[sgw928]

Imagine someone super rich shorts Herbalife like Ackman did, lobbies congress to make Herbalife's business model illegal, and then profits from the short position. Would this be conflict of interest legally, or is this just how crony capitalism works in the US nowadays?

[loeg]

What makes you think Ackman didn't lobby against MLMs? The trouble is/was, Herbalife outbid him by a large factor: https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/8/5590550/alleged-pyramid-sc...

[eschutte2]

That's roughly what Ackman did. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/business/staking-1-billio...

[starpilot]

Imagine someone invents something currently illegal then lobbies to make it legal, in order to sell it. This is just capitalism and liberalism, and it's a good thing.

[BLKNSLVR]

How is this a good thing?

What if it's illegal for a good societal reason, and lobbying is just throwing enough money at enough of the right people until they succumb and legalise it?

It's never going to be cut and dried 'a good thing'. In some instances it will be and some it won't.

[MrLeap]

It might be a good thing if you think the natural progression of a governmental system is one where entropy increases til' things can't change, and you think that governmental systems trend negative in aggregate.

I'm not yet convinced of the above, but my trajectory points that way.

[phamilton]

A clear example is self driving cars.

[smt88]

What if that thing is dangerous?

I can't think of many historical examples where something was already illegal when it was invented for no good reason. Can you? Maybe pharma fits that category, but no rational person would argue drugs should be legal by default...

[jdminhbg]

> I can't think of many historical examples where something was already illegal when it was invented for no good reason. Can you?

"For no good reason" is carrying a lot of water here. But because the legality is in question, all the examples you are going to get are things that are debatably legal, rather than outright illegal, like Uber. Or things that were intended to be illegal but legal via loopholes, like FedEx.

> no rational person would argue drugs should be legal by default

Plenty of rational people would, in fact, argue that.

[smt88]

By "drugs" I meant "pharmaceuticals marketed as treating illness," not recreational drugs.

Whatever someone feels about recreational drugs, there's a huge difference between freedom to put drugs in your body vs. freedom to advertise drugs for a medical purpose.

The former is (consistent with my argument) legal by default. The latter is not.

[ada1981]

I tend to think drugs should be legal.

[grafporno]

For a somewhat similar reverse case, you don't need to imagine, Betsy DeVos already has that on lock-down.