Slightly related, and for anyone that might accuse the OP of using the term "oligarch" as too modern or too politically-motivated, I highly suggest Robert Michels's "Political Parties", a book written more than 100 years ago and whose subtitle says it all: "A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy".

I've just finished reading it (it had been on my to-read list for a couple of years now) and it's fascinating how prescient the writing in there is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Parties

I think it informs ideas about what branches, soldiers, civilians, and contractors do. Once you track where the money goes there are practical ideas to reduce defense spending, as well as dispassionate pros/cons of what’s been tried in the past.

If you really believe the structure of US expenses isn't heavily impacted by interests of a few rich, powerful men then I'd call your view of the world very naive.

They do like military spending.

I think sometimes folks wrap up the political will of the people in "oligarchy" simply because they don't like what those folks want or value.

Second problem: to the extent people vote on politicians over things they promise, they vote based on what politicians say they will do (and not in absolute, but relative to competing politicians), not over what they actually do or have done in the past. Since politicians are not accountable for their promises, and the general population has a really short memory, the main impact of voting is as an indirect signal - politicians hoping for being (re)elected have to say and do the things they hope will win them the next elections.

(In other words: the control input to political decision making system isn't what the populace wants, but the prediction of what would make most people vote favorably.)

Three: people vote based on what the media they read tells them is important, which usually has zero relation to reality and relative relevance of things. I'm far from believing media sources (including social media) are bought and controlled by politicians - no, it's worse. All sides try to nudge and control the narrative, and not just the government, but also the private sector. No one wins that tug-of-war, but the end result is that modern media is a form of complete DDoS attack on population's cognitive capabilities. It's literally making the society stupid.

Voting for specific policies directly is often disastrous. Look at the way voter initiatives ring fence high levels of spending while also restricting taxation. Look at how Brexit became such a dumpster fire because a government and an elected parliament was compelled to try to implement a policy the government and a majority of MPs disagreed with. Voting for things not people inevitably creates a breakdown in responsibility, especially for complex policies that could be implemented in many ways and involve difficult trade offs.

I’m not against referendums in principle, they can work, but only if they are seeking permission to implement a policy supported by the government that is calling the referendum. In that situation the lines of responsibility are clear, and for an important decision it can make sense to hold a referendum.

Still, this part:

> if you trust the person and like their policies you vote them in. If they under-perform you vote them out

absolutely doesn't work in practice. One, there's no way to build trust at the scale elections are held. For any given politician, you can have maybe a couple hundred people who know them who could actually trust them. Everything above that requires transitive trust - trusting someone who trusts that politicians. However, in my experience, in the general population, the proper chain of trust isn't happening. People trust media outlets, which they have no basis to trust.

Compounding the problem is that in some countries, you aren't even voting for people, you're voting for parties. At the moment, there is no political party on the planet I would trust to do a good job in governance.

There are a lot of failure modes in the democratic system; it's probably worthy of a dense textbook (and I'm sure someone has written one). The incentive structures, the feedback loops, are all wrong for delivering good decisions. The only redeeming aspect of democracy in my eyes is that it's designed to enable bloodless transition of power. And, while I suppose that this makes it the best system, I'd really love if we could figure out a way to make it stop consistently producing idiocy.

It demonstrably does, elected leaders get voted out in well functioning democracies all the time. Do some incumbents hang on longer than seems right? Yes, but who gets to decide how long is right? The voters, whether you or I like it or not. Sometimes the voters screw up, but that's their right and it's their right to correct that if they choose to or not if they don't.

For me the key is to be a floating voter. Do not buy into the group-think tribalism of party loyalty, it's a mug's game. I say that, but I've voted for the same part here in the UK except for twice, but to me those two times are crucial. They were actually painful choices to make, but important decisions. To be honest I have also voted on party lines and regretted it. Those two times should really be three.

I really don't like representative democracy where you're voting for a list. It puts power in the hands of party committees, and makes those actually elected beholden to those who put them on the list. Elected officials should never be exposed to that kind of leverage.

In a pseudo-democracy policy priorities are defined exclusively by the oligarchy, and the required opinions are sold to voters through media channels directed by think tanks and PR outfits.

Voters are persuaded they have a choice over personalities and superficial issues, but never over national policy.

If a politician appears to threaten the cosy consensus, the media wurlitzer goes into overdrive to smear them, talk them down, and persuade voters that they're "extremist", "not electable", and other stock tropes.

So - it doesn't matter if leaders are voted out if key policy goals never change. And as a rule they either don't, or they change in ways that benefit the oligarchs, not the majority of the population.

That doesn't mean it works in practice. It may mean your electorate is tuning in to the media noise. The end result is usually that no long-term improvements happen in the country, because the first thing a new government does is undo the reforms and cancel the programs of the previous one.

> For me the key is to be a floating voter. Do not buy into the group-think tribalism of party loyalty, it's a mug's game.

That's table stakes for any human being with more than half a brain (unfortunately, most people aren't like that). But then you hit another problem. Last two elections (one internal and one for EU MEPs), I decided to learn more about the available choices of political parties and their programs. And I came from this with a firm belief that I cannot, in good conscience, support any single one of them. That's the negative side of voting for people, parties and programs. You don't get to express your true beliefs - you can only vote for the lesser evil, or abstain.

Then how come the US Congress has extremely low approval ratings, but also extremely high incumbent re-election rates?

It's interesting that empirical evidence show that people rarely vote for something. More frequently, they vote against something. This explains the success of political attack ads but also opens the gate to incredibly cynical manipulation of the voting public.

If people could vote against disaster, they would. As it stands, all they can do is vote against a candidate that gets portrayed as pro-disaster though media manipulation.

There is many studies that show that the government aligns strongly with big money. Just look at the state of health care as an example.

I don't doubt money influences things, but also I don't buy into what seems like an all or nothing theory here that the only driver is money or some vague "money".

In an capitalist society money will be... everywhere in most every market. It's awfully easy to point that out.

How exponential growth works, for one. Two, its implications on JIT supply chains modern society operates on.

In all honesty, money flow is the most powerful force on this planet. On the face of it, this looks like a pretty trite observation, but it isn't. What it means is that if you study the feedback loops and incentive structures, look at the market as a dynamic system, you'll see where things are heading - and that picture is very bleak.

For instance, you can be damn sure that no matter how badly this epidemic goes, the next one will be handled just as badly. All the problems: lack of tests, disappearing protective equipment, fragile supply chains - are a direct and predictable consequence of market pressures, which chip away all safety buffers, piece by piece. You can't fix this without reducing or removing the influence of market pressures in many points across our society - which is synonymous with the trite saying, "we need to stop X from being driven by money".

And to GPs point, those reaping the rewards of the growth are not those impacted by the first or second order effects.

I completely agree with that. Right now the system is less than ideal. But, there is many people willing to fight for a better world. And cynicism is only going to make things worse.

Many wrong decision are taken in name of profits. But that can be changed, our well being, our planet are at stake.

We have time and will to make things better. I just want to point out that we need to work for it. It will not come for free.

Take the Stamp Act. This produced the most ferocious resistance to that date in the colonies, in part because it was a tax increase to support something that most colonists didn't want (they suspected, rather correctly as it turns out, that the British army being stationed in the colonies was primarily a sinecure). But it also fueled suspicion that Britain was pushing other changes that pissed off other groups in the colonies--there was a specific mention of stamp duty for documents in ecclesiastical courts, which didn't exist at the time and were opposed by the majority of colonists. Or duties on diplomas that would hamper the growth of a professional class in the colonies, forcing them to rely on Britain.

And then there's the Intolerable Acts. In an utterly misguided response to a terrorist act condemned by the majority of colonists (Boston Tea Party), Britain decided to close the third-largest port in the colonies, abolish its legislature, and force trials to be held back in Britain (effectively abolishing the judiciary as well, at least for royal officials). This overreaction soured many colonists on Britain, as they saw themselves as potentially being next in line; nearly guaranteed imminent revolution, with reconciliation much harder; and ultimately turned a terrorist act into a symbol of patriotism.

The proclamation against settling the Ohio Valley may have set the speculators against Britain, but there were many, many other steps that Britain took to turn the colonists away from them.

Money?

> Britain decided to close the third-largest port in the colonies

Money?

> Or duties on diplomas

Money?

> The proclamation against settling the Ohio Valley may have set the speculators against Britain, but there were many, many other steps that Britain took to turn the colonists away from them.

Yes. All of them were tied to money. British needed good relations with native americans in order to maintain their lucrative fur trade. Americans wanted native american land.

Pretty much every major founder viewed themselves as proud englishmen. Nobody saw themselves as pennsylvanian, virginian, etc. They all referred to themselves as proud englishmen and willing subjects of the british crown. Until the british crown screwed them over money.

There has never been a war over ideals. Every war is about wealth. The more a war wraps itself around ideals, the more it was truly about wealth.

You don't get those freedoms in an oligarchy as you describe it.

The scale of freedom? The freedoms were pretty much "the rights of an englishmen", which the american colonists already had. For 150 years, the american colonists ( especially the elites ) enjoyed the rights of englishmen. The american "freedoms" pretty much stem from the magna carta and lockian/english principles. Nothing new and nothing special. I know, we are told it was "new", "special", "exceptional", "revolutionary", etc. All nations lie to their people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Englishmen

> You don't get those freedoms in an oligarchy as you describe it.

I know. That's why the founders didn't allow 90%+ of americans to have "freedoms" or the right to vote. It's why slavery existed after the war of "ideals and freedoms", women were property and the poor unlanded whites were 2nd class citizens.

The central reason for the american revolution and every war is greed of the oligarchs. That's it. Everything else is just saccharine fake facade to rile up the uneducated masses.

Dunno, to me that still sounds like "lack of freedom", it's just a matter of how you want to frame it.