[kandu]

When considering a decision, elected officials may consult existing scientific literature, may commission scientific studies or polls on the issue, or request the public comments on their specific proposal. There are plenty of information sources to inform them. If they rely just on information provided by the richest, and which represents the interest of these richest groups, the politician's decisions will be suboptimal.

[damoncali]

You can sort through thousands of opinions, or you can organize them. Organzied groups of similar thinking folks are what the media calls "special interest groups" or "lobbyists".

Now, quick - find me some scientific literature on a 1031 real estate exchange (for example). Then tell me what you think of them. How long did that take? How confident are you that you understand the issue?

Now do that for 1,000,000 more issues of equal or greater complexity.

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of democracy.

[Flenser]

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of democracy.

They just shouldn't be able to give politicians money.

[twoodfin]

A lobbyist can give a candidate for Federal election the same amount as you or I: $2,500.

[nealmydataorg]

There are other ways presidential candidates get more than 2,500 from a person. Please check out http://mydataorganizer.com/fund.html You can search for the donors who donated at least 30,000 . There are about 1000 people who donated more than 30,000 each for the 2012 US Presidential election.

[ypcx]

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of...

...getting 90% of your money stolen by those who have money.

I hope you have absolutely no damn idea how delusional you are. Lobbyism is the cancer of this society and of this planet, and it will destroy it if not stopped.

It's a simple equation: do you know what you get, if you add an "interest group", less than 100% systemic transparency, and give it some time? The best term for the result is "organized crime".

[dazzawazza]

Agreed, I wouldn't advocate just taking the opinion of the richest. Nor would I advocate just taking the opinion of scientists as important as their work is.

It would be nice if we lived in a simple world but most of what politicians consider has no simple answer and there are diverse opinions that should guide them. Industry is just one of them.

For example, lets look at public health. It would be stupid to look at public health issues without asking pharmaceutical companies what they think. It would be equally stupid to sit at the table and think they are not trying to make money. It would be equally stupid to not ask scientist, public health officials and the public. It seems reasonable to me that the pharma companies would employ specialist PR people to deal with legislation. It does not seem reasonable to me that in order to stay elected individuals need to raise millions of dollars to fight for what they believe and are thus open to bribery. Fix that and lobbying no longer matters.

All businesses exist to make money. That is their sole goal. If you know that then there can be a reasonable outcome.

BTW: All western democracies are struggling with Lobbying. Only the US has got in to the state where it appears that lobbying has the upper hand (although many would argue the UK is close).

[anamax]

> When considering a decision, elected officials may consult existing scientific literature, may commission scientific studies or polls on the issue, or request the public comments on their specific proposal.

You really don't know anything about elected officials.

Look at their backgrounds - how many of them can understand any of the sources that you propose?

And then there's the assumption that they're just deciding between competing proposals. They're often creating proposals.

> If they rely just on information provided by the richest, and which represents the interest of these richest groups, the politician's decisions will be suboptimal.

Since they don't, that's irrelevant. (It's easy enough to see that they're influenced by groups that aren't "rich". See AARP, Greenpeace, etc.)

It is important to remember that an elected official's job is to get elected and re-elected because anyone who doesn't do that doesn't do anything else either.