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Source: family members are lobbyists.
I think sometimes people assume that x amount of lobbying dollars = y influence, but it's not a linear equation at all. At the end of the day, it is still people you are dealing with, and sometimes people can happily take your money, make you believe they are going to do what they said, and then not do it. Source: family members are lobbyists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lobbying in some form is explicitly protected by the 1st amendment. The question is: If you form a contract for someone else to petition for a redress of greivances on you behalf, is that contract void?
My limited (understanding) of the state of things in the US is that the lobbying itself is a problem mostly because the whole political system is driven by donations, which of course disproportionally come from the rich actors. Here in Poland the parties are sponsored by the state itself and donations are a very limited factor, which makes the lobbying not very effective and hence not a real factor.
Only by acting collectively can this sort of thing make a difference. Large organizations like the National Rifle Associations have influence not because they can bribe politicians through donations, but because their large membership means that an endorsement or condemnation from that organization can cause the members to act individually in support of or against a politician.
For that matter, political parties in the United States are really no more than giant PAC in themselves -- they help candidates by narrowing their field of support to a single candidate in elections and by helping them get the signatures necessary to get on the ballots (which are technically open to anyone, not just those affiliated with a party), in exchange for which members of the party are expected, to some degree, to support party-line initiatives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1st amendment rights apply to people. They should not apply to corporations.
Corporations are made up of people. How would you go about restricting corporate speech without restricting people's speech? And, more so, why would you want to? Scenario A: 1,000 people organize into a company. One of those people is the Founder/CEO who takes the vast majority of the money out of the company into his personal wealth. It is uncontested that this natural person can then use his wealth to buy ads/throw…
Sure they can, just not under the (limited liability) umbrella of the corporation. Do you believe the lobbying done by Amazon is approved of by all Amazon employees? Do you want foreign corporations lobbying the government?
I think sometimes people assume that x amount of lobbying dollars = y influence, but it's not a linear equation at all. At the end of the day, it is still people you are dealing with, and sometimes people can happily take your money, make you believe they are going to do what they said, and then not do it. Source: family members are lobbyists.
so what you are saying is its possible that poor Amazon wasn't able to get all the political influence it paid for and we are should not be angry at it for trying to buy itsel support that it otherwise would not have
Lobbying is not an exclusive concept. I could right now pay someone to go lobby the government for me. Obviously I wouldn't get very far, but what if my neighbors and I pooled our money together? And their neighbors? And so on and so forth and indeed that is how many lobbying arms are formed outside of industry.
Ultimately at the end of the day, Lobbying is viewed with contempt because we have corrupt officials that weigh the opinions of certain lobbyist who are looking to corrupt the law for their own interests more than what is good for the general public. If you took out lobbying right now, you would still be left with corrupt officials that weigh the opinions of people with money more than the general public. But here is the kicker: you would do more harm than good, because now advocacy groups do not have a way to influence officials. Lobbying, however contemptible it seems to most people, exists because it does serve a purpose. Your elected officials cannot possibly keep up with the sea of issues in their constituencies. Lobbying provides a sort of self-selecting way for the more important issues to "bubble up to the top"
What is always missing from conversations on lobbying is the hundreds of other lobbying groups that have as their mission to serve to improve the general good or public and how eliminating it would impact the good that is done by them (as evidenced by sibling comment by mtgx).
You either allow lobbying or ban it. Amazon used a legal process to tip the balance in their favour. The entire lobbying thing does sound to me like a hack in the entire democratic process. People should vote not companies.
Lobbying in some form is explicitly protected by the 1st amendment. The question is: If you form a contract for someone else to petition for a redress of greivances on you behalf, is that contract void?
I'm not sure that this is in the end a distinction that is useful. Even making such contracts unenforceable would not really change things. Neither party to the contract is in violation of the law. So if a group lobbies on my behalf, and I pay them, then all is well and good. If there's a dispute, and after they lobby, I refuse to pay them (even for cause) then the enforceability of the contract comes into play, but that's a little more rare and the extralegal system (like reputation) means that this will do little to curtail lobbying.
I think sometimes people assume that x amount of lobbying dollars = y influence, but it's not a linear equation at all. At the end of the day, it is still people you are dealing with, and sometimes people can happily take your money, make you believe they are going to do what they said, and then not do it. Source: family members are lobbyists.
There was a freshman congressperson who noted that during their initial, explicitly nonpartisan policy briefings that both sides of issues were represented by different lobbying firms.
Imagine if there was a policy briefing for Congress around encryption standards and the only voices in the room were vendors selling encryption software.
There's no space in that framework to communicate with our governmental leaders about things like open source / the benefits of non-proprietary standards, etc. And it's that way for every conceivable topic.
Remember when internet companies were supposed to be disrupting the system, not co-opting it and making regulatory capture favor themselves?
I think sometimes people assume that x amount of lobbying dollars = y influence, but it's not a linear equation at all. At the end of the day, it is still people you are dealing with, and sometimes people can happily take your money, make you believe they are going to do what they said, and then not do it. Source: family members are lobbyists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
Also, the U.S. system of "vote transparency" (votes are anonymous in almost all other cases, and for good reason) in Congress means that the lobbyists know which politician voted for what, and the politicians also know that the companies donating tens of thousand of dollars to them will know how they voted, too - so they will vote "accordingly" if they want that income stream to continue in the future.
This is a rotten/corrupt relationship/dependency that should not exist in a democracy that's supposed to listen to the "voice of the people".
It is hard for me to find fault with any company which lobbies the government because they have no choice. If they don't play the game someone else will and use their influence to get the power of government applied to their competitors directly or indirectly.
One way to fix it is not to prevent anyone from spending money on campaigns but to instead prohibit politicians, their immediate family, and relatives, from participating in any position that may have influence over a regulating body. It is very common to have family of politicians benefit by either getting jobs directly with a lobbying company or lobbying firm but the other method is through PACs which pay them huge salaries for part time work.
I could care less what they do before they are in office but once in it needs to be clamped down. congress and their relatives are more likely to increase their wealth by magnitudes than lose it, the reason is simple, they structured the rules to benefit them and make it nigh impossible to unseat them