
The Superrich Endanger Democracy - ericdanielski
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-05/kapitalismus-demokratie-ungleichheit-globalisierung-english/komplettansicht
======
jaabe
In Denmark we have a fairly recent political party called Liberal Alliance.
They were funded by billionaire, bank owner and businessman Lars Seier
Christensen for almost 10 years and at their height achieved 7% of the votes
and a spot in our government. At some point Lars Seiers brother founded a
political party and Liberal Alliance fell out of favour with the billionaire.

In our very recent election Liberal Alliance was decimated and Lars Seiers
brothers party was voted in and is now bigger than Liberal Alliance.

Now, I’m not suggesting anything that you will need a tinfoil hat for. There
are a lot of reasons things went the way they did for these two political
parties, and most of them could have happened without the easy access to
money. I do, however, think it’s a worrying show of how just much influence, a
single billionaire can have in a small democracy, compared to the average
citizen.

~~~
sneak
Why is this a bad thing? Is the implicit assumption here that the electorate
is primarily mindless, and that things like advertising or facebook or fake
news or russian ad buying is all it takes to directly translate from dollars
(or euro or rubles) to votes?

It seems to me to run counter to the democratic idea that an individual’s
opinion matters. Either individuals are good at forming their own opinions
from the world and voting is the practical realization of that into a
government, or the electorate is an unthinking blob to be managed, as it will
only vote for that for which it has been sufficiently inundated with
propaganda, in which case the whole election is somewhat of a farce to begin
with.

Why isn’t the will of the people (given an equal opportunity market for people
to buy mass media advertising) respected more?

~~~
lumberjack
Everyone is susceptible to propaganda, including you and me. Democracy is
based on information, so if you mess with that information, you can most
definitely have a noticeable effect. The propagandists exploit the asymmetry
of resources and time between them and you. They can lie easily, they have all
the time and money to craft careful lies. You don't have all the time and
money and domain knowledge to figure out each and every one of their carefully
crafted lies. Not to mention other more sinister tactics like tracking you,
finding out your biases and using them against you with targeted propaganda
campaigns.

~~~
sneak
Sure, but isn’t that the nature of the beast? If propaganda works on everyone,
and people get to vote, then what is the meaningful difference between
propaganda and campaigning?

I really don’t see how this isn’t a system working as intended. Freedom of
expression is freedom to spread propaganda.

Either the electorate is to be respected and their opinions held as valid
regardless of their media consumption, or propaganda is too dangerous and
effective and elections are just a farce. I’m not sure you can have it both
ways.

------
ddebernardy
Vox has much more interesting and detailed takes on this issue. See for
instance the current season of their Future Perfect podcast, and this episode
in particular:

[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/future-
perfect-3/e/6138...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/future-
perfect-3/e/61383678)

A few articles that go through the same information as summaries or interviews
for those who don't want to listen to the whole thing:

[https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/6/3/18632438/federal...](https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/6/3/18632438/federalist-society-leonard-leo-brett-kavanaugh)

[https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/5/29/18629799/federa...](https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/5/29/18629799/federalist-society-brett-kavanaugh-olin-foundation-
jane-mayer)

[https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/6/1/18629859/judge-r...](https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/6/1/18629859/judge-resort-weekend-naidu-manne-seminar-ginsburg)

------
bjornsing
Isn't it _Lobbying_ that is a threat to democracy? That's (the) one industry I
think we should regulate the shit out of...

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Its more complicated than that.

Sure, a lobbyist pays $10k a plate to fund a politician.. But its not buying a
vote. The lobbyist is buying face-time with the politician.

And given a rapport over many times, the politician learns to trust the
lobbyist. Those other people (citizens) don't really know anything, the
politician thinks. The lobbyist comes from inside industry, and 'really' knows
what's happening and why.

Lobbyists are just a paying type of royal advisors. And even if they weren't
paying cash for plates of food, they would use their backing interests' money
and power to exert 'assistance' in other ways.

------
sametmax
Any concentration of power is a danger to democracy.

We understood that already, and separated the legislature, an executive, and
judiciary branches of power. They are not bad, they are necessary, but you
don't want them to mix.

We are now learning that the power of money must be separated as well. Money
is not bad, but it should not mix with the rest.

And right now, they happily do.

~~~
makotech222
Actually, Marx figured that out in the 1800's. If you have two classes of
people, the more powerful class will take control of government and advance
interests for themselves.

~~~
sametmax
Not the same. Marx assumes you should have no rich people. Separating powers
does not imply that. It just implies rich people should be isolated the other
powers.

~~~
makotech222
No, he doesn't assume you should have no rich people. He wants there to be
only one class of people, regardless of total wealth. There are two classes in
capitalism, owners and workers. In Marx, there is only worker-owners.

~~~
sametmax
Rich is a relative term. You can't have everybody that is rich. You are only
rich to relative to somebody who is not.

I've lived in West Africa for 2 years, and here you have plenty of "rich man
of the village". But you would not consider them rich yourself.

------
nabla9
Money and political power transfer naturally to each other.

In authoritarian countries, the ruler is usually superrich billionaire. In the
western world there are limits, but they work better to one direction than
another.

Clever politician may be able to get millions, but rarely hundreds of millions
and never billions. Billionaires however can turn their money into politics.
Only direct middling for political campaign is limited. Superrich can create
institutions, whole universities, think tanks, academic positions, grants and
lobbying groups. Even political parties.

------
fetbaffe
Agree on the premise that the superrich can be a threat to democracy, however
this article argues a fallacy, the superrich has a lot of lobbying power
_because_ the political system has en-massed a lot of political power in a few
entities, like the EU.

The superrich then only needs to lobby a few entities instead of every country
in Europe, or every region for that matter. Just take the latest lobbying
success against the citizens of EU, the content filter & the link tax,
proposing those two on the national level would never have been possible,
because of the ease of circumvention, but on a EU level it can actually be
enforced.

If you want to keep transnational organizations like the EU, then you need to
make it immune to lobbying, which first of can't be done and maybe not even
wanted. Not all lobbying is immoral per se, because parliaments are not
experts on every subject, it becomes immoral when it has an obvious quid pro
quo situation.

What you is left with is to stop people of becoming superrich and/or stripping
wealth from the already existing superrich. Good luck passing that in any
legislative chamber we have today.

------
VMG
Democracy will take care of the "Superrich" (that will probably include most
people on HN)

~~~
m12k
I just hope we do it sooner, using regulation and taxation, rather than later
using pitchforks. But if the superrich keep successfully distracting the
populace with bigotry and other sideshows, we might miss that exit.

~~~
Kaiyou
Pitchforks won't work. The superrich learned from history and own private
armies. Also, they don't live in the same town as the people with the
pitchforks. Possibly not even the same continent.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
They live within marching distance of _some_ people with pitchforks. Beverly
Hills isn't that far from Watts. Midtown Manhattan isn't that far from Harlem.
And so on.

~~~
Kaiyou
You and I have very different concepts of "superrich".

------
_Codemonkeyism
First step in Germany would be lock politicans up that take money from special
interest groups and rich people and/or have another "side-" job in industry at
the same time. Also lock politicians up when they take a relevant industry job
afterwards.

Reality is politicians take a lot of money but do not need to declare where
they take it from and right after their politician career will get well paid
job from the people they regulated a short time before.

------
baybal2
I am not agreeing with this opinion.

Think of the same comment put the other way around. What do you think of
people "selling their vote for a mere promise of free sausages?"

------
fallingfrog
To the point about inequality, it’s pretty clear that you can’t have political
equality coexisting with dramatic economic inequality, because the mass of
people would just vote themselves all the money until the discrepancy was
eliminated. The measure of economic power of a group and the measure of their
political power is always closely related.

Edit: ok downvoters, name me one example of any society ever in which
political and economic power for some class of people was out of balance.
Rome? No, the patricians has all the economic and political power. The ussr?
No, the high ranking party members had all the economic and political power.
China? No. The United States? No.
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
poli...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-
and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You can get close to that _if you have a limited government_ , so that the
mass of people _can 't_ just vote themselves all the money. (Though, if it's
enough of the masses, they can vote a change in the limits on government...)

~~~
fallingfrog
I don’t understand- are you saying that if you had a limited government, you
could have a situation where the people with the power and the people with the
money were different people? Because I feel like that’s not what you’d get. If
Emma Goldman and others are correct though, you might get a situation where
the both power and money were distributed fairly equally. But they’d still be
in the same hands.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Let's start with the assumption that you have people with money. Let's even
suppose that they're probably the people who end up in power. If you have a
limited government, they don't have much power.

If you have a federal government with the power that the US government had
before 1930, you don't have as much money being spent on campaigning and
lobbying, because the influence isn't worth as much, because the government
can't do as much.

Back to your comment that I was replying to. What I meant was, with a limited
government, if the bottom 90% of the people want to take all that the top 10%
have, if "taking all that the rich have" isn't one of the things that the
government is allowed to do, then the 90% can't do that. ("Allowed" in the
previous sentence means "allowed by the constitution", not "allowed by the
people in charge".) In a country actually ruled by law, there are genuine
restrictions on what the government can do...

... until there aren't. The US Constitution _can_ be amended. It was amended
to allow for income tax, for example. If the 90% wanted it badly enough, they
could probably get it, but it would take more than just yelling at their
representatives. They'd have to actually go through the process.

Then there's the problem that you seem to be talking about in your reply, that
the representatives tend to be from among the rich. That puts another obstacle
on the peoples' ability to just take what the rich have...

... until the people get tired of it all, take over the streets, and just burn
it all down.

~~~
fallingfrog
You are too stuck in the present time with the present form of government-
look at this like you were an alien from outer space. To an alien there’s no
hard dividing line between a corporation and a government. And throughout
human history a myriad of political forms, permanent and temporary, have
existed, and all of them wield political power in one sense or another.

In the example you just gave, with the government just standing by, political
power devolves to the major corporations acting in the area. Early US
corporations historically had their own police forces and armies (the
pinkertons). In the late 1800s strikers fought many gun battles with private
security hired by barons such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, using
in some cases artillery and machine guns. Does that not count as political
power?

------
atq2119
Historically, the idea that a freer market and capitalism go hand in hand with
democracy does have some merit. The fact that business became a more important
factor for the power calculus meant that it was possible to challenge the
autocratic status quo, and democracy was an alternative that was naturally
favoured by many businesspeople at first because it promised a more
meritocratic system.

Nowadays, the super rich have more power _in practice_ than many of the
autocrats who were thrown out by democratic movements of the long forgotten
past, so their hubris leads some of them to work towards establishing
autocratic structures again, believing that those will always work in their
favour (newsflash: they don't, but that's another topic). Since capitalism
alone does not put a check on this development, it is no longer a good ally of
democracy. Still a useful tool when applied with measure and combined with
other tools, but not an ally.

~~~
your-nanny
I think a pretty good argument can be made that fall of the Roman Republic was
a consequence of Rome's increasing business interests abroad, and the
increasing importance of military leaders executing interventions, eg in
Greece, in support of those interests.

------
fallingfrog
I also want to point out that with respect to the connection or divorce
between capitalism and democracy, there is no conflict between capitalism and
slavery, in fact slavery is the purest expression of the capitalist ideal,
since slavery is basically elevating property rights above personal/human
rights.

Edit: not saying capitalism is equivalent to slavery. I’m just saying that the
conflict between capitalism and freedom can be boiled down to a conflict
between human rights, and property rights.

------
roenxi
There is a key premise in this article. That premise is there is some
unadulterated Will of the People that democracy is meant to uncover, and the
Capitalists are subverting it.

To me the flaws in that premise seem pretty straightfoward - there is no truth
that democracy seeks to uncover. Democracy is a highly effective release valve
so that if the situation becomes intolerable then the ruling class is changed
out. If you want to change the world, you need to convince the ruling class
that change is needed, or the people that something else needs to be tried.

The idea that some people have more decision making power than others isn't
some subversive perversion of what is good in the world, it is normal.
Democracy is fantastic compared to a monarchy - the competition is systems
where a lunatic ruler can appoint a horse to government. That is a pretty
simple example of why democracy should be preferred.

Capitalism and Democracy are bedfellows because they are both the best systems
we know of for filling roles that need to be filled - how to allocate
resources and who gets to be in charge respectively. The problem isn't that
the wealthy are also powerful, the problem is that the people are as
disorganised and fractured in opinion as the politicians who represent them.

~~~
dragonwriter
> To me the flaws in that premise seem pretty straightfoward - there is no
> truth that democracy seeks to uncover.

Sure there is. In fact, you are about to illustrate it unwittingly:

> Democracy is a highly effective release valve so that if the situation
> becomes intolerable then the ruling class is changed out.

The truth democracy seeks to uncover is “is the leadership intolerable”; the
corruption of democracy into plutocracy frustrates discovering g that answer
as he weighting of political power by wealth biases toward showing the actual
ruling class as tolerable irrespective of whether that is the mass feeling,
and makes democracy a led effective safety valve.

------
orbifold
The articles reasoning is flawed: It does not recognize that the rise of the
new far right is in answer to neoliberalism and globalism. The problems they
are describing are caused by this old neo liberal anti-nationalist but still
right wing agenda. I guess it is confusing to them that the current Italian
government both is cracking down on immigration and for the first time is
introducing long term unemployment insurance. Unrestricted immigration was
also the weapon of choice for the elite in the US in the 19th century. You
could pit Germans against Irish against former Slaves and it is still one of
the reasons that today there are so little social benefits, because people
think “those people” will take advantage of it.

I guess it is not surprising because the Zeit has been the mouthpiece for a
globalist neo-liberal elitist agenda in Germany for a long time. Their editor
in chief is a warmongering (has argued for a preemptive attack on Iran for
example) Havard educated neo liberal.

~~~
tannhaeuser
It's not surprising at all considering NSDAP (name of the orginal Nazi party)
stands for "National- _Socialist_ German Worker's Party" (emphasis mine).

~~~
genera1
Do you really need an explanation, how Hitler had nothing to with socialism,
or are you just spewing far right talking points without regard for fact or
reason?

~~~
tannhaeuser
What? My comment was meant as a warning to not fall for far-right, or any
other extremist position, not as advertising for far-right positions of all
things.

~~~
genera1
Well, it might've been a honest mistake of someone who believes in horseshoe
fallacy, but calling Nazis and Hitler socialist or left-wingers is a very
common far right tactic, designed to muddy the waters and distance themselves
from a very problematic person, so that's why I was confused about the point
you were making.

------
Hendrikto
The link to the German version 404s. Very strange.

~~~
sschueller
I can't find it either. I think it doesn't exist in German.

~~~
tannhaeuser
It's here: [https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-04/kapitalismus-
demokrat...](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-04/kapitalismus-demokratie-
ungleichheit-globalisierung)

Though TFA was originally written in English, so if you're on HN you'll want
to read the original anyway.

