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People study and apprentice in PR and lobbying just as hard as programmers learn to program. It is a skill with high stakes outcomes, so planning and preparatio
by reilly3000 5y ago
People study and apprentice in PR and lobbying just as hard as programmers learn to program. It is a skill with high stakes outcomes, so planning and preparation is important. Ultimately you want to build broad consensus with influential people around your position such that decision makers feel your choice is the safe, obvious, and ideally only choice. Nothing of substance can be done with brute force alone.
Big companies can afford to hire legions of people who have a track record of getting things done legislatively and with public perception. Frankly I know of no antidote. The know how to astroturf grassroots campaigns, defame anyone who opposes them, get an audience with anyone, and research anything at scale.
The best I’ve come up with over the years is some kind of law that requires disclosures about all spending on PR and lobbying, and that those are presented along with all communications. Sort of a nutrition label for hot air. Of course, that would be astonishing difficult to pass into law, with their whole trade leaning against it. Another policy could be to stop making their expenses tax deductible. There was some movement towards making advertising 50% tax deductible rather than 100% a several years back, but American Advertising Federation lobbying made sure it never got any traction.
Their handiwork: https://www.aaf.org/Public/Education-and-Resources/Government-Affairs-Policy/Legislative-Comments-Testimony.aspx https://www.aaf.org/Public/Education-and-Resources/Governmen...
They are sort of the anti-EFF.
Anything you organize that becomes a threat, they will try to disorganize… from the top down or bottom up.
If there is a better way let me know and I’ll get behind it.
- jimkleiber 5y agoOne suggestion that I've heard, based on a lot of research, is to give Congress more relative power by having more closed door committees and committee votes. The problem being if Congressional activities are too transparent, then the power shifts to whomever can lobby the best, which often means who can best track the behaviors and intimidate people into behaving certain ways. While citizens can view more with transparency, we often don't, and the richest companies and orgs do. I've tried to loop in James to shed more on the research behind it but it's at congressionalresearch.org
- specialist 5y agoI've also heard this was an unanticipated consequence of increased transparency. I'm not ready to give up my faith in the wisdom "the solution to democracy's problems is more democracy". But do try to be mindful that there's always tradeoffs.
- jimkleiber 5y ago> "the solution to democracy's problems is more democracy" By democracy, do you mean direct democracy, representative democracy, both, or neither?
- specialist 5y agoDavid Graeber style participatory democracy. Put decision making closest to the people impacted. Doesn't scale. Which is a feature, not a bug.
- jimkleiber 5y agoIf it doesn't scale, what would be the largest size it would work at, and then how to resolve conflict amongst those groups?
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoThe other problem with this is that the existing votes are already choreographed for public consumption, so the existing transparency is an illusion. There was a bill earlier this year to expand police funding. After a year of "defund the police" from AOC et al, it turned out that if she would have voted against it, it would have actually defeated the bill. So instead she voted "present" and the bill passed. Most people aren't going to notice that, but that was equivalent to voting yes. And if her vote wasn't actually necessary to pass the bill, she'd then have been able to vote no specifically because it wouldn't change the outcome, even though as we know she would flip when it mattered. That happens on a regular basis too but in those cases it's undetectable.
- 5y ago