this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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The amount of people who died as a result of Brian Thompson's leadership of united healthcare should be investigated instead
Western democracy is at risk until this is done. We literally don't deserve to exist if we can't figure this basic stuff out - i.e. when our own people are dying, maybe the empty private hospital beds and ample staff resources should be used to save those lives. Because people are.. gonna die otherwise. The fact that anything else needs to be said is the problem.
‘Western style democracy’ has never been truly democratic because of how money influences elections and politicians. True democracy isn’t possible as long as there exists a capital class in society. The capital class will not give up its wealth without a class war.
Hence the need to remove
But changes to these policies won't occur because these policies already exist.
And they are self sustaining, as long as money can buy politicians, no politician would ever be able to stop it on their own.
I asked chatgpt for a solution. It's not promising:-
Even though U.S. policies like equating money with free speech, treating corporations as people, and legalizing lobbying are deeply entrenched, history shows that even long-established systems can change through persistent, multifaceted efforts. Here’s how such changes might occur:
Constitutional Amendments: The most sweeping change would come from amending the Constitution. For example, an amendment could clarify that money is not a form of free speech or that constitutional protections apply only to human beings, not corporations. Although amending the Constitution is difficult and requires broad political consensus, it would directly override existing legal interpretations.
Judicial Reinterpretation: Change can also occur gradually by influencing judicial interpretations. By electing or appointing judges who are open to rethinking established precedents—such as those set by decisions like Citizens United—legal opinions on campaign finance and corporate rights can slowly evolve.
Reforming Campaign Finance Laws: Even without a constitutional amendment, Congress and state legislatures can pass new laws to restrict political spending. Measures might include public financing of campaigns, strict spending caps, and full disclosure of contributions to reduce the outsized influence of large donors.
Regulating Corporate Political Activity: Statutory reforms can be introduced to redefine the role of corporations in politics. For instance, laws could ban corporate contributions to political campaigns or limit their lobbying activities, effectively reducing the political clout that comes with corporate personhood.
Tightening Lobbying Regulations: Legislatures can also impose stricter rules on lobbying—such as enhanced disclosure requirements, limits on the "revolving door" between government and private industry, or even temporary bans on certain types of lobbying. These measures would curb the direct influence that special interest groups can wield over lawmakers.
Building Public Pressure: Change often starts from the bottom up. Grassroots movements, advocacy groups, and citizen coalitions can mobilize public opinion, use social media to raise awareness, and pressure elected officials to prioritize campaign finance and corporate reform.
Electoral Reforms and Voting Engagement: Changes like anti-gerrymandering efforts, ranked-choice voting, and other electoral reforms can help shift political power towards a broader base of citizens. Increased voter participation and support for reform-minded candidates can gradually reshape the political landscape.
State-Level Innovations: States can act as testing grounds for reform. Successful state-level initiatives—such as stricter campaign finance laws or innovative transparency measures—can provide models that encourage national adoption of similar policies.
Summary
Though deeply entrenched, policies like "money as free speech," corporate personhood, and legal lobbying can change. Through constitutional amendments, new laws to reform campaign finance and corporate influence, and powerful grassroots mobilization, we can reshape our political system to be more democratic and representative.
These avenues illustrate that while the current biases are strong, a combination of legal, legislative, and grassroots actions can pave the way for meaningful political reform.
And on that score, I often muse if we should be grateful that MAGA and Trump are accelerating the timetable as they have... Capitalism, world economics and geopolitical problems as they were 20 years ago could have been sustained well into the 22nd century. We are so good at avoiding change at all costs!
Now we are headed for a societal collapse, once the ruffians who instigated it are out of the way I think the future for humanity looks quite bright indeed. We may even beat climate change, so long as we.. beat all the nasty billionaires, nazis, dictators and oligarchy first... holds head in hands
That's an interesting thought. In the slow system we might've been boiled like a frog, but now that things are changing much faster, we may be able to jump out of the water before we die.
And land in the flames instead.
Accelerationism
Capitalism is an inherently unstable system due to the contradictions that define it. Scapegoats are necessary to prevent working class from rising up, and economic conditions in the US have gotten so bad that most people no longer care about sustaining the status quo. So I don’t think the current rise of fascism could have been prevented without a socialist alternative.
Also Biden had already changed the geopolitical landscape when he openly funded an (even domestically) deeply unpopular genocide.
I might be being a bit daft here, but why western democracy, not just American democracy? I ask cause on USA has privatised healthcare.
I'm in Australia, which is supposed to have universal health care, that system has been eroded into dysfunction by decades of neglect and downsizing by subsequent conservative governments. Right wingers slash and burn budgets, and then "left leaning" centrist governments come in with the weakest possible reform agenda, never returning things to where they were but preventing others from fixing it either.
I'm not sure where Canada, NZ and other English speaking nations are at, but I assumed that their health systems are negatively affected by neo liberalism and similarly face problems that didn't exist 10-25 years ago. Even if they have universal healthcare on paper, shenanigans by lobbyists, slashing of budgets and other institutional neglect has led to a breakdown in the care people can access.
The UK has an even worse issue with the NHS. It was already as bad as Australia before Brexit, now it's been a prolonged period of people on public waiting lists where patients wait for over 2 years, unable to see specialists or book in surgeries. Untold amount of misery, and even death, that was preventable.
Countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland seem to have done a better job protecting the interests of the public from greed. But then there's western countries that have huge social issues like Spain, France, etc.
My perception is that western democracies are not good at protecting their citizens because law makers, the media and other mechanisms in a western democracy allow for abuse by greed and self interest. It seems like despite strong laws and traditions existing, ongoing campaigning by those with money and allowing those people to earn a profit from essential services results in those services being eroded.
Thank you for this, it’s really well written.
Yeah, I get you. I was being dense.
That's part of the problem, we don't have ample hospital beds nor staff resources.
I don't know if and am not saying there are enough to cover the gap... But there are certainly plenty of unused resources in the private hospital system. Doctors, nurses, beds, medicines that could be put to use saving lives, preventing trauma and improving the livelihoods of people in the public system.
The private medical system has siphoned too much from the public for too long. It should always have been a premium tier for the wealthy to enjoy caviar and have cable TV in a private room after surgery. Instead, people who go to a public hospital for urgent emergency care are being sent home to die in error, instead of the ICU, because public emergency rooms are catastrophically overloaded.
In Australia we've taken the disadvantage of the poor a step further, like we often do, and have propped up the private system advantaging it even further, e.g. by forcing people to pay a tax for not having private insurance, labyrinthian bureaucracy of referrals that rack up consultation fees and achieve nothing for patients, etc.
In the US, the system is overwhelmed in large part thanks to the financial side pushing for ever increasing patient loads and reduced staff. So nurses are saddled with more patients than they can safely take care of because an empty bed is lost profit. This has a cascade effect because staff are leaving the industry as a whole because of the understaffing, stress, and poor pay/life balance.
I don't know if the ACA has the same tax as your system does, but I know my state also has a tax penalty if you're not covered by insurance. The upside to this, though, is that the state offers insurance. It's not a great system (before you even get into the plague of issues with the finer points of the system), but it's better than just leaving people to fend for themselves.