> My philosophy degrees prove quite definitively that I do.
At best your degree proves that you read carefully at one time (and even that is open to doubt because your degree manifestly did not imbue you with the ability to identify logical fallacies like over-generalization and argument from authority).
> Joe Politician doesn't personally call you on the phone unless you have big money.
That depends on what you consider "big money". It only takes a few hundred dollars to get a meeting with a congressman. A few thousand will get you an audience with a senator or a governor. And once you start writing checks, your phone will be ringing constantly. It actually gets annoying after a while.
> everyone isn't against you
I never said they were. The poker analogy was not meant to imply that life is a zero-sum game, it was just meant to illustrate my actual point, which is that deception is not generally effective if you do it constantly. To be an effective deceiver you have to be judicious. You have to appear to be honest. That makes it hard to tell the difference between an honest person and an effective deceiver.
And BTW, not all deception is bad. There are "white lies". There are even professions -- magic and acting -- dedicated to honing deception literally to the level of a fine art. In the right circumstances, people actually pay good money to be deceived.
> His supporters simply don't care.
Some of them don't, but there is a significant contingent who actually believe he is telling the truth.
(See my point above about people paying good money to be deceived.)
> you didn't ask me what I meant either
Because it didn't matter, and it still doesn't. Any feature you describe in the non-political market, I can find you an analogy in the political market. For example:
> I reside in Wisconsin, and we have a lot of bars and taverns.
OK. You also reside on planet earth and you have a lot of national governments to choose from. About 200 in fact. If that's not enough variety for you, or if changing nationalities is too much friction for you, you can just come here to California where we have seven officially registered political parties and God only knows how many different activist organizations and fringe groups. So how is your choice of tavern different from your choice of government?
> while Apple and Google have a duopoly over operating systems, they don't have a duopoly over employment
Of course they do. If you want to make a living writing mobile apps, you can write for Apple devices or you can write for Android devices. Those are quite literally your only options.
This limited choice extends to nearly every part of software development. If you want to write desktop apps, you have two and a half choices: MacOS, Windows, or Linux (that's the half-a-choice because no one is actually making a living writing desktop apps for Linux). If you want to write Web apps it won't be long before your only choice is Chrome. And if you want to write enterprise apps, well, you're pretty much just hosed.
Yes, there are lot of different companies for which you can go to work, but this is an illusory choice because one way or another your work will be constrained by one of the (very few) major players. It's kind of like the apparent choice you have of what hotel to stay in. On the surface it looks like there is a lot of choice, dozens of different hotel brands, but in fact they are all the same, just with different signage, because they are all owned either by Hilton or Marriott. It's the same in just about every industry. There are lots of different brands of eyeglasses but they are all owned by Luxottica. There are a lot of different restaurants, but the vast majority of them are chains.
This is not to say that there aren't any fragmented industries left -- obviously there are a few (charter private jets, for example). But the overwhelming trend is towards consolidation. And it's easy to see why: once a company starts to dominate in its industry it can use its power and influence to crush competitors even the competitors offer a superior product. That becomes a positive feedback loop and so an established leader becomes nearly impossible to dislodge unless they somehow shoot themselves in the foot or the government (!) intervenes.
>> My philosophy degrees prove quite definitively that I do.
> At best your degree proves that you read carefully at one time
I said degrees, plural, which proves that you aren't reading carefully now.
The rest of your response also proves that. And it mostly ignores the main point, which is political corruption. It doesn't even address the tangential point about how, unlike the political duopoly, the OS duopoly doesn't necessitate business corruption. I hope to quit this futile discussion for real now, except for one more thing:
> There are a lot of different restaurants, but the vast majority of them are chains.
That's not true either. You're factually wrong and just making up junk out of thin air.
It's interesting that you chose to mention that and ignore my accusation, which you didn't refute or even deny: "That's not true either. You're factually wrong and just making up junk out of thin air."
On second thought, no, it's not interesting. It's dull and predictable. After all, there is no honest defense of political corruption, only distraction and misdirection.
As I said earlier, this fits the pattern of people tending to selectively overlook corruption. In your case, it seemed to require the mental gymnastics of believing, or at least arguing in faux agnosticism, that everyone is corrupt. I congratulate you on a gold medal performance.
What do you want me to say? You didn't provide a reference, you just proclaimed that I was wrong. Fine, you're right, I was wrong. It is not the vast majority that are chains, it's just a lot of them. (Apparently your Multiple Philosophy Degrees didn't equip you to recognize non-sequiturs either.)
And, to go back to my original point which is apparently too difficult for you to grasp, I am not overlooking "corruption". I am simply observing that what you call "corruption" is ubiquitous, mostly legal, and necessary for anyone who wants to advance in politics under our current system. That is simply a fact. You cannot succeed in politics without shmoozing donors. You can call that "corruption" if you want, but I'm not interested in quibbling over terminology.
I'm also not interested in having a discussion with someone who thinks that having Multiple Philosophy Degrees actually matters. Ben Carson has an M.D. but he's still a blithering idiot. Ted Kazinsky had a Ph.D. but he was still a psychopath. I see your Multiple Phislosophy Degrees and raise you my Ph.D. in computer science -- and them I'm folding my hand because this is not a game I am interested in playing.
I'm obviously failing once again to quit the discussion...
> I'm also not interested in having a discussion with someone who thinks that having Multiple Philosophy Degrees actually matters.
I mentioned them only in response to one claim of yours, already about twenty levels deep into the debate:
> Have you considered the possibility that you don't read very carefully?
Otherwise, I didn't try to cite them to support any other point of mine.
> necessary for anyone who wants to advance in politics under our current system
Why should we as citizens care about the advancement of individual politicians? Their job is supposed to be to represent us. If the winners of elections cater to their donors rather than to their constituents, if the representatives, at the behest of their donors, purposely prevent progress that would help the majority of people, then what good is winning?
My argument was that it's the moral corruption of the political parties, especially their leaders, that makes it necessary for party officials to be corrupt, e.g., "if you want to be part of one of the two major parties, who are already corrupted by money, you've got to play along with the team, join the perverse game. Otherwise they'll crush you like a bug. Perhaps you could make some excuses for the minor party politicians, but there are no excuses for the leaders of the parties. They're the ringleaders of the whole corrupt operation." There doesn't even appear to be a desire among most politicians to change this sad situation. Also: "I don't actually think that money in politics corrupts politicians as much as politics appeals to the corruptible, i.e., the type of ladder-climber that I mentioned. It's possible to be courageous (i.e., not corrupt) in politics, as long as you care more about your principles than you do about election and especially reelection."
Let me make a little analogy. Instead of talking about the US government, let's talk about the government of a totalitarian country. Take your pick: China, Russia, North Korea, etc. It's "simply a fact", as you say, that in order to advance to a high position in the government of such a country, it's necessary for a politician to be terrible, ruthless, evil, even murderous. We can admit that as a fact. But this terrible fact doesn't excuse the behavior. Not in the least. It's still inherently wrong to be terrible, ruthless, evil, murderous. There's simply no excuse. A moral person would play no role in that villainy. And I would say the same thing about corruption in US politics.
I'm not trying to argue that you shouldn't vote for Biden, or even that you shouldn't donate to him, but at least we should call a spade a spade. It's simply admitting the truth, which is much more important than politics IMO. The truth only seems to come out of his lips when talking to his donors, promising "Nothing fundamentally would change" if he was elected. And he kept that promise! https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-no... This is and always has been who Biden is, fundamentally. You seem to want to defend him as a victim of "necessity", whereas I see him merely as an ambitious, corrupt ladder-climber with no real principles, and one of the worst of all the Democratic candidates in 2020. It wasn't actually necessary for Biden to run, and remember that he was forced to drop out of a previous Presidential run because of his dishonesty.
> I'm obviously failing once again to quit the discussion...
Welcome to my world.
> Why should we as citizens care about the advancement of individual politicians?
Another non-sequitur. Your penchant for going off on tangents is one of the reasons I don't want to engage with you any more. But just for the record: I'm not making any value judgements here, just a factual claim: politicians in the U.S. spend a lot of time fundraising, and they do this not necessarily because of any moral failing but simply because it's a prerequisite for keeping their jobs.
If you accept that, then we can go on to have a discussion about whether or not this state of affairs is desirable, and, if not, why it's undesirable what might be done about it. But that is a different topic, and it is important to keep a clean separation between the two.
> Your penchant for going off on tangents is one of the reasons I don't want to engage with you any more.
I already said (2 days ago), "I agree that I was following a bit of a tangent", since the submitted article was about political advertising on Twitter/X. However, it's been the same tangent the whole time: "Serious question: Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not corrupt? As far as I've seen, which is a lot, he's been a paid tool of the Delaware financial industry for his entire career."
> politicians in the U.S. spend a lot of time fundraising, and they do this not necessarily because of any moral failing but simply because it's a prerequisite for keeping their jobs.
> If you accept that
I already accepted that long ago in the discussion: "You certainly have to raise money to win, but there are different ways of going about that, and also different ways to handle it after you've raised the funds and won the election." "Of course every politician raises campaign funds, an empirical fact beyond dispute." "I wasn't talking about the fact that Joe Biden has raised campaign funds; by itself, that's not interesting or worth noting."
> then we can go on to have a discussion about whether or not this state of affairs is desirable, and, if not, why it's undesirable what might be done about it.
That wasn't ever the question, I was never trying to debate that with you, and I'm not sure we would even disagree about the answer.
My question has always been very specific: "Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not corrupt?" I assume that, like other politicians, Biden spends a lot of time fundraising, so we can take that for granted. Time spent fundraising is not the question. I'm more interested in what Biden does when he's not fundraising, i.e., when he's supposed to be doing the job he was elected for.
> Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not corrupt?
And I'll give you the same answer I gave before, but I'll try to be more succinct: the answer to that questions turns entirely on your definition of "corrupt". I have seen no evidence that Joe Biden has done anything materially different from what every U.S. politician does by necessity in order to remain employed. If that's "corrupt" then it is not possible to hold elected office in the U.S. without being "corrupt", which makes that not a very useful definition IMHO.
But this too is a non-sequitur, because the question was never whether Biden is "corrupt" or not, but rather whether he is, as Donald Trump often claims, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. I don't think there is any plausible definition of "corrupt" under which that is true. Indeed, I think that Trump is vastly more corrupt than Biden under any plausible definition of the word.
[UPDATE]
> he's been a paid tool of the Delaware financial industry for his entire career
I don't know much about the details of Biden's career, but I don't doubt that he's supported legislation beneficial to the financial industry and they have in turn spent generously to keep him in office. But is that "corruption" or "being responsive to his constituents"?
The thing I have not seen Biden do is use his power to enrich himself personally the way Trump and Thomas have done. That to me is a useful distinction, and a more appropriate deployment of the word "corrupt".
> I don't know much about the details of Biden's career
Ok, well, I really wish you would have said that a long time ago.
> I don't doubt that he's supported legislation beneficial to the financial industry and they have in turn spent generously to keep him in office. But is that "corruption" or "being responsive to his constituents"?
Oy, I can't believe that's a serious question.
I count constituents by the number of people, not the number of dollars.
> I really wish you would have said that a long time ago.
Why? If I accept your premise, what difference does it make if I'm familiar with the details?
> Oy, I can't believe that's a serious question.
It's dead serious. Why do you have such a hard time believing that?
> I count constituents by the number of people, not the number of dollars.
Do you not think that supporting one of the leading industries in the state you represent, an industry that directly employs tens of thousands of people and indirectly employs hundreds of thousands more, counts -- or is at least defensible -- as being supportive of your constituents even when measured by people rather than dollars?
Also, if I have money then chances are that I earned it by being productive. Why should that not entitle me to greater consideration than someone who has been less productive as adjudicated by the free market? (Yes, I know earlier I said there were no free markets. The phrase "free market" meant something different there than it does here. There it referred to sellers, here it refers to buyers. The U.S. does have a relatively free market on the demand side, just not on the supply side.)
BTW, counting constituents by number of people rather than dollars has never been the American way. It's actually a very modern notion. At the founding, only white male land owners could vote. The founders specifically designed our system to not make all voices equal. Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing. I don't think it is. But it's a fact.
At best your degree proves that you read carefully at one time (and even that is open to doubt because your degree manifestly did not imbue you with the ability to identify logical fallacies like over-generalization and argument from authority).
> Joe Politician doesn't personally call you on the phone unless you have big money.
That depends on what you consider "big money". It only takes a few hundred dollars to get a meeting with a congressman. A few thousand will get you an audience with a senator or a governor. And once you start writing checks, your phone will be ringing constantly. It actually gets annoying after a while.
> everyone isn't against you
I never said they were. The poker analogy was not meant to imply that life is a zero-sum game, it was just meant to illustrate my actual point, which is that deception is not generally effective if you do it constantly. To be an effective deceiver you have to be judicious. You have to appear to be honest. That makes it hard to tell the difference between an honest person and an effective deceiver.
And BTW, not all deception is bad. There are "white lies". There are even professions -- magic and acting -- dedicated to honing deception literally to the level of a fine art. In the right circumstances, people actually pay good money to be deceived.
> His supporters simply don't care.
Some of them don't, but there is a significant contingent who actually believe he is telling the truth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/21/poll-trum...
(See my point above about people paying good money to be deceived.)
> you didn't ask me what I meant either
Because it didn't matter, and it still doesn't. Any feature you describe in the non-political market, I can find you an analogy in the political market. For example:
> I reside in Wisconsin, and we have a lot of bars and taverns.
OK. You also reside on planet earth and you have a lot of national governments to choose from. About 200 in fact. If that's not enough variety for you, or if changing nationalities is too much friction for you, you can just come here to California where we have seven officially registered political parties and God only knows how many different activist organizations and fringe groups. So how is your choice of tavern different from your choice of government?
> while Apple and Google have a duopoly over operating systems, they don't have a duopoly over employment
Of course they do. If you want to make a living writing mobile apps, you can write for Apple devices or you can write for Android devices. Those are quite literally your only options.
This limited choice extends to nearly every part of software development. If you want to write desktop apps, you have two and a half choices: MacOS, Windows, or Linux (that's the half-a-choice because no one is actually making a living writing desktop apps for Linux). If you want to write Web apps it won't be long before your only choice is Chrome. And if you want to write enterprise apps, well, you're pretty much just hosed.
Yes, there are lot of different companies for which you can go to work, but this is an illusory choice because one way or another your work will be constrained by one of the (very few) major players. It's kind of like the apparent choice you have of what hotel to stay in. On the surface it looks like there is a lot of choice, dozens of different hotel brands, but in fact they are all the same, just with different signage, because they are all owned either by Hilton or Marriott. It's the same in just about every industry. There are lots of different brands of eyeglasses but they are all owned by Luxottica. There are a lot of different restaurants, but the vast majority of them are chains.
This is not to say that there aren't any fragmented industries left -- obviously there are a few (charter private jets, for example). But the overwhelming trend is towards consolidation. And it's easy to see why: once a company starts to dominate in its industry it can use its power and influence to crush competitors even the competitors offer a superior product. That becomes a positive feedback loop and so an established leader becomes nearly impossible to dislodge unless they somehow shoot themselves in the foot or the government (!) intervenes.