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Lobbying isn't used to exacerbate the social divide. It's used to achieve incremental policy wins and prevent incremental policy losses for the clients of the l

by Aunche 1y ago

Lobbying isn't used to exacerbate the social divide. It's used to achieve incremental policy wins and prevent incremental policy losses for the clients of the lobbyists. This is what the general public needs to do as well if they want the government to better represent their interests, but they have little interest in that. People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide, and the overwhelmingly negative sentiment to lobbying is evidence of this. Colonialism is a form of centralized planning, which catastrophically fails for the same reasons that it does in communist regimes. China is evidence of capitalism's incredibly successful record of poverty mitigation. They've retained some communist style central planning, but the "bad" part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of wealth, as mentioned upthread, which China allows just like any capitalist country.

don_esteban 1y ago
Lobbying to create laws that benefit rich people/big corporations and make the life of ordinary people tougher directly exacerbate the socio-economic divide. Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. The reality being that the system is designed by rich, for rich, to maintain and improve their position. "People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide" What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? "Colonialism is a form of centralized planning" - no, colonialism (and neocolonialism) is a form of institutionalized looting, historically highly successful (see the graph of the GDP (as a percentage of the whole world GDP) of Great Britain vs India for a nice example) No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power, by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state. I suspect one of the reasons China was able to maintain its upward trajectory was their ability to separate the political power from the wealth (see the case of Jack Ma what happens if the wealth starts to impinge on political power in China). From the point of view of West, they did some highly questionable decisions that costed them trillions (squashing the blockchain miners, bursting property bubble, going hard after excessive gaming and internet time by kids) and would not be conceivable in the west, but overall might be net positive for the society at all.
- Aunche 1y ago
  > Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. Lobbying is not a tool designed for the rich/powerful. It is literally just communicating with to politicians your interests. Corporations spend a lot on lobbying, but that's because they have to pay "corporate rates". Grass-roots organizations only need to pay for the basic expenses of their lobbyists. The NAACP successfully lobbied for multiple Civil Rights Acts with a much smaller budget than nonprofit organizations today. > What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? Yes. People's reactions to corporations getting better at lobbying was to act like it's something only evil people do, so that they could feel better about themselves. As a result, grassroots lobbying has declined and knowledge of how to do so has been lost [1]. This is a gift to billionaires that they never could have dreamed of. > institutionalized looting Sure, but that is a central plan. > No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power The CCP has unlimited power, which was why they could arbitrarily silence Jack Ma, without even formally accusing him of anything. > by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state This is a way bigger problem in China than the US. China does not collect enough tax revenue to fund its local governments, so many departments are essentially funded by corruption. [1] https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-155e63395a03edbfe7c53cf9c932e274 https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-1...
  - don_esteban 1y ago
    1.) "Lobbying is not a tool designed for the rich/powerful. It is literally just communicating with to politicians your interests. Corporations spend a lot on lobbying, but that's because they have to pay "corporate rates"." Sorry, no. In other countries what goes as 'lobbying' in US would be mostly classified as blatant corruption of the politics. Citizens United also... Corporations are centralized entities that have access to a lot of money and (also through money) to lobbying specialists with know-how hot to push their interests. Normal citizens face and uphill struggle in every step - they have to get organized, get money, get specialists. This is not a level playing field, and the argumentation that it is, is exactly what those with an advantage engage in. Shouldn't voting for the people who represent your interests be actually enough? What the lobbying does is that whoever you vote-in, if not already corrupted, will be corrupted by the lobbyists. So democracy (will of the people) is just a theory, wool over your eyes, similarly as communism was, the practice is totally different. People are waking up to that, and that's the reason for the rise of all anti-system parties all over the west. 2.) more grass-roots involvement: yes. Thinking that that is enough: hell no, people did that, got disillusioned when that repeatedly yields minimal results 3.) Colonisation of North America was not a central plan. You repeatedly bringing central plan just points to your ideological blinders. 4.) Ultimately, it is not about who has the power and where does the legitimacy of power come from, but how is that power wielded. Wield it to improve the lives of your citizens, you gain legitimacy even if you got the power in an illegitimate way. Wield it to enrich a narrow elite, at the expense of everybody else, and you will start to lose the legitimacy, even if you originally got it fairly. Nothing new there. What is new is that the elites in China managed the country in a way that significantly improved the lives of its citizens, while the elites in the west managed their way into dystopian future ruled by mega-corporations, with melting middle class and unsustainable levels of debt. This goes against the prevailing wisdom in the west that liberal democracies are the only ones capable of taking care of their citizens, while the authoritarian rest is just a cesspool of corruption and inept governance. Other examples of authoritarian countries reaching (or at least starting in a significant way their path to) prosperity are Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan... (all of them were authoritarian at the time their economic boom started and progressed).

by Aunche 1y ago

don_esteban 1y ago

Lobbying to create laws that benefit rich people/big corporations and make the life of ordinary people tougher directly exacerbate the socio-economic divide. Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. The reality being that the system is designed by rich, for rich, to maintain and improve their position. "People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide" What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? "Colonialism is a form of centralized planning" - no, colonialism (and neocolonialism) is a form of institutionalized looting, historically highly successful (see the graph of the GDP (as a percentage of the whole world GDP) of Great Britain vs India for a nice example) No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power, by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state. I suspect one of the reasons China was able to maintain its upward trajectory was their ability to separate the political power from the wealth (see the case of Jack Ma what happens if the wealth starts to impinge on political power in China). From the point of view of West, they did some highly questionable decisions that costed them trillions (squashing the blockchain miners, bursting property bubble, going hard after excessive gaming and internet time by kids) and would not be conceivable in the west, but overall might be net positive for the society at all.

Aunche 1y ago
> Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. Lobbying is not a tool designed for the rich/powerful. It is literally just communicating with to politicians your interests. Corporations spend a lot on lobbying, but that's because they have to pay "corporate rates". Grass-roots organizations only need to pay for the basic expenses of their lobbyists. The NAACP successfully lobbied for multiple Civil Rights Acts with a much smaller budget than nonprofit organizations today. > What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? Yes. People's reactions to corporations getting better at lobbying was to act like it's something only evil people do, so that they could feel better about themselves. As a result, grassroots lobbying has declined and knowledge of how to do so has been lost [1]. This is a gift to billionaires that they never could have dreamed of. > institutionalized looting Sure, but that is a central plan. > No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power The CCP has unlimited power, which was why they could arbitrarily silence Jack Ma, without even formally accusing him of anything. > by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state This is a way bigger problem in China than the US. China does not collect enough tax revenue to fund its local governments, so many departments are essentially funded by corruption. [1] https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-155e63395a03edbfe7c53cf9c932e274 https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-1...
- don_esteban 1y ago
  1.) "Lobbying is not a tool designed for the rich/powerful. It is literally just communicating with to politicians your interests. Corporations spend a lot on lobbying, but that's because they have to pay "corporate rates"." Sorry, no. In other countries what goes as 'lobbying' in US would be mostly classified as blatant corruption of the politics. Citizens United also... Corporations are centralized entities that have access to a lot of money and (also through money) to lobbying specialists with know-how hot to push their interests. Normal citizens face and uphill struggle in every step - they have to get organized, get money, get specialists. This is not a level playing field, and the argumentation that it is, is exactly what those with an advantage engage in. Shouldn't voting for the people who represent your interests be actually enough? What the lobbying does is that whoever you vote-in, if not already corrupted, will be corrupted by the lobbyists. So democracy (will of the people) is just a theory, wool over your eyes, similarly as communism was, the practice is totally different. People are waking up to that, and that's the reason for the rise of all anti-system parties all over the west. 2.) more grass-roots involvement: yes. Thinking that that is enough: hell no, people did that, got disillusioned when that repeatedly yields minimal results 3.) Colonisation of North America was not a central plan. You repeatedly bringing central plan just points to your ideological blinders. 4.) Ultimately, it is not about who has the power and where does the legitimacy of power come from, but how is that power wielded. Wield it to improve the lives of your citizens, you gain legitimacy even if you got the power in an illegitimate way. Wield it to enrich a narrow elite, at the expense of everybody else, and you will start to lose the legitimacy, even if you originally got it fairly. Nothing new there. What is new is that the elites in China managed the country in a way that significantly improved the lives of its citizens, while the elites in the west managed their way into dystopian future ruled by mega-corporations, with melting middle class and unsustainable levels of debt. This goes against the prevailing wisdom in the west that liberal democracies are the only ones capable of taking care of their citizens, while the authoritarian rest is just a cesspool of corruption and inept governance. Other examples of authoritarian countries reaching (or at least starting in a significant way their path to) prosperity are Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan... (all of them were authoritarian at the time their economic boom started and progressed).