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I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. I have friends who have successfully lobbied in the the U.K. to get bills introduced to curb climate change. I suppo

I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. I have friends who have successfully lobbied in the the U.K. to get bills introduced to curb climate change. I support the Alltrials people, lobbying to ensure that the results from all medical trials are published whether ‘successful’ or not. Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. It’s when the convincing them comes in the form of personally enriching the legislators that it turns into bribery and the problems occur.

flexie 9y ago
Agree
ivan_gammel 9y ago
Not necessarily personally - all sorts of exchanges here should be banned, including contributions to the election campaigns, which in true democracy should be funded solely from public money. Being allowed to bring the case does not mean that you have to or should be allowed to pay for that.
- anovikov 9y ago
  Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? I'll say the opposite - any kind of public money involvement into elections should be banned. Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. 'Opinions' of ordinary people are not important because they effectively, don't exist: propaganda decides what their opinions will be.
  - vvillena 9y ago
    Funding campaings from public money is widespread in Europe. Sometimes the opposite argument is made: public funding ensures a level field, in which no one has a disproportionate advantage. Of course, this has the effect of displacing the battle to the real battlefields, one of them being propaganda, as you said.
    - gbacon 9y ago
      Democrats and Republicans already control ballot access laws, a clear conflict of interest. Let us wave our magic wands and — poof! — campaign expenditures are now tax-funded. Nothing meaningful changes. The Republicrats still control who has access to the ballot and thus who will receive campaign largess. “Public campaign finance” is no magic fix, rather it is welfare for already wealthy political parties.
      - ivan_gammel 9y ago
        If campaign financing will be restricted to public money, they won't be wealthy anymore and they will not be able to use to their political benefit any unrestricted hidden wealth in the form of super PACs. And this will also open way for the smaller parties and independent candidates to the fair competition.
        gbacon 9y ago
        Smaller parties and independent candidates will still be left out because the Big Two control access to the ballot.
        sverige 9y ago
        And people whose only jobs as adults have been elected or appointed positions will still mysteriously become worth 7 or 8 or 9 figures by the end of their careers, even though their only reported income has been a government salary.
        anovikov 9y ago
        If politicians are denied chance to get silently wealthy on their positions, we will have different kind of politicians: not relatively benign fat cats who are after nothing but money, but ideologically explosive 'great leaders' who want to change the world in the name of their 'great' ideas (there won't be much reason to go into politics otherwise, if you can't make much cash there). Do you really want any of them? Corruptioners are the best kinds of politicians you may have.
  - ivan_gammel 9y ago
    >Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? There's no causal link between public funding and totalitarianism and there's no historical proof that this ever happened. When and if democracy fails, it happens for a number of other reasons, but this is certainly more likely to happen, when a) there's no equality in voter's influence on the outcome, b) there's no fair competition between candidates. Public funding usually addresses those two problems and at this moment does it quite successfully in Europe, which, despite all the recent turbulence and the rise of the far-right parties, is still in much better shape than USA, when it comes to the elections.
    - 18pfsmt 9y ago
      Nobody in the US is going to get behind banning me, an independent citizen, from making Bernie Sanders bumper-stickers or yard-signs. Nor me making TV ads about how great Bernie would be for our country. Your proposal is at complete odds with the US Constitution with respect to an individual's right to free speech. Lobbying creates a paper trail of sorts and is therefore more transparent (How do you think opensecrets exists?).
      - ivan_gammel 9y ago
        Freedom of speech is just one of the many freedoms granted by the rule of law, it's not a law of nature and not something unquestionable in any circumstances. There are always limits to it, even in the US constitution itself (which is quite outdated document, as we already know from the mass shootings made possible by it). Limits can and should be imposed to defend the sane way to elect the government, but of course it's up to you, American people, which way do you want to go. I just hope that you'll finally sort this out somehow, because the world cannot let America being a self-proclaimed "leader of free world" ruled by Trump-like oligarchy.
  - hn0 9y ago
    > Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. That’s a fascinating thesis, can you point me to sources on it?
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      I think they are talking about the Magna Carta.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England" Democracy was most certainly not invented in the middle ages or in England. Neither of those statements is even remotely true. Democracy is a product of Ancient Greece around 300BC. And then the Romans after that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
    - gbacon 9y ago
      The ancient Athenians would reject our form of democracy because they regarded popular elections as a tool of oligarchy. They also executed officials for abuse of power.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        None of which changes the fact that democracy was not invented in the Middle Ages or England as per the context of my comment.
        gbacon 9y ago
        No dispute there, friend.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    And those city states in the Greek peninsula which were doing it 1500 years prior?
- Anon1096 9y ago
  In this theoretical democracy with publicly funded elections would I, a completely independent citizen be able to buy ads in support of my desired candidate? How about making lawn signs to campaign? Or even just going door to door for him or her? All of the above is a gift of either my time or my money. Should all of that be banned? It's the problem people face when opposing Citizen's United. Money is inherently connected to speech.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    No you wouldn’t be able to. Campaign finance contributions can be circumvented if political expression is not banned, making such political expression a perpetual target: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth-of-campaign-finance-reform https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth... > But in the course of the argument, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Stewart and inquired: "What's your answer to [the] point that there isn't any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, [or] providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?" Stewart, an experienced litigator who had represented the government in campaign-finance cases at the Supreme Court before, responded that the provisions of McCain-Feingold could in fact be constitutionally applied to limit all those forms of speech. The law, he contended, would even require banning a book that made the same points as the Citizens United video. > There was an audible gasp in the courtroom. Then Justice Alito spoke, it seemed, for the entire audience: "That's pretty incredible."
    - smaddox 9y ago
      Very interesting read. Thank you for linking it. It has significantly altered my perception of the Citizens United issue. I see now that there's no simple way to balance campaign finance reform against freedom of speech. Edit: Perhaps instead of focusing on campaign finance reform, we should focus on polling reform, and expanding the house? If we used a better polling system, e.g. candidate ranking, and increased the number of representatives, then it would be much more costly to buy a majority.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Two states have moved to public funding. There has been little difference in outcomes: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign-finance-left https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/2...
  - dd36 9y ago
    I live in AZ and that bill does nothing to stop outside spending. AFAIK, it also doesn’t cap what can be raised. If it does then most politicians here don’t access it.
- sib 9y ago
  There is no such thing as "public money." There is only money that the government has taken from people via taxes. So, if the government takes money from me, under threat of force, and then spends it on a candidate with whose views I disagree, it has forced me to support a candidate that I do not want elected. That sounds extremely un-democratic to me.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    To agree and rephrase, "public funding" looks like incumbents controlling how campaigns are funded and how those funds are spent. Add that on top of the existing gerrymandering issues and it sounds like we'll have a government even less accountable to the average voter.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  How do you stop thousands of people from cramming the ballot just to have a little fun at the taxpayer expense? There has to be some qualification process which will cost money to complete.
MindTooth 9y ago
When there is money involved, it's corruption. I can't see it any other way. It also exclude the people/corporations that don't have that kind of money. I have nothing against the concept, as long as no money is involved and the playing field is levelled.
- rayiner 9y ago
  What kind of money do you think is involved?
  - hyperpape 9y ago
    Campaign contributions, for one.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Lobbying has little to do with campaign contributions. Lobbyists are limited to $2,300 like everyone else. Especially corporate lobbying, because corporate campaign contributions to candidates are banned. Money in lobbying is almost entirely paying lobbyists to make PowerPoint presentations to staffers: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_lobbying_drutman.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_lobb....
      - oceanswave 9y ago
        Tell me more about the limits on contributions? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-strikes-down-limits-on-federal-campaign-donations/2014/04/02/54e16c30-ba74-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-strike... https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00004357&cycle=CAREER https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=...
        rayiner 9y ago
        The WaPo article addresses a ban on aggregate contributions to multiple candidates, not a single candidate. OpenSecrets very misleadingly attributes all contributions from a company’s employees to the company itself. It’s propaganda.
jxub 9y ago
> I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. That touches upon the fundamental problem of end justifying means... And in the case of lobbying the groups of interest that will prevade will be the ones with the biggest amount of cash in their pockets, which doesn't correlate often with the best ethics.
Amygaz 9y ago
You are mistaking citizen action and corporate lobbying, especially the way it's done in the US. It's always Big Companies, with vested interests in keeping the statue quo, because their CEOs lack the creativity to move forward and has the shareholder have no incentive to ask him to do otherwise, spend millions of dollars, target to specific senator or house representatives whose votes will help and only help the big co... We are not talking about what your friend did, or what you are supporting. Those are actions that will move the society forward.
- brownbat 9y ago
  There isn't a check box on the LLC form that says all your actions from now on must be evil. There are going to be citizen interest groups you disagree with and corporations you agree with. And a lot of high-profile lobbying is corporations arguing against each other. If there was a simple heuristic like whatever corporations want is bad and whatever individuals want is good, then governing wouldn't be hard. Policy would be easy and not full of complex dilemmas with multiple competing interest groups that all have roughly prima facie coherent perspectives and interests. Some of these groups will of course be wrong on further examination, but sorting that out isn't some one line test.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Big companies don’t need lobbyists to influence government. Environmental organizations do. Look at Amazon. They put out bids for a place to build HQ2, and states fall over themselves to accommodate them. Corporate donations to candidates are already illegal. It doesn’t matter—the CEO of a big employer can just call up a Congressman and say “hey, I employ 10,000 constituents in your district. It’d be a shame if anything happened to their jobs.”
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    There was a point in the 90s when tech companies weren't interested in politics so much. They mostly tried to be better at technology and business and stay out of that game. Things like anti-trust suits, vague IP law, and domain name disputes disabused tech companies of that notion quickly. They couldn't afford not to get involved in lobbying.
tw04 9y ago
>Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. Why should YOU or you and your friends be allowed to lobby MY congressman if you're not in a district he or she represents? They're in office to represent their constituents, not whoever has the most money to throw their way. Lobbying should be limited to constituents only, not include gifts, donations, or further benefits post-office.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  Because the represent a group which has membership in your district.
  - tw04 9y ago
    That's not how the law works, and it's definitely not how lobbying works. Which is exactly why it's broken. And quite frankly even if there were "members" in my district, those members should be contacting their representative(s) themselves.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      You keep thinking that.
hrktb 9y ago
> Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. Why can’t this be a public process with no direct access to the legislator ? If the point is to change a public body’s behavior, it should be done in the open and with tracability. For me by definition it shouldn’t be lobbying but open discourse.
- euyyn 9y ago
  I don't know about the US, but in the EU Parliament, lobbyists need to be registered and I think all their meetings with legislators are part of the public record (maybe not the content, but the fact?).
djsumdog 9y ago
Lobbying is legal corruption. The represent.us group do a great video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig& The US government doesn't represent the people. It only represents about 10% of the people; those who are the top income earners and whose view happen to align with the interests that represent the top industry groups.
- rayiner 9y ago
  How about we base our views on something substantive, not YouTube propaganda?
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    > How about we base our views on something substantive, not YouTube propaganda? YT may host content from any number of sources of varying quality. It would be more useful to address why the video itself is propaganda.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    I've read the study referenced in the video, specifically the Gilens and Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" published in 2014. It's a really good study and worth reading. I've used the same study in a video I later made: https://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differe...
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The problem with the Gilens and Page study is that it shows the elites and regular people agree about 90% of policies: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-.... They look at the situations where the elite and regular people disagree, and conclude that because the rich win those areas of disagreement, we live in an “oligarchy.” But it does almost no analysis of those issues. Without that analysis, it’s hard to tell whether that’s oligarchy, or just republican democracy doing the “republican” part. The paper also makes the huge mistake of using survey data without systematically accounting for whether respondents are likely voters. It is well known that voters are not representative of the population as a whole. They skew older, whiter, and more conservative.
bogomipz 9y ago
What you described sounds like a citizen lobbying effort and that type of lobbying is indeed an essential part of a democracy. However I think a distinction must be made between citizen and petition lobbying and and the big-moneyed-corporate special-interest lobbying. When people are decrying the general term "lobbying" its mostly the latter.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Does the NRA count as citizens or a special interest? What about Planned Parenthood? The AFL-CIO?
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Perhaps read the hyphenated adjective "big-moneyed" that precedes the term special-interest in my comment. The NRA, Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO all make 10's of millions of dollars in direct campaign contributions[1][2][3]. This is not at all the same as what the framers had in mind with the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” in the First Amendment. Big-moneyed special interest and influence was specifically something that James Madison was concerned about. I recommend reading "The Federalist Papers." [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000591 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000059... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088 [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082
mylons 9y ago
no. lobbying, per se, is a problem.
TsomArp 9y ago
Of course lobbying is a problem. How different is it from bribery? Some senator receiving money from a company or person in a exchange for a benefit. It always baffles me it is legal in USA (and probably other countries?).
- GordonS 9y ago
  This kind of lobbying doesn't happen in the UK, and is very much illegal - money doesn't change hands (at least not publicly!)
nojvek 9y ago
In US you can legally “donate” to politicians and have meetings with them without much tracebility. Then you also have the dumb idea of super delegates, to which millions are donated by corporations since they have a much larger influence than individual voters. The reality is that US is no longer a democracy, it’s a plutocracy where the wealthy have a far larger influence. And since elections are getting more expensive every term, I predict almost every candidate to be a billionaire backed candidate. Bernie was an exception but couldn’t do much against billionaire backed Hillary.

flexie 9y ago

Agree

ivan_gammel 9y ago

Not necessarily personally - all sorts of exchanges here should be banned, including contributions to the election campaigns, which in true democracy should be funded solely from public money. Being allowed to bring the case does not mean that you have to or should be allowed to pay for that.

anovikov 9y ago
Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? I'll say the opposite - any kind of public money involvement into elections should be banned. Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. 'Opinions' of ordinary people are not important because they effectively, don't exist: propaganda decides what their opinions will be.
- vvillena 9y ago
  Funding campaings from public money is widespread in Europe. Sometimes the opposite argument is made: public funding ensures a level field, in which no one has a disproportionate advantage. Of course, this has the effect of displacing the battle to the real battlefields, one of them being propaganda, as you said.
  - gbacon 9y ago
    Democrats and Republicans already control ballot access laws, a clear conflict of interest. Let us wave our magic wands and — poof! — campaign expenditures are now tax-funded. Nothing meaningful changes. The Republicrats still control who has access to the ballot and thus who will receive campaign largess. “Public campaign finance” is no magic fix, rather it is welfare for already wealthy political parties.
    - ivan_gammel 9y ago
      If campaign financing will be restricted to public money, they won't be wealthy anymore and they will not be able to use to their political benefit any unrestricted hidden wealth in the form of super PACs. And this will also open way for the smaller parties and independent candidates to the fair competition.
      - gbacon 9y ago
        Smaller parties and independent candidates will still be left out because the Big Two control access to the ballot.
        sverige 9y ago
        And people whose only jobs as adults have been elected or appointed positions will still mysteriously become worth 7 or 8 or 9 figures by the end of their careers, even though their only reported income has been a government salary.
      - anovikov 9y ago
        If politicians are denied chance to get silently wealthy on their positions, we will have different kind of politicians: not relatively benign fat cats who are after nothing but money, but ideologically explosive 'great leaders' who want to change the world in the name of their 'great' ideas (there won't be much reason to go into politics otherwise, if you can't make much cash there). Do you really want any of them? Corruptioners are the best kinds of politicians you may have.
- ivan_gammel 9y ago
  >Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? There's no causal link between public funding and totalitarianism and there's no historical proof that this ever happened. When and if democracy fails, it happens for a number of other reasons, but this is certainly more likely to happen, when a) there's no equality in voter's influence on the outcome, b) there's no fair competition between candidates. Public funding usually addresses those two problems and at this moment does it quite successfully in Europe, which, despite all the recent turbulence and the rise of the far-right parties, is still in much better shape than USA, when it comes to the elections.
  - 18pfsmt 9y ago
    Nobody in the US is going to get behind banning me, an independent citizen, from making Bernie Sanders bumper-stickers or yard-signs. Nor me making TV ads about how great Bernie would be for our country. Your proposal is at complete odds with the US Constitution with respect to an individual's right to free speech. Lobbying creates a paper trail of sorts and is therefore more transparent (How do you think opensecrets exists?).
    - ivan_gammel 9y ago
      Freedom of speech is just one of the many freedoms granted by the rule of law, it's not a law of nature and not something unquestionable in any circumstances. There are always limits to it, even in the US constitution itself (which is quite outdated document, as we already know from the mass shootings made possible by it). Limits can and should be imposed to defend the sane way to elect the government, but of course it's up to you, American people, which way do you want to go. I just hope that you'll finally sort this out somehow, because the world cannot let America being a self-proclaimed "leader of free world" ruled by Trump-like oligarchy.
- hn0 9y ago
  > Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. That’s a fascinating thesis, can you point me to sources on it?
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    I think they are talking about the Magna Carta.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England" Democracy was most certainly not invented in the middle ages or in England. Neither of those statements is even remotely true. Democracy is a product of Ancient Greece around 300BC. And then the Romans after that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
  - gbacon 9y ago
    The ancient Athenians would reject our form of democracy because they regarded popular elections as a tool of oligarchy. They also executed officials for abuse of power.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      None of which changes the fact that democracy was not invented in the Middle Ages or England as per the context of my comment.
      - gbacon 9y ago
        No dispute there, friend.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  And those city states in the Greek peninsula which were doing it 1500 years prior?
Anon1096 9y ago
In this theoretical democracy with publicly funded elections would I, a completely independent citizen be able to buy ads in support of my desired candidate? How about making lawn signs to campaign? Or even just going door to door for him or her? All of the above is a gift of either my time or my money. Should all of that be banned? It's the problem people face when opposing Citizen's United. Money is inherently connected to speech.
- rayiner 9y ago
  No you wouldn’t be able to. Campaign finance contributions can be circumvented if political expression is not banned, making such political expression a perpetual target: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth-of-campaign-finance-reform https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth... > But in the course of the argument, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Stewart and inquired: "What's your answer to [the] point that there isn't any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, [or] providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?" Stewart, an experienced litigator who had represented the government in campaign-finance cases at the Supreme Court before, responded that the provisions of McCain-Feingold could in fact be constitutionally applied to limit all those forms of speech. The law, he contended, would even require banning a book that made the same points as the Citizens United video. > There was an audible gasp in the courtroom. Then Justice Alito spoke, it seemed, for the entire audience: "That's pretty incredible."
  - smaddox 9y ago
    Very interesting read. Thank you for linking it. It has significantly altered my perception of the Citizens United issue. I see now that there's no simple way to balance campaign finance reform against freedom of speech. Edit: Perhaps instead of focusing on campaign finance reform, we should focus on polling reform, and expanding the house? If we used a better polling system, e.g. candidate ranking, and increased the number of representatives, then it would be much more costly to buy a majority.
rayiner 9y ago
Two states have moved to public funding. There has been little difference in outcomes: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign-finance-left https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/2...
- dd36 9y ago
  I live in AZ and that bill does nothing to stop outside spending. AFAIK, it also doesn’t cap what can be raised. If it does then most politicians here don’t access it.
sib 9y ago
There is no such thing as "public money." There is only money that the government has taken from people via taxes. So, if the government takes money from me, under threat of force, and then spends it on a candidate with whose views I disagree, it has forced me to support a candidate that I do not want elected. That sounds extremely un-democratic to me.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  To agree and rephrase, "public funding" looks like incumbents controlling how campaigns are funded and how those funds are spent. Add that on top of the existing gerrymandering issues and it sounds like we'll have a government even less accountable to the average voter.
lr4444lr 9y ago
How do you stop thousands of people from cramming the ballot just to have a little fun at the taxpayer expense? There has to be some qualification process which will cost money to complete.

MindTooth 9y ago

When there is money involved, it's corruption. I can't see it any other way. It also exclude the people/corporations that don't have that kind of money. I have nothing against the concept, as long as no money is involved and the playing field is levelled.

rayiner 9y ago
What kind of money do you think is involved?
- hyperpape 9y ago
  Campaign contributions, for one.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Lobbying has little to do with campaign contributions. Lobbyists are limited to $2,300 like everyone else. Especially corporate lobbying, because corporate campaign contributions to candidates are banned. Money in lobbying is almost entirely paying lobbyists to make PowerPoint presentations to staffers: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_lobbying_drutman.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_lobb....
    - oceanswave 9y ago
      Tell me more about the limits on contributions? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-strikes-down-limits-on-federal-campaign-donations/2014/04/02/54e16c30-ba74-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-strike... https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00004357&cycle=CAREER https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=...
      - rayiner 9y ago
        The WaPo article addresses a ban on aggregate contributions to multiple candidates, not a single candidate. OpenSecrets very misleadingly attributes all contributions from a company’s employees to the company itself. It’s propaganda.

jxub 9y ago

> I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. That touches upon the fundamental problem of end justifying means... And in the case of lobbying the groups of interest that will prevade will be the ones with the biggest amount of cash in their pockets, which doesn't correlate often with the best ethics.

Amygaz 9y ago

You are mistaking citizen action and corporate lobbying, especially the way it's done in the US. It's always Big Companies, with vested interests in keeping the statue quo, because their CEOs lack the creativity to move forward and has the shareholder have no incentive to ask him to do otherwise, spend millions of dollars, target to specific senator or house representatives whose votes will help and only help the big co... We are not talking about what your friend did, or what you are supporting. Those are actions that will move the society forward.

brownbat 9y ago
There isn't a check box on the LLC form that says all your actions from now on must be evil. There are going to be citizen interest groups you disagree with and corporations you agree with. And a lot of high-profile lobbying is corporations arguing against each other. If there was a simple heuristic like whatever corporations want is bad and whatever individuals want is good, then governing wouldn't be hard. Policy would be easy and not full of complex dilemmas with multiple competing interest groups that all have roughly prima facie coherent perspectives and interests. Some of these groups will of course be wrong on further examination, but sorting that out isn't some one line test.
rayiner 9y ago
Big companies don’t need lobbyists to influence government. Environmental organizations do. Look at Amazon. They put out bids for a place to build HQ2, and states fall over themselves to accommodate them. Corporate donations to candidates are already illegal. It doesn’t matter—the CEO of a big employer can just call up a Congressman and say “hey, I employ 10,000 constituents in your district. It’d be a shame if anything happened to their jobs.”
- humanrebar 9y ago
  There was a point in the 90s when tech companies weren't interested in politics so much. They mostly tried to be better at technology and business and stay out of that game. Things like anti-trust suits, vague IP law, and domain name disputes disabused tech companies of that notion quickly. They couldn't afford not to get involved in lobbying.

tw04 9y ago

>Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. Why should YOU or you and your friends be allowed to lobby MY congressman if you're not in a district he or she represents? They're in office to represent their constituents, not whoever has the most money to throw their way. Lobbying should be limited to constituents only, not include gifts, donations, or further benefits post-office.

jimktrains2 9y ago
Because the represent a group which has membership in your district.
- tw04 9y ago
  That's not how the law works, and it's definitely not how lobbying works. Which is exactly why it's broken. And quite frankly even if there were "members" in my district, those members should be contacting their representative(s) themselves.
  - jimktrains2 9y ago
    You keep thinking that.

hrktb 9y ago

> Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. Why can’t this be a public process with no direct access to the legislator ? If the point is to change a public body’s behavior, it should be done in the open and with tracability. For me by definition it shouldn’t be lobbying but open discourse.

euyyn 9y ago
I don't know about the US, but in the EU Parliament, lobbyists need to be registered and I think all their meetings with legislators are part of the public record (maybe not the content, but the fact?).

djsumdog 9y ago

Lobbying is legal corruption. The represent.us group do a great video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig& The US government doesn't represent the people. It only represents about 10% of the people; those who are the top income earners and whose view happen to align with the interests that represent the top industry groups.

rayiner 9y ago
How about we base our views on something substantive, not YouTube propaganda?
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  > How about we base our views on something substantive, not YouTube propaganda? YT may host content from any number of sources of varying quality. It would be more useful to address why the video itself is propaganda.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I've read the study referenced in the video, specifically the Gilens and Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" published in 2014. It's a really good study and worth reading. I've used the same study in a video I later made: https://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differe...
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The problem with the Gilens and Page study is that it shows the elites and regular people agree about 90% of policies: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-.... They look at the situations where the elite and regular people disagree, and conclude that because the rich win those areas of disagreement, we live in an “oligarchy.” But it does almost no analysis of those issues. Without that analysis, it’s hard to tell whether that’s oligarchy, or just republican democracy doing the “republican” part. The paper also makes the huge mistake of using survey data without systematically accounting for whether respondents are likely voters. It is well known that voters are not representative of the population as a whole. They skew older, whiter, and more conservative.

bogomipz 9y ago

What you described sounds like a citizen lobbying effort and that type of lobbying is indeed an essential part of a democracy. However I think a distinction must be made between citizen and petition lobbying and and the big-moneyed-corporate special-interest lobbying. When people are decrying the general term "lobbying" its mostly the latter.

humanrebar 9y ago
Does the NRA count as citizens or a special interest? What about Planned Parenthood? The AFL-CIO?
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Perhaps read the hyphenated adjective "big-moneyed" that precedes the term special-interest in my comment. The NRA, Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO all make 10's of millions of dollars in direct campaign contributions[1][2][3]. This is not at all the same as what the framers had in mind with the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” in the First Amendment. Big-moneyed special interest and influence was specifically something that James Madison was concerned about. I recommend reading "The Federalist Papers." [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000591 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000059... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088 [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

mylons 9y ago

no. lobbying, per se, is a problem.

TsomArp 9y ago

Of course lobbying is a problem. How different is it from bribery? Some senator receiving money from a company or person in a exchange for a benefit. It always baffles me it is legal in USA (and probably other countries?).

GordonS 9y ago
This kind of lobbying doesn't happen in the UK, and is very much illegal - money doesn't change hands (at least not publicly!)

nojvek 9y ago

In US you can legally “donate” to politicians and have meetings with them without much tracebility. Then you also have the dumb idea of super delegates, to which millions are donated by corporations since they have a much larger influence than individual voters. The reality is that US is no longer a democracy, it’s a plutocracy where the wealthy have a far larger influence. And since elections are getting more expensive every term, I predict almost every candidate to be a billionaire backed candidate. Bernie was an exception but couldn’t do much against billionaire backed Hillary.