This is what I sent out last November to everyone in my mailbox and in this thread somewhereVIDEO https://youtu.be/UOTAdvc1MJM I like George Carlin. He was a good comedian. But there is a fundamental difference in a democracy--this was the revolution that was started in the late 1700s.
Yes, the powerful are just that, very powerful. BUT who has the power is different, and their interests are different. In autocracy, the government has all the real power. So if you are in Russia, Putin is the boss, plain and simple. Sure, he keeps the rich in his pocket by largely doing what they want, but he can turn on them in an instant, and they have no recourse.
In a democracy, that power is diffused--out to other powerful interests, rather than the government. Does the government have a lot of power? Absolutely. But it is also a check on even the most powerful (people like Epstein, for instance), and Bill Gates, and Elon Musk (neither of whom appears to be anything like Epstein).
The wealthy still have a great deal
more power than you and I do (and many of us, because we are pretty well off, have more power than people with significantly fewer resources). But that power is limited by the competition for resources among us. Which, helpfully, also helps to grow the amount of resources. Capitalism is useful that way. But it requires rules, otherwise you end up with consolidation of power in the hands of very, very few.
One area that Carlin gets very wrong (notwithstanding, it is a funny/good bit) is that the Bill Gates's, Elon Musks, etc., Warren Buffets, and Koch brothers
do want a well educated populace. They need it. They don't make their money without a well-educated and productive upper and middle class. Now, how much they want to pay for that is another question. No one likes paying taxes because it isn't a direct benefit. We're happy to pay for a car (after we negotiate for it) because it's a direct benefit: I pay this, I get that. Taxes don't work that way. It's all indirect benefits, which sucks. Even Social Security, which many people don't think of as a tax (and the government tries very hard to keep you from thinking of it that way), still isn't a direct benefit (although it's closer to it--which is why it has so much better political support than even infrastructure spending, which is also very popular).
That's one of the reasons the democratic west has generated so much wealth compared to other nations. The only places that can compete are oil-rich countries, so bully for them: they happen to have a resource that the industrialized world is addicted to, but even there, you would almost certainly rather be a middle class worker in the U.S., Austria, England, or South Korea, than a middle class worker in Saudi Arabia.
This is no small thing: look at the pace of industrialization between the fall of Rome and the enlightenment? It was marginal, at best. But once the Enlightenment hits, and democracy starts to take hold, holy cow, things took off. That's a function of a lot of things, but it includes the dramatic change in politics and its associated power.
All of which is to say that I'm not happy with the direction our democracy is trending right now, but I'd still take democracy every day of the week and twice on Sunday over the centralized power in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Turkey...And we should be vigilant about preventing too much centralization of power with the government. Even if the wealthy are still mostly "in charge," it's better for them to be fighting for the power, than for the centralized government to have it.
See, I'm not a crazy leftist. Crazy, maybe. :-)
