[saddestcatever]

IMO: The mind blowing element, is that in the grand scheme of things It's not actually that much money.

I'm not sure if anyone knows the true amount, but estimates put the number spent on lobbying around a few million dollars. Opensecrets.org estimated ~$3.2m lobbying in 2021.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

For a company that makes $2 BILLION dollars a year, the amount they actually spend lobbying and otherwise influencing governments is shockingly small.

[_jal]

Politicians are surprisingly cheap, so long as you're talking about topics that don't get a lot of press.

And thanks to Citizens United and similar decisions that have driven up the cost of US elections, US pols are very expensive compared to their counterparts in other countries.

It does make me wonder about the efficacy of standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about something. This would be a prime example - I would happily pay $100 to compete with Intuit's lobbying here. I'm also certain there are 31,999 other people in the US who feel the same way.

I just don't have the energy to do the work of learning how to set up the corporate structure around that to make it legal.

[glenstein]

I completely agree that politicians are not cheap at all. The reality is that so much of the money that's invested in influencing politicians is through means other than campaign contributions.

It's through season tickets to the network of friends that know the politician, it's through donations to the university that gets their child into college, it's through pacs and issue groups, it's through lining up and bundling donors to max out their individual donations to a politician's preferred presidential candidate, it's through flying them out to special events, it's through hiring their best friend, it's through investing in their brother in law's new business, it's through buying things at their husband or wife's charity auction, it's through arranging a job for them after they retire from politics, it's through finding them a buyer for their investment property, it's through an entire network of investments one or two degrees removed from the politician.

The only sliver of that that people typically cite is the amount directly spent on campaign contributions which (1) mistakenly makes it seem like politicians are cheap and (2) is underwhelming, to people who cite those numbers sincerely believing that that's the only economic dimension to political influence.

[saddestcatever]

True! Great point that there are very, very many other ways that they are "compensated" besides direct $$$ donations. Thank you for noting that.

[l33t2328]

> standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about something. This would be a prime example - I would happily pay $100 to compete with Intuit's lobbying here. I'm also certain there are 31,999 other people in the US who feel the same way.

Congratulations, you just independently invented the concept of a Political Action Committee.

[throwaway81523]

That is called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox .