[dmkolobov]

I don’t know why you keep bringing up socialism. My point is that corporate lobbying and donations should be restricted, not that free market businesses shouldn’t exist.

There is a broad, non-linear spectrum between socialism and unrestricted corporate influence on government.

[mcguire]

Because Walter doesn't see any difference between Stalin's Soviet Union and election regulations.

[WalterBright]

You're never going to get money out of politics. Even in the Soviet Union. Do you really think the Soviet Union did not have endemic corruption in government?

Here in Seattle, the Council created "democracy vouchers" paid by the taxpayer to give to the candidate of their choice. What it really is is the incumbents using taxpayer money to fund their campaigns. If you're not an incumbent, good luck getting any of those vouchers.

[dTal]

>Do you really think the Soviet Union did not have endemic corruption in government?

Literally no one thinks that or implied it in this conversation. What a non sequitur. I don't think you're even properly reading the comments you reply to.

[beerandt]

Saying that "but for" corporate/capitalistic influence, government would be benevolent is very much implying that countries without capitalism shouldn't have corruption.

[Dylan16807]

Who said that?

There's a bunch of comments saying lobbying makes things worse than not having lobbying.

I don't see the ones saying that's the only source of problems?

[Stupulous]

I think the argument is that absent corporate lobbying, politicians can still be influenced. Something else will fill the position, and the total amount of influence over politicians not granted democratically will be unchanged. Maybe that's still through money, but taken as direct bribes under the table, or maybe it's populism, or something else entirely.

I don't know if that's true. I also don't know if what replaced campaign contributions would be better or worse.

I do know that lobbying is itself overstated. In 1999, the GDP was 10 trillion. 3 billion, or 0.03%, of that went into politics, mostly from individual donors rather than companies [1]. If lobbying were an effective way to buy political influence, more companies would shell out. Maybe it's already happening under the table, though.

[1][pdf] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9409.pdf

[inter_netuser]

Good luck why?

[WalterBright]

> unrestricted corporate influence on government

Your notion that absent corporate lobbying, government control would work out in the best interests of everybody is utterly without foundation.

Your complaint about the profit motive being the root of evil also implies that without profit, things would be better. Without profit has been repeatedly tried. It never produces better results.

My father grew up a socialist. Then he joined the military, and spent years living on military bases. There is zero profit motive on a military base. But there was no end of ridiculous problems, enormous waste, glacial bureaucracy, etc. This thoroughly disabused him of his socialist notions.

For one small example, on a new base, furniture for the base housing had to be supplied. The base commander delegated the selection of furniture to his wife (men rarely care about these things). She picked all the furniture, confident in how great her taste was and what a big favor she was doing to the ignorant masses on base.

The servicemens' wives all hated that furniture. My dad would always have a huge laugh at how much they loathed it.

P.S. When my parents got married, my mom hated all of his furniture. He had to buy all new stuff to her specifications.

[shkkmo]

Please try responding to what people are actually saying rather than inventing endless strawman arguments.

There are important functional distinctions between a government run enterprise, a government regulated enterprise and a completely unregulated enterprise.

There are different types of inefficiencies in heirarchical systems and market systems. Markets tend to duplicate effort often in unnecessary zero-sum games. Heirarchical systems have trouble routing around incompetence and corruption.

If you pay attention you'll notice that the systems that work best are hybrids that layer market and heirarchical systems.

While the army seems like a purely heirarchical system, it is really a hybrid system since interfaces heavily with the market systems which we call the military-industrial complex.

[WalterBright]

> While the army seems like a purely heirarchical system, it is really a hybrid system since interfaces heavily with the market systems which we call the military-industrial complex.

That has nothing to do with how things are run on a military base.

Besides, if you've got any evidence that the military worked better in a non-market system, like the USSR, please present.

> Markets tend to duplicate effort often in unnecessary zero-sum games.

Another word for that is "competition". Competition makes them efficient. Eliminating competition leads to gross inefficiency and incompetence, making things far worse than the duplication ever did.

[shkkmo]

> Eliminating competition leads to gross inefficiency and incompetence.

It can, especially if poorly managed. However, there is a reason why most companies are heirarchical systems.

If markets were truely the "one true way to do things" you would see markets all the way down. That simply is not the case. In fact, instead we see that "vertical integration" can be extremely successful and can multiple companies linked purely by markets.

Similarly, you don't see very many successful truely free markets. It turns out that you need the rule of law and a regulating authority to minimize unproductive competition that would otherwise swamp the benefits of the productive competitive.

We don't want companies competing for sales by blowing up each other's stores. We want companies to compete for sales by making better products.

Deciding when and how to mix markets with heirarchical and other systems is extremely complicated and hard. But it is simple minded to pretend that pure markets are always the best solution when reality so clearly shows the benefits of hybrid systems.

[WalterBright]

> you don't see very many successful truely free markets

It's been very successful everywhere it's been tried.

[bumby]

>There is zero profit motive on a military base.

And yet, the military is one of last institutions that the American public still has faith in. It's almost as if people realize there can be many motives, beyond profit, that drive people to act in a certain way.

I'm fairly blown away on a regular basis by how otherwise smart people revert to utterly simplistic models of the world.