IIRC Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman make the argument in "Manufacturing Consent" that basically consent can be manufactured in the U.S. because of the role that business and corporations play. Which is sort of a critique of capitalism, but I also recall Chomsky talking about how it's hard to really call the U.S. capitalist considering how much of the military industrial complex and academia (especially defense-related) is government funded, and how central those things are to the U.S. econonmy.
I'm not sure of the details but my takeaway is media consent can be manufactured in a corporatist/capitalist-like system, which may also be but is not necessarily an oligarchical one.
I think the thought that it’s not dangerous because it’s not the government is itself dangerous. As you say, private interests and multinationals have a lot of power to ensure compliance. Economic power is as powerful as political power.
I think that concentration of wealth in the hands of an ever-shrinking elite is a form of oligarchy.
Right. It's excessive and unaccountable power that's dangerous --- no matter what form that power takes. Limiting your worries to abuses of state power and ignoring abuses of private power is like worrying only about being shot with a gun and so ignoring someone pointing a crossbow at you. Both will injure you.
For sure. When the book was written income inequality wasn't extreme as it is now.
Also the whole idea of a government / multinational divide gets a bit blurry, doesn't it, when you look at the longstanding U.S. government relationship with companies like G.E. , A&T, etc, and, I'm sure in one form or another, today with Google and Amazon.
I mean government-funded research created the tech giants.
Lastly, as much as people love to knock government, ideally it's how people organize to do stuff, and, has an accountability mechanism (elections).
I'm kind of riffing off of what you are saying but yeah. Power comes in many forms and can be abused in many forms.
Exactly. Power is power, whether it’s wielded by a government or a company. Money buys governments and elites give favourable conditions to their friends’ companies. This problem is not exactly new either, it was already the case e.g. with the East India Company and its equivalents (not to single out the English).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
IIRC Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman make the argument in "Manufacturing Consent" that basically consent can be manufactured in the U.S. because of the role that business and corporations play. Which is sort of a critique of capitalism, but I also recall Chomsky talking about how it's hard to really call the U.S. capitalist considering how much of the military industrial complex and academia (especially defense-related) is government funded, and how central those things are to the U.S. econonmy.
I'm not sure of the details but my takeaway is media consent can be manufactured in a corporatist/capitalist-like system, which may also be but is not necessarily an oligarchical one.