techstepgenr8tion wrote:
The problem with lobbying is that its an organic phenomena - ie. anyone with dollars for influence burning a hole in their pocket will use them and it would be very challenging to come up with a legal solution where, if people are exceedingly willing to pillage the spirit to the maximum degree without violating the letter, such legislation wouldn't just rearrange the problem.
If lobbying is a very organic phenomenon ... then perhaps we just need to defeat capitalism altogether.
People dislike socialism largely because they see it as inherently totalitarian. In reality, the opposite is true.
If what you are saying is true, this means that freedom and capitalism are incompatible.
Quote:
As far as state ownership of the media - that's a really bad idea because it ceases to be any sort of check or balance against the state if it gets abusive, rather it just gets absorbed and shares the same fate, even accelerates that fate when it controls the national narrative. This is also why I really don't like the idea of press licences that have to be renewed yearly. It's unlikely to turn immediately corrupt in noticeable ways but it clearly gives power over what's said to the people issuing such licenses and if they're in the government it's a soft version of the same thing where the media still becomes a component of the government. A lot of people seem to have a way of laughing at concerns like that like it's paranoia but then they stack another thing just like it, and another thing just like it on top of that, and then you really do have a serious problem with very credible effect and force - its important to see the layers and foundations of that sort of thing early.
The problem I think you're trying to tackle with the media though - I think I do have a solution I might recommend that could be better. I think, what we call the FCC in the US, I don't know what it's called in other countries, should be tasked with coming up with a set of minimum guidelines as to what constitutes valid evidence to call an article in print or story on TV 'news'. Everything not rising up to that standard is called 'editorial', you're allowed to still editorialize to your hearts content but this would become something like what you have in the sciences - ie. there's a hard demarcation, like peer review, between what constitutes science and what doesn't constitute science. Similarly news and editorial should be in just as hard of buckets and anyone breaching the basic protocols of what would be called 'news' and calling it news would be in violation of the law and open to prosecution and lawsuit from the city, state, government, or whoever else is harmed from the line being violated (particularly the party being complained about in the story). The idea also would be that, if there's enough editorial on an idea and there's anything to all that smoke, someone would actually have to find a real fire to make news of it - until then it's purely rumor and opinion.
What I like about that above idea, if it's not obvious, it becomes equally hard for any interested group to distort reality - regardless of what their political orientation, belief set, etc. is. About all they could do is try to legislatively chip away at the integrity of such a legal framework.
So far the media has been able to run wild with rumor and opinion, one-sided story telling, that has to be rendered into a new stack called non-news, ie. editorial. We could also maybe have determinants for a couple different layers of editorial so that the popular editorial also doesn't turn to conspiracy theories and all kinds of smut. Still - I notice there aren't any qualifications in the media world and since politics beat honor/integrity hands down there have to be some hard/crisp lines in terms of what can be called news.
If the state was truly democratic, then state-run media would be fine. How would such a government become corrupt if there was no capitalism to corrupt it?
Quote:
I'm not sure what religious tension you're talking about? It's still a predominantly Christian nation and with all of the other religions - Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Neopaganism, etc.. it seems like we've had the luck of being protected by oceans on either side of us which means that we're one of the few countries in the west where, if a preacher in a church, mosque, etc.. is preaching violence or sedition our FBI will snap them up immediately. We also get to skim off the top of the most peaceable emigrants from anywhere in the world.
Europe is where things are really bad right now. Think of it like this - our biggest problem is a bunch of lapsed Catholics, sometimes criminals and drug dealers, jumping the Texas border. Europe has a totalitarian religion south of the Mediterranean that it spent centuries fighting, from the times of Charlemagne all the way up through the Barbary Pirates. They conquered Spain and held it as caliphate for quite a while; it's been a battle between Europe vs. the Middle East of conquer or be conquered and, as it's been for the last 1400 years, the moment you go lacks the other side starts pulling the same shenanigans. Having Mexico and central America to the south vs. having Saudi Arabia, Libya, Somalia, to the south of you - *very* different situation. the USA also has to admit that it's not a white nation - it never was, it was founded as a melting pot, and there really isn't properly any place for the USA to declare that it should always have a white majority or any other kind of ethnic majority. Europe, OTOH, is as much where white people come from as Africa is where blacks come from, China and India where Asians come from, etc.. - ie. there is a major ethnic homeland argument to be had in Europe that can't be shrugged off as easily or ignored as they can when made in reference to the United States.
Our religious strife is largely a product of our corporate foreign policy.
Most people in the West know that Muslims are angry, but they don't know why ... because they don't understand what the US military actually does and why.
Quote:
The other thing I'm confused about - large businesses disappearing? I'm not sure how you figure. There are certain types of activities and manufacture that require significant infrastructure investment and simply aren't possible on a cost-effective scale without a company not only being big enough to buy massive machinery but possibly even bridge multiple continents to move resources from one, manufacture in another, and rely on ocean freight for transportation from resource origin to manufacture to points of sale. I think what would more likely happen if we were able to take the massive corporatism out of our capitalism and stop giving massive welfare to huge corporations and jamming the small-ones with red tape; you'd have significantly more small corporations and fewer of the big corporations would be mega-corps.
What I do think you have with Amazon, Etsy, etc.. is the desire to re-modularize production and get it back to where smaller shops can exist creating the goods and then find a retailer who can get their products, particularly 'long-tail' products to market. While Amazon.com is big right now I do hear a lot about them, like I used to hear about Walmart, with regard to extorting it's vendors. I think if other online retailers treat their vendors better it will bite Amazon in the arse and they'd be forced to either come to similar standards or watch their empire shrink while their competition grows.
That's a somewhat different topic but still - I do think the growth of small business is critical because it's the bread and butter of job creation and I'd agree that it's critical to do that than trying to invest huge sums of money into companies who'll force their vendors into n90 payment terms and maybe, if vendor is lucky, pay them in six months to a year for the privilege of having done business with them.
Whatever. Forget about the small businesses then. If lobbying is an organic phenomenon, I guess capitalism needs to go.
Quote:
I don't understand this jump - why would race relations calm down? Also you must have left something out about Islam, did we all submit to the will of Allah?
The media manufactures Islamophobia and racism in order to draw attention away from class conflict.
DarthMetaKnight wrote:
There were just short of 325 million people in the US as of 2016. We've got a big enough habitable land mass that we're not insanely overpopulated. My question here I guess - where are these forests growing? Did something in the above list cause massive depopulation and a population decrease down to 100-150 million? Did we find some radical new technology to green the deserts even where the Rocky Mountains are stopping the flow of cloud formation and water off of the Pacific Ocean? Do we have some radical new way of farming that's condensed the space needed to feed the people of the US and meet agricultural export demand to the point that we're able to grow these crops in mines or big towers and reforest most of our arable farm land?
Many forests are currently being destroyed by bark beetles which are moving north thanks to global warming.
DarthMetaKnight wrote:
What incentives do you put in place to make that happen? The people who want to advertise their products and have the money to advertise their products will need a venue to make the public aware of their product and that they're selling it. If they can't sell anything people don't have jobs. Also what kinds of funding sources is this new media going to have? Also, and this is a big one, making it 'nicer' - what does that mean and how do you do it? Do you not report homicides anymore? Do you not report it when North Korea launches test missiles or when the FBI busts a major child trafficking ring? Do you just demand that such bad or ugly news be reported in a nurturing manner?
The media would be nicer because it wouldn't be run by corporate powers anymore. The media is currently run by corporate elites who stir up racial tension in order to draw attention away from class conflict.
Also, there would be no more ads because there would be no more capitalism. If lobbying is "organic", then capitalism must go.
Quote:
The problem with your analogy about corporate media is that they'd have to be the product of some unknown non-human force to not be manifesting some aspect of the human psyche or propensities. That's what I think anyone has to be overlooking when they say 'Get rid of x and we'll be free!'. If it's not grays or lizard people enslaving us then it's us enslaving us and whatever's causing that is not a foreign substance - it's something everyone carries around with them. To me that means that the only way to fix it is to identify what that thing is that everyone carries around with them, understand that it needs an outlet (it's not necessarily with is by choice - it just helped keep the human species alive at some point) and that outlet has to be better integrated into a better structure that achieves its goals with much less violence against other things we want in our civilization.
I disagree.
We aren't naturally full of capitalist propaganda.
Quote:
Are you just saying badly directed movies or are you saying no more super-hero films? If it's the later you're in a spot of trouble - ie. the superhero genre runs right through the core of what it is to be human. It has a lot to do with our limitations, our red tape, what we don't get to do or be, what we wish we could do or be, and we love it if and when someone is able to portray all of that in such a manner as satisfies us that it told the tale of the broader human psyche and just how much we wish we could fix the disorder and chaos that is the human condition.
No. Superhero movies will still exist.
Michael Bay films are on a whole new level of stupidity though. Only the corporate media can engineer the stupidity necessary to enjoy that crap.
Quote:
I've got an ancillary thread proposal and I might start it tonight or tomorrow if that's okay with you. It would be the question 'What would an effective legal abolition of lobbying look like?'. At heart I'm with you, just that the 'effective' part is a real doozy.
I will admit that "What would an effective legal abolition of lobbying look like?" is probably a better title for this thread. Of course, we need to give this idea a catchy title so that it can be sold to the masses. That's why I use the term "left-populism".
I believe that lobbying can be stopped. Consider the following: Most people don't even know what it is or how it works. What if they did know all about it? It's not like it's a "harsh truth" that is difficult to accept.
Some truths in this world are not commonly believed because they are harsh truths. This is why so many people believe in God. It's hard to accept the fact that we are living in an amoral, godless universe. It's hard to accept because so many of us live crappy lives ... and so we want to see life beyond life. That's what the Marxist phrase "heart of a heartless world" means.
Of course, corporate lobbying is
not a harsh truth. It's a very liberating truth. We will essentially tell the masses "Your problems are not your own fault! Those rich bastards are responsible!" Most people will jump at any opportunity to blame someone else for their problems.
Fortunately, more and more poor people are using the internet every day. This means that more and more people are discovering Noam Chomsky's YouTube channel every day.
Bernie Sanders was right. In the long run, we have already won. The internet is our tool of victory. I'm just trying to accelerate the process. That's all.
_________________
Synthetic carbo-polymers got em through man. They got em through mouse. They got through, and we're gonna get out.
-Roostre
READ THIS ->
https://represent.us/
09 Jul 2017, 1:14 pm
