It’s not just the size of the donation, the PAC system permits tremendous amounts of dark money whose donors aren’t disclosed.
Donating directly to politicians is fairly straightforward and transparent due to campaign finance law, but PACs operating “independently” and in the background undermine the system in a huge way
My point is that as long as donations of any kind are legal, politicians will continue to optimize for fundraising, rather than optimizing for policies that benefit the largest number of people. Who is most equipped to donate large sums to politicians? The wealthy.
If donations are no longer legal, only the wealthy will have enough money to run for office. It would not have the democratizing effect you seem to think it would.
This just isn’t true, and this problem largely already exists in the US.
Many countries use publicly funded elections where all candidates get a set sum from the government to use towards a campaign. This would stop the billions flowing into races and ensure that all candidates have the same campaign budget.
Look at Texas, for example. The annual salary for a state legislator is pitiful (like $10k), which basically prevents anyone who isn’t independently wealthy from running from state office.
As long as we have free speech, whomever can buy the largest megaphone has the ability to drown out everyone else. You have to regulate speech so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone, but then groups that most people want to drown out also gets to speak. You can try limiting it so only some groups get access, but then you just get regulatory capture of speech.
This doesn't make any sense. Government is a servant of big business because we allow free speech? How exactly would you go about regulating speech "so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone"? Censorship would absolutely not help improve the situation
>Government is a servant of big business because we allow free speech?
Well, you have to include the middle step that voters are strongly influenced by what they hear, advertising, and the like and that many voters do not do a deep amount of digging. Also you have to include the other step that there is a lot of research in marketing and psychology to sway people's reactions and opinions.
But once you combine the above, it turns out that those with control of the primary information distribution can influence public opinion. Now, they can't convince people that grass is purple and the sky is green, but they can sway public opinion. Politicians realize this and are thus swayed by those who control the information lest they make enemies who will seek to promote their opponents either in primaries or general elections (at least in the US with its government system).
>How exactly would you go about regulating speech "so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone"?
I don't have a clue, and as you suggest, such actions won't be without unforeseen consequences which could end up worse than the original problem. A few countries in the EU seem to have laws made to dampen the problem without fixing it, but the actual effectiveness of the laws is something I haven't seen any peer reviewed research on.
I think _theoretically_ the way this is thought to work is that Amazon or Google could take out daily ads in all major media that say "vote for John Doe, he's a great guy!", i.e. well-heeled companies could do candiates' campaigning for them, while we ordinary people can't afford that much public exposure.
That may be true enough, but it's not a phenomenon we've been seeing. What we _have_ been seeing in the past few years, especially after _Citizen's United_ and the dawn of PACs, is wealthy corporations legally handing money to candidates to do their campaigning with.
This would and should have nothing to do with free speech, except that there have been recent (SC?) rulings declaring financial donations, i.e. money, to be a form of speech, so basically unlimited political donations are considered protected under the 1st Amendment. I personally consider this a grave error in judgment, undoubtedly politically motivated.
Donating directly to politicians is fairly straightforward and transparent due to campaign finance law, but PACs operating “independently” and in the background undermine the system in a huge way