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by trymas 90 days ago
Time and time again it amazes me how incredibly cheap lobbied politicians are. They may be earning big sums for an individual, but if you go full corruption[1] to sell out a state or a country - sell it for a fair price.

I remember from peak net neutrality discussions during trump 1 maybe around 2017-2018 ant saw an article on theverge.com (that cannot find now) and biggest sum to individual politician was around $200k, when median values were much much lower.

Politicians are selling tens of billions of dollars (if not hundreds of billions) worth of revenue to ISPs for couple or dozen million. Literally 1000x return on investment (if successful).

I remember local politician (I am not from US) got caught taking 100k bribe from a company for helping with alleged highway construction procurement. Project was valued ~1B - 10 000x return on investment (if they wouldn't have been caught).

[1] I am sorry, not "corruption", but "lobbying".
2 comments
kjkjadksj 90 days ago
Bribed are even smaller. Some councilmembers got indicted in LA some years back for pay for play development. The bribes were things like steak dinners, 5 figure sums of cash in paper bags, and hookers. Astoundingly cheap.
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budman1 90 days ago
in the 1990's there was a woman prime minister of Turkey.

she ended up resigning in a scandal caused by her husband accepting a boat (or work on the boat..i don't remember). the scandal was caused by the amount of the bribe. it was too low. the Turkish people could understand some corruption, but to be able to bribe the top leader for $50k. Unacceptable. If it would have been $100 million, it would not have been a scandal.

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NickC25 90 days ago
This. Issue in the USA is that if you don't accept the money offered, you get primaried and they bribe money you would have gotten just goes to the campaign of your primary opponent.

Rinse and repeat. Unless, politicians band together and say "we need the full ROI of your project, and NONE of us will even talk to you unless we get half the profits, and you can't primary all of us at once"

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trymas 89 days ago
US needs to get rid of first past the post voting system.
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