Moissanite

I actually thought of this because of a line in The West Wing where the President is making a point about representation, then went off on a googling exploration to understand a bit whether it is a meaningful distinction - most of what I read seemed to reinforce the notion that the difference is important.

In day-to-day life it certainly doesn't matter - but when you are attempting to discuss the nature of that political system itself, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to call out the distinction and decide whether to discuss it further. No need for snide jabs.

Good; I was worried I'd stumbled into some some paleo-esque "only drink from puddles at dawn and dusk to maximize your gut flora development" nonsense.

> Don’t drink more than 2 drinks in a day

Just to clarify, because this one tripped me up: you specifically mean alcohol, right?

Listen, if I had to pull the Flying Kipper up a hill with inferior non-Welsh coal, I'd be sad too.

Interesting - having read the book several times I don't get the reference to the dinner scene; will have to look it up.

The parts which bothered me were the Zendaya slow-mo flash-forwards being too long and too frequent with no substance, and Lady Jessica crying far more than reasonable for the character I remember.

I should really have said "elites, including those in antagonistic countries like Russia". My main point was more about the elites than where they are from.

Yes!

I'm the OP - and it's more complicated than that. Foreign powers fermented the discord in American society (which was already there for sure, but could have been much less toxic without external influence), hence describing it as a proxy war and not a foreign-backed coup.

Do you have a promising example of where normal people were shareholders and managed to push through a decision which was against the interests of the board? Sounds from your comments down this thread like you only favour influence being accessible to those with capital, which I disagree with largely based on the fact that it is the world we live in already, and things are not trending in a good direction.

Someone has to sit at the top of the tree, making decisions whose impact has to be accepted by the people below.

Government is far (far!) from perfect, but at least it aspires in the right direction (where "right" is defined by the zeitgeist of the population, and so by definition what government will tend towards).

Companies are beholden to no-one but the markets. Markets are demonstrably not aligned with what is best for the populace, but rather what is best for owners of capital. We can't change that property of companies easily, but we can, in theory, hold government to a higher standard than "do whatever the highest bidder says". So, I'd like government to stay at the top of the tree.

I think "We bring tech jobs and tax revenue, which we will take elsewhere if you're not more compliant" is hard to label as anything other than a threat - particularly in the context of trying to play off the UK against the EU. UK politicians have made hay off the idea that being free of EU bureaucracy would make the UK a more appealing environment for companies; that was always bullshit anyway, but here Microsoft are trying to use it as leverage in the court of public opinion.

Once I get a vote on board membership for every company operating in my country, I will happily participate in that discussion.

Do you believe the appeal of Trump to disaffected Americans would be enough to win him the election, if big business (Koch et al) turned against the Republican party? Genuine question, because I feel like that is where the lever really is.

We need to go beyond stopping mergers. Any company which sees itself as large or powerful enough to make unveiled threats against a national economy needs to be broken up.

For ultra-large companies (e.g. any company with a market cap over $100B at the moment), default-deny should be the position for any mergers from this point - the burden of proof should be on them to show why the merge would not only be non-harmful, but actually benefit the wider economy.

> We live in a democracy or not?

Not really, no.

Setting aside pedantry about the US being a republic and not a pure democracy, the fact is that wealthy elites decide election outcomes now. You ended up with Trump because elites in Russia wanted him elected more than elites in the US wanted Clinton. You got rid of him because elites in the US had woken up to the fact that they weren't the only player in that game anymore.

Culture wars are a proxy battlefield in much the same way that Ukraine is.