Making the world safe for corruption - Primaries edition

Say there is a power struggle in some country, and you don't like who's winning. How much should you spend, and how much influence can you buy?

Let's say North Korea.

There's the little fatso Kim Jong-un, and the elder fatso, Kim Jong-nam. Jong-un was the frontrunner, but he's too young, and many people would like Jong-nam to be the new king. What can they do?

Nothing. Kim Jong-nam has long been an exile in Macau, where he is survives only because China, t protects him against his brother's assassins. China being the guarantor of the NK regime. Kim Jong-nam has many friends in high circles in China, but even that didn't get him in power. Nobody can influence the NK power process.

caption="I spend a million every day in meals"

Now let's say the USA.

See there are this primaries thing going on. Obama doesn't look too good so there's a lot of attention in the Republican nomination. So far there is a Ned Flanders-went-investor guy as the frontrunner. A loaded Mormon. Fuck that. Let's say you've got some spare dough and you wanna spend it in anyone but the Mormon. How much would you need to spend to make a difference?

One million dollars!

And the guy managed to win 3 primaries with the money. See how cheap democracies are? Attention too to the donor's reasons:

No. 1, I think of all the guys that strap a gun on their backs and head to Afghanistan and Iraq to keep us free and safe and maintain what America has stood for.

And people complain when studies say that Republicans are stupid. The amazing is that stupid people can become millionaires in America. And buy presidential candidates! The American Dream for the left half of the Bell Curve.

As I said here, I increasingly think that the only real point of democracy is to lower the price of influence buying for rich dudes. Think of the hundreds of millions that all secret services must be paying to the Syrian rebels to topple the Assads, while some clueless redneck gets to influence the homefront with his spare change.

At least in Europe there's still some dignity left (H/T foseti).

As I said here, I increasingly think that the only real point of democracy is to lower the price of influence buying for rich dudes. The prices may be lower, but how much influence is bought for them? This can be seen (and I indeed see it) merely as evidence for Moldbug's thesis that elected politicians have very little real influence in modern Western "democracies," which are in fact run by non-elected bureaucracies. (Including of course not just the civil servants proper, but also the whole vast network of judiciary, academia, media, "NGOs," powerful unions, too-big-to-fail business, etc.) The real U.S. equivalent of buying influence with the North Korean regime would be to get the New York Times, the Supreme Court, the Ivy League professoriat, the CFR, etc. to side actively with you -- all at the same time. Obviously, even actually getting your stooge elected for president would get you orders of magnitude less influence, let alone merely shaking up the Republican primaries.

Well what you say about politicians not really having power is true, so their backers don't get power qua influence on the Cathedral. But it does get you money. Donors to political machines do get some monetary return on their investment.