Democracy is not dead. But you're hundred percent right about Billionaires. Think Tanks are all 100% biased depending on who is funding what. Whether it's a company or a billionaire. Economists, professors, public figures, Historians, everyone is being paid.

The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process.

So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.

A good way of validating an idea is to look at empirical evidence, or the results of the application of that idea in other places.

A good example of this is the current tax debate. Republicans claim lowering taxes is a great way to "jump-start" the economy. But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade, you realize that it's a terrible idea.

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-t...

> But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade

But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding. So then the key is to see why one works and the other doesn't.

I'm from Florida. Born and raised. I'm not sure what they have been succeeding at. Opioid crisis is rampant, inequality is insane, the education system got worse and worse throughout my education and seems to have gotten worse since I graduated high school and left. Miami is partially underwater every king tide because of rising sea levels and yet under Rick Scott's government the phrase "climate change" is forbidden in emails and correspondence, so people are hamstringed into doing nothing about it. Charter schools have been given tons of leeway and there are tons of accounts of them discriminating against students who are less likely to be academic achievers on the one end of the spectrum (so that their stats look better), and on the other end of the spectrum they neglect and abuse the children in the classrooms.

As an individual it seems great to go work there as opposed to here in CA because there is no state income tax, yet I still make way more money here in CA because there is practically no industry in FL unless you're a lawyer or a doctor.

>>But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding.

Succeeding by what measure?

I was wrong: I was thinking of North Carolina[0].

[0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454640/north-carolina-...

> Democracy is dead

According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?

Only temporarily.

Once issues stop getting public attention they try again and usually succeed.

The article also cites Comcast's campaigns to oppose municipal networks. These campaigns failed too:

https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...

They might try again, but then they might lose again. No need to give in to cynicism and apathy just yet.

Remember SOPA? people protested it because it allowed to see what people did online.

But what happened this year? ISPs can sell your web history. Now they got net neutrality provisions revoked.

They lost a battle, but they are winning the war.

Note that the recent presidential election was in large part decided by which groups didn't vote. The viewpoint that politicians are all the same, voting doesn't matter etc. is a also a political opinions which benefits certain interests.

Considering that the US election spending reached a billion $ I'm not convinced.

I'd love to one day see a US presidential candidate hand out flyers on Times Square.

... why?

I'd like to see less money in politics, either public funding or donations restricted to small individual donors, and I personally think a good candidate for higher office should have worked at least one shit job in their life. But the other extreme is equally absurd.

The President is literally the chief executive of an organization of millions of people. While some good old fashioned down-to-earth-ness is great for knowing what to do, if a Presidential candidate can't manage a large organization efficiently, pick competent subordinates and delegate authority effectively, they ain't never gonna get anything done as President.

The President is like the one race where a two year PR stint managing a few thousand people spread across all fifty states and a few territories is a good interview for the job.

Was this ever not the case? Look into the history of e.g. how marijuana prohibition came about. I think we are just more aware of it today.

History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.

Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into motion that impact everyone else?

Corruption at the scale we're currently seeing was pretty much illegal until the Citizen's United ruling. Dark Money groups spent $600 million on senate races in 2016.

The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill:

> "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop, other than that it'll be fine!"

How what is described in the article - political group promoting their opinion - is "corruption"? Yes, some rich people may have financed that particular group - as rich people finance a lot of politically active groups - but what's corrupt in that? Did they bribe anyone? Did they break any laws?

Legal corruption is still corruption. But to fix it you have to change the system, not just enforce existing rules. And in order to change the system, you have to have a better system ready and widespread support for it. That's hard.

OK, let me rephrase. How it is "legal corruption"? What's corrupt there in people trying to convince other people in their point of view? Is the "corrupt" part that the people doing the convincing happen to be rich and thus must be evil? What exactly needs fixing here? Should Kochs be banned from political advocacy? Should TPA be prohibited? Should opposition to municipal projects be banned? What exactly here needs fixing?

Ever heard of United Fruit? Read more history and you'll find plenty of examples of the government taking action on behalf of one or a handful of corporations or individuals.

United Fruit (now called Chiquita) was able to exert influence on the Eisenhower administration because the Dulles brothers (Secretary of State and Director of the CIA) had a long work history and direct financial interest in the company, which was outraged that the Guatemalan government planned to force the company to sell its unused land back to the country at the company-assessed price (the company owned >40% of the arable land in the country, which it had claimed was nearly worthless to save on taxes).

The US imposed a military coup on Guatemala which overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a right-wing military junta in its place, after which the military ruled via a succession of corrupt dictators and military puppets, and undertook a horrific genocidal decades-long civil war against armed rebels and rural peasant civilians.

But I don’t think that’s quite the same situation as the Koch Brothers today. For one thing, all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners.

> all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners

What about all the American fruit farmers that compete with bananas? There's always side-effects. Now Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined.

Hopefully they lose anyway if it's that unpopular.

Probably not -- The version that emerged from the conference committee included a provision that wasn't in either the House or Senate bill -- but coincidentally would result in a tax cut of over a million dollars per year to the Senator that was previously holding out. He then announced that he would now support the bill.

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-es...

I mean lose at the polls.

Yeah. Pre-enlightnment...

Are you from the US? If so your comment reads like you have Stockholm syndrome.