' 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'"
You lift the limits on campaign spending, declare that corporations have the right of political speech and are now surprised that the rich people have all the say?
I have no sympathy. In fact, many of you cheered it as a sign of greatness and freedom that America was doing this. Your allies, however, were fucking appalled. Let
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
It took a study to figure that out?
Benjamin Franklin chose his words well.
Does this give us a free pass to revolt now?
Yes, but you've had that right the whole time...
You will, however, find it very much harder to do today than it was 230 years ago...
It isn't just that the US military has tanks and stealth bombers (they help of course), it is that they more or less control the media, thus control what people see, read, and think...
To this day, the average person continues to believe the news, as if everything they say is a "fact"...
The other truth is... the American Revolution wasn't started by a bunch of serfs, it was started by rich land owners who didn't like their deal...
Technically I believe the United States is a Constitutional Republic.
Danger: anecdote ahead...I listened to an NPR interview recently where it was stated there was significant fear during the Irish/Italian immigration waves that the immigrants were not capable of appreciating US' liberty, and would effectively dilute it. I now think that was accurate, and came to pass.
One cannot argue that in today's United States we have liberty - cutting down a tree requires a permit, even when there are no safety considerations. Growing various plants is illegal. Operating a hair-cutting business without the proper permits is illegal. The list goes on...
Republic? Long gone... One can debate, but I would nominate Wilson at the latest. FDR is the common scapegoat, but Wilson certainly set the stage. There may be earlier contestants, but this is not my area of expertise.
In Sydney we just arrested the State Premier for corruption over a bottle of wine. The system works. The Prime minister is not above the law in Australia. Something that the USA has never managed to sort out with their corrupt system. Nixon should have been jailed, but really the rot had started to set in long before then. The Greens in Australia are a credible threat to the Liberal and Labor parties. Unlike America, where there is no alternative political movement that can ever get into office. The minor parties in Australia actually get to set policy and ensure that the average person retains a speaking voice in our government.
Try the Scandinavian countries instead.
You know, I think the surest way to keep politicians semi-honest is to have a multi-party system and its corollary, the minority government. Just in my own lifetime I've seen a prairie protest party (Social Credit by name, not nature) disappear, a major party on the right (Progressive Conservative) go from the largest parliamentary majority ever to extinction, a party that wants to break the country in two become the Official Opposition, another prairie protest party on the right (Reform) try to take national power, a socialist party (NDP) go from perennial third or fourth party status to being the Official Opposition, Canada's other major party, the Liberals, drop down to a poor third, the party on the right reconstitute itself, the Green Party get a member in parliament for the first time... And I'm simplifying. New parties are always bubbling up, and the three biggest parties go up and down and sometimes disappear.
Nothing keeps the rascals on their toes like fear of the electorate.
-Gareth
Carter was the last President; after him, it has been a complete sham. One reason he had it so bad is because he went up stream against a system that was near death.
You only have power in a corrupt system as long as you go with the flow; it's empty power but it is enough to still attract tools. Like a C or B movie villain's 2nd in command, the second he falls out of line all that power does nothing to stop a dramatic (and cliche) example from being made of them.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
As usual. It implies that the views of 'average Americans' are abrogated by the economic elite. As the PDF clearly states on page 14 "It turns out, in fact, that the preferences of average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of the economic elites." It also turns out that the paper defines 'average American' as someone at the 50% income level, and 'economic elite' as someone at the 90% income level or above, which works out to $146,000. The paper than argues that this 'elite' population fairly represents the truly elite (the top 2%) based on 13 policy preference questions--which aren't listed in the paper--with a correlation of r=0.91 vs a correlation of r=0.69 for the 'average' population.
Sorry. There ain't nothing in this paper about the Koch brothers, Soros, Oprah, Bill Gates, or any of your other favorite elites. This is all about Joe the Plumber vs your mid-level Google executive.
So how does the paper define the views of the 'average American'? Well, on page 15, there's this "Some particular U.S. membership organizations--especially the AARP and labor unions--do tend to favor the same policies as average citizens. But other membership groups take stands that are unrelated (pro-life and pro-choice groups) or negatively related (gun owners) to what the average American wants." A footnote 40 then directs you to another paper by one of the same authors, presumably for the corroborating data.
Finally, on page 18, we encounter this: "Because of the impediments to majority rule that were deliberately built into the U.S. political system--federalism, separation of powers, bicameralism--together with further impediments due to anti-majoritarian congressional rules and procedures, the system has a substantial status quo bias. Thus when popular majorities favor the status quo, opposing a given policy change, they are likely to get their way; but when a majority--even a very large majority--of the public favors change, it is not likely to get what it wants."
In other words, here's the real summary: "Elite academic researchers at elite universities have conducted a study in which they find that the constitutional system put in place by the founders of the republic to prevent mob rule is thwarting their elite progressive agenda by working as intended. Oh, and throwing a lot of money around and making noise tends to draw attention to your cause, particularly when it aligns with the majority view, which it does most of the time."
Nothing to see here. Move on.
Not only is the president immune from prosecution given the Nixon example, but none of the bank managers, presidents or CEO's were ever jailed for causing the last financial disaster. That if nothing else proves that the US is an Oligarchy.
Ahhh America, Rome 2.0. Now I just wonder who will be our Marius to kickstart our whole no limitations on terms, and Augustus to finally rule on us as princeps and make the transition from republic to empire official...
I love to slaughter the english language.
Perhaps it's time for a constitutional amendment.
In times of past, when it took weeks and months to communicate between far away places (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) it made sense to structure the political organization of this country as a railroad organization. Today, it does not.
What we need to do is simple: We need to define, in simple print, that corporate fictions are not in fact citizens, and as such, do not have political freedoms or civil rights as such.
The concept if a corporate fiction as a person is a bit ridiculous anyway. A corporation can engage in activities that kill people (against the law) but they cannot be imprisoned. Finding General Motors (say) criminally liable for something that they have done corporately is a joke. They are already immune from such prosecution and bringing criminal charges that stick against board members or management is a very difficult thing.
If corporate entities cannot participate in the democratic process; there is no proxy for voting in a general election. We should formalize this and extend it so that corporate fictions simply cannot make political contributions of any size whatsoever. If management has strong political feelings, let the members make a personal contribution in their own name and not from corporate funds. If a CEO wants to contribute millions to a political candidate, well, they're paid enough to write the check. If a corporation feels strongly about a political issue, they can encourage (but not require) that their employees write their own checks to whatever political cause is extant. A vote, and a political contribution, should only be permitted to come from someone who can be demonstrated to be a living, breathing person and not some vacuous entity dreamed up by invisible attorneys.
This moves us back to the "one man, one vote" ideal our forefathers envisioned. Right now, we're moving ever closer to merchantilism and "One Dollar, One Vote" -- which, in my humble opinion, is not a good thing at all.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I mostly agree, except this didn't start after World War I. The first things the founders did was restrict who could and couldn't vote. White male landowners. And in many places there was a wealth tax requirement to hold office. If you didn't have 1,000 pounds of wealth, you couldn't hold office in some states. Voting was effectively restricted to the top 10% of society, and holding office was for the 1%.
And there really was never a time when the working class wasn't being exploited. There were strikes and riots all through the 1800s, complete with harsh crackdowns by the national guard and private police forces. The robber barons of the gilded age were made fantastically wealthy on the backs of the poor. Things got briefly better thanks to the rise of unions in the first half of the 20th century, but we've been backsliding ever since Reagan.
Class warfare started the day one man said to another, "here's a boot, go stomp on that guy's face and I'll make things a little better for you," and it hasn't stopped yet. It will never stop until the last king and the last capitalist swing from a rope.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.