Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Biden is trying to rebuild the middleclass.
Is it any surprise that the billionaire owned media companies are "making mountains out of mole hills" of everything that happens during his first 1/2 year as President?
Including that lame ass NBC poll just before elections showing his popularity waning?
Come on. This is so painfully obvious. The rich don't want to pay taxes. They want the lower classes to work more for less.
That's what is happening here.
You'd better believe the blow-hards will be out in full force tomorrow—screaming from the billionaire owned media outlets—and with their blessing.
5 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Rise of Neo-Feudalism
The private capture of entire legal systems by corporate America goes far beyond neoliberalism. It evokes the private fiefdoms of the Middle Ages.
https://prospect.org/economy/rise-of-neo-feudalism/
The history of the modern democratic state can be understood as a story of shifting authority and lawmaking, first from private potentates to sovereign monarchs, and then to publicly accountable democracies. Today, this centuries-long democratizing trend is rapidly being reversed. Western democracies are not simply embracing neoliberalism in the sense of deregulating the economy. Elites are pursuing something aptly described as a new form of feudalism, in which entire realms of public law, public property, due process, and citizen rights revert to unaccountable control by private business.
The system of finance, once supervised by bank regulatory agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been delegated to private realms of law. The financial collapse of 2008 is best understood as the seizure, corruption, and abuse of entire domains of regulation and jurisprudence. Laws to protect workers and consumers, reflecting 70 years of struggle to expand rights, are now erased by compulsory arbitration regimes. Trade law permits similar private tribunals to overturn or sidestep public regulation. Tech platform monopolies have created a proprietary regime where they can crush competitors and invade consumer privacy by means of onerous terms, often buried in online “terms of service” provisions. The unity of common scientific inquiry has been balkanized by confidentiality agreements and abuses of patents, as scientific knowledge comes to be “owned” by private entities. Companies like Monsanto, manipulating intellectual property and trade law, prevent farmers from following the ancient practice of keeping seeds for the next planting season. This is not deregulation or neoliberalism. It is legally sanctioned private jurisprudence—neo-feudalism.
The Brief Era of the Democratic Commons
For part of the 20th century, the democratic state served as a counterweight to the concentrated power that flowed to concentrated wealth in a capitalist economy. Laws helped workers offset the power of employers, protected small investors from the schemes of bankers and brokers, gave some countervailing power to tenants against landlords, and added consumer safeguards to constrain abuses of manufacturers and retailers. All of this has been thrown into reverse—not just by the more visible forms of deregulation, but by the creation of entirely private realms of property and law. It is easy to miss what has been occurring, because the age-old elements of private law, such as contracts and torts, have long coexisted with public law and regulation. Contention between public law and private power is a very old story. What is new and alarming is the displacement of entire areas of public law by private commercial interests and the resurrection of abusive forms of private law.
Not only did the 20th-century state expand democratic public law. Acting through the courts, the state intervened to police private contracts and protect weaker parties from abuse by the powerful. Twentieth-century courts moved away from the formalist contract law of the late 19th century, which was characterized by rigid contract interpretation and deference to the principle of caveat emptor. In its place, 20th-century judicial interpretation and enforcement of contracts emphasized fairness between the parties. Using such doctrines as unconscionability, duress, and impracticability, courts in the 20th century refused to enforce contracts between parties with vastly unequal resources, knowledge, or bargaining power when they found agreements to be oppressive, coercive, grossly one-sided, misleading, or blatantly unfair.
snip
The private capture of entire legal systems by corporate America goes far beyond neoliberalism. It evokes the private fiefdoms of the Middle Ages.
https://prospect.org/economy/rise-of-neo-feudalism/
The history of the modern democratic state can be understood as a story of shifting authority and lawmaking, first from private potentates to sovereign monarchs, and then to publicly accountable democracies. Today, this centuries-long democratizing trend is rapidly being reversed. Western democracies are not simply embracing neoliberalism in the sense of deregulating the economy. Elites are pursuing something aptly described as a new form of feudalism, in which entire realms of public law, public property, due process, and citizen rights revert to unaccountable control by private business.
The system of finance, once supervised by bank regulatory agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been delegated to private realms of law. The financial collapse of 2008 is best understood as the seizure, corruption, and abuse of entire domains of regulation and jurisprudence. Laws to protect workers and consumers, reflecting 70 years of struggle to expand rights, are now erased by compulsory arbitration regimes. Trade law permits similar private tribunals to overturn or sidestep public regulation. Tech platform monopolies have created a proprietary regime where they can crush competitors and invade consumer privacy by means of onerous terms, often buried in online “terms of service” provisions. The unity of common scientific inquiry has been balkanized by confidentiality agreements and abuses of patents, as scientific knowledge comes to be “owned” by private entities. Companies like Monsanto, manipulating intellectual property and trade law, prevent farmers from following the ancient practice of keeping seeds for the next planting season. This is not deregulation or neoliberalism. It is legally sanctioned private jurisprudence—neo-feudalism.
The Brief Era of the Democratic Commons
For part of the 20th century, the democratic state served as a counterweight to the concentrated power that flowed to concentrated wealth in a capitalist economy. Laws helped workers offset the power of employers, protected small investors from the schemes of bankers and brokers, gave some countervailing power to tenants against landlords, and added consumer safeguards to constrain abuses of manufacturers and retailers. All of this has been thrown into reverse—not just by the more visible forms of deregulation, but by the creation of entirely private realms of property and law. It is easy to miss what has been occurring, because the age-old elements of private law, such as contracts and torts, have long coexisted with public law and regulation. Contention between public law and private power is a very old story. What is new and alarming is the displacement of entire areas of public law by private commercial interests and the resurrection of abusive forms of private law.
Not only did the 20th-century state expand democratic public law. Acting through the courts, the state intervened to police private contracts and protect weaker parties from abuse by the powerful. Twentieth-century courts moved away from the formalist contract law of the late 19th century, which was characterized by rigid contract interpretation and deference to the principle of caveat emptor. In its place, 20th-century judicial interpretation and enforcement of contracts emphasized fairness between the parties. Using such doctrines as unconscionability, duress, and impracticability, courts in the 20th century refused to enforce contracts between parties with vastly unequal resources, knowledge, or bargaining power when they found agreements to be oppressive, coercive, grossly one-sided, misleading, or blatantly unfair.
snip
