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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 11:47 am Post subject: Do US politicians represent their constituents? |
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So there is this undercurrent of discussion on this board of whether the people are screwed by the elite, or the people screw themselves. The caniff-mises school of thought suggests that the elite exploit the people and their ignorance. The Kuros-Fox theory posits that the people allow the elite to exploit them. Lastly, there's the Spacebar/Bacasper school, which asserts that it is all a system of control. If you believe these views are indistinguishable because of their cynicism, you may be right, all the views are pretty cynical (but what is an ex-pat current events chatboard but a nexus for cynicism?).
I submit into evidence Exhibit #1 for the Kuros-Fox theory.
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| And to the question of whether one income group is better represented than the other, our descriptive analysis suggests that the answer depends on representative party. Republican legislators vote more along the lines of the views of their constituents residing in high income neighborhoods. Democratic legislative voting is better predicted by the voters of lower income areas ... Democratic and Republican legislators represent voters at opposite ends of the income distribution because they represent voters at opposite ends of the ideology distribution. |
So why did the tax cuts for the rich pass? I admit that is still a mystery. And caniff-mises might offer it up as their Exhibit #1.
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| Popular vs. unpopular cuts: The NBC/WSJ poll also lists 26 different ways to reduce the federal budget deficit. The most popular: placing a surtax on federal income taxes for those who make more than $1 million per year (81% said that was acceptable), eliminating spending on earmarks (78%), eliminating funding for weapons systems the Defense Department says aren�t necessary (76%) and eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries (74%). The least popular: cutting funding for Medicaid (32% said that was acceptable), cutting funding for Medicare (23%), cutting funding for K-12 education (22%), and cutting funding for Social Security (22%). |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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| The caniff-mises school of thought suggests that the elite exploit the people and their ignorance. |
Yes, this is a fair characterization. I have little time now, but my general position is that our governments are for sale. Here's an example:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/03/2096338/presidential-motorcade-might-hold.html
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| President Obama will be visiting the school... for several hours Friday afternoon. ... Friday evening, he�ll be attending fund-raisers at the Fontainebleau Hotel and a private residence. |
The visit to the school is fodder for the proles. Oh look, Hope and Change is going to fix the schools.
He finishes with that and heads on over the the Fontainebleau, where wealthy people will pay thousands to hear a speech. Then he's off to the private home of an oligarch, where the real money will get an ear. That's the system. The president of this great republic going to a house to ask for money.
I agree with Spacebar too. Our system is a means of control. Bread and circus and all that. Democracy is the illusion of choice. Even the most elementary understanding of maths should allow all of us to understand the futility of voting. We're always given meaningless choices too: I can pick Blue Harper or Red Harper.
Anyways, my solution is simple. We (the USA and Canada) need - damn desperately - publicly financed elections. IF we had publicly financed elections, then I'd be more inclined to the Kuros/Fox position, whereby the people are able to change the system. I see them as helpless.
Here's an example of how the world works:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216
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Last year, Aguirre noticed that a conference on financial law enforcement was scheduled to be held at the Hilton in New York on November 12th. The list of attendees included 1,500 or so of the country's leading lawyers who represent Wall Street, as well as some of the government's top cops from both the SEC and the Justice Department.
Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats. At the Hilton conference, regulators and banker-lawyers rubbed elbows during a series of speeches and panel discussions, away from the rabble. "They were chummier in that environment," says Aguirre, who plunked down $2,200 to attend the conference.
Aguirre saw a lot of familiar faces at the conference, for a simple reason: Many of the SEC regulators he had worked with during his failed attempt to investigate John Mack had made a million-dollar pass through the Revolving Door, going to work for the very same firms they used to police. Aguirre didn't see Paul Berger, an associate director of enforcement who had rebuffed his attempts to interview Mack � maybe because Berger was tied up at his lucrative new job at Debevoise & Plimpton, the same law firm that Morgan Stanley employed to intervene in the Mack case. But he did see Mary Jo White, the former U.S. attorney, who was still at Debevoise & Plimpton. He also saw Linda Thomsen, the former SEC director of enforcement who had been so helpful to White. Thomsen had gone on to represent Wall Street as a partner at the prestigious firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Two of the government's top cops were there as well: Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Robert Khuzami, the SEC's current director of enforcement. Bharara had been recommended for his post by Chuck Schumer, Wall Street's favorite senator. And both he and Khuzami had served with Mary Jo White at the U.S. attorney's office, before Mary Jo went on to become a partner at Debevoise. What's more, when Khuzami had served as general counsel for Deutsche Bank, he had been hired by none other than Dick Walker, who had been enforcement director at the SEC when it slow-rolled the pivotal fraud case against Rite Aid.
"It wasn't just one rotation of the revolving door," says Aguirre. "It just kept spinning. Every single person had rotated in and out of government and private service."
The Revolving Door isn't just a footnote in financial law enforcement; over the past decade, more than a dozen high-ranking SEC officials have gone on to lucrative jobs at Wall Street banks or white-shoe law firms, where partnerships are worth millions. That makes SEC officials like Paul Berger and Linda Thomsen the equivalent of college basketball stars waiting for their first NBA contract. Are you really going to give up a shot at the Knicks or the Lakers just to find out whether a Wall Street big shot like John Mack was guilty of insider trading? "You take one of these jobs," says Turner, the former chief accountant for the SEC, "and you're fit for life."
Fit � and happy. The banter between the speakers at the New York conference says everything you need to know about the level of chumminess and mutual admiration that exists between these supposed adversaries of the justice system. At one point in the conference, Mary Jo White introduced Bharara, her old pal from the U.S. attorney's office.
"I want to first say how pleased I am to be here," Bharara responded. Then, addressing White, he added, "You've spawned all of us. It's almost 11 years ago to the day that Mary Jo White called me and asked me if I would become an assistant U.S. attorney. So thank you, Dr. Frankenstein."
Next, addressing the crowd of high-priced lawyers from Wall Street, Bharara made an interesting joke. "I also want to take a moment to applaud the entire staff of the SEC for the really amazing things they have done over the past year," he said. "They've done a real service to the country, to the financial community, and not to mention a lot of your law practices."
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That is the government. We are way beyond elections fixing this thing. Nor can the people loudly demand sensible policy. The people spoke loudly against the bailouts and all the letters and calls were ignored.
At least Americans know that the big banks were bailed out. I seriously doubt 1 of 10,000 Canucks knows that the CDN banks were given massive public support. That is one hell of a propaganda victory.
http://www.sprott.com/Docs/MarketsataGlance/11_09%20Dont%20Bank%20on%20the%20Banks.pdf
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First, they received $65 billion in liquidity injections from the Insured Mortgage Purchase Program (IMPP), whereby Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) purchased insured mortgages from Canadian banks to provide additional liquidity on the asset side of their
balance sheets.7 Next, the Bank of Canada provided them with an additional $45 billion in temporary liquidity facilities. Finally, a Canadian Bank (that shall remain nameless) also received assistance
from the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) through the purchase of $4 billion in mortgages prior to the IMPP program, for a total government expenditure of $114 billion.8 For reference, the entire tangible common equity of the Canadian Banks in 2008 was $68 billion. Can you put two and two
together? The Canadian government injected a sum through mortgage purchases worth more than the entire tangible common equity of the Canadian banking system! On top of that, the Bank of Canada provided more than 50% of the tangible common equity of the system in emergency liquidity facilities. |
http://www.cba.ca/en/media-room/50-backgrounders-on-banking-issues/480-what-canadians-think-about-their-banks
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18 June 2010
A large majority of Canadians agree that Canada�s banks are well-managed and well-regulated and avoided the recent problems in the global financial sector. As a result, it�s important to ensure that Canadian banks are not put at a disadvantage as new global banking regulations are considered and that a strong banking sector in Canada is able to compete internationally and support Canadian consumers and Canadian businesses. |
How in the world is Canada going to have a government for the people when the people haven't the first clue what they're talking about because their media has fed them nonsense?
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20081009/canadian_banks_081009/
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| Canadian banks the soundest in the world: report |
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/589123
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What Obama can learn from us
Zakaria notes that, in the industrialized world, only Canada has experienced no bank failures or government bailouts. |
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When I speak of the elite I don't separate media from business from government. It is one entity. The people are defenseless. Life is difficult. We have jobs, families, responsibilities and with our free time would like to unwind and not read about how poorly run the country is. We can not expect the average citizen to put in sufficient time and effort to fully understand policy. They sit down and watch the CBC or CNN. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:57 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Democracy is the illusion of choice. |
I really don't think this is true. You have a real and genuine choice in the voting booth, and it doesn't have to be between "Blue Harper and Red Harper." You can vote for whoever you want; non-party candidates have won, as have non-traditional candidates within a party during primaries. The problem is, just as you get to vote for whoever you like, so does everyone else, and unlike you, they're quite content to cast their vote for one of the "Harpers" and be done with it. Democracy isn't the illusion of choice, but it can seem that way when you are heavily out of step with the electorate (which anyone who is both of above average intelligence and possessed of an ethical spirit is likely to be). Passionate men of virtue stand very little chance, not because of some scheme by the elite, but because the average person is turned off by them. There are rare exceptions, but those exceptions work against your case by showing that the electorate -- assuming it's possessed of the proper character -- is capable of success in this regard.
| mises wrote: |
| Anyways, my solution is simple. We (the USA and Canada) need - damn desperately - publicly financed elections. IF we had publicly financed elections, then I'd be more inclined to the Kuros/Fox position, whereby the people are able to change the system. I see them as helpless. |
History implies, I think, that not only is this just a band-aid, it's a band-aid that will ultimately fall off due to constant push back from the capitalist class. I'm not saying I disagree with publicly financed elections, mind you -- I think they're better than where we are now -- but on their own they aren't enough. The real remedy is first and foremost a cultural one; without that, there's no healing going on under your proposed band-aid, and when it falls off the bleeding will still be happening.
| mises wrote: |
That is the government. We are way beyond elections fixing this thing. Nor can the people loudly demand sensible policy. The people spoke loudly against the bailouts and all the letters and calls were ignored. |
They were ignored because they were in the minority in any real sense. Sure, the public (at least the portion of it that has an opinion at all) might not have liked the bail-outs, but it was a tepid dislike. Plenty of politicians that support bailing out banks will remain in office, and plenty more will continue to be elected, not because it's inevitable, but because when it comes down to it it really doesn't bother the average American that much. It's not a deal breaker issue. The Patriot Act isn't a deal breaker issue. The outrageous state of the TSA isn't a deal breaker issue. These things are all easy to be passively against, but if the people aren't willing to vote their mind on the matter, then the results will reflect that.
| mises wrote: |
| How in the world is Canada going to have a government for the people when the people haven't the first clue what they're talking about because their media has fed them nonsense? |
You are Canadian, and you know. This gets into the other part of this matter; media is shaped by its viewer base. Sure individual media outlets have agendas, but they'll only thrive if that agenda can actually connect with a large portion of the population. Media that doesn't get watched doesn't stay in business. Westerners have more choice of who to turn to to get their news than any people in the history of the world, but you can't make the horse drink.
| mises wrote: |
| When I speak of the elite I don't separate media from business from government. It is one entity. The people are defenseless. |
Your concept of the elite as a group that spans business, government, and media is fine, but this idea that the elite are some omnipotent collective that the common man can't resist isn't reasonable. The elite and the commons operate on a kind of feedback loop, with each reinforcing and shaping the other. It's easy to just blame the status quo on the guys at the top, and very convenient, but get rid of them somehow and they'll be replaced by very similar faces unless the culture changes in the interim.
It's not like I'm some sort of big time supporter of big business or deceptive media here either. I'm just being realistic. Individual crimes can be laid at the feet of individual people, but that's as far as it goes.
| mises wrote: |
| We have jobs, families, responsibilities and with our free time would like to unwind and not read about how poorly run the country is. We can not expect the average citizen to put in sufficient time and effort to fully understand policy. They sit down and watch the CBC or CNN. |
Living in a representative democracy comes with responsibilities. Either an electorate lives up to those responsibilities, or the electorate will suffer. I sympathize with what you've said here, I really do, but I also recognize that it's just not realistic. Just as it's unrealistic to ignore economic reality and try to live beyond your means through ever-increasing debt, it's unrealistic to ignore political reality and not at least ensure a basic familiarity with important political issues and how they affect you, your family, and your society.
Now, with regards to the tax cuts for the rich mentioned in the original post, according to this a solid 40% of Americans disagreed with ending the Bush tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars. It's a minority, but a sizable one, and bigger than any other chunk if you break people's positions down based on where they wanted the cut-off to be (no cut off/1 million/500,000/250,000/allow all to expire). I'm not sure it's entirely fair to construe politicians who voted to extend these tax cuts as somehow out of step with their constituents; in some cases they might be (particularly the deep-blue state democrats who went along with the deal), but in a lot of cases they probably weren't too far off base. The American view of taxes is dysfunctional, and it's reflected in our politics. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| The real remedy is first and foremost a cultural one; without that, there's no healing going on under your proposed band-aid, and when it falls off the bleeding will still be happening. |
You're probably correct in asserting that money would find a way to buy politics.
A cultural change is a very fuzzy concept. Can you be more specific? Can you point to modern examples?
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| Plenty of politicians that support bailing out banks will remain in office, and plenty more will continue to be elected, not because it's inevitable, but because when it comes down to it it really doesn't bother the average American that much. |
It is a circle, right? In the US:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/07/23/gallup-confidence-in-congress-drops-to-11/
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| Gallup: Confidence in Congress Drops to 11% |
Yet:
http://www.fandm.edu/politics/politically-uncorrected-column/2005-politically-uncorrected/a-certain-uncertainty
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| Nationally House congressional incumbent reelection rates have exceeded 95-percent for almost two decades. In recent election cycles, fewer than ten percent of House seats (about 30 of 435 seats) are considered "competitive." |
There is a time lag between those two data points, but they remain generally true.
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| Sure individual media outlets have agendas, but they'll only thrive if that agenda can actually connect with a large portion of the population. Media that doesn't get watched doesn't stay in business. Westerners have more choice of who to turn to to get their news than any people in the history of the world, but you can't make the horse drink. |
Again, this is true, but speaks more to the problem. The elite, with a hundred years of psychological research under their belt, are able to use media as a means to distract and manipulate and at the same time ensure that the material presented connects with a large share of citizens. The average guy watching TV does not know that the way news is presented is carefully designed to distract him from critical thinking. Half of the population is less intelligent than half of the population, right?
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| Your concept of the elite as a group that spans business, government, and media is fine, but this idea that the elite are some omnipotent collective that the common man can't resist isn't reasonable. |
The system of propaganda and illusory choices may be overcome by a population of intelligent citizens. We don't have such a population. Most people are just average. They'll respond to the leadership of whoever is on top. That's our species. The vast majority muddle along. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:11 am Post subject: |
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I feel like I subscribe to all three - I'm like cynicism cubed at this point.
Following current events is like seeing a trainwreck - gruesome but you can't help but watch.
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| ..media is shaped by its viewer base. Sure individual media outlets have agendas, but they'll only thrive if that agenda can actually connect with a large portion of the population. Media that doesn't get watched doesn't stay in business. |
I'd posit that in many cases all the major news outlooks are parroting the same angles/talking points.
*I used to do some editing work so I'm just staying in practice.
Last edited by caniff on Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 8:05 am Post subject: |
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| My school merely says they represent their paymasters, and they only get to where they are in the first place if they have first been picked, vetted, packaged, and sold by the paymaster elites, e.g. Obama, e.g. when Kerry ran against Bush, the leading donor for Bush was the president of Citibank while that for Kerry was the vice president of Citibank. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
A cultural change is a very fuzzy concept. Can you be more specific? Can you point to modern examples? |
I can point to no perfect examples (because a perfect culture that absolutely defies corruption is probably more an ideal to strive towards than something attainable), but the entire world is more or less a series of relative examples. You yourself recognize this to be true, I think. Nations are a good or bad place to live based first and foremost on the people that live there.
The easiest and fairest (due to the fact that they're all operating under a single guiding set of federal laws) examples can be found right here in the United States. Our state governments have a substantial amount of diversity, and that derives directly from cultural differences. Our states also have a noticeable poverty disparity, and that too derives from who lives there. Note that even when we take race into account, all that does is smooth out the line a bit; whites in West Virginia are still over two times as likely to be impoverished than whites in New Jersey. This isn't just about race, it's about culture, first and foremost. Different state cultures produce different results with regards to prosperity, with regards to political representation (and therefore, with regards to law), and because politics are ultimately the means by which the "elite" operate, this can't help but be meaningful. The citizens of Wisconsin are kicking up a fuss about a plan that's just the quietly accepted status quo in other states for a reason, after all.
Of course there are other examples world wide. There's a reason, for example, why Scandanavian states tend to win out in political corruption indexes, and it's the same reason that they've managed to create comfortable states with high standards of living for themselves. They have a certain quality of culture that lends itself to that. Obviously their results aren't perfect (and in some cases are indicative of social consciousness taken too far), but nothing ever will be. What matters is that we can see the character of an electorate very much seems to be reflected in it's society, in it's elected government, and in it's overall results.
| mises wrote: |
| Again, this is true, but speaks more to the problem. The elite, with a hundred years of psychological research under their belt, are able to use media as a means to distract and manipulate and at the same time ensure that the material presented connects with a large share of citizens. The average guy watching TV does not know that the way news is presented is carefully designed to distract him from critical thinking. Half of the population is less intelligent than half of the population, right? |
I think some of this is probably true, but I think it's just as equally true that a huge swath of the population has no interest in critical thinking and just wants easy, mindless entertainment, so much so that it's wildly profitable to provide it. Two-way street, not top-down conspiracy. Vanish the elite tomorrow and people are still going to demand crap like talk shows, reality TV, cop shows, and so forth. Sure there's some bread and circuses going on here, but they serve two agendas. One agenda wants those breads and circuses to distract from things, no doubt. The other agenda just really, really likes bread and circuses, and doesn't care about much that is neither bread nor circus. Even if you get rid of the former somehow, I think it will naturally stem again from the latter.
| mises wrote: |
| The system of propaganda and illusory choices may be overcome by a population of intelligent citizens. We don't have such a population. Most people are just average. They'll respond to the leadership of whoever is on top. That's our species. The vast majority muddle along. |
Then any government with a serious element of democracy is going to devolve into either theocracy, plutocracy, or totalitarianism over time. Our choice as a society is to either take real steps to improve the common man (it needn't necessarily be with regards to IQ; character and values are what matter most here), or to work on forming a government that avoids corruption while reducing the involvement of the common man. I'd prefer the former, because the vast majority "just muddling along" under a system designed to essentially baby sit them isn't what I want. I don't think it's what any of us want, and I don't think we can afford it. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
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| ..media is shaped by its viewer base. Sure individual media outlets have agendas, but they'll only thrive if that agenda can actually connect with a large portion of the population. Media that doesn't get watched doesn't stay in business. |
I'd posit that in many cases all the major news outlooks are parroting the same angles/talking points. |
That's because they're all talking to the same population. Media directed at specific small sub-cultures will always be more interesting, involved, and in-depth, because it doesn't have to (and isn't trying to) appeal to as many people as possible.
What's important here is that any news source you or I could look at, anyone else could look at as well. The type of media one chooses to consume says a lot about them as a person. Fox News, CNN, etc aren't some sort of transmission directly and unavoidably beamed into our brains. The viewership of those channels actively seek out those channels, and they do so because what they find there agrees with them. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:08 pm Post subject: |
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When you're talking about American households in general I think it's just about impossible to overstate the power of the almighty boob-tube. And when you're talking news on TV, it's more or less the same 3-4 players.
We could be dealing with a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum here. |
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ThingsComeAround
Joined: 07 Nov 2008
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:41 am Post subject: |
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US politicians represent those with the deepest pockets and make the greatest 'campaign contributions'.
There, I said it. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
That's because they're all talking to the same population. Media directed at specific small sub-cultures will always be more interesting, involved, and in-depth, because it doesn't have to (and isn't trying to) appeal to as many people as possible. |
The creation of trends is a good example here. When a major retailer (Gap, Urban, etc) want people to discard their recently bought attire, they get together with advertisers, magazines, marketing consultants and create the new trends. Consumers respond, thinking they're cutting edge. Say you've entered an order to some sweatshop in Indonesia for a million ugly shoes. You want people to think the shoes are cool. So you start ground up. Women who think themselves fashionable follow blogs run by 'private' women. These bloggers receive freebies from the firms. The magazines then - at the same time - start pushing a new trend. The population responds as it is supposed to, and goes to the store to buy the new shoes. Styles and consumer tastes are created from the top and pushed up from the bottom.
I imagine it is exactly the same with political information.
Fox, this is where we disagree (or one of the places). I do not see the creation of culture as a back/forth between elite and people. It is top down. People will wear what they're told to wear. Same for politics. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 9:57 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Fox, this is where we disagree (or one of the places). I do not see the creation of culture as a back/forth between elite and people. It is top down. People will wear what they're told to wear. Same for politics. |
Then who is the elite? If we're talking about culture, then it will be the artists. You're saying its the marketers?
As for politics, people are tribal and they aggregate in political blocs. I think the multi-party systems have a better go of it, its more likely that a nascent party can ride a reform to its destination than here in the US. The tribalism is very bottom-up, but the people at the top are responsible for the talking points and unified language. But even in the US you see Ron Pauls and Gary Johnsons. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:18 am Post subject: |
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| You're saying its the marketers? |
It was an example of how a meme is created. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
That's because they're all talking to the same population. Media directed at specific small sub-cultures will always be more interesting, involved, and in-depth, because it doesn't have to (and isn't trying to) appeal to as many people as possible. |
The creation of trends is a good example here. When a major retailer (Gap, Urban, etc) want people to discard their recently bought attire, they get together with advertisers, magazines, marketing consultants and create the new trends. Consumers respond, thinking they're cutting edge. Say you've entered an order to some sweatshop in Indonesia for a million ugly shoes. You want people to think the shoes are cool. So you start ground up. Women who think themselves fashionable follow blogs run by 'private' women. These bloggers receive freebies from the firms. The magazines then - at the same time - start pushing a new trend. The population responds as it is supposed to, and goes to the store to buy the new shoes. Styles and consumer tastes are created from the top and pushed up from the bottom.
I imagine it is exactly the same with political information.
Fox, this is where we disagree (or one of the places). I do not see the creation of culture as a back/forth between elite and people. It is top down. People will wear what they're told to wear. Same for politics. |
If this were so, market research (to use your example) would be totally useless. It's not useless, though. Sure, there's some element of companies using advertisement (both through direct advertisement and through things like "reviews") to encourage consumer purchases, and it undoubtedly has an effect, but the reason it's as effective as it is is because these products were all ready created with the population in general in mind, and when they weren't, you end up with a failed product. Advertising might make Timmy buy something he might not have bought anyway, but it won't make him buy and keep something he hates with any regularity.
This applies to politics as well. Sure by the end you've got, as you so eloquently put it, "Blue Harper and Red Harper," to choose from on the ballot. But you've got that because the political process all ready weeded out a large number of alternative, essentially unelectable candidates. Just as with the pants, election advertisement can move people's voting patterns within a narrow band, but it's not going to make them vote for someone they hate.
Sure there's top down influence. I think you totally underestimate the bottom up influence though. Guys like Ron Paul (to use Kuros' example) are not the work of the elite. So why does a guy like that win in his district, a lesbian liberal who opposes the Iraq War won in mine, and a pro-war neocon win in a third? Because of real bottom up differences that really do have an effect.
Last edited by Fox on Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Guys like Ron Paul (to use Kuros' example) are not the work of the elite. So why does a guy like that win in his district, a lesbian anti-war liberal win in mine, and a neo-con win in a third? |
Maybe becaue the elite don't see these people as a viable threat (and could actually see them as beneficial in that they promote the appearance of a more diverse political landscape).
The MSM for the most part refuses to give RP the time of day and when they do they always insinuate (or flat-out say) that a RP presidential candidacy is hopeless. |
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