This is just acknowledging that the government wouldn’t be corrupt without the billionaires. By the logic of your post, the left is correct and the right is not.
But your first sentence in your comment is wrong.
Classic correlation is not causation. With the addition of “if X is Y because Z, if Z wouldn’t be, then X wouldn’t be Y”.
I was on the fence about this exact thing. My logic is that corruption requires wealthy/powerful people to be corrupt in favor of. If there were no billionaire class, no bourgeoisie, there would be no people who benefit from the oppression of the proletariat, so corruption as we conceive of it in modern America couldn’t exist.
Of course, people will act unpredictably and some people with power will abuse it, but the whole system of billions being spent on campaign contributions and lobbyist dinners couldn’t continue if there weren’t entities with billions to spend.
If there were no billionaires, a corrupt person could still have power inside a government. Making it a corrupt government.
Then he could benefit from that corruption and become a billionaire.
It’s not a one way relationship.
Corrupt entities make powerful people. And powerful people (sometimes) do make the entities corrupt.
And this is an issue for all political systems.
It’s not a “get rid of billionaires and the issue is fixed”. We must both redistribute power so it is at more reasonable levels. And clean the entities.
And once the power imbalance is smaller and the entities are clean, it is a constant maintenance fight to keep those entities clean and the power balanced.
A single democratic election can give a lot of power to a person that previously had none. Power is always flowing.
This is just acknowledging that the government wouldn’t be corrupt without the billionaires. By the logic of your post, the left is correct and the right is not.
This stinks of “enlightened centrist” meme junk.
Yes, the post is meant to be pro-left.
But your first sentence in your comment is wrong. Classic correlation is not causation. With the addition of “if X is Y because Z, if Z wouldn’t be, then X wouldn’t be Y”.
I was on the fence about this exact thing. My logic is that corruption requires wealthy/powerful people to be corrupt in favor of. If there were no billionaire class, no bourgeoisie, there would be no people who benefit from the oppression of the proletariat, so corruption as we conceive of it in modern America couldn’t exist.
Of course, people will act unpredictably and some people with power will abuse it, but the whole system of billions being spent on campaign contributions and lobbyist dinners couldn’t continue if there weren’t entities with billions to spend.
If there were no billionaires, a corrupt person could still have power inside a government. Making it a corrupt government.
Then he could benefit from that corruption and become a billionaire.
It’s not a one way relationship.
Corrupt entities make powerful people. And powerful people (sometimes) do make the entities corrupt.
And this is an issue for all political systems.
It’s not a “get rid of billionaires and the issue is fixed”. We must both redistribute power so it is at more reasonable levels. And clean the entities.
And once the power imbalance is smaller and the entities are clean, it is a constant maintenance fight to keep those entities clean and the power balanced.
A single democratic election can give a lot of power to a person that previously had none. Power is always flowing.