Linda Felbinger
April 17, 2018
English 112
U.S. Government
The Truth About Today’s Government
When asking almost anyone what type of government is present on U.S. soil, their immediate answer would be that we are a democracy. A democracy is defined as a government that is based on the idea that the government can only take actions if it has the "consent of the governed" (Merriam -Webster). Because it is impractical and unproductive for all citizens of a country to vote on all individual issues, our constitution lays out the groundwork for a representative democracy wherein we choose our representatives on local, state, and national levels. As our founding fathers feared, this system of representation, and the fact that decisions are many levels removed from the constituents that they affect, has allowed the U.S. government to slip far away from the pure form of democracy that it started as. Mostly because of the influences of money and unchecked capitalism, the United States is arguably moving further and further away from democracy and closer to a state that can more closely be described as a Plutocracy and a Corporatocracy.
Much of the trouble with our political system lies in the fact that our modern day election process requires vast amounts of money to get a candidate elected. For example, in the 2017-2018 election cycle alone, the average amount of money raised per senate candidate was over 1.1 million dollars (Open Secrets). A large percentage of this money came from Political Action Committees (PACs) and other groups that represent mostly various industries or ideological interests. One of these groups that is getting the most (negative) attention at the moment is the NRA, which pours most of its money into helping politicians that support loose gun regulations win. Such groups and large individual donors use their money to influence our elections to get representatives that are loyal to their interests into power and keep them there. The direct definition of plutocracy is "a country or society governed by the wealthy"; and I would argue that having interest groups comprised of wealthy individuals and companies play such a large role in getting our representatives elected is in direct alignment with this definition.
The fact that big businesses have been contributing to candidates of their choice for decades through interest groups and private donations has lead to the United States having some fairly relaxed business laws that give companies more freedoms than maybe they should have. While the arguments made for these lenient regulations is that they help stimulate the US economy and that they keep us at the forefront of technological development, they often just lead to companies taking more and more control over the everyday lives of people. While there are countless historical examples of monopolies that could be used to defend the fact that the United States is taking on ever more attributes of a Corporatocracy, we will focus our efforts on a more recent example: Facebook.
Facebook is particularly interesting because in their grasp for profit they single-handedly allowed native and foreign interest groups influence our latest election by spreading fake news and even encouraging voter suppression. (Medium.com) During these past few weeks, the U.S. learned just how powerful Facebook is and just how little power our government has to regulate them. While Facebook certainly didn't set out to become the world's home for all things fake news and a tool to help campaigns suppress voter turnout, their platforms algorithm was designed to make money and allowing these actions to take place on their site was an effective way to do that, so they let it occur. During the Facebook hearings, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook had built it's advertiser tools in a way that lets its users target people based on very specific criteria that could in theory be used to target ads at people that are of a particular political orientation or that care about specific issues. (C-Span) As Facebook was not about to turn down anyone's money they did nothing to police the usage of these tools and let them get into the hands of people whose aim was squarely to influence US elections. While the specifics of exactly how Facebook influenced our most recent elections is a vastly interesting topic, we will simply take it as fact that they did play a substantial role.
If the US really were a true democracy as most people seem to think, companies as powerful as Facebook should not be allowed to exist in their current form within the borders of our country and wealthy individuals and interest groups should not be allowed to play such a large role in our elections. While the United States if legally still very much a democracy, in practice our current system of government is far away from the idea that the actions of our government have the "consent of the governed" but it is instead a government much more closely aligned with a Corporatocracy and Plutocracy in which money, not the citizens of this country, holds the power.
Works Cited:
“Democracy.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy. Accessed 17 Apr 2018.
“Facebook Google Twitter Executives Testify Russia Election Ads, Oct 31 2017.” C-SPAN.org, www.c-span.org/video/?436454-1%2Ffacebook-google-twitter-executives-testify-russia-election-ads. Accessed 17 Apr 2018.
“History of the Socialist Movement in the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_socialist_movement_in_the_United_States#Early_American_socialism. Accessed 22 Apr 2018.
“The Moscow Project – Medium.” – Medium, medium.com/@moscowproject. Accessed 17 Apr 2018.
“2018 Election Overview.” OpenSecrets.org, www.opensecrets.org/overview/. Accessed 17 Apr 2018.