How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning? Even disregarding direct corporate sponsorship, the rich who mostly contribute are still affiliated with the industry & finance sector. Average Joe can vote for puppet A or puppet B. People like Ron Paul, with firm principles, and the means to finance themselves despite sizable opposition, are the rare exception.
Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.
There's nothing stopping you the voter from voting for anyone running, even the person with no monetary support. The fact that you vote for one of the people with the most ads is your failing, not the system's.
> How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning?
There are a few issues I have with this statement, hence I decided to slice your post. I hope it is ok. Here is what I can't agree on:
1. From the very sentence above my understanding is that you notice something very important here: is it that in your opinion democracy doesn't work? You see this point you make isn't about capitalism. It's all about Democracy. Your claim here is that (sorry for vulgar interpretation): democracy doesn't work because I see elections after elections that voters vote for guys with most money for the campaign. But that's issue with democracy. Not capitalism. As long as money exists, rich&poor exist -- democracy won't be perfect. I take different view than that on this. I think you need more than just money to kind of "cheat" in democracy. You need stupid populous too. You need dumb people who care just about 6-packs and entitlements. So whoever promises them the most for the vote casted, gets elected. And then that gets funded by cheap credit, forever low interest rates (FED) and public spending. No wonder both parties do the same. This is late stages of democracy though. Not issue with capitalism. Last time I checked capitalism worked fantastic for a country - namely China -- but without the fallacies of democracy.
2. You are not the only one who notices that. US Government noticed that as well. And compared to China, it seems democracy and capitalism aren't as effective as authoritarian system and capitalism. It's not only China. Look at South-East Asia in general. If you ask, why we have more militarization of police, huge prison population, NSA eavesdropping, etc, etc -- it's all about the elites in the US seeing on the example of China that democracy doesn't really work.
3. Another issue with the statement: would you voted for Hitler given he had the most money in elections in 1933 ? Right, democracy isn't idiot-proof. That's the real problem with it. You can't really let 6-pack-joe voting, that's idiotic notion. Again, nothing to do with capitalism.
>Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.
Democratic system that is. Ordinary citizen not knowing how to vote. Poor idiots. Almost like Jews voting for NSDAP. (Sorry, couldn't help myself). Your disbelieve in American voters is mind blowing! The distrust in democracy horrifying!
I don't distrust the American voter in particular, don't worry. Maybe you could say the problem is simply entrenchment.
Voters don't go and seek out candidates with the most money, it's the other way around. Somebody with small funds simply can't reach as many voters as somebody with a huge war chest.
A capitalism where money is the outmost metric doesn't work, just like communism with absolute centralization and discounting all ownership doesn't work. Sidestepping the need for social responsibility, a very important factor, that people tend to ignore, about free market theory is that it's based on the premise that all information is available to you when you make an economic transaction. In that case, the market can be self-regulating. But in reality, this is by a large stretch not the case. Especially in politics.
So there you have a democratic system where money is power to to spew your viewpoint to as many people as possible. The voter doesn't have to be particularly ignorant for this to work, as this subverts the usual social channels. You always have incomplete information about the world, even without the help of politics. Money is an undeniable influence factor. A free market can only work if both sides to a transaction disclose all relevant information, be it money or politics.
My problem with "The System" is that the influence of money (and other hidden factors) is hushed under the table, and thus, in the vein of the previously mentioned free market principles, self-regulation ceases to work, and you have entrenchment.
So that is the dichotomy perpetrated by "pure" capitalism with regards to democracy. If you want money to win, there you have it. Those in power rescued the banks, themselves, effectively, to keep their money and their power, at the cost of the people at the lower rungs being disenfranchised. This has nothing to do with socialist principles.
Coming back to the beginning, the two-party system is already biased towards entrenchment, effectively barring small upstarts from entering politics. The mechanics of how this comes about are subtle and evolutionary enough that nobody notices it until its too late. The system is already too broken (maybe only almost...) to allow reform from within, eg. by the regular mechanism of voting and elections. There is also a huge amount of technical debt from the before the information age, that needs to be shed, as well as legal debt from at least two centuries of evolutionary lawmaking.
TL;DR: reform is needed, but the system is too encubered to let it happen.
Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.