4 ms·

I find the US political donation system a weird mix: is it bribery or a protection racket or both!?

photochemsyn 4y ago
The visible donations are just the tip of the iceberg. The hidden donations include lucrative cushy jobs for family members of politicians, insider stock tips, promises of corporate board positions for 'retired' politicians and bureaucrats, special low-rate home loans, and probably about a dozen other mechanisms. Then, the Senator or House member will always take the donor's call, will introduce bills written by the donor's lawyer, will put pressure on regulatory agencies to do what the donor wants, etc. (not that the latter is really needed, as the regulators are typically going back and forth to jobs in the industry they're supposed to be regulating, via the revolving door). It's a grossly corrupt system, but notice that corporate media (owned by the same people) chose not to put 'concern about government corruption' on their list of items to poll voters about prior to the midterms.
- rosnd 4y ago
  >It's a grossly corrupt system, but notice that corporate media (owned by the same people) chose not to put 'concern about government corruption' on their list of items to poll voters about prior to the midterms. I find it difficult to view the things you describe as "grossly corrupt" >Then, the Senator or House member will always take the donor's call Ok, so what? >will introduce bills written by the donor's lawyer What exactly is supposed to be wrong with this? >will put pressure on regulatory agencies to do what the donor wants, etc. Not in any official role, as a politician they just happen to be a well respected person with influence. How would you even forbid this? None of these seem to be examples of actual corruption, like buying votes.
  - batch12 4y ago
    > None of these seem to be examples of actual corruption, like buying votes. Why buy votes when you can own the representative directly? Why should someone who donates massive amounts of money to a campaign have more sway over a representative than another constituent. On that note, maybe only those represented by a candidate should be allowed to contribute to that candidate's campaign.
    - rosnd 4y ago
      > Why buy votes when you can own the representative directly? Except it doesn't, the donors are just paying for someone to listen to them for a moment. US political donors get a far worse deal than someone paying bribes in an actually corrupt country would. > Why should someone who donates massive amounts of money to a campaign have more sway over a representative than another constituent. Similarly as any friend or acquaintance would have more sway over a representative than another constituent. That's how it works when you hire humans to decide things.
      - batch12 4y ago
        > donors are just paying for someone to listen to them for a moment These donors aren't paying for a sympathetic ear. If the donors didn't get the outcome they wanted they wouldn't donate so much money. They are buying influence that benefits their causes and it's a corrupt practice. Representatives exist to represent their constituents not get rich pandering to other rich people. > Similarly as any friend or acquaintance would have more sway over a representative than another constituent. My friends don't pay me to give me their opinions.
        rosnd 4y ago
        What exactly is it that you are proposing the donors get in return? "influence"? How do you quantify that? Is it votes? If not votes, then what? Buying "influence" is not corruption. Paying a representative or a senator to take specific actions in the course of their official duties would be. Giving money to a senator and then asking them to call the DHS to push your business partners visa through is strictly not corruption. Anyone who'd call this "grossly corrupt" has never interacted with real corruption.
        batch12 4y ago
        > Buying "influence" is not corruption. Hard disagree. I don't think we will come together on this one.
VHRanger 4y ago
More like bribery But according to the US supreme court, money is speech so it doesn't matter
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  And corporations are people, of course
  - richbell 4y ago
    "Corporations are people, my friend." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c
  - sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
    This is a nice tagline, but I think it's much more benign than it sounds, and it's not exclusive to America. It's just a legal convention to help think about how corporations fit into laws not explicitly written for them. For example, who can enter legal contracts and what are the repercussions if they are broken? Well contract law was thought of around people, but if you think of a corporation similarly, then the law still makes sense. Of course, they can and do specify restrictions that only apply to corporations or opt them out.
    - foobarbecue 4y ago
      I was referring to the (awful) supreme court Citizens United decision.
  - anon291 4y ago
    This is one of those things that is simply not true. Corporations are not legally equivalent to people. What utter rubbish and lazy analysis.
    - foobarbecue 4y ago
      What I was really saying was that corporations should have to obey campaign spending limit laws that were explicitly designed to apply to them, to limit corruption.
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
In extreme capitalism, even the government is up for sale to the highest bidders.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > In extreme capitalism, even the government is up for sale to the highest bidders. I'm going to guess (with a great deal of certainty) that you've never spent time in a former or current socialist/communist country, because that is how things get done there with the implicit expectation of it being the precursor for how anything gets done. I think that is one of the many overlaps all States have in common: the superficial means may differ but through largess and outright theft (and eventual consolidation) of a Nation's wealth amongst a minority with an effective monopoly on violence is the crux of how they all operate. Condemning it entirely and finding a new ways to structure Society should be the aim, but since tribalism is so effective you have the plebs fighting amongst themselves about who's corrupt system steals from them the most legitimately.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    > Condemning it entirely and finding a new way to structure Society should be the aim Never gonna work. It was noted by Plato over 2000 years ago that in any system where the leaders can own property, they will use their political power for financial gain. And he has been proven right over and over again ever since. Plato even admits that his ideal system, where the leadership is not allowed to own property, is impossible.
    - Melting_Harps 4y ago
      > Never gonna work. It was noted by Plato over 2000 years ago that in any system where the leaders can own property, they will use their political power for financial gain. And he has been proven right over and over again ever since. Plato even admits that his ideal system, where the leadership is not allowed to own property, is impossible. Funny, we have entirely different interpretations of the significance of the Republic; if there was any book that substantiated the need to move away from the Nation State model it was that! Any Society which sought to kill it's professed 'Philosopher King' due to it's own hubris is unfit to structure what we call Civilization--more so when that individual claims to 'know nothing' but exposes the vapid nature of it's rulers and it's Legal system to be a murderous farce. The fact that Humans have repeated this cycle since Ancient Greece is testament of not just our collective folly in the West to learn from our predecessors but also underscores just how long the scale of these cycles are rather than what you purport, I'm afraid. The Republic was actually what made me look further into Anarchism after repeated readings since I was in my early teens, and its what I advocate for those who are interested on the topic should begin to see how far it goes back. With that said, I'm well aware Plato advocated for a plutocracy/oligarchy, but one need only look to the Kyklos [0] or anacyclosis to know that one is just the precursor to the other and I think I side with Aristole's assessment (though not his conclusion) more anyhow. The fact that we haven't broken this perverse cycle is testament of Humanity's inherit flaw and begs a much bigger question about the many paving our own road towards extinction for the benefit of the few; because as we've seen with COVID and now Russia's cataclysmic invasion in Ukrainian and the CCP's saber rattling with Taiwan they all seem intent more than anything to bring about the collective demise of Human civilization via Nuclear War in the backdrop of the damage that climate change has wrought upon the World--much of which all Nation states has enabled. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos
api 4y ago
Both. Donate and get favors, don’t donate and get investigated.
rosnd 4y ago
It's neither. It's donations to support causes.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> I find the US political donation system a weird mix: is it bribery or a protection racket or both!? Definitely both, his text interview pretty much revealed to what extent he was willing to go to open the right doors, once in them he realized he had to keep the grift going and donations/contributions are how things get done in order to 'be liked' and make a 'reputation.' I want to re-iterate, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin (FTX never had any exposure to it), and more to do with how an insider with political, VC and SV connections who used alt cryptocurrencies (specifically his own) to do EXACTLY what crooks from wall street have done (Lehman, MF Global). This guy had backing from Sequoia to Blackrock, and sat down with tons of politicians on panels and was on the cover of tons of media and was about to do a panel will Janet Yellen and Zelensky this month! Again, he is an insider who had a lucrative trading background and pivoted to go out on his own pretending to be a woke Effective Alturist to VCs in order to grift retail who were incredibly short-sighted with promises of infinite yield farming with alts. Seqoiua 'loved' and ave him $250million while he played video games during his pitch: please help me understand how ANYONE who has been a founder and has had to bootstrap how could anyone get away with this if he weren't a connected insider? It's like the most satirical version of Silicon Valley come to Life. If Elizabeth Holmes went down perhaps the pressure will be on to get him back to the US and prosecute him for financial malfeasance, but it seems the Bahamas intends to financially ruin him before that happens. I fear his connected parents have already started to make phone calls and call in favours in order to get him a pardon or at the very least a very short sentence in a white collar crime prison. In short, Bitcoiners get multiple life sentences in a SuperMax for running websites, and I envision an insider like SBF (and his gf a Stanford grad who is responsible for losing customer funds who is seemingly out of the picture) who ran a ponzi scheme funded by VC money will likely get a light sentence if anything at all.
a_square_peg 4y ago
Yeah - I can't remember where I read it but the notion seems to be that corruption and bribery in China and US is actually quite comparable except that in the US, bribery in the form of political donation is legalized. For companies such as FTX, or any in the Fortune 500 size, it the expenditure on political donation must have such outstanding ROI. For the scale of economic impact it has (tens of billions of dollars) I can't believe that influences can be bought for mere tens of millions of dollars.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
I just happened to listen to this Freakonomics podcast yesterday. The bits on The Politics Industrial Complex were helpful. It puts into words what my gut has been telling me. Given your question, give it a listen, it's worth your time. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/im-your-biggest-fan/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/im-your-biggest-fan/

The visible donations are just the tip of the iceberg. The hidden donations include lucrative cushy jobs for family members of politicians, insider stock tips, promises of corporate board positions for 'retired' politicians and bureaucrats, special low-rate home loans, and probably about a dozen other mechanisms. Then, the Senator or House member will always take the donor's call, will introduce bills written by the donor's lawyer, will put pressure on regulatory agencies to do what the donor wants, etc. (not that the latter is really needed, as the regulators are typically going back and forth to jobs in the industry they're supposed to be regulating, via the revolving door). It's a grossly corrupt system, but notice that corporate media (owned by the same people) chose not to put 'concern about government corruption' on their list of items to poll voters about prior to the midterms.

rosnd 4y ago
>It's a grossly corrupt system, but notice that corporate media (owned by the same people) chose not to put 'concern about government corruption' on their list of items to poll voters about prior to the midterms. I find it difficult to view the things you describe as "grossly corrupt" >Then, the Senator or House member will always take the donor's call Ok, so what? >will introduce bills written by the donor's lawyer What exactly is supposed to be wrong with this? >will put pressure on regulatory agencies to do what the donor wants, etc. Not in any official role, as a politician they just happen to be a well respected person with influence. How would you even forbid this? None of these seem to be examples of actual corruption, like buying votes.
- batch12 4y ago
  > None of these seem to be examples of actual corruption, like buying votes. Why buy votes when you can own the representative directly? Why should someone who donates massive amounts of money to a campaign have more sway over a representative than another constituent. On that note, maybe only those represented by a candidate should be allowed to contribute to that candidate's campaign.
  - rosnd 4y ago
    > Why buy votes when you can own the representative directly? Except it doesn't, the donors are just paying for someone to listen to them for a moment. US political donors get a far worse deal than someone paying bribes in an actually corrupt country would. > Why should someone who donates massive amounts of money to a campaign have more sway over a representative than another constituent. Similarly as any friend or acquaintance would have more sway over a representative than another constituent. That's how it works when you hire humans to decide things.
    - batch12 4y ago
      > donors are just paying for someone to listen to them for a moment These donors aren't paying for a sympathetic ear. If the donors didn't get the outcome they wanted they wouldn't donate so much money. They are buying influence that benefits their causes and it's a corrupt practice. Representatives exist to represent their constituents not get rich pandering to other rich people. > Similarly as any friend or acquaintance would have more sway over a representative than another constituent. My friends don't pay me to give me their opinions.
      - rosnd 4y ago
        What exactly is it that you are proposing the donors get in return? "influence"? How do you quantify that? Is it votes? If not votes, then what? Buying "influence" is not corruption. Paying a representative or a senator to take specific actions in the course of their official duties would be. Giving money to a senator and then asking them to call the DHS to push your business partners visa through is strictly not corruption. Anyone who'd call this "grossly corrupt" has never interacted with real corruption.
        batch12 4y ago
        > Buying "influence" is not corruption. Hard disagree. I don't think we will come together on this one.

VHRanger 4y ago

More like bribery But according to the US supreme court, money is speech so it doesn't matter

foobarbecue 4y ago
And corporations are people, of course
- richbell 4y ago
  "Corporations are people, my friend." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c
- sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
  This is a nice tagline, but I think it's much more benign than it sounds, and it's not exclusive to America. It's just a legal convention to help think about how corporations fit into laws not explicitly written for them. For example, who can enter legal contracts and what are the repercussions if they are broken? Well contract law was thought of around people, but if you think of a corporation similarly, then the law still makes sense. Of course, they can and do specify restrictions that only apply to corporations or opt them out.
  - foobarbecue 4y ago
    I was referring to the (awful) supreme court Citizens United decision.
- anon291 4y ago
  This is one of those things that is simply not true. Corporations are not legally equivalent to people. What utter rubbish and lazy analysis.
  - foobarbecue 4y ago
    What I was really saying was that corporations should have to obey campaign spending limit laws that were explicitly designed to apply to them, to limit corruption.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

In extreme capitalism, even the government is up for sale to the highest bidders.

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> In extreme capitalism, even the government is up for sale to the highest bidders. I'm going to guess (with a great deal of certainty) that you've never spent time in a former or current socialist/communist country, because that is how things get done there with the implicit expectation of it being the precursor for how anything gets done. I think that is one of the many overlaps all States have in common: the superficial means may differ but through largess and outright theft (and eventual consolidation) of a Nation's wealth amongst a minority with an effective monopoly on violence is the crux of how they all operate. Condemning it entirely and finding a new ways to structure Society should be the aim, but since tribalism is so effective you have the plebs fighting amongst themselves about who's corrupt system steals from them the most legitimately.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  > Condemning it entirely and finding a new way to structure Society should be the aim Never gonna work. It was noted by Plato over 2000 years ago that in any system where the leaders can own property, they will use their political power for financial gain. And he has been proven right over and over again ever since. Plato even admits that his ideal system, where the leadership is not allowed to own property, is impossible.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > Never gonna work. It was noted by Plato over 2000 years ago that in any system where the leaders can own property, they will use their political power for financial gain. And he has been proven right over and over again ever since. Plato even admits that his ideal system, where the leadership is not allowed to own property, is impossible. Funny, we have entirely different interpretations of the significance of the Republic; if there was any book that substantiated the need to move away from the Nation State model it was that! Any Society which sought to kill it's professed 'Philosopher King' due to it's own hubris is unfit to structure what we call Civilization--more so when that individual claims to 'know nothing' but exposes the vapid nature of it's rulers and it's Legal system to be a murderous farce. The fact that Humans have repeated this cycle since Ancient Greece is testament of not just our collective folly in the West to learn from our predecessors but also underscores just how long the scale of these cycles are rather than what you purport, I'm afraid. The Republic was actually what made me look further into Anarchism after repeated readings since I was in my early teens, and its what I advocate for those who are interested on the topic should begin to see how far it goes back. With that said, I'm well aware Plato advocated for a plutocracy/oligarchy, but one need only look to the Kyklos [0] or anacyclosis to know that one is just the precursor to the other and I think I side with Aristole's assessment (though not his conclusion) more anyhow. The fact that we haven't broken this perverse cycle is testament of Humanity's inherit flaw and begs a much bigger question about the many paving our own road towards extinction for the benefit of the few; because as we've seen with COVID and now Russia's cataclysmic invasion in Ukrainian and the CCP's saber rattling with Taiwan they all seem intent more than anything to bring about the collective demise of Human civilization via Nuclear War in the backdrop of the damage that climate change has wrought upon the World--much of which all Nation states has enabled. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos

api 4y ago

Both. Donate and get favors, don’t donate and get investigated.

rosnd 4y ago

It's neither. It's donations to support causes.

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> I find the US political donation system a weird mix: is it bribery or a protection racket or both!? Definitely both, his text interview pretty much revealed to what extent he was willing to go to open the right doors, once in them he realized he had to keep the grift going and donations/contributions are how things get done in order to 'be liked' and make a 'reputation.' I want to re-iterate, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin (FTX never had any exposure to it), and more to do with how an insider with political, VC and SV connections who used alt cryptocurrencies (specifically his own) to do EXACTLY what crooks from wall street have done (Lehman, MF Global). This guy had backing from Sequoia to Blackrock, and sat down with tons of politicians on panels and was on the cover of tons of media and was about to do a panel will Janet Yellen and Zelensky this month! Again, he is an insider who had a lucrative trading background and pivoted to go out on his own pretending to be a woke Effective Alturist to VCs in order to grift retail who were incredibly short-sighted with promises of infinite yield farming with alts. Seqoiua 'loved' and ave him $250million while he played video games during his pitch: please help me understand how ANYONE who has been a founder and has had to bootstrap how could anyone get away with this if he weren't a connected insider? It's like the most satirical version of Silicon Valley come to Life. If Elizabeth Holmes went down perhaps the pressure will be on to get him back to the US and prosecute him for financial malfeasance, but it seems the Bahamas intends to financially ruin him before that happens. I fear his connected parents have already started to make phone calls and call in favours in order to get him a pardon or at the very least a very short sentence in a white collar crime prison. In short, Bitcoiners get multiple life sentences in a SuperMax for running websites, and I envision an insider like SBF (and his gf a Stanford grad who is responsible for losing customer funds who is seemingly out of the picture) who ran a ponzi scheme funded by VC money will likely get a light sentence if anything at all.

a_square_peg 4y ago

Yeah - I can't remember where I read it but the notion seems to be that corruption and bribery in China and US is actually quite comparable except that in the US, bribery in the form of political donation is legalized. For companies such as FTX, or any in the Fortune 500 size, it the expenditure on political donation must have such outstanding ROI. For the scale of economic impact it has (tens of billions of dollars) I can't believe that influences can be bought for mere tens of millions of dollars.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

I just happened to listen to this Freakonomics podcast yesterday. The bits on The Politics Industrial Complex were helpful. It puts into words what my gut has been telling me. Given your question, give it a listen, it's worth your time. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/im-your-biggest-fan/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/im-your-biggest-fan/