[T2_t2]

That's cool but where are the lines? The problem is that a LOT of lobbying goes on, and we don't know how to allow what, when or why - and no country does it well.

Examples: protests - are they ok? What if they are funded by some group?

What about a concerned citizenry meeting a politician? Is that OK? What if their funding comes from Iran?

It gets real complicated real quickly.

> Politicians should craft laws based on what's best for the country

That seems so simple, but man, that is SOOO complicated. Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited?

That simple sentence fragment is why lobbying, and groups like the NRA and teachers unions, exist and hold so much sway. Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt and why is what politics is, in part, about.

There just aren't any magical, mystical policies where everyone wins, not even things like free trade which has been great for almost everyone on the entire planet.

[batty_alex]

> That seems so simple, but man, that is SOOO complicated. Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited?

I agree with your premise that it's a hard problem, but I'd add that utilitarian arguments for policy leads to creation of bad short-term policy. Public policy should be focused on the long game of leveling societal playing fields and use short-term tools to ease suffering (stimulus, emergency aid, food stamps, etc).

> There just aren't any magical, mystical policies where everyone wins, not even things like free trade which has been great for almost everyone on the entire planet.

Again, I like your premise but I'd add that the effects of the current form of open trade is still open to historical judgement. Is it great? How does Europe and Asia feel about it?

Anyway, just wanted to add a bit of spice to this discussion - it's interesting.

[denzil_correa]

> Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt and why is what politics is, in part, about.

Let me quote John Rawls with "The Difference Principle" [0] which can indicate some general direction on making laws.

> Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Differ...

[seneca]

The problem with Rawls is that, brought to its logical conclusion, his ideas essentially say that you can all but enslave the most effective people in your society to benefit the least advantaged, so long as they are slightly more advantaged than the single least advantaged member of your society. It sounds nice on paper, but it's essentially endorsing extreme totalitarian socialism. It's the kind of dystopia Kurt Vonnegut was satirizing in Harrison Bergeron [0].

It also complete ignores the rights of the so call "advantaged" class. From the stand point of Social Contract Theory, society exists because it's advantageous to all of its members to give up some rights in order to protect others. If you systematically disadvantage a group of people, especially those who are deemed the most capable and advantaged, you will quickly leave them with no reason to want to be a member of your society. Unless you plan to run an authoritarian dictatorship, you will be left with few citizens other than the disadvantaged, who will suffer for having the others run off. Not to mention that the idea of intentionally systematically disadvantaging an entire class of people is, on its face, disgusting.

There are plenty of other arguments against Rawls, but the primary ones are made by Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia [1], and he can make them better than I can. Rawls is a brilliant philosopher, but his ideas are better left in the realm of thought experiment, and not in government.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

[waterhouse]

Rawls's approach seems to be to say, morally, you don't know in advance which individual you're going to be, and therefore you should arrange society so as to maximize ... to maximize, not the average or expected-value happiness, but the minimum happiness, of the individual you might end up as. So a slight comfort to the worst-off person is worth imposing a significant penalty on everyone else, as long as the penalty isn't so severe as to make someone else worse off than the one person. As if Rawls is extremely risk-averse and thinks this should be the organizing principle of society. If someone took that principle and ran with it, it would probably justify huge amounts of destruction. [1]

Also, consider this interpretation: "The best way to solve everyone's problems is to create the technological singularity, at which point we truly can fix the genetic problems that cause the worst-off person in the world to constantly feel pain; and therefore anything that most efficiently and reliably achieves the singularity is the best long-term option for the worst-off people, even if the short-term aspects of the most efficient approach involve e.g. cutting off all aid to the disabled and euthanizing anyone who's too old to work, nuclear preemptive strikes against "rogue states" that might endanger progress, wiping out all animals and plant species that take up space we could use more efficiently some other way, etc." That obviously carries its own potential justifications of mass destruction. I'm not saying all of those are necessarily the most efficient or reliable approach—e.g. the nuclear preemptive strikes might lead to a worse backlash from the surviving countries—but some of them might be. More importantly, some people might be persuaded that these are the most efficient or reliable approach, and be mistaken. That is a fundamental problem: even if we all agree on a certain set of goals (which is a big if), reasonable people can have very different, mutually exclusive ways that they think are the best way to fulfill them.

Note that "promulgate my philosophy/plan to everyone, and kill all the heretics who don't accept it" is one potential step that could be added to any plan; and it seems like if you did manage to carry it out, it would guarantee success; and if your philosophy/plan is big enough and important enough, it might seem like it's worth doing (and thus it will probably tempt some adherents of every philosophy ever), unless you have, say, principles that say you should never do a thing like that, no matter the apparent benefit.

Raymond argued[2] that such principles can be justified within utilitarianism: you can never be sufficiently certain you're right. If you're right and you kill the wrongthinkers, maybe this gets you there a little faster than if you used more peaceful methods: a slight benefit. If you're wrong and you kill the "wrongthinkers", the consequences are extremely severe. It's worth killing the wrongthinkers if and only if the chance you're wrong is smaller than the ratio of "slight benefit" to "extremely severe". The principle would be, you're not allowed to decide that the chance you're wrong is that small.

That might work. But one way or another, I think you need to have principles that prevent you from knowingly doing these horribly destructive things. I would say anyone without such principles is not civilized; and, from recent revolutionary history, it seems those with strong moral philosophies and no such principles may be dangerously uncivilized. (Note: Stepping outside of civilization may be appropriate in some circumstances. But then you have no right to complain when good civilized people arrest you and punish you.)

[1] This argument is expanded on here (not by me): http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/ASchroeder/docs/RawlsMaxim...

The citation says: "Surely Rawls wasn’t crazy, so we can conclude that this isn’t how he meant to pursue the argument." Which I don't think is very helpful.

[2] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4878

[fuzz4lyfe]

The sticky part is who decides who has what level of advantage.

[aylmao]

> That's cool but where are the lines? The problem is that a LOT of lobbying goes on, and we don't know how to allow what, when or why - and no country does it well.

The fact that the alternative isn't figured out I think isn't justification for keeping a broken system. The alternative doesn't have to be perfect, only better. So yeah, there could be protests funded by some group... but that already exists in the current system too. On top of straight up giving money to politicians in exchange for their attention.

> Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited? That simple sentence fragment is why lobbying, and groups like the NRA and teachers unions, exist and hold so much sway. Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt and why is what politics is, in part, about.

I have two things to say about this in general.

1. I'm from outside the US, so maybe we think of politics differently. Where I'm from, we think of what's "right" or "wrong", not really who is benefited or affected so much. I'm from Mexico-- the president recently uncovered massive amounts of corruption and illegal, institutionalized leaching of gasoline out of the state oil company, and so decided to shut down all pipes and distribute gas using guarded trucks.

A whole 5 states or so have had gasoline distribution issues-- there's lines in some gas stations that extend for 4+ hours. Everyone has been negatively affected-- but over three quarters of the country support his measures because it might be a burden, but it's the "right" thing to do.

And I know it's not always as easy to tell what's right and wrong, but ultimately that's the framework, IMO, in which all these conversations should be had-- ethics, not whose life will be better or worse.

2. Lobbying doesn't "need" to exist. Other countries do without it, and much better on a number of fronts it'd seem. Take the "climate debate" that seems to still be raging in the US, even though the rest of the world has pretty much acknowledged there's no such debate. Oil giants are spending $115 million a year to oppose climate policy [1], but there is no "sustainability giants" that can drop $115 million to "counteract" that influence. How can it ever be a fair system if in lobbying only the side with money is represented?

[1]: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oil-companies-climate-p...

[conanbatt]

> I'm from outside the US, so maybe we think of politics differently. Where I'm from, we think of what's "right" or "wrong", not really who is benefited or affected so much. I'm from Mexico--

Please. Mexico has 20x the political corruption the US has, and most of the money comes from the cartels, not the big companies building moats.

[aylmao]

Care to elaborate on how your hyperbole addresses my point?

[conanbatt]

There is no moral compass in politics from latin countries, it's all a ruse for power and money.

[koboll]

>The fact that the alternative isn't figured out I think isn't justification for keeping a broken system.

Stop for a second and consider how much pain and suffering has occurred throughout history because of this very idea

[opportune]

so is this just a slippery slope argument saying we should let super-corporations/billionaires write laws just in case a teachers union tries to pass legislation?

>Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited?

Wow it's almost like this is what politics is about. We might as well give up completely because it's way too hard to do math or let people make decisions

[dahfizz]

I think the argument here is that the platitudes like "no lobbying" and "do what's best for everyone" hide a lot of complexity and are basically meaningless / unhelpful.

[kortilla]

Nope, it’s not a slippery slope argument if op is pointing out that there is no rational demarcation between the NRA, a teachers union, a women’s rights organization, and an industry group.

You can counter with a proposed solution if you can think of one. So far nobody has managed to do it.

[CoryG89]

I understand the point, but I don't accept that no one has a better solution. How about we just making it illegal to bribe politicians with money, regardless of what group is doing it? Why is it that bribery laws we already have on the books should not apply to lobbyists?

[imgabe]

It is illegal to bribe politicians with money. There are reams and reams of laws and regulations about what politicians are allowed to accept, from whom, and when. The bribery laws do apply to lobbyists as well.

Really, it's a matter of campaign finance reform. As long as people and corporations can make "donations" to a campaign, it will never go away. Eliminate all independent campaign donations. Allot every candidate a fixed budget from the government. That would probably go a long way towards fixing the problem.

Even then you still have super PACs. Maybe I can't give money directly to Joe Candidate. But can you make a law telling me it's illegal for me to take out an ad saying I support Joe Candidate without throwing out the First Amendment? So far, the Supreme Court says you can't.

[rayiner]

Direct corporate contributions to campaigns is illegal. It's also illegal, even under Citizens United, to say "if you do X, we will run adds in favor of your election."

[rayiner]

The bribery laws we have on the books do apply to lobbyists; it's just that what lobbyists do isn't bribery. Because corporations are legally prohibited from donating to candidates, the exchange of money is not part of lobbying. When you hear "Google spent $X million lobbying" that means they paid lobbyists $X million to make presentations and submit whitepapers and draft legislation to the staff of legislators. (How do you spend millions of dollars on a PowerPoint presentation? The same way you can spend millions of dollars on a legal filing.)

[blub]

If this is too hard for you it doesn't mean you have to try to make everyone else give up too.