3 ms·

Why isnt there a crowdsourced lobbying startup? Essentially everyone votes on a particular topic and also donates money for that cause. If the cause collects en

Why isnt there a crowdsourced lobbying startup? Essentially everyone votes on a particular topic and also donates money for that cause. If the cause collects enough money its sent to a non profit which actually has some lobbying clout to fight the battle on Capitol hill. Teh startup can take a small %age and ensure that people can quickly swarm together and effectively beat shit bills like this. Is there a problem with this idea?

anigbrowl 15y ago
There have been several attempts, and they usually quickly turn into nonprofits or PACs themselves. They tend to reflect particular points of view because people who want socialist-type policies are unlikely to use a crowdsourcing mechanism that's already popular with, say, the Tea Party crowd. I have often wondered why someone doesn't just set up Republican and Democratic versions of the same service, with appropriate color schemes and so on.
- keeptrying 15y ago
  So imagine it being a marketplace. When some bill needs to be beaten and a lot of money collects then the voters can select which lobbying firm to give it to. And this would lead to them getting the money and having to prove what they are doing with the money. So its like a marketplace connecting lobbyists to constituents.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Organizations like the EFF already lobby on this sort of topic. There's no secret sauce or suitcases of cash involved; lobbyists are just people who know how to sell policies to politicians. Personally, I'd say that the the best way to move forward on this is to publicly write large checks to the EFF (with whom I am not affiliated, btw). Inventing a new market mechanism for this purpose is equivalent to saying that you don't understand how the existing marketplace works. This isn't something you can simply automate away, for the same reason that government by plebiscite is not historically effective.

anigbrowl 15y ago

There have been several attempts, and they usually quickly turn into nonprofits or PACs themselves. They tend to reflect particular points of view because people who want socialist-type policies are unlikely to use a crowdsourcing mechanism that's already popular with, say, the Tea Party crowd. I have often wondered why someone doesn't just set up Republican and Democratic versions of the same service, with appropriate color schemes and so on.

keeptrying 15y ago
So imagine it being a marketplace. When some bill needs to be beaten and a lot of money collects then the voters can select which lobbying firm to give it to. And this would lead to them getting the money and having to prove what they are doing with the money. So its like a marketplace connecting lobbyists to constituents.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Organizations like the EFF already lobby on this sort of topic. There's no secret sauce or suitcases of cash involved; lobbyists are just people who know how to sell policies to politicians. Personally, I'd say that the the best way to move forward on this is to publicly write large checks to the EFF (with whom I am not affiliated, btw). Inventing a new market mechanism for this purpose is equivalent to saying that you don't understand how the existing marketplace works. This isn't something you can simply automate away, for the same reason that government by plebiscite is not historically effective.