• xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Every other billionaire is spending their money on lobbying to get their taxes even lower. Maybe she could still have an impact through lobbying and influence peddling, but she’s outmanned and outgunned.

    I’m not saying that she’s an angel. I haven’t seen anything in the press about her motives or political stances; you could be 100% correct. But paying politicians to go against all the other donors isn’t a trivial undertaking

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      EDIT: In this weeks episode of “Where Keeping It Real Goes Wrong.”

      This is a good point, and it brings to mind something I ignored from my previous post.

      A lot of the people in congress can be “bought” for so little while in congress because the actual “payday” they get is when they leave office and enter into a cushy job where they’re paid to do not much at all, because they’ve already done the job of getting bad legislation passed.

      Scott is not in a position to be offering them cushy jobs at Amazon once they leave, so one of the main ways to “pay off” this class of politician is actually out of reach for her as an individual instead of as the head of a business.

      It’s easy to get lost in frustration with having to rely on charity, but it’s good to step back and think about it a little more clearly for a minute. Cheers, mate.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        5 months ago

        You make a great point here. The way that I think about it is that when you have a certain amount of money, it stops working like money and starts functioning as straight up power. Part of the “exchange rate” when considering money as power is the commitment to the cult of the line - the line must always go up. If you opt out from this, money starts being more like money.