As a non-american, it's a cultural mind-blow to think that you guys need to pay your guys-in-charge so they do their jobs properly.
Trust me, we aren't very keen on it, either.
Crowd-sourced political lobby
21–30 of 40 posts
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#22Can crowd sourced lobbying compete against the deep pockets of corporate interests? That's my biggest concern. I like this idea a lot though. Hopefully it gains traction.
Can it compete? Let's find out.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#23Get rid of the indirection. Hiring lobbyist isn't necessary.
Instead, a two step system would be nice:
1. People add money to pool. The pool's contents are publicized.
2. After congressional votes, the pool is distributed to all politicians who voted "correctly".
Note that this incentivizes politicians to oppose the status quo, as the less politicians supporting a piece of legislation, the higher the payout.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#24Why is a representative going to listen to our lobbyist over the MPAA's lobbyist? We can raise enough money to hire someone to work in Washington for us, but I somehow doubt we can consistently raise enough money to make matching campaign contributions so that our lobbyist is taken seriously. Even if we could, it feels fundamentally wrong that we need a self-imposed tax on citizens for their representatives to repres…
In France we have a lobby fighting for internet freedom, La Quadrature du Net: http://www.laquadrature.net/
The lobby is only three people, and was started by one guy on his own. He pays himself with donations.
And yet he's been very efficient: almost all newspaper stories on the subject quote him. Also, more and more French politicians understand the electoral weight of the issues, and less and less support restrictive laws such as Hadopi.
I don't see why you couldn't have the same in the states.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#25Get rid of the indirection. Hiring lobbyist isn't necessary. Instead, a two step system would be nice: 1. People add money to pool. The pool's contents are publicized. 2. After congressional votes, the pool is distributed to all politicians who voted "correctly". Note that this incentivizes politicians to oppose the status quo, as the less politicians supporting a piece of legislation, the higher the payout.
Would that be legal? It sounds like outright corruption...
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#26As a non-american, it's a cultural mind-blow to think that you guys need to pay your guys-in-charge so they do their jobs properly.
It is really disturbing that you need to pay to get access to your own government. The greatest trick the Lobbyists ever pulled was replacing "corruption" with "lobbying" in the dictionary.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#27I wonder if they plan to take a percentage of the funds raised. I can see this being problematic. I think it's reasonable to say WeTheLobby needs to keep the lights on. I think I'd feel a lot better providing ongoing contributions if I knew WeTheLobby were a NonProfit and either publicly disclosed all management salaries or had a salary cap. Anyone here from WeTheLobby willing to chime in?
I was just about to go to sleep, but this is an important question. We want to spend as much money as we can on lobbying efforts. The site itself was made completely pro bono because we all believe in the idea. We are committed to being as financially transparent as possible. Right now our only costs are for hosting and setting up the site; a little under $100 to date. As things progress we will disclose the informat…
Seperate pages would definitely be the best in regards to transparency.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#28Well don't forget to add some serious revolving doors, as a motivation for the lawmakers (http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/), because, you know, they already got that.
Secondly, but even more importantly, don't forget to set aside a large chunk of the cash to hire an army of assassins and mercenaries, because, you know, anybody of any importance is already under a death threat if they step out their line, and you are fool if you think otherwise.
I seriously, seriously, seriously suggest reading through all the 5 pages of this, no matter how "stock conspiracy theory" it may look to you, just effin do it (allocate half a day, it's a long read), and bitch later, because you really need to know: http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1023-financia...
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#29Get rid of the indirection. Hiring lobbyist isn't necessary. Instead, a two step system would be nice: 1. People add money to pool. The pool's contents are publicized. 2. After congressional votes, the pool is distributed to all politicians who voted "correctly". Note that this incentivizes politicians to oppose the status quo, as the less politicians supporting a piece of legislation, the higher the payout.
Would that be legal? It sounds like outright corruption...
Not much different from how it operates now.
Just ask Dodd.
Re: Crowd-sourced political lobby
#30Is there an opportunity for a data driven approach to politics?
I would be interested in a service that segmented people into large groups based on their political ideas. A cross between a semi-anonymous Facebook, groups and politics, none of the social networky stuff, just ideas, viewpoints, groups and votes.
For example, you might belong to a very large simple 'liberal' group, with vague and general ideas. Within this group, you'd have factions with more specific ideas and options. It may drill down to situations like: "You are a member of group liberal-software-developers (xxx,xxx members), group members strongly support ..., generally support ..., generally oppose ..., no strong opinion about about ...". Eventually you might find a group you nearly always agree with.
With enough support across the population, it would make it easy for everyone, including politicians to see how everyone felt on various topics.
To make this work, you'd need to put topics to people (in a fair way, with proper presentation of each viewpoint) and do some polling. It would then be interesting to see the correlation between groups you are in, and your viewpoint.
You could then pivot the data based on categories and any number of dimensions to see what people are thinking.
Some other usecase ideas: "I'm a member of liberal-software-developers, I generally agree with this group's viewpoint. I'll trust viewpoints from group members who are better informed on topic Z, rather than some TV commercial."
"My group doesn't have a strong opinion on some healthcare thing, I'll trust liberal-doctors instead..."
As a step for the original question, perhaps conduct a fair nationwide poll on each contested topic? You could ask 1000 people what they thought of each topic in a credible fashion. The result then gives media organisations some content to work with and read out. If public support is overwhelming for each topic, then it may become difficult to ignore the polling data.