Most people are very critical on corporations and know well that their business agenda are just nice words, everything they say is advertisement and they cannot be trusted. The only agenda of a corporation is to make money.
This can be simply explained by game theory. Corporations are competing and only the most profitable ones will survive. A corporation that focuses on other aspects beyond making money will get pushed out of the market. And this is not cynicism, it is the truth.
Thankfully corporations still often act in our interest. Because their goal to make money is aligned with satisfying our desires. They make good products so we want to buy them. And they very much reflect what the consumers care about.
Why do chickens live in tiny cages? Because the average customer does not give a shit about them. And why are there bio chicken for people that still want cheap chicken but feel good? And why do these chicken still live in virtually the same shitty conditions? Because the hipsters are not really about the chickens they are just about their own conscience and their life-style. And why are there no products from actual animal friendly production? Because there are not enough people that are ready to pay for that. The markets just deliver what people want.
And to understand this we only need game theory, that is based on corporations competing for customers with the primary goal to make money.
While most people agree at least in parts with my analysis of corporations, their view on politics is fundamentally different. While corporations are greedy and evil, political parties care about the people and act in our interest. They are thought to be fundamentally good and only frequently mess up.
However the same game theory that pushes corporations to be optimised for profit, also applies to democracy.
Political parties are in direct competition for votes and parties that do anything beyond farming votes are pushed out of the system. Also the interests of the parties are aligned with the people that can bring them the most votes for the same reason.
Parties never care about morality or ideology, that is just a flavour to get them votes. Parties never talk about their true intentions. Everything they say is advertisement. Parties only care about your vote. And like corporations care most about their rich customers, parties care most about the people that give them money or influence so they can get many votes.
And this is not a cynical analysis. Political parties are in fierce competition and are very professional in only one thing. And that is playing the game of getting votes. Any ideology is just getting in the way as a disadvantage.
Just as corporations have no morality, politics is free from it. That is not a bad thing. Morality only lives in the private person and their individual actions.
And we can choose to buy 'ethical' products. But the corporation delivering them is still free of morals. They are just a neutral intermediary that aligns with our moral decision to make a profit. The same is true for political parties. With a few fundamental flaws that entirely break the system.
Our choice is artificially narrowed down to very few choices making it impossible to vote for what we actually want.
Secondly the impact we have by voting is much smaller than our impact as a customer. Most votes are decided by political interference, money and influence on the press. Political impact is much more uneven distributed than money. We may have one person one vote, but pushed into very few choices elections are decided by public perception and persona cults. And these are shaped by the social influence of people. Democracy is the only system where the stupidity of the people is weaponised. And finally voting invokes an illegitimate authority that free markets don't.
