[wkimeria]

I'm originally from Kenya. We used to have a joke

"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".

I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p...

From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen.

Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).

[colpabar]

As an american, I really enjoy learning things like this about how other countries view us and our craziness. A lot of people here would be genuinely confused at the comparison.

>"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".

To add to this, we (americans) also never refer to our own elite class as oligarchs. That's reserved for other countries, because ours is a totally fair, democratic, and meritocratic society, and we're definitely not ruled by a small group of well connected rich people.

[Fnoord]

> As an american, I really enjoy learning things like this about how other countries view us and our craziness. A lot of people here would be genuinely confused at the comparison.

I'm puzzled by that. I thought it is generally well known Hollywood influences the Dems, and that the tobacco industry influenced politics in past (to name two examples).

[mrandish]

> Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system

I disagree that money is the root. Money is still one level above the true root, which is what the money is needed to buy: "Re-election." Thus, an alternative, though unconventional, solution is single-term limits. Once elected to any national public office, you can never run for that or any other elected office again. One and done.

This idea is not without it's share of potential problems, but I think that's true of any potential solution that has a chance of actually working. After thinking it through, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the "single-term" set of potential downsides over the others.

[ckosidows]

Why would someone elected to office, who knows they can't run again, have any concern about the will of the people? At best you would have the same outcome that you get from politicians at the end of their terms, and it's not like these politicians are solving all of society's ailments.

If they can still get lobbying money by operating on the will of corporations, they could spend their whole term making money for themselves with no concern about re-election.

This solution just seems like hoping and praying the politicians we elect have higher regard for their legacy than their wallet.

[lapetitejort]

I'm under perhaps the insane notion that politicking is a job, and when done well, the citizens see the benefit. No profession allows someone to work in it for two to six years, then never allows them to work in it again (aside from some nuclear-related jobs). Term limits have their place at the leadership level of their respective institutions (president, speaker of the house, president pro tempore, supreme court judge), but not for the rank and file politicians.

[mrandish]

> Why would someone elected to office, who knows they can't run again, have any concern about the will of the people?

Reason #1 is the Princeton study cited in other posts:

> The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1]

It's already clear that "the will of the people" isn't being represented currently.

Reason #2 is "the will of the people" being reflected is not (and has never been) a design goal of the U.S. system of government. The U.S. was specifically created as a "representative democracy" and not a "direct democracy." This was debated extensively at the time of the founding of the country. They decided then (I think correctly), that it was better to have voters choose representatives, who, once elected, are supposed to vote what they personally think is genuinely the 'best' answer, not what they think 51% of their district's citizens want them to vote.

> they could spend their whole term making money for themselves with no concern about re-election.

This is already super against the law and congress members have gone to jail for it surprisingly often. The FBI has a special unit constantly searching, investigating and probing for any sign of it. At the same time as single-term limits, I would >10x the budget of these investigators. At least enough to ensure that more than one lobbyist meeting a year per legislator is a well-run Abscam-like sting operation and the politicians have no idea which one. I'd also substantially increase the jail time for such convictions, along with substantially increasing our one-term legislator's pay at least to $1M/year. The goal being to reduce the need to cheat while dramatically increasing the penalties for cheating.

Combined, the higher pay + higher penalties would have the effect of significantly increasing the $Cost to influence a legislator with money. While the single-term limit would greatly reduce the $Value of influencing a legislator. Having the ear of someone likely to be in power for many terms is much more valuable than having the ear of someone who's gonna be gone for sure next term. I think the combined result will substantially reduce the amount of illicit influence peddling, leaving our legislators free to simply vote their conscience - which is really the best result we can realistically hope for anyway. None of the "Suspiciously Got Very Rich While in Office" >5 term legislators accrued any significant wealth in their first term. Even with the current laws, penalties and underfunded FBI enforcement, the only way to get rich in congress is to do it over many terms.

If you really sit down and thoroughly ponder how single-term limits would actually play out in the real world, vs the results we are actually getting now (not what we should be getting), there are a lot of interesting impacts. For one, it's very likely to reduce the power of the two major duopoly political parties who've jointly controlled Washington for >50 years. While it would increase the viability of tertiary political parties who are currently irrelevant. It's also likely to increase incentives for tertiary parties to sometimes form meaningful alliances as we see in some European countries. Anytime anyone votes for any candidate OTHER than a Democrat or Republican, it's currently a wasted vote. Thus alternatives can't ever build any gradual, grassroots traction and things just grow increasingly polarized at the extremes.

[medvezhenok]

Single term limits might not be a great idea, since new representatives will have to rely even more on people who've been around Washington a lot (i.e. lobbyists) to write legislation (since part of joining Congress is getting ramped up on a lot of tradition/things you have to learn on the job).

Public funding of elections would help - take the current $2 they ask you about on taxes, and make that $100 or so. Then give proportional time to candidates with publicly funded money.

The other counterintuitive one is to bring back the secret ballot in Congress. Publicizing voting records actually makes lobbying more effective since the lobbyists can measure effectiveness of their $$. If you brought back the secret ballot, people are more free to vote their conscience without having to take the brunt of the blame for it (lobbying really took off after the elimination of secret ballots in the early 70s)

[mushbino]

This is why the revolving door exists. Do what we want and we'll give you a high paying job afterward. There are former congressman currently making $3 million a year as lobbyists as soon as they leave office.

[mrandish]

There are already voluntary (but expected) commitments from cabinet members not to engage in lobbying for five years (I think, may be more) after leaving office. I would make these commitments rules and extend them to all legislators, while in exchange adding a nice yearly stipend in the years immediately after office and dramatically increasing legislator pay during their one term (>$1M/yr).

There's only 535 of these roles and as their employer (a voter), I'd much rather have them directly over-compensated by us voters than indirectly compensated by special interests. I think it's fair (and a good deal for voters) to basically buy an "exclusivity" agreement from our elected representatives by paying them openly to contractually commit to not monetize their influence or relationships after leaving office.

[lossolo]

> "If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".

It's the same here in Europe, we are joking how elites in US legalized corruption and called it lobbying, it's really weird for us (outside of US), that people just go along with this state of things and do nothing about it, like almost whole population would be after some kind of long period of brain washing in US.