[John23832]

You're conflating two different things.

If Company A wanted to lobby for the killing of all blue eyes babies, they could. They can make signs, start campaigns, attempt to get a meeting with a member of Congress.

All of that lobbying would be useless though because we all know that that idea is disgusting and wrong (hopefully we all know... with this current climate, nothing is certain).

The act of killing the babies is wrong, and we can pretty much all agree on that. But that company has every right to lobby for that position. No matter how crazy.

> They may have the legal right to do so, but it's still wrong in some cases.

You seem to agree here.

[mikeash]

I fully understand the distinction, and I think you're the one conflating two different things. How exactly am I supposed to interpret "wrong" in your original comment? Without context, that usually refers to morality, not legality. Furthermore, you used the word "wrong" a second time to describe elected officials going against the public interest, which is legally right. I see no way to read your original comment other than saying it is not morally wrong for businesses to lobby in this way.

But then afterwards you concentrate entirely on legality. If you just wanted to say that it's legal for businesses to lobby like this, I don't disagree, but I don't see how that position is described in the original comment, nor do I even understand the point of making that comment, since I think we all already know that it's legal.

If you did indeed mean to say that it's legally allowed but morally reprehensible, then we are indeed in agreement and I don't think there's much to say here.

[jakelazaroff]

> The act of killing the babies is wrong, and we can pretty much all agree on that. But that company has every right to lobby for that position. No matter how crazy.

No one is saying they don't have that legal right; they're saying that "legal" doesn't imply "ethical".

Consider Company A's lobbying efforts succeed and people start killing blue-eyed babies. Even if Company A never kills a baby, they still did something unethical, since there's a causal relationship between their lobbying efforts and a thing we just agreed was wrong.