Publicly financed elections.

[Ryantology]

Word salad? Those are largely your words...accept that I applied them to publicly financed campaigns instead of corporations.

Which is a comparison that doesn't work and makes zero sense. You might as well have replaced "corporate money" with "your child's allowance", because you would have achieved the same result. Own your salad.

[Heywood]

Word salad? Those are largely your words...accept that I applied them to publicly financed campaigns instead of corporations.

Which is a comparison that doesn't work and makes zero sense. You might as well have replaced "corporate money" with "your child's allowance", because you would have achieved the same result. Own your salad.

The comparison does work. You claimed corporations allow an individual, the executive of the corporation, to have a greater voice and influence in politics than your typical citizens by granting him/her access to money that does not belong to him. A publicly financed campaign does the exact same thing. It gives a candidate a greater voice and influence in politics than your typical citizen by granting him/her access to money that does not belong to him.

[Brian37]

In my 13 years of debate I constantly come to the same conclusion. Topic outside of science is a matter of opinion. While you have to allow for that, you cannot allow any opinion to get a free pass. You can only allow the claim to be made.

My only "worldview" has nothing to do with the label "atheist". It has to do with my observation that nothing is simplistic, nothing is monochromatic, nothing can be stated in simplistic labels, even with those who share the same labels. Humans compete, on every level. We compete for resources. We compete on issues on politics, religion and business. That is unavoidable. Even within our own labels we do not always agree. We can as a species allow for those differences, but we cannot in the process chose our own facts. We can only agree to accept that we will never, even within the same label, agree. What we can do is shift our priority away from our tribalism which wont go away, and shift it to our common ground.

[Ryantology]

The comparison does work. You claimed corporations allow an individual, the executive of the corporation, to have a greater voice and influence in politics than your typical citizens by granting him/her access to money that does not belong to him. A publicly financed campaign does the exact same thing. It gives a candidate a greater voice and influence in politics than your typical citizen by granting him/her access to money that does not belong to him.

No, it doesn't work at all.

A campaign is an event specifically designed for a candidate to express their viewpoints and to encourage voters to help them achieve public office. That is emphatically not (supposed to be) the point of corporate entities. Campaign money is raised for the purpose of an election. Corporate profits are not (supposed to be).

It fails further because I mentioned pretty clearly that the candidates should have equal access to equal amounts of money which is strictly limited and should be entirely accounted for. Again, not the case in the corporate world.

It fails mostly because there is no basis for comparison at all between a campaign and a corporation. They don't do the same things, they don't operate the same way, and they don't serve the same ends. Only, you think that it should be like that.

So, again, why not just sell votes, so that people who can afford to vote a million times can? That's the logical end result of money equaling speech, after all. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

[Heywood]

No, it doesn't work at all.

A campaign is an event specifically designed for a candidate to express their viewpoints and to encourage voters to help them achieve public office. That is emphatically not (supposed to be) the point of corporate entities. Campaign money is raised for the purpose of an election. Corporate profits are not (supposed to be).

It fails further because I mentioned pretty clearly that the candidates should have equal access to equal amounts of money which is strictly limited and should be entirely accounted for. Again, not the case in the corporate world.

It fails mostly because there is no basis for comparison at all between a campaign and a corporation. They don't do the same things, they don't operate the same way, and they don't serve the same ends. Only, you think that it should be like that.

So, again, why not just sell votes, so that people who can afford to vote a million times can? That's the logical end result of money equaling speech, after all. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

You cannot give all the candidates equal amount of money. You can only give the candidates you select an equal amount of money. If you are going to give everyone who runs for president 100 million dollars...I will be running for president too and so will a lot of other people. A rule requiring so many signatures to be a valid candidate requires that campaigns be privately financed because to go out and get signatures...requires a campaign. Publicly financed campaigns simply will not work unless the government first picks the candidates.....and that is going to be abused.

Your understanding of a corporation is wrong. Corporations do not spend corporate profits, they spend money. Corporations do not have to make money to have money to spend. Corporations often retain some or all of the money that make as retained earnings. Retained earnings are supposed to be used for the benefit of the corporation. The reason you dislike corporations spending money on campaigns is because you feel they benefit too much from that spending. This is evidence that it is true that corporations benefit from donating money to campaigns. Your claim that corporate profits are not supposed to be used for campaigns is just wrong on so many levels. It really just amounts to you don't like the way people spend money when they assemble together as a corporation and want to legislate the actions of others to conform with your will.

There is plenty of money from businesses and labor unions and other non profits that pour into an election already....so that their messages can be heard......yet there is no market place where I can buy up or sell votes. Your claim that the logical result of money equaling speech is the buying or selling of votes simply does not follow in the real world. It is a hallow claim.

[Brian37]

Objects don't pay taxes....people pay taxes. Corporations pay taxes because they are considered persons for purposes of law.....why? Because corporations are comprised of people and people do not lose their constitutional rights or their obligation to pay taxes simply because they decide to pool their resources and do business as a corporation.

This is dishonest. People don't lose any rights because they are associated with a corporation. They are free to vote and to donate their own personal finances towards anything they want, just like you or I. What you are doing is suggesting that, in addition to those rights we all share, corporate executives and shareholders should have the additional special right to use money that is not theirs, personally, to make their own personal political influence stronger than yours or mine. You are suggesting that corporate executives and shareholders deserve more of a say in politics than the average voter, who cannot afford to do such things.

As I said previously, if you want to treat money as if it was speech, then you might as well drop the pretense and let everybody buy as many votes as they can afford, because that is the practical result of what you're advocating.

BINGO! Haywood and far too many people in general are basically arguing that wealth=automatic morality. "We are rich so therefore we are more important than everyone else".

[Ryantology]

You cannot give all the candidates equal amount of money. You can only give the candidates you select an equal amount of money. If you are going to give everyone who runs for president 100 million dollars...I will be running for president too and so will a lot of other people. A rule requiring so many signatures to be a valid candidate requires that campaigns be privately financed because to go out and get signatures...requires a campaign. Publicly financed campaigns simply will not work unless the government first picks the candidates.....and that is going to be abused.

In the Internet age, acquiring signatures for a petition is not an especially difficult or expensive activity. There can even be publicly-funded facilitators to help candidates.

And, even if it's not a perfect solution, it gets a lot more people involved, introduces a lot more potential candidates, and does more than anything else could to break the two-party duopoly everybody hates.

Your understanding of a corporation is wrong. Corporations do not spend corporate profits, they spend money. Corporations do not have to make money to have money to spend. Corporations often retain some or all of the money that make as retained earnings. Retained earnings are supposed to be used for the benefit of the corporation. The reason you dislike corporations spending money on campaigns is because you feel they benefit too much from that spending. This is evidence that it is true that corporations benefit from donating money to campaigns. Your claim that corporate profits are not supposed to be used for campaigns is just wrong on so many levels. It really just amounts to you don't like the way people spend money when they assemble together as a corporation and want to legislate the actions of others to conform with your will.

My claim is not that corporate profits should not be used to fund campaigns. My claim is that no private money of any kind should be funding, or influencing, a political campaign. That puts everybody on an even level. Otherwise, our political system is nothing but a sham.

There is plenty of money from businesses and labor unions and other non profits that pour into an election already....so that their messages can be heard......yet there is no market place where I can buy up or sell votes. Your claim that the logical result of money equaling speech is the buying or selling of votes simply does not follow in the real world. It is a hallow claim.

There is no market because it's not legal to set up such a market. That doesn't make the claimed result illogical. Corporations have much more money than any other entity to spend on influencing politics. Policy of almost every sort is dictated largely by the whim of moneyed influences. Selling votes outright is just the honest way of accomplishing what they already accomplish. Either way, the system is currently designed so that your value is equal to your net worth. This is clearly the way you like it, for some reason. So, why not just sell votes?

Or, better yet, why not just drop the pretense of government for the people and turn over the apparatus of government to an executive board? We can call it America, LLC. We can even still call it a 'democracy' and allow select shareholders to vote on board members. It would be a conservative paradise.

[Heywood]

In the Internet age, acquiring signatures for a petition is not an especially difficult or expensive activity. There can even be publicly-funded facilitators to help candidates.

And, even if it's not a perfect solution, it gets a lot more people involved, introduces a lot more potential candidates, and does more than anything else could to break the two-party duopoly everybody hates.

In the internet age, it doesn't take a lot of money to produce a slick ad and get it seen by thousands of people. The internet has helped level the playing field in terms of candidates getting their messages out. What it hasn't done is made it easier to collect signatures to get on a ballot. I'm not sure why you think it does....but getting signatures requires physically going around and meeting people face to face.....the internet does not help with this.

My claim is not that corporate profits should not be used to fund campaigns. My claim is that no private money of any kind should be funding, or influencing, a political campaign. That puts everybody on an even level. Otherwise, our political system is nothing but a sham.

So if I like a candidate it becomes illegal for me to run down to Office Depot, buy some markers and poster board....write up a sign and put it up in my yard? Your plan to stop private money of any kind from influencing a political campaign is a plan to curtail my speech.

What would you have me do? Go down to some government agency wait in line, fill out 10 different forms, go to 8 different windows just to obtain some publicly financed markers and poster board? Eliminating private money from campaigns is not only ludicrous....it is impossible.

[Ryantology]

In the internet age, it doesn't take a lot of money to produce a slick ad and get it seen by thousands of people. The internet has helped level the playing field in terms of candidates getting their messages out. What it hasn't done is made it easier to collect signatures to get on a ballot. I'm not sure why you think it does....but getting signatures requires physically going around and meeting people face to face.....the internet does not help with this.

And here, I thought I would never meet someone on the internet who never heard of internet petitions being a thing. Or, the fact that the White House famously operates one.

So if I like a candidate it becomes illegal for me to run down to Office Depot, buy some markers and poster board....write up a sign and put it up in my yard? Your plan to stop private money of any kind from influencing a political campaign is a plan to curtail my speech.

That's just how people show off what team they root for. Yard signs don't sway elections.

Now, if you go and get these materials to print large quantities of yard signs so you can distribute them to others, or to place large quantities around town, that's a problem, if you're using unlimited amounts of private money. That's no more a restriction of free speech than laws against public urination.

What would you have me do? Go down to some government agency wait in line, fill out 10 different forms, go to 8 different windows just to obtain some publicly financed markers and poster board? Eliminating private money from campaigns is not only ludicrous....it is impossible.

No, your ludicrous example has proven me wrong. Let's sell votes!

[Heywood]

In the internet age, it doesn't take a lot of money to produce a slick ad and get it seen by thousands of people. The internet has helped level the playing field in terms of candidates getting their messages out. What it hasn't done is made it easier to collect signatures to get on a ballot. I'm not sure why you think it does....but getting signatures requires physically going around and meeting people face to face.....the internet does not help with this.

And here, I thought I would never meet someone on the internet who never heard of internet petitions being a thing. Or, the fact that the White House famously operates one.

So if I like a candidate it becomes illegal for me to run down to Office Depot, buy some markers and poster board....write up a sign and put it up in my yard? Your plan to stop private money of any kind from influencing a political campaign is a plan to curtail my speech.

That's just how people show off what team they root for. Yard signs don't sway elections.

Now, if you go and get these materials to print large quantities of yard signs so you can distribute them to others, or to place large quantities around town, that's a problem, if you're using unlimited amounts of private money. That's no more a restriction of free speech than laws against public urination.

What would you have me do? Go down to some government agency wait in line, fill out 10 different forms, go to 8 different windows just to obtain some publicly financed markers and poster board? Eliminating private money from campaigns is not only ludicrous....it is impossible.

No, your ludicrous example has proven me wrong. Let's sell votes!

Yard signs are speech and your argument basically comes down to you want to be able to control peoples speech based on your own ideas of what you think should be permissible and what shouldn't.

Typical liberal elitism.