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Having lots of money gives you significant advantage in dealing with our government in its current incarnation. This is especially true with the judicial branch
by csallen 14y ago
Having lots of money gives you significant advantage in dealing with our government in its current incarnation. This is especially true with the judicial branch (hiring better attorneys, surviving longer trials, etc) and the legislative as well (lobbyists, etc). I think it's pretty obvious that a contest of law should never be decided or even influenced by which party is financially better off. The fact that it can be means the system can be gamed, more or less, by those with spare money to spend.
Hence, you see big organizations like the RIAA and MPAA funding massive efforts to get alleged piracy perpetrators "settle or be sued". Should not recipients of these threats feel they have a fair chance to win should the case go to court? And would the RIAA and MPAA engage in such a strategy of their money afforded them no significant advantage?
I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what the fix is. But I would challenge anyone who says it's impossible to design a governmental system that limits/erases the influence of money.
- andrewflnr 14y agoOne thing that I think would help would be to make it simpler. It would be nice if you only needed a lawyer for really really complicated cases, and the rest of the time you could trust common sense. Seems like the legislative process could be simpler too. Maybe if it was easier to get up to speed, we could reduce the need for career politicians, making lobbyists work a little harder to gain influence. This is obviously not easy. I don't think you can erase the influence of money; if nothing else, there is a baseline of people who will simply ignore the law.