[JackFr]

If you want to keep corporations from giving money to politicians, the only effective way to do it is to stop politicians from giving corporations money.

Limiting the scope of government is not ideological -- its pragmatic and practical.

[hga]

Or shaking corporations down. A whole lot of "gridlock" is merely milking proposals that'll help or hurt various companies and sectors, and collecting contributions to continue preventing the bad or pushing for the good. Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets is (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343) a really good book on the subject, taught me things I didn't know despite watching this sort of thing closely starting around the time of Watergate, like how there's a type of PAC a Congresscritter can establish that can be legally converted to subsidize their lifestyle.

This is one of the reasons for the constant changes in the tax code, despite the great uncertainty this creates for businesses and people. The obsession with short term results makes more sense when you realize long term financial planning is literally impossible (yeah, technically you might get that widget into production in a few years, but you really don't know how much money you'll be allowed to make from selling it).

[jjoonathan]

And what about politicians who give money to corporations by limiting the scope of government (see: deregulating energy markets -> Enron buys up capacity and shuts it down -> rolling blackouts and $$ in their pockets as prices spiked)?

Regulations aren't the only cause of friction, perverse incentives, and exploitative business models. They're also pretty much the only tool we have against tragedies of the commons. Deciding which regulations are good and which are bad is inherently ideological, and the declaration that we should generally assume they're bad is so extreme that Adam Smith himself would disapprove.

[JackFr]

I am not against unreasonable regulation, rather I'm in favor of broad principled regulation that takes the form laws passed by Congress and interpreted by courts. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1933 is a good example as was Glass-Steagall.

A law like Dodd-Frank on the other hand is an example of rent seeking by banks while Congress gets bought off while they act under the guise of 'reining in the banks.'

[unethical_ban]

It enrages me that you got downvoted, because I've thought this for almost as long as I've had political thought. Corporations and lobbyists would stop buying politicians if the scope of power were limited.