Forget Google - It's time to break up the payment processing duopoly of Visa and MasterCard

submitted by magnora7 from medium.com

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[–]dittendatt 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There is a historical continuity to what is happening. It's unsavory but it's there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism

many definitions for clientelism have been proposed, according to the political scientist Allen Hicken, it is generally thought that there are four key elements of clientelistic relationships:

  • Dyadic relationships: Simply, these are two-way relationships.

  • Contingency: Delivery of a service to a citizen by a politician or broker is contingent on the citizen's actions on behalf of the politician or party through which they are receiving services.

  • Hierarchy: The politician or party is in a higher position of power than the citizen.

  • Iteration: The relationship is not a one-off exchange, but rather, ongoing.

I think the best illustration of the contingency and the hierarchy present, is Biden's statement 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black'. It's a really in-your-face power move. You're the cattle, I'm the shepherd, you fucking do what I say, and I'll keep the gibs flowing.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interesting. Thanks for sharing that! It seems kind of obvious, but the breaking it down and parsing it out is useful and gives good ways of look at the problems. I agree, it is an example of those. It goes way beyond Biden, who as a person has done far more harm to those he was trying to appeal to in that interview than would give him a right to just grandstand for their votes. But, he's like Tilda Swinton in the Narnia movie donning the lion's mane. Biden is pretending to be heir to the New Deal/Civil Rights traditions, simply by his position in the Dem Party.

I really want national politics to collapse. We have no say in what the federal government does anymore, they are fully unaccountable in every single way be it immunity for judges and prosecutors to the fact that most house members and senators are multi-millionaires and secure in their reelection efforts by the collusion of the two parties, and it is all a distraction of real tangible problems we all have locally. So many communities can not afford to maintain their drinking water infrastructure, but we're still meddling in any country that has oil. To his credit, Trump is not as bad about it as Bush or Obama, but he's not proving to be an solution to anything and the circus that is DC is run by clowns from both parties.