That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.
Y’all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn’t stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.
Annoyingly it also turned the word “lobby” into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.
Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.
The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.
We’re so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?
That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.
Y’all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn’t stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.
Annoyingly it also turned the word “lobby” into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.
Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.
The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.
We’re so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?
The tolerance paradox had yet to materialise when that was written. Yes we should amend that to specify people, not corporations.
And ‘grievances’ such as “I want all the money and yet I don’t have it. Please fix this. Thx” should not be allowed to be lobbied for.
Most of the constitution needs major work.