And why would "corporate" and "oligarchs" fight? Can the same person not be a "corporate" and an oligarch at the same time?

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mapt 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Another way of looking at this would be in terms of the millionaire managerial and professional class holding up the Democratic Party versus the interests of the billionaire aristocratic and executive class holding up the Republican Party.

The billionaires are far less numerous, have far better ability to coordinate and summon resources, and have interests that diverge farther from the thousandaires who actually do most of the voting, compared to the millionaires.

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jfengel 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting.

The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.

It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose.

It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."

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econ 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind.

You won't find a single person who does this.

Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money.

Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.

	▲	threatofrain 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We don't become legal experts to run a business, we hire lawyers. We don’t become doctors to aid in our own health either. So too should people find ways to delegate and evaluate economic and policy analysis.

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laserlight 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.

“People can vote whichever side they prefer, as long as their opinions are based on fake news.” It's difficult to talk about rank and file pulling the levers, when millionaires manufacture the news.

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jfengel 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You say that because you know that the news is fake, and you know that because it's not really that difficult to figure out at least an approximation of the truth. You know who are the abject liars (because they routinely tell outright falsehoods), and you know who at least tries to get it right even if they sometimes fail at it.

It's not that hard. People seek out the fake news; the millionaires and billionaires are just providing slightly better versions of it. They could be doing really sophisticated propaganda but they just don't have to. People are pleased to believe the most outlandish lies if it affirms their egos.

	▲	laserlight 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not that hard when you have proper education, scientific practice, understanding that you don't have to succumb to the fear pumped by those in power, and surplus time and energy to put everything in perspective in a constantly changing world. Otherwise, I'm afraid it's difficult to break out of one's echo chamber.

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treyd 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Corporates understand that a strong economy is important for the system to be viable long term and that some kind of middle class is a necessary part of it, which they can skim off the top of. Oligarchs don't care about that nearly as much, and are more acutely focused on accumulation of power and wealth and are happy to disassemble productive capacity and force the middle class down to an a working poor class in the process.

	▲	Barrin92 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's basically the difference between "every one of my workers needs to be able to buy one of my cars" industrial Fordism and what Varoufakis coined techno-feudalism, which does not utilize markets or independent workers but tries to extract value from what are effectively serfs directly. Zuckerberg et al. are obviously emblematic of the latter.

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markus_zhang 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn't say corporations and oligarchs are going to fight. I'd say elites infight all the time, but they all agree that the other humans are simply "human resources" and they have the common interests to extract as much value from those fellow humans as possible.

Exactly the same model for pretty much all large countries, each with a bit of different "flavour" that the elites learned throughout the centuries, and conveniently serves as one of the topics to divide the human resources.

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koakuma-chan 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I prefer “workforce” over “human resources,” and I believe lots of people voluntarily choose to remain a member of the workforce, as they would rather have a family and live a “simple” life than spend effort to become some kind of entrepreneur or politician.

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markus_zhang 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Our preference is irrelevant. We are resources to them. I’d rather honestly acknowledge that.

	▲	koakuma-chan 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What I said doesn’t conflict with this, just highlighting that’s what people themselves want.

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rixed 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are they actually fighting?

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lupusreal 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why wouldn't they fight? Some level of conflict always occurs within all groups or affiliations. It would be completely unnatural for there to be no conflict.

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danaris 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would say that the distinction between the two groups is, roughly:

"Corporates" are the leaders of the many large corporations in this country. They want broad protections for corporate power against labour, corporate profits, lowered regulations, etc.

"Oligarchs" are the leaders of the few titanic corporations, like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They want to become the zaibatsu of modern America, essentially being given total control over the economy divided up between them.

There are many things they want that are in common (for instance, the removal of regulations), but that prime desire of the oligarchs is directly at odds with the continued existence and livelihoods of the corporates.