Why does the USA seem particularly susceptible to regulatory capture and industry lobbying? Is it just money in politics or is something else happening?

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dcgudeman 10 months ago | parent | next [-]

The USA is not particularly susceptible, you just are exposed to more stories about it happening in the US. It's happening all the time all over the world.

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makeitdouble 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"small government" fundamentally means "big industries".

When governing entities have limited money and power, they will need a lot of good will from the incumbents to have anything done at all.

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pxmpxm 10 months ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not so sure the thinly veilled preposition there ("big government" is the solution) actually holds on empirical basis - government-enterprise monoliths don't exactly have a great track record with these things.

	▲	makeitdouble 10 months ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a proposition. On an empirical basis, you'll find extreme examples of all situations, from full-on dictatures to company owned land masses. Whether it holds or not has to do with the specific country and its situation. In a very real way, ideologies don't feed people, and usually it will be the reality of the country that nurtures appropriate philosophies, not the other way round (e.g. Chinese "communism" wouldn't have happened anywhere else, and you can't apply it to other countries willy nilly either)

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didgeoridoo 10 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you under the impression that the USA has a small government?

	▲	makeitdouble 10 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Looking at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... The USA is at 38%. That's pretty low compared to most EU countries (e.g. France or Italy are at 58%), even lower than Brazil or Japan. And Japan has no offensive military to throw money at.
	▲	BrainInAJar 10 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		in terms of things that the government provides to the public, absolutely. The US is incapable of doing anything other than through the military.

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mrguyorama 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because the US has way more corpo-sycophants than anyone else. What other country would have enshrined a monopoly into law?

Look how absurdly anti-union everyone is. That was a purposeful century of marketing by companies, and the US populous bought it without complaint.

Look at Citizens united and the absurd way people will twist very simple concepts just to ensure that corporations have MORE rights than people. We have no difficulty with limiting agents of the Government from doing things despite "the government" being made up of people just the same a corporations, but bad actors continue to insist we cannot disambiguate between an individual doing an individual act, and someone doing an act as an agent of say an LLC. Limiting a corporations speech does not limit the speech of individuals, only of agents of the corporation. You can say stuff as an individual that are illegal to say as an official entity of the org.

	▲	Nasrudith 10 months ago \| parent [-]
		What other country would have enshrined a monopoly into law? How about all of Europe for one? The entire guild system was all about granting monopolies. And that is before getting into the India Companies. An officially enshrined monopoly has been the norm far more often than officially prevented monopolies.

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waste_monk 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Too much drinking lead perhaps.

	▲	gsf_emergency 10 months ago \| parent [-]
		+1 for humorously pointing out (but to me technically correct) that people don't pay enough attention to the feedback loops inherent in big industries

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financetechbro 10 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Because industry lobbying = corruption (in most cases)