• placebo@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      If it was illegal to donate money, these money would still reach the recipients - but without anyone’s knowledge.

      • Avicenna@programming.dev
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        3 hours ago

        good, then make the punishment heavy enough so that even if a few are caught, they are made examples of. I am thinking if the illegal lobbying money is higher than a certain amount he is forced to step down and the company is run by a board of truestees for a year. Will they be able to find ways around it? Sure they are resourceful and have an army of lawyers shamelessly trained at finding loopholes, but it will be much harder than now which is basically a walk in the park for them.

        • placebo@lemmy.zip
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          3 hours ago

          he is forced to step down and the company is run by a board of truestees for a year

          What company? Daniel Berntsson used his personal funds.

          Political parties need donations and membership fees to survive because the alternative - where political parties receive funds from the state - makes them dependable and controllable by the state. There are many laws that regulate such donations. Did he break any law? If not, should the law be stricter? It’s up to the debate.

          The idea that we should make everything illegal and punishable and that will solve every problem is just naive.

          • Avicenna@programming.dev
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            1 hour ago

            where political parties receive funds from the state - makes them dependable and controllable by the state.

            Lol, what so you think its easier to implement a fair support scheme for political parties through private means than govermental means? You prefer political parties be dependent on whims of private companies who only make these donations with strings attached? You think donations don’t make parties controllable by their donors if they are private? There is simply no logic to this statement.

            I am sure you are gonna make an argument along the lines of “but look what if all these donations depended on the current US goverment, surely it couldn’t be worse than a private company”. That means you are missing the big picture and how Trump got into goverment in the first place. Pointing at a government that is so shit because it has million strings attached to other entities including zionist lobbies and tech giants and then saying being dependent on goverment for election funds is dangerous is just bad logic. It is also quite delusional to think that one could have a fair donation scheme where interest of private companies are involved. Lobbying has been the menace of democracy for well over a century.

            Also the very fact that politicial parties need on the order of hundereds of millions of dollars for campaigning is already outrageous enough. Things like super PACs is just another loophole to get the party with more connections in power. All of these can be much better regulated with laws and not letting private companies run rampant on politics.

            What company? Daniel Berntsson used his personal funds.

            All you are doing with this statement is you are pointing at a loophole. Does not matter, personal funds can still be used to do lobbying for a company. So whatever stricter implementations one should come up with it should try to cover and punish loopholes like this to reduce frequency of it happening.

        • lando55@lemmy.zip
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          21 hours ago

          “You’re saying I can only murder people in secret? I thought this was America.”