No Stupid Questions

if money = power then liberal (democracy) = oligarchy

Feel free to crosspost to !AskUSA@discuss.online

It's at least a Soft Oligarchy yes. There's no legally or extra legally enforced class system. If you can make it into the upper classes, by guile, luck, or sheer bastardry they'll accept you and let you run some things, maybe even political offices. See J.D. Vance, a millennial from Appalachia who has risen to the Vice Presidency via guile and sheer bastardry.

But it's a Soft Oligarchy because opportunities are far from equal. Before anyone starts screeching, equality of outcome isn't an expectation here, merely equality of opportunity. In the large majority of cases your zip code can predict your future socioeconomic level. And not because rural areas are cheaper, that just means middle and upper class start at lower numbers there. Those classes are still not being obtained. Along with this are several studies over the last couple decades telling us that socioeconomic mobility is all but dead, both individually, and more recently, intergenerational mobility.

So while you aren't going to be killed or imprisoned for earning too much or asking for stuff above your station, it is very rare to access those levels without being born to them. Thus the "soft" in Soft Oligarchy.

The closest thing we have to democracy is our ability to begin democracy by fighting against first-past-the-post voting systems

it's very close to turning into one.

It's not quite there, but trump is definitely not one to shy away from it, so it mostly depends on who he appoints and interacts with. And how corrupt he will be.

No, we will never be an oligarchy. A plutocracy, yes, but I think money is the deciding factor here.

Pretty sure it crossed that line decades ago.

I say this in nearly complete seriousness:

Always has been

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It has been an oligarchy for a long time. This has been studied and proven.

Well in 2015 Jimmy Carter said that the United States is "just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. "

That same year The Economist's Democracy Index downgraded the United States to a "flawed democracy" and it has continued to trend downwards since then.

If you're looking for something more recent, Bernie Sanders is saying the same thing: "We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, have so much wealth and so much power".

So between the massive (and growing) income inequality in the country, and rulings like Citizen's United it's hard not to believe it's not at least on the trajectory towards an oligarchy. Now throw in the blatantly corrupt picks of the Trump administration, where cabinet positions are favors to rich friends, or being given to billionaires with a direct interest in killing the government agency they are running - not to mention all the things he's routinely done / will do to enrich himself / friends with tax payer dollars and it certainly seems like an oligarchy to me.

And just on a personal vibes level, living here, it feels like legislation to help normal people or solve normal people's problems is almost non-existent. And when it does happen, it also conveniently throws a ton of money at the rich at the same time (see recent tax cuts, pandemic relief funds, etc.). Even something like the Affordable Care Act, which did a ton of net good things for this country, enriched a whole lot of private healthcare companies along the way rather than creating an actual public option with negotiated prices to keep government costs down.

Turned? Have you ever heard of the Rockefeller and Morgan families?

the US is run by billionaires and corporations.

you can live in peace as long as you don't inconvenience them too much, and keep paying them

The US has been an oligarchy for some time. Act accordingly.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

Tbh I think the most recent election and its implications makes the facts abundantly clear.

I would say corporatocracy. Ever since Citizens United, corporations have been making more and more policy and political decisions, placing in power who they believe will advance their agendas of unlimited and never ending profit.

I think it’s worse. I think we have noble houses fighting for the throne again. The Bush family, the Clinton family, they wanted Michelle Obama.. In what sane democracy does the family member or wife of the last elected leader make sense as being the best option? Forget oligarchy, we have a straight up monarchy brewing with a nice democratic paint job.

The rich were behind the mutiny in the first place, so, always has been

citizens united is where I would draw the line and no I don't think we are an oligarchy but a plutocracy. Honestly Im not even sure if that is the right word because the money itself has the effect and the various wealthy people spending it. I don't think they even really understand what they are doing. So its more like being ruled by money rather than the wealthy per se and honestly the ones calling the shots are the financial entities so corporations. Part of it may just be their relative power and active global decision making bend. News articles talk about musk possibly being the first trillionaire but mean while corps have based a trillion as early as 2008 and now many multi trillion dollar companies are around and the top add up to tens of trillions. So corptocracy. We had enough of that to begin with but now its out of control. Someone recently posted the international agreement that allows corps to sue countries and that finished up in the 90's so it not only started before but is also not just a us thing.

That was the case since the 80s