Economists like to fashion themselves as the “adults in the room.” However, their notion that incomes are determined by productivity is naïve. It ignores the role of power in the determination of distribution. The guise of objectivity that economists give to distribution diverts us from the difficult adult conversation that we must have: who should get what and why?
Political campaigns cost a lot of money and billionaires fund the ones that would bail them out directly or indirectly. So billionaires are in fact bailing themselves out. This is why we so often find ourselves in the situation where all candidates are shit and we try voting for the lesser turd. If it were merely a matter of voting, we wouldn’t be in this position. Unless this is widely understood and we take the steps needed to counteract it, we’d forever be pointing at either the housing minister, or the voters and ask how could this still be happening. (Actually we won’t because the system would collapse when workers eventually revolt, but you get what I’m saying.)
The theory that if we only let large firms fail when they fuck up, things would get better is a fantasy because that changes nothing of significance in who holds power in society. And that’s before we think about corporate ownership and how profits are protected during failure. And before we consider that when firms fail, they rarely disappear. Instead they get absorbed, customers, employees and capital by their competitor, creating even bigger firms, now able to exercise higher market power, and their owners even richer. Competition does not lead to a competitive equilibrium outside of rare cases. Instead it leads to consolidation and eventually monopolies or oligipolies.
Canada has campaign finance laws put in by Harper that prevent corporations from dumping millions into donations. Unless you meant a revolving door, that I can agree with; though we just voted for a Brookfield lobbyist so there is that.
Yes I do mean the revolving door. Also the campaign finance laws still favor better funded campaigns and we know how much better funded the cons are for example than anyone else. And then there’s the spending that goes to advertising from third parties which is very high. And then we have the third party ad spending outside of campaign periods. Your Canada Prouds and such pushing corporate propaganda all day, every day. And then in some provinces there are no limits for provincial elections or the limits are quite high. Don’t get me wrong, we’re in a much better position in this regard to the USA but we’re very much not in a democratic environment that really favours the majority of working Canadians.