re: #70 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

Money can buy power, diplomacy, or a military. Each of those elements are as you note, not the same.

For a lot of people, if someone sounds confident in what they present, they can present all matters of bullshyte which will be accepted as truth. Anyone can do that, liberal or conservative, though the right seems to have the monopoly on bullshit-producing media machinery.

It sure is easier to earn your second billion dollars than it is your first. Once you have that first though (either through inheritance or winning the lottery, the so-called Protestant work ethic isn’t going to do it), getting the attention of politicians suddenly becomes much easier.

There’s a Russian (I think?) joke regarding the difference between the US and Russian governments: in US first you get money and then you get power, and in Russia first you get power and then you get money.

And we sure as shit have to do something about the information instrument of power.

ETA: I think we basically agree that the transnational billionaires are perhaps the greatest threat to the world now, in terms of democracy, human rights, economic justice, and the environment, but disagree on what tools are available to fight them. What I want to see out of a Biden administration is total financial war on the keepers of trillions of dollars of hidden money in the world, which will need serious international participation.