One man's bribery is another man's method to reach a real person in the government instead of a feedback form (like complaining on HN about some way you got scr

One man's bribery is another man's method to reach a real person in the government instead of a feedback form (like complaining on HN about some way you got screwed by google's automatic processes). The good side of lobbying allows for some interest group, lets use the people who do commercial fishing in the gulf as an example, to pay attention to their interests and let someone know about problems in legislation they foresee or notice after the fact. Without them, each congressman (or some subset of them) would have to employ someone who knew a thing or two about marine/environmental biology to read all their legislation for ways that it could harm x. It's really unpopular for congress to spend money on itself, so this probably wouldn't happen and we'd ignore environmental impacts of a wide variety of things. This, of course, is in theory. I whole heatedly agree that the balance of power between interest groups and of interest groups isn't at any sort of ideal point, but I can't see removing their ability to communicate with politicians as a good thing. Lobbyists do a whole lot more than just donate to crooked politicians.