• eicker@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 days ago

      That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.

      • Fushuan [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 days ago

        Y’all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn’t stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.

        • Humanius@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          Annoyingly it also turned the word “lobby” into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.

          Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.

          The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          We’re so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?

          • bthest@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            The tolerance paradox had yet to materialise when that was written. Yes we should amend that to specify people, not corporations.

            And ‘grievances’ such as “I want all the money and yet I don’t have it. Please fix this. Thx” should not be allowed to be lobbied for.

            Most of the constitution needs major work.

  • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I can only hope this is true. Most voters aren’t paying a bit of attention to where the money comes from.

    They’re using AI. They think it’s wonderful, they’ve barely heard about the controversy around data centers, and think “data centers are where the internet it, yOU lIkE thE inTErNeT, Don’T yoU?”

    The Top 10 AI Uses in 2025 (none of which it does very well):

    • Therapy and companionship
    • Organizing my life
    • Finding purpose
    • Enhanced learning
    • Summarizing content
    • Generating ideas
    • Generating code (for professionals)
    • Improving code (for professionals)
    • Creativity
    • Visual art and design
    • pemptago@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      You’d be surprised. Data centers seem like a big issue. My boomer parents hate data centers, as do a lot of rural voters who have them nearby or proposals nearby. But to your point, I also see a lot of people who are aware of problems around ai/data centers/billionaires still using ai.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    their efforts aren’t buying the political capital they’d hoped for.

    Trump did get elected by “AI money” and they all celebrated on stage with him, you know.

    Midterms? Yeah, when you are an indisputably shitty President who has broken every campaign promise and is openly deranged, you will likely lose the midterms no matter how much you try to pump Republicans. Diminishing returns.

    Usually the “winning” party only holds power for a couple terms, then, after their incompetence has disgusted yet another generation of voters, they lose, only to be replaced by the other party that will repeat the process.

    bOtH sIdEs, YeS, oH My

    I vote in every election, and you should too. Because it’s funny

  • eicker@lemmy.worldOP
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    9 days ago

    Turns out telling people your technology will replace their jobs, devour their electricity, and possibly end civilization isn’t the winning sales pitch billionaires imagined. Imagine spending hundreds of millions buying political influence, only to discover voters don’t enjoy being treated like obsolete hardware.

    • Karjalan@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      telling people your technology will replace their jobs, devour their electricity, and possibly end civilization isn’t the winning sales pitch billionaires imagined.

      “but what you guys aren’t getting is the fact that it’ll make me a lot more money.”

    • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      AI is still not viable business. All that fear mongering is to create an alternative revenue sources.

      “look, I created a monster that can destroy us all. Please give me money to contain and tame it. We can’t destroy it because our enemies are creating their own monsters.”

    • Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz
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      9 days ago

      I’m not trusting the US voting system anymore. I think it’s going to be rigged and they won’t get over the republicans. I still hope that midterms will change the way USA behave, but I’m not going to hold my breath for it.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Trump’s claims of election rigging as so dumb because they can’t even come up with a plausible way it could have happened. We have 90,000 polling places, across 50 states, all of whom run elections their own way. There’s no central database to hackerman. Best anyone could possibly do is maybe sway the local dog catcher election. Maybe.

    • pigup@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I thought someone did the math and said if all US billionaires were slaughtered and the money divided amongst US population, we’d all get like $400k+.

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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    9 days ago

    AI Billionaires Are Flooding Money Into Politics are flooding politics with money, or pouring money into politics.

    This is grade school stuff, FFS!