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I really think the fact that this kind of thing can be known and reported by a newspaper means we should have some kind of anti-corruption law triggering at lea

• jimbob45 3y ago
  How would you prefer the lobbyists act? Corporations do have interests and it’s sometimes beneficial for those interests to be taken into account when creating laws (e.g. Intel with fab construction).
  • nativeit 3y ago
    “Against the public interest” might contain a clue for the distinction they’re making.
    • Tyrek 3y ago
      "Against the public interest" is the vaguest bar for investigation I can imagine, it's even vaguer than "probable cause" in policing! As long as you can find a person who disagrees (and presumably pays taxes), you're good to go on "against the public interest"?
      • forgetfreeman 3y ago
        K, so let's give it a try anyway and see what kind of behavior it incentivizes.
    • 6510 3y ago
      It's not as silly for cable lobbyists to want something they shouldn't have as it is to have people on the gov payroll attempt to write it into law. Even more silly is for journalists to not name the offenders. Those evil cable lobbyists did this!
  • advael 3y ago
    Your example is too vague to make much of, frankly, but in theory I'd believe perhaps it's possible for lobbyists' positions to align with or at least not contradict the public interest, though recent decades have shown precious few examples compared to the sheer volume of fuckery like this. A law could be written to not target all lobbying activity while still being able to draw useful distinctions between doing harm in the name of profit and providing some kind of useful industry insight (whatever that may be) to the process of government
    • jimbob45 3y ago
      How about AI censorship? Without lobbying, how would corporations share their expertise on the matter for politicians to take into account?
      • Qwertious 3y ago
        >Without lobbying, how would corporations share their expertise on the matter for politicians to take into account? There is literally an entire govt department in the US whose core job is to unbiasedly keep the politicians informed on the expert details of the areas they're legislating. Specifically, the Library of Congress (this is why the US Congress has a library), and it's Congressional Research Service.
  • Retric 3y ago
    Intel fab construction is exactly the kind of corruption we’re talking about here. Trying to manipulate markets via subsidies is horrifically inefficient and thus a vast waste of taxpayer dollars.
    • CPLX 3y ago
      This statement contains the unstated premise that efficiency is a higher goal than all other goals.
      • Retric 3y ago
        No, it does not. It simply suggests it’s the general public that should be protected. Bringing up inefficiency seems wrong because the goal is a subsidy not acting in the interest of the general public.
        • CPLX 3y ago
          The goal is to ensure domestic production of physical goods intrinsic and essential to our way of life and other economic sectors. That’s an extremely defensible policy goal.
          • Retric 3y ago
            The terrible efficiency due to high cost a minimal impact largely disproves that idea. Politicians aren’t stupid, when your argument only works if you assume stupidity then you’re likely misunderstanding something.
            • CPLX 3y ago
              Huh? Either the chips we need are made on an island surrounded by Chinese warships, or they are made in Arizona. That’s what this is about. It’s not some abstract concept.
              • 3y ago
• xnyan 3y ago
  While I believe lobbing as practiced is actual corruption, it’s totally legal in the US. Legality aside, there are a not insignificant number of people who truly believe that private industry is invariably better than government at providing virtually any good or service, and that government involvement in anything that could be done privately is by definition harmful. I actually had a conversation about this exact subject with a family member just last week. We live in a rural area and have awful service from Spectrum. He opposes plans for better cheaper muni internet because “The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does.” I personally think that a hybrid system is best. The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.
  • ang_cire 3y ago
    > The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does. Amazing... they're so close to realizing. :)
  • rayiner 3y ago
    > Legality aside, there are a not insignificant number of people who truly believe that private industry is invariably better than government at providing virtually any good or service, and that government involvement in anything that could be done privately is by definition harmful Given the type of government service they’re going to get—one run by New Yorkers, not Swedes or Japanese—are they wrong? Their frame of reference is the MTA (which runs subways that are late 15% of the time), the NYCHA, which runs some of the worst slums in the country, and NYC DOE which has a graduation rate worse than the subway’s on-time performance. Maybe there’s a reason there is a market for the message “hey, however bad Spectrum is, imagine the city government running your broadband.”
    • xnyan 3y ago
      > Given the type of government service they’re going to get—one run by New Yorkers, not Swedes or Japanese—are they wrong? You won’t hear me argue the NY state legislature is not deficient and/or corrupt. pushing back against monopolies writing their own legislation to kill competition is definitely a part of how we begin to fix it.
• forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Short of a complete reboot of both federal and state governments it is unclear how anything meaningful can be accomplished in this space. Understand this is politicians doing their job by promoting legislation their constituents support. The issue here being corporate and special interest groups pay for politicians to run for office, making them the constituency that is served.
  • patmorgan23 3y ago
    Fixing the electoral commission to allow for better influence from the public could be helpful. Independent redistricting commissions, banning political Gerrymandering/requiring competitive districts, publicly financed political campaigns, and rank choice voting would all have positive impacts on who gets selected and the ability of a constituency to replace them when they don't vote in their interest.
    • forgetfreeman 3y ago
      Sure there's several roadmaps to get back to something approximating representative government but they all have to get through legislative bodies that have been well and truly captured by corporate interests and oligarchs. The issue isn't that we don't know what representative government looks like, it's that we don't have one and there are no clear incentives for elected officials to make supplying one a priority.
    • anamax 3y ago
      > Independent redistricting commissions Define "independent". I note that California has an "Independent redistricting commission" and it gerrymandered the state more than the previous "by legislature" system. (Exactly how do you determine "independent" in a way that isn't easily gamed?) Of course, there's also the "define gerrymander" question. The typical answer is some variation on "minimize the perimeter of districts." That's measurable but why is it good? For example, it doesn't follow interest group lines
  • euroderf 3y ago
    One word: perestroika.
• non-chalad 3y ago
  The only way to stop corruption is to remove the violence inherent to the system. When corporations can no longer use government to force people to buy from them (mandates, subsidies, IP), this kind of corruption will end.
  • yard2010 3y ago
    And a new corruption begins? The problem is with human nature rather than the system
    • non-chalad 3y ago
      Which is why the system needs to be built on consent, not extortion. In the military we had a saying: "There is only one thief; Everyone else is just trying to get their shit back." The same applies to the monopoly on force, extorting individuals and corporations, but corporations can actually afford paying off and directing government towards their competition (and us individuals).
• mhuffman 3y ago
  I remember that they actually got a law passed in North Carolina, I believe, that had a hilariously named law like "Save NC Jobs Act" which straight up made it economically impossible to create municipal broadband if it didn't already exist. It had things like: Municipalities had to add "phantom costs" to their rates and adhere to additional vague laws and regulations, couldn't use certain types of financing to build it, required public entities to make "commercially-sensitive data" available to private industry competitors, etc. If I recall it passed overwhelmingly just because of the name of the bill.
• mgraczyk 3y ago
  What if the broadband companies are right though? I would prefer having a voice in government that isn't just a politician. Obviously an unpopular opinion but municipal broadband would likely not be good for me personally.
  • advael 3y ago
    I have no idea where you get this impression. Municipal fiber projects have by and large provided consistent symmetric fiber broadband at reasonable prices, while ISPs have invariably gouged people, provided both inconsistent and outdated services, while also selling basically any information about your browsing history they can get their grubby mitts on to everyone under the sun. Between that and abysmal customer service, there's a reason they consistently ranked among the most hated companies in the world. And yet every single one of them is making bank. What world do you live in?
    • mgraczyk 3y ago
      The cities near me that have planned municipal broadband are spending more than $5000 per resident. I pay more taxes than the average person, so I end up spending more than I would spend on private service.
• winter_blue 3y ago
  Absolutely agree. Utility company lobbyists in California recently ruined net metering (with something called NEM 3.0 that cuts solar benefits down by 75%), and wrecked the solar industry in California in the process. Nothing has been done to resolve it yet. The corrupt officials in this case were members of the California Public Utilities Commission, who are appointed by the governor. They put the interests of some greedy utility companies (who, on a different note, have caused many forest fires) above the interests of the people of California, the environment movement and its impetus for green energy, etc. It's a sad and horrible state of affairs.
• whoitwas 3y ago
  This is how laws are created in the US. It's corruption.