4 ms·

I am honestly perplexed by the recent history of "lobbying" being rolled up into bribery. Would love a linguistic interpretation of what is going on with that w

• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Would love a linguistic interpretation of what is going on with that word It’s a jumble caused by well-placed concerns around money in politics being written about by misinformed journalists [1]. Then the term gained political cachet on the left and, more recently, far right, which propagated its mis-use. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_State...
• bluGill 2y ago
  There is no easy way to separate what is a bribe or not. Some things are obviously bribes. However a lobbyist will often pay for a meal for a politician and then the politician will vote against the lobbyist - so clearly a meal isn't a bribe. Note however that I only asserted that it happens, not how often, you can have your own interpretation of what how often it needs to work for a meal to turn into a bribe. I used meals, but there are lots of other hidden bribes. A common bribe is donate to my favorite charity - in some cases the CEO of the charity is the politicians brother in law (the is somewhat obvious) - but even if the charity is legitimate the donation can still be a bribe if the politician really believes in the cause. Ticket master of course can give someone a ticket with a face value of $49 - even though the show is sold out and the real street value is over $1000 (from the few scalpers you can find).
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