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Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

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Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#51
post #15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a perverted view of the “public interest” as being diametrically opposed to corporate interests. The goal of corporations is to extract as much money as possible from the public. So in a very real sense, they are opponents, even if sometimes their interests align.

Corporations give people goods and services in exchange. (And almost everyone gets the money in the first place by working for a corporation.) Their interests are highly aligned.

In addition to selling goods, sometimes they also sell bads: https://www.thebalance.com/credit-default-swaps-pros-cons-cr...

I would be skeptical of any corporation writing public laws and even a certain A. Smith seems to agree[1]

[1] (right hand column) https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=rpMuAAAAYAAJ&hl=ja&pg=PA...

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lobbying is pure corruption I never understood why more people don't see it this way. You literally pay money to get X bill passed. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.

Because no one wants to think that “their side” is corrupt. It’s always the other side.

[deleted]

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#53
post #43
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mocrosoft’s views on legislation are already throughly represented through the voting power of its shareholders, employees, and anyone else who is affected by them. Are you saying they should have unequal influence beyond that?

Huh? As a subscriber to Office 365, Microsoft has sensitive information about me, and so I am affected by Microsoft's handling of privacy and data security. How does that make my voting power representative of their views? I also question whether a company's views are represented through the voting power of its employees.

Microsoft’s views can be represented by groups of people without every individual within every group representing them.

I’d still wager that you represent their views to an extent. You’d probably oppose a 100,000% tax on Office, or a plan to disband the company and destroy all of its assets, for example.

The employees want the company to prosper. Their views will be closer to what’s good for the company.

The shareholders will represent the company perfectly, pretty much by definition.

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