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Corporate interests can lobby daily because they’ve got capital. Ask most people to lobby daily and they will ask you how they are supposed to pay rent if they

Corporate interests can lobby daily because they’ve got capital. Ask most people to lobby daily and they will ask you how they are supposed to pay rent if they are busy lobbying and not working. The problem is the accumulation of capital. The more capital you have, the more influence you can buy, the more capital you can accumulate, the more influence you can buy. The idea of parties is to be a lobby group for the common man. The population delegates lobbying to a dedicated group (a party) of their choice. This group represents (or is supposed to represent) the interests of their voters. In the meantime, the voters can go back to work and try to earn money to pay the next rent.

s73ver_ 9y ago
It takes 5 minutes to call your congressperson. Don't give me this "Too busy" garbage.
- confounded 9y ago
  It takes longer than five minutes to build a coherent argument to present to them, and much longer than that to read enough to stay abreast of important developments, expert opinion in them, and form your personal priorities. I completely agree that we (as individual technologists concerned about people’s freedoms) should use our democratic rights as much as possible. But it’s not that easy for John Doe to even understand what is his iPhone does vs. Facebook vs. his cell provider vs. his ISP, less understand the political implications.
  - intended 9y ago
    Which is why I personally find a few topics of interest to me, and work on them till I can boil them down into a few lines and share them with friends. That’s what I can do easily, and that’s my ability and time others can leverage. As the other poster said - not having enough time in this day and age is not a barrier. You don’t have to do everything in one day, and often many of these topic are just interesting on their own. It’s doable by your lonesome. But with the internet it’s quite easy to find others who’ve done a lot of the searching or other heavy lifting for you.

s73ver_ 9y ago

It takes 5 minutes to call your congressperson. Don't give me this "Too busy" garbage.

confounded 9y ago
It takes longer than five minutes to build a coherent argument to present to them, and much longer than that to read enough to stay abreast of important developments, expert opinion in them, and form your personal priorities. I completely agree that we (as individual technologists concerned about people’s freedoms) should use our democratic rights as much as possible. But it’s not that easy for John Doe to even understand what is his iPhone does vs. Facebook vs. his cell provider vs. his ISP, less understand the political implications.
- intended 9y ago
  Which is why I personally find a few topics of interest to me, and work on them till I can boil them down into a few lines and share them with friends. That’s what I can do easily, and that’s my ability and time others can leverage. As the other poster said - not having enough time in this day and age is not a barrier. You don’t have to do everything in one day, and often many of these topic are just interesting on their own. It’s doable by your lonesome. But with the internet it’s quite easy to find others who’ve done a lot of the searching or other heavy lifting for you.