Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by uasnew 2992 days ago
Perhaps an easy way is to stop legal lobbying - and all this stops?
3 comments

Does it? Generally speaking, you make money with money, right? So even if playing "fairly", it would seem the 1% will still get far more rich far faster than anyone else. Lobbying only slows that down some, if at all.

Don't get me wrong, I think Lobbying in its current form is disgusting. Yet, directly I don't blame it for the wealth gap.

I suppose you could argue that lawmakers might have a chance at proposing solutions if not for lobbying, so by taking lobbying away you eventually, somehow, fix the problem. Even with that said, I'm still more curious to talk about possible solutions to the problem directly, rather than hoping to foster an environment where someone else will fix the problem.

You’ll have to amend the constitution. Good luck.
Lobbyists just make politicians’ work easier, even if the politicians would’ve received no money or compensation at all the politicians still like the service they provide.

Politicians want, above all else, to stay in power. That’s their actual full time job. To do that you need key supporters, not just financiers for your campaign but blocks of voters, and the latter is the most precious of all and the one lobbyists can help politicians with. If the coal miners keep you elected you want to know what political moves will please them. Same thing with minorities, elderly and other demographic blocks; they want mutually exclusive things and lobbyists who represent these groups can tell you what would please the group they represent.

So, if you make it illegal for these groups to meet politicians through lobbyists politicians will do their best to reach the voters instead. That’s basically the service Cambridge Analytica supplied, in a sense.