The Democracy of the founding fathers was Greek Democracy, predicated upon a slave society, and restricted to only the elite. This is the society we live in today, even with our reforms towards direct representation. The system is inherently biased towards the election of elites and against the representation of the masses. Hamilton called it “faction” when the working class got together and demanded better conditions, and mechanisms were built in (which still exist to this day) that serve to ensure the continued dominance of the elite over the masses. The suffering of the many is intentional. The opulence of the wealthy is also. This is the intended outcome.
You misunderstood what I meant. What I’m saying is that corporations have taken over the governments that are supposed to be regulating them and now write the rules that benefit themselves, a.k.a. regulatory capture. This is bad. Thus why I wrote what I wrote.
Capitalism isn’t inherently bad. Unchecked capitalism will eventually become corrupted, this is known. I’m not advocating for true capitalism, I was merely making a remark about the current situation. If you read my last sentence, I’m a proponent for well regulated capitalism that’s run by a system of social democracy.
Regulatory capture was predicted well over 100 years ago. It is in inevitable outcome of the liberal Democratic capitalist model.
So while you might say, that many of our problems would be solved if we just stopped this damn regulatory capture, to do so, would reflect a lack of understanding of the inevitability of actors gaining enough capital to influence and even overpower the state. You cannot fix it through capitalism. Even soft social changes like syndicalism would only result in syndicates capturing regulatory processes , rather than corporations.
It was predicted over a 100 years ago? Lol, a 100 years ago we were trying to climb out of the Robber Baron Era, the definitive era that showed how rotten unbridled capitalism could become… until some key events, politicians, and laws helped put a stop to their total control, it(and then of course the Great Depression came crashing in). This is in the context of the US, anyway.
Anyway, I’m done arguing with you. Keep dreaming of the impossible, I agree it is a nice dream but I promise you it will never happen at scale until humans evolve and/or modern societies have been reduced to ash.
1867 to be exact.
socdem is a perfectly good intermediary to a socialist society, so I won’t bad talk it. However, none of the problems we currently face as a civilization can be solved through capitalism.