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For the political experts out there, what would happen if we stopped allowing lobbying? That seems to me like the most obvious source of corruption. Edit: ok,
by vlunkr 5y ago
For the political experts out there, what would happen if we stopped allowing lobbying? That seems to me like the most obvious source of corruption.
Edit: ok, I should have worded better. What if we stopped allowing corporate lobbying through donations to elected officials?
I understand there would be loopholes to close, but isn't this the obvious source of government corruption?
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoNot a very useful thought experiment once you accept that you’d have to out-lobby the lobbyists to get it done.
- aww_dang 5y agoThe incentive for lobbying would remain and turn more deeply to black markets. To end lobbying you'd need to remove the incentive for lobbyists to seduce lawmakers. Instead, remove the power of lawmakers or reduce/decentralize the power as much as pragmatically possible.
- justinmchase 5y agoIn Plato's ideal republic the lawmakers, or protectors, were instead removed from society living in a parallel society dedicated to service. Therefore they would be incorruptable, or difficult to corrupt.
- hypersoar 5y agoThe broad concept of "lobbying" is really just people bringing their concerns to elected representatives. I don't really see how you would ban it entirely.
- brink 5y agoI think they wanted to talk about getting money out of politics.
- goda90 5y agoThe problem is actually in the wide gulf between illegal bribery, and regulated lobbying. The law says "This is lobbying, these are the rules, and required reporting", and the law says "This is bribery, and these are the punishments". There's a lot of activities involving politicians and money that don't fall under either.
- notahacker 5y agoAnd removing the legal stuff (candidates get publicly disclosed campaign donations from companies in all the industries they're favourably disposed towards the status quo in, which gives a pretty visible hint to any voters who care about how they're going to vote on the issue) potentially backfires by making the grey area stuff more powerful (candidates have much smaller campaign budgets from capped donations from private individuals, but mystery benefactors are spending a disproportionate amount on astroturf campaigns against some of them anyway)
- cheeseomlit 5y agoThere seems to me a massive difference between corporate interests openly bribing lawmakers in a brazenly material fashion vs. a group of concerned citizens merely voicing their concerns, yet the two are always conflated. Money is not speech and corporations are not people, I don't see why people tolerate this.
- Gunax 5y agoBribery is not legal, never has been, and is not being advocates for. If you want to call lobbying 'bribery' in a sort of exaggerated way, go ahead. In my experience most of the rhetoric around bribery is reapoy just interested groups doing regular politics stuff--like 'if you do not support bill xyz we will tell our million newsletter subscribers you're a bad person'.
- Gunax 5y agoAnd how would one stop that, or would you really want to? I consider campaigning to one's representatives a cornerstone of democracy and political activism. To get rid if that because groups we don't like also use it is anti-democratic.
- refurb 5y agoLobbying is just communicating your desires to your elected representative. If we stopped it, we stop democracy?
- skywal_l 5y agoIf we are discussing in good faith, the parent was probably talking about lobbying done by moneyed interests. Which is not necessary for democracy, itself a very broad term in its initial definition which does not include think tanks, political action comities and privately held mass media.
- refurb 5y agoWait what? You’re saying groups (think tanks, companies) shouldn’t be able to petition their elected representative as a condition of democracy?
- gremlinsinc 5y agoYes, companies aren't citizens. Secondly, petitions are one thing, petitions with a hidden $1billion folded up in the middle is a bribe. Bribes definitely should be illegal. If I were to call up my senator, I should get the same 'attention' as Elon Musk would get if he were donating a Hospital to their hometown.
- newsclues 5y agoIf that were true(lobbying is just communicating), people and corporations would write a letter rather than hire a lobbyist.
- 6510 5y agoA letter would work too if bribes are paid.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y agoLobbing in the US at least I’d typically referring to large institutions , not citizens. The elimination of lobbying in the US is most often reference to the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.
- ekanes 5y agoI would guess the parent comment is referring to paid/corporate lobbyists.
- pydry 5y agoThere have been a lot of attempts to curtail wealth driven lobbying. Capital somehow overcomes all of them. This inability of capital to help itself from corrupting lawmakers is apparently the fault of the state, not the fault of capitalism for reasons I can't quite fathom but might make sense if I had a lot more money. If somebody emerged from poverty in the third world though, and capital was tangentially involved then lavish praise is apparently due.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago>There have been a lot of attempts to curtail wealth driven lobbying. Capital somehow overcomes all of them. Exactly. It’s called “capitalism” for a reason. Karl Marx understood exactly how it worked when he started using this term to refer to it. It’s also the basis for Marx’s “political economy” which understands the politics are inseparable from the economics.
- jkhdigital 5y agoLobbying, as it manifests in our (the United States, in my case) current form of governance, is a direct consequence of the fact that 538 people control how 30% of GDP is spent.
- cafard 5y agoIt has been pointed out that Daniel Webster was on retainer from various business interests while he was a senator. I don't know the figures for federal share of GDP in those days, but think it must have been much smaller.
- lwansbrough 5y ago538 (elected) people. Seems far more (rather than too few) than is necessary. If it were 10 elected people for example it becomes harder to hide in the crowd. Look how much scrutiny is applied to the supreme court.
- pseudo0 5y agoI'd guess that the main issue they were highlighting was the "30% of GDP" part, which was actually more like 34% pre-covid (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX). There has been a consistent upwards trend since the '50s, if not earlier, and there are people alive today who remember a time when we didn't even have a federal income tax.
- sebow 5y agoLobbying is not actually that harmful when it's relatively transparent: i.e everybody can look up who funded who, which this kinda applies to US. Many US citizens think lobbying is the source of the problem.At a first thought you may think that, but without lobbying you de facto have "unseen" lobbying: which is corruption, more or less.That's why in 'democratic' countries where lobbying is illegal, there's way more corruption.This is not to say that lobbying reduces corruption, no, but it's a way to somewhat keep transparency while influencing and pressuring politicians, which happens, happened, and will always happen.
- dudzik 5y agoOne of the arguments I heard around corruption caused by lobbying is that centralization of power makes it worse. It kind of boils down to persuading one person is easier than convincing many people.
- jjk166 5y agoMaybe in theory but in practice even in less centralized systems there is still generally just one person you need to persuade, and that one person is generally easier to persuade than if they were more central. If you compare local governments to state governments to the federal government, there is substantially more graft in the smaller governments. Local officials are cheaper to influence, have less of a spotlight on them (both from criminal investigators and the electorate), and have fewer competing interests to worry about.
- 6510 5y agoYes, we have political processes that have undefined read write access to unrelated settings and data. You will have to format the drive and install a new Government.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> For the political experts out there, what would happen if we stopped allowing lobbying? You mean, if you prohibit people (including other government decision makers) from communicating with government decision-makers about their preferences for government decisions? Nothing good.