5 ms·

The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so-called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of regular citizens meanwhile police

The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so-called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of regular citizens meanwhile police and other agencies are busy enforcing big pharma monopoly on drugs. Most governments run until they are exposed and people are mad enough to march on the streets, or they simply run out of "their" monopoly money. To improve that we need a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics once and for all.

jrwoodruff 6y ago
>a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics once and for all. Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive mergers creating single companies with control of a massive media market share, and journalism trade unions to be eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what they're told.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Media has perhaps the most competing firms of any nationwide industry. I don't understand this take, and I see it a lot. There are probably 20 relatively trustworthy outlets through which you can consume US news. That is a lot. Look at the competitive landscape in other industries. There are basically 4 tire companies, 4 or 5 home builders, 6 or so mobile handset manufacturers, 4 or 5 US based airlines... You get the picture. And all of those industries are still decently competitive.
- varispeed 6y ago
  In places where press is licensed, it is not free - because they must report in a certain way to not lose license - it also includes being nice for whomever is currently on top. I've seen here in the UK where Russia Today reported a story that should have collapsed the government, but none of the other main stream media investigated the story until few months later where the party has concocted a plausible explanation why something happened. Between that RT was given a warning that they'll lose license for interference in UK affairs... Madness.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    The press requires a license in the UK? Foreign press? Really? (American here, so I don't know. But the idea seems insane to me.)
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  I think you're missing the other half of the problem, which is that people actively seek out "journalism" that confirms their world view, regardless of whether it is true. Despite the mergers, there are still news outlets that produce accurate and in depth reporting, and of course it's possible to consume news from multiple opposing sources, but most people either don't care about the news or only care if it gives them a reason to hate the other side.
  - billytetrud 6y ago
    This is only a problem for hype-based ad funded news. Our news is so bad today because it's ad funded, instead of subscription based. With a subscription, you read a source you trust and that source has an incentive to keep you trusting it by giving you interesting information. By contrast, ad based news gets most of it's revenue from vitality, shares, and clicks. They create hyperbolic headlines aimed to create an emotional response (usually highly negative) in order to induce people to click in a rage.
    - pietrrrek 6y ago
      One could argue that subscription based news orgs are incentivesed to provide you news which would ensure that you stay subscribed. For some people these news would have to be factual, but, for IMO most people news which are either not fully factual, or omit some information would be "preferred" as long as they (the news) conform to the opinion of the subscriber.
      - billytetrud 6y ago
        People have their biases, and people like to be validated. I agree. I just don't believe that people satisfying their biases would have much of a market in primarily subscriber-oriented news. Even todays subscription news is driven by clicks and shares in a misguided effort to compete with free news.
- sbacic 6y ago
  There's a funny joke about that. "Where do rich people hide their wealth in the West?" "In tax havens." "And where do they hide it in Eastern Europe?" "In plain sight". A free press won't do squat if there is no consequence for the behavior they expose. If neither the public nor the courts punish such behavior having a free press cover it will amount to very little.
naravara 6y ago
This misses the actual mechanism by which political corruption works. Lobbying is merely any person going in to press their interests with their representatives. Where large, monied interests rig the game is because they run election campaigns and implant narratives in the media. In other words, the mechanism by which lobbyists get their way is by weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation rather than the "quid pro quo" corruption people imagine it is.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah - I basically agree with this framing. I think Lessig's talk is the best summary of this: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_... Lobbying itself is fine - we want experts with deep domain expertise interacting with law makers. We just don't want them also funding their campaigns.
  - tacocataco 6y ago
    I must have watched a different ted talk he did on the same subject. I think it was called "the green primary"
- User23 6y ago
  Put more simply, lobbyists are just the bag men. They facilitate payoffs that are laundered through junkets, book deal advances, insider trading opportunities, and who knows what else. The lobbying firms certainly have little or no idea why the proposed bill they are selling was crafted. It’s a sobering realization that none of our elected legislators are competent to actually write laws. Occasionally you’ll see an example where they’ll have a staff attorney draft something for the purpose of political grandstanding, but that’s a sideshow compared to the amount of legislation written by the people with the real power. The dynamic of how the sausage is made in DC is why, incidentally, Trump had to go. For all his many many faults, one thing he did right was bring buying legal privilege in the form of laws or federal regulations to a grinding halt.
loki49152 6y ago
Lobbying is a form of self-defense against the real corruption - a government that has assigned itself the power to interfere in our day-to-day lives. Most people today take it for granted that "regulations" must exist because they solve some actual problem. Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some government functionary wants to look like they're "doing something", which is itself a form of corruption. Regulations also commonly serve ideologically-motivated belief that some faction has managed to force on everyone else. Everything else that is "corrupt" about proscriptive regulations follows from the fact that the belief in proscriptive regulations is a corrupt belief (and illegal under the US Constitution as it was actually written).
- simonh 6y ago
  Just for clarity, it seems that when you say regulations, you're really talking about laws.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Specifically of the Administrative form (read: delegated to the executive in their definition by Congress) These are the types of regulations that can change on a moments notice, and that the American citizen has no knob to turn to influence once the paper to establish the Agency in question is inked. Executive lawmaking was never supposed to be a thing.
    - nradov 6y ago
      While I share your concern with the legislative branch handing over its lawmaking authority to the executive branch, the rules really don't change on a moment's notice. There is a defined rule making process which all federal agencies must follow, which includes a significant public comment period. The real problem is that regular people don't have time to monitor notices of proposed rule making or submit comments in the right way. So the process ends up being dominated by lobbyists, special interest groups, and unaccountable bureaucrats who are pushing their own agendas.
- HWR_14 6y ago
haecceity 6y ago
It's not a problem! Maybe it is a problem but China is even more corrupt!! They're gonna fall apart any day now! We don't have to be worry about ourselves look at China!!!
lazide 6y ago
And what is to stop or check that ruthless agency when it is corrupted? It is a fundamental attribute of power that it corrupts, and any agency with the power to decide what is corrupt and enforce against other agencies /government bodies their idea of corruption - is pretty much all powerful no?

jrwoodruff 6y ago

>a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics once and for all. Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive mergers creating single companies with control of a massive media market share, and journalism trade unions to be eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what they're told.

missedthecue 6y ago
Media has perhaps the most competing firms of any nationwide industry. I don't understand this take, and I see it a lot. There are probably 20 relatively trustworthy outlets through which you can consume US news. That is a lot. Look at the competitive landscape in other industries. There are basically 4 tire companies, 4 or 5 home builders, 6 or so mobile handset manufacturers, 4 or 5 US based airlines... You get the picture. And all of those industries are still decently competitive.
varispeed 6y ago
In places where press is licensed, it is not free - because they must report in a certain way to not lose license - it also includes being nice for whomever is currently on top. I've seen here in the UK where Russia Today reported a story that should have collapsed the government, but none of the other main stream media investigated the story until few months later where the party has concocted a plausible explanation why something happened. Between that RT was given a warning that they'll lose license for interference in UK affairs... Madness.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  The press requires a license in the UK? Foreign press? Really? (American here, so I don't know. But the idea seems insane to me.)
dane-pgp 6y ago
I think you're missing the other half of the problem, which is that people actively seek out "journalism" that confirms their world view, regardless of whether it is true. Despite the mergers, there are still news outlets that produce accurate and in depth reporting, and of course it's possible to consume news from multiple opposing sources, but most people either don't care about the news or only care if it gives them a reason to hate the other side.
- billytetrud 6y ago
  This is only a problem for hype-based ad funded news. Our news is so bad today because it's ad funded, instead of subscription based. With a subscription, you read a source you trust and that source has an incentive to keep you trusting it by giving you interesting information. By contrast, ad based news gets most of it's revenue from vitality, shares, and clicks. They create hyperbolic headlines aimed to create an emotional response (usually highly negative) in order to induce people to click in a rage.
  - pietrrrek 6y ago
    One could argue that subscription based news orgs are incentivesed to provide you news which would ensure that you stay subscribed. For some people these news would have to be factual, but, for IMO most people news which are either not fully factual, or omit some information would be "preferred" as long as they (the news) conform to the opinion of the subscriber.
    - billytetrud 6y ago
      People have their biases, and people like to be validated. I agree. I just don't believe that people satisfying their biases would have much of a market in primarily subscriber-oriented news. Even todays subscription news is driven by clicks and shares in a misguided effort to compete with free news.
sbacic 6y ago
There's a funny joke about that. "Where do rich people hide their wealth in the West?" "In tax havens." "And where do they hide it in Eastern Europe?" "In plain sight". A free press won't do squat if there is no consequence for the behavior they expose. If neither the public nor the courts punish such behavior having a free press cover it will amount to very little.

naravara 6y ago

This misses the actual mechanism by which political corruption works. Lobbying is merely any person going in to press their interests with their representatives. Where large, monied interests rig the game is because they run election campaigns and implant narratives in the media. In other words, the mechanism by which lobbyists get their way is by weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation rather than the "quid pro quo" corruption people imagine it is.

fossuser 6y ago
Yeah - I basically agree with this framing. I think Lessig's talk is the best summary of this: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_... Lobbying itself is fine - we want experts with deep domain expertise interacting with law makers. We just don't want them also funding their campaigns.
- tacocataco 6y ago
  I must have watched a different ted talk he did on the same subject. I think it was called "the green primary"
User23 6y ago
Put more simply, lobbyists are just the bag men. They facilitate payoffs that are laundered through junkets, book deal advances, insider trading opportunities, and who knows what else. The lobbying firms certainly have little or no idea why the proposed bill they are selling was crafted. It’s a sobering realization that none of our elected legislators are competent to actually write laws. Occasionally you’ll see an example where they’ll have a staff attorney draft something for the purpose of political grandstanding, but that’s a sideshow compared to the amount of legislation written by the people with the real power. The dynamic of how the sausage is made in DC is why, incidentally, Trump had to go. For all his many many faults, one thing he did right was bring buying legal privilege in the form of laws or federal regulations to a grinding halt.

loki49152 6y ago

Lobbying is a form of self-defense against the real corruption - a government that has assigned itself the power to interfere in our day-to-day lives. Most people today take it for granted that "regulations" must exist because they solve some actual problem. Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some government functionary wants to look like they're "doing something", which is itself a form of corruption. Regulations also commonly serve ideologically-motivated belief that some faction has managed to force on everyone else. Everything else that is "corrupt" about proscriptive regulations follows from the fact that the belief in proscriptive regulations is a corrupt belief (and illegal under the US Constitution as it was actually written).

simonh 6y ago
Just for clarity, it seems that when you say regulations, you're really talking about laws.
- salawat 6y ago
  Specifically of the Administrative form (read: delegated to the executive in their definition by Congress) These are the types of regulations that can change on a moments notice, and that the American citizen has no knob to turn to influence once the paper to establish the Agency in question is inked. Executive lawmaking was never supposed to be a thing.
  - nradov 6y ago
    While I share your concern with the legislative branch handing over its lawmaking authority to the executive branch, the rules really don't change on a moment's notice. There is a defined rule making process which all federal agencies must follow, which includes a significant public comment period. The real problem is that regular people don't have time to monitor notices of proposed rule making or submit comments in the right way. So the process ends up being dominated by lobbyists, special interest groups, and unaccountable bureaucrats who are pushing their own agendas.
HWR_14 6y ago

haecceity 6y ago

It's not a problem! Maybe it is a problem but China is even more corrupt!! They're gonna fall apart any day now! We don't have to be worry about ourselves look at China!!!

lazide 6y ago

And what is to stop or check that ruthless agency when it is corrupted? It is a fundamental attribute of power that it corrupts, and any agency with the power to decide what is corrupt and enforce against other agencies /government bodies their idea of corruption - is pretty much all powerful no?