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Top-level
Avocado Toast
@katco @aral society is people, sure, but the way it's driven and organized is guided by far fewer. There are people at the top of the pyramid with vast powers of allocation, dispersement, and influence. In the government that's the President, Congressional leaders, the Fed, Supreme Court, and the Treasury. In the "private sector" that's the Forbes 500 list and C-suite people. The President can invent a phrase (e.g. WMDs) and have it coming out of the mouths of ordinary citizens within a week. 4 comments
Katherine Cox-Buday
@avocado_toast @aral this is all true. Go one step beyond the analysis: what's the solution? How would one affect change? I'm convinced that at the bottom of it is what I've said: we need lots of people to understand these things and people are being denied the resources to do so.
Avocado Toast
@katco @aral I don't think it is possible for one (ordinary) person to affect change. However, collectively we can. I think there are people out there doing their best to affect change. I think labor leaders are good examples of that. People were spread thin and hurting during the last gilded age as well. It was only through their perseverance that we had the labor movement and obtained things like social security and the minimum wage. |
Gregory's Server
@katco @aral we've wrestled with this problem before in this country. I think only the war profiteering is new because prior to WW1 and WW2 we weren't a superpower with a fully realized military-industrial complex.
But the robber barons and their influence over governmental policy looks a lot like the late 1800s. We're (IMO) living through a second gilded age.