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Alternate Headline: Man vows to get money out of politics by throwing more money into politics One thing I really don't understand about this movement to get m
by jhspaybar 12y ago
Alternate Headline: Man vows to get money out of politics by throwing more money into politics
One thing I really don't understand about this movement to get money out of politics is what the alternative is? No money in politics? Well clearly someone has to put money into politics or you'd never see signs up, you wouldn't see commercials, politicians wouldn't have websites to post their platforms on, etc.
It seems to me like what people actually want is better politicians and the influence of money is the current reason to see politicians as poor. People have always hated politicians though, didn't we have Nixon before this big money kick? What about Herbert Hoover? Surely he'd be accused of some corporatist agenda today for his blunders.
It seems to me if you don't like how politicians behave and are influenced that the solution is to reduce their power and influence. If, and it's a big if, money is the problem, the money will stop flowing if the benefit of spending it drops. The larger government gets, the more power we give our politicians, and the more beneficial spending that money becomes. Remove the incentives and this problem will fix itself. That probably means many more complaints about why we don't have specific social programs, research programs, defense budget and whatever else we spend money on, but it'll fix the issue of the influence of money.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y agoCalling Lawrence Lessig "man", implying "some random guy" sells him very short. He has stature and form in this field. hint: try google and wikipedia
- acgourley 12y agoOne popular alternative is to have $X campaign funds provided by the government to candidates with $Y levels of popular support.
- ja30278 12y agoBegging the question of how candidates achieve the Y level of support. Either they are already well known figures (actors, athletes, etc), or they have to spend money to make themselves known.
- humanrebar 12y agoAnd you restrict political speech to campaigns only? How? Is that something we want to do? Can corporations run ads to support a candidate? If not, what's the difference between that and a New York Times (Inc.) editorial?
- netcan 12y ago"Money in Politics" is a pretty general concept. But if you break it down into some important components like "campaign funding" you can find solutions. First of all, who says politicians need to be running expensive advertising campaigns? There are plenty of "pull" channels that don't cost anything. There's not much of a benefit to democracy for politicians to be buying TV airtime and putting up signs everywhere. Presumably people want to hear what a Presidential candidate has to say. Second, as long as budgets are small it shouldn't be a problem to fund it from any number of sources. Some countries have system for using public money. You could limit presidential campaigns to $1m from deposits totaling no more that $100-$1000. This isn't even a hard problem.
- slantedview 12y ago> This isn't even a hard problem. The solution isn't hard, but getting there is very hard indeed. The system is entrenched.