> This kind of thinking is exactly why they rule over you.

I'm pretty sure the pessimism came as a result of where we're at and not as a cause of it. Nobody really needs to collude for corruption to seep into things; it kind of seeps in on its own if left unchecked.

> Rather than do anything to improve the situation, it's easier to point fingers and argue against a false choice between being a career politician and nothing else.

> A television game show host won the presidency against a career politician in 2016 and spent about half as much on their campaign. This flies in the face of the all the idiotic rhetoric that money buys elections i.e., Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and that the media can assassinate the character of a candidate. If you're a conspiracy theorist thinking the boogieman got him elected in 2016, the same boogieman certainly didn't help in 2020 when he had four years to prepare and the advantage of already being POTUS.

For one thing, I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue that what you have to do to win office is outspend your opponent. On the other hand, you definitely have to have and spend a lot of resources. "Half as much" (versus who, the opponent?) is still the same magnitude of money, which is to say, a lot. I don't know about you, but I don't have $325 million dollars laying around.

That said, honestly, I really think your analysis of Donald Trump is ridiculous. Donald Trump had been a celebrity since the 80s at least; a recognizable face that you could see on McDonalds advertisements. In 2016 it seemed like you had to pay television stations to stop talking about Trump for 5 minutes; he had become a spectacle of the election, especially as he continued to succeed. This is not a story of someone who succeeded in spite of a lack of resources. It's someone who succeeded because of the immense amount of resources they had, including a brand they had been building for many decades prior.

> A few years ago the NYT reported about 20% of Congress were outsiders -- double the success rate of startups. And despite the obstacles in front of them, people start businesses and take massive pay cuts every day. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez run a campaign and get elected while waiting tables and tending bar at a taqueria in NYC.

> These events should inspire readers to start getting involved. It's the only way to change things.

Yeah, this just isn't going to work. I mean don't get me wrong, good for AOC and all of the others who follow in her lead, but this is not sustainable. It's maybe a hope to get a foot in the door, but seriously: if this is the incentive structure that remains for politicians, you can expect ~no change in the longer term. So I hope the ones that get through are able to do something about this quickly.

People, especially the lower you go down on the economic rungs, depend on each-other. People depend on me. I am not going to throw away my current career to go wait tables for shit pay and no benefits so I can have some minuscule chance at becoming one AOC among hundreds to thousands of dog shit career politicians. And even if I didn't have obligations and people who depended on me, I would not want to. It's not my life, it's just that simple. I don't care enough about this to build my life around it. I would find it boring and unfulfilling. I am sure I am not alone.

That doesn't mean I don't care about politics at all. I'd love to do something to improve the situation if I could. But, people who want to dedicate their entire lives to hitting the campaign trail already probably know what they're doing; I already know what I'm not.

And of course, even if I don't do anything, I absolutely have the right and reason to complain about things like this. Does complaining solve anything? Well, it solves one thing: it fulfills my desire to complain. And this is a thing that seems to mostly impact the American and maybe a bit more generally the English-speaking side of the internet a lot: Just because someone is complaining or venting about something, does not mean they are necessarily soliciting an answer. The first post in this thread reads as follows:

> Glad to see that so many large corporations and billionaires can set their petty differences aside and work towards a common goal of screwing the little people.

No doubt, it was poorly received on HN, as it's currently grayed out. Maybe it's just because it's a cliche take, maybe because it's pessimistic, maybe it's because there's not really much constructive to add to it. Either way, to me it isn't asking for someone to come in and try to solve it, it's lamenting how depressing the situation is. It's not necessarily that this is a super valuable or original take, but it's one that I think a lot of us can relate to deep down.

I understand that this entire tangent probably isn't really going to go over well in the court of public opinion, but it struck a nerve in me. And if there's one thing I can do, it's write way too much text meandering on about something. In this case, I really, genuinely just wish, that people would allow others on the internet to vent when they want to vent. But even if the person had ended their post with,

> So, is there anything we can do about this?

I still suggest that telling them they ought to upend their life for the cause is unlikely to resonate strongly with anyone who ever reads it. So if you have any ideas between that and nothing, by all means.