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What do HN people think about a law to prevent corporate executives from giving money to politicians?

• sowbug 9y ago
  You mean overturning Citizens United (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) and McCutcheon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCutcheon_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCutcheon_v._FEC). A law that targeted corporate executives would have no chance of surviving the legal precedent of those two cases. It wouldn't do much to solve the problem of dollars having more influence these days than one-person-one-vote in the U.S., but hey, don't let me stop you. Easy reading about those cases: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/22/14611/mccutcheon-decision-explained-more-money-pour-political-process https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/22/14611/mccutcheon-...
• deleted 9y ago
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• eru 9y ago
  If you care about democracy, you want to make it easier for individual people to spend a lot of money on politics. As with so many regulations, it mostly benefits the people who have enough resources to work around them: With strict limits per person, you need a huge established machine that can reach out to many individuals to get your donations rolling. Without limits, you just need to convince one eccentric billionaire. While the latter is still hard, it's still much easier done than the former.
  • aalleavitch 9y ago
    Yes, because we want people with sufficient money to be the only ones with a voice, and we want their voices to massively outweigh the voices of everyone else. That's definitely what someone who cares about democracy would want.
    • eru 9y ago
      The supposedly money-restricted alternative is not the democratic utopia you paint, but the place where only established machines can compete.
• deleted 9y ago
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