There is no more corrupting influence in the United States and likely many other country than unequal representation. The citizen can vote once. That is you and I. We can donate to campaigns but we have a campaign limit.
Corporations technically cannot vote, the people in the corporation do. Yet the corporations as of "Citizens United" have no limit on how much they can donate to a campaign. The argument has been that to limit them would be limiting free speech since the corporation is owned by people.
Think long and hard about that. Each member of that corporation already had a right to cast their vote. They each had a limit of how much they could donate to a campaign. That is unchanged. Yet somehow the fact they jointly create an entity together now means that entity should be able to donate any amount. Do you see the con?
Over the years I have encountered people that look very dogmatically at "Citizens United" like it is a good thing. They don't seem to get it. Though perhaps they do and they benefit from their unequal representation.
Let's try some simple math:
Let's use the letter V to represent voting power, and the letter F to represent financial power in the form of the maximum possible donation.
We will use P to represent the number of citizens voting. We will use C to represent corporations.
Before Citizens United
Total Vote = P x V
Maximum Possible Financial Contribution = P x F
After Citizens United
Total Vote = P x V
Maximum Possible Financial Contribution = P x F + (unlimited amount by C)
If you happen to own a lot of shares (stake) in corporations you can leverage immense financial power within the government. To prevent the unequal corruption of such influence the founders of the nation intentionally put a limit to the financial contribution. They also tried to make that limit not very high so as to attempt to give some semblance of equality of opportunity when it came to individuals voting and funding those they wanted as representation.
Without such protections then the wealthy would always dominate due to being able to easily out perform any gathering of people when it comes to funding. If this funding is incentive enough for those elected then it will be to those who fund them that the representatives are now beholden. They will not answer to the people. They will not represent their district. They will represent those who keep them well funded.
If you are wealthy AND own a corporation you can funnel that wealth through then this might sound great to you. You are now a master not of just your corporation but you are effectively one of the new Lords and Ladies in this new neo-feudalism that masquerades as a representative form of government. You are one of those benefitting from the fraud.
If you don't happen to be one of these people then you are a serf, a peon, a peasant, etc. They have simply layered the chains and shackles behind a lot of flowery words and bureaucracy. Your chains are not physical and easy for even the most dim witted of us to see. They are hidden. They are threaded with emotional appeals. Those emotions usually involve guilt, fear, or envy. The Lords and Ladies have learned to play those emotions like a virtuoso musician. They have many of us actively attacking and seeking to silence or even kill anyone that would attempt to make others see the chains. "How dare you deny the truth of the masters! You are a denier, a heretic, a blasphemer, a racists, a fascist!"
That last one is a hoot. Calling anyone a fascist that is standing up to the corporate overlords that pull the financial strings of the government is the height of ignorance. It points out in very sharp lines the fact that the person using the label fascist has no clue what it means. If they did they would look into a mirror and realize they are the minions and servants gleefully fighting on behalf of the actual fascists.
Some more math...
The census clock tells me that the U.S. population at the time I am writing this is 332,607,361 people.
Looking at those charts it can be confusing and it looks like there are restrictions. Yet notice the unlimited transfers. Keep in mind how multiple accounts can work here on Hive. You can funnel money through multiple accounts to effectively be able to do this many times. They have also created what are called Super PACs which don't seem to be on this chart. Perhaps that is because they can already by design create additional corporations and legal entities as needed to funnel any amount of contribution. Ultimately they shouldn't be able to send any amount through corporations as political donations. I'll cover that in a bit.
Scenario 1: Maximum funding + 100% voted
Individuals can donate $2900 per election to a CANDIDATE. They provided ways for people to contribute beyond this by donating to PACs and other entities. This may seem a balance but it is not. It is the carrot, and we are the donkey.
Total Votes = 333,607,361 x 1 = 333,607,361
Maximum Possible Funding = $967,461,346,900 assuming every man, woman, and child donated $2,900.
That is $967.46 billion.
Scenario 2: Guess on funding + 50% voted
However, let's assume that most people are struggling, are children, and otherwise cannot contribute. I am going to pick the arbitrary number of $100 per person to even this out. I suspect it may be lower than in actuality but it is speculation on my part.
Total Votes = (333,607,361 x 50%) x 1=166,803,680 (I dropped the 0.5)
Guess on funding from people = $16,680,368,000
That is $16.68 billion which still seems way higher than any amount of funding raised in any given year. That would make me think the actual per person amount would average to somewhere between $5 and $10.
So what?
Thanks to Citizens United people can funnel any amount of money through corporate entities created for that purpose. They may have to shuffle it through multiple entities but the end result is that any amount can be contributed.
By my little thought experiment above I suspect if we were to average the amount being donated across all voters it would be somewhere between $5 and $10.
Then we have individuals now in this country that have far more than the amount we would be contributing if that average were $10.
Do you think they care who you voted for?
You can elect someone. That person will look at your paltry funding and they will look at the funding offered to them by the corporations which are nothing more than fronts for stake holders in that company.
Those people effectively get the same vote as you and restrictions but thanks to the corporation THEY control they now can contribute however much they like to influence the elections, the laws, and the candidates.
For representative government to work the people need to be as close to equal footing when it comes to the elections as possible.
If this were truly the case then when we looked at the campaign donation limits the only thing listed there should be the $2900.
That is a lot of money to me. To many people it is paltry. To some people they can't even afford $1. Yet assuming they could donate $1 then the worst case scenario is that someone else might be 2900 times more financially powerful in terms of influence on the campaign than they are. With "Citizens United" that gap easily is in the millions or billions of times more financially powerful.
At that point how many people vote becomes mostly a show. An opportunity to let the slaves think they are not slaves.
Is this always true?
No I think we recently witnessed someone that was not part of the plan. That should have been apparent by the fact that all the mouth pieces and entities controlled by the corporations came out and ceaselessly attacked him. They can just as easily cover for any doddering and insane mistakes as we can witness with the current administration.
Usually they do mostly cover. We might see a jab here and there but usually it is relatively amicable. 2016-2020 stands out as a glaring exception to the norm.
Why did I write this?
I've forgotten what inspired me in my stream of consciousness writing of this. I did realize that I really should say something about how "Citizens United" corrupts our government and turns most of us into serfs/slaves and we don't even realize it.
It does become easier to see though as they are actively telling you what you MUST do whether you agree with it or not. As those demands enter the realm of first your businesses, and then your body it begins to become more clear. If you turn your head quickly enough you might briefly see the mirage of the chains and shackles you wear.
If you take long enough to look away from the glow of the screen and look at just the correct angle you might see the ghost like glowing signs on the outer side of your home saying "Property of the State".
You may hear the words of Barack Obama ringing through your ears "You don't own that, you didn't build that."
Perhaps you might stop believing them every time they come at a new angle and try to make you afraid, guilty, or envious.
EDIT: Bonus - glance around you?
Who are most advertisements and commercials for?
Who has products which can be mandated for everyone yet they have no liability if those products should hurt you?
Answer: Big Pharamceutical companies...
Who do you think has more influence on your representatives, you or those companies?
Now ask yourself why anytime something inexpensive and safe is found to counter the need for one of their products that inexpensive option is suddenly banned and vilified. It doesn't happen just with vaccines. It happens with all products they have on the market.
If you are not sick they cannot keep selling you their products.
If you are not told you are sick then the government can't force you to take their products.
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
EDIT 2: But if we die...
If they kill us there will be no one to pay for their products.
How much farm land have those stake holders purchased? How many foreclosed homes and business do they now own?
If we cease to be around that might be much like the vermin finally being removed by a good pest control plan. They have already gathered most of the wealth, and most of the assets worth anything. Why do they need you?
Well for now we still out number them and if we did anything dangerous to them like WAKE UP then that could put them at risk...
Better to remove that risk. Especially since doing so won't make life particularly worse for them.
How many people panic sell their homes due to fires in areas, or the threat the sea level is going to rise in a short time? Who ends up purchasing that property?
Pretty interesting if you bother to think about it.