It's never wrong for businesses to lobby for their interests. It's wrong when our elected officials bend to those business interest when it goes against the public interest.
Obviously, a lot of business don't really care about right and wrong, and so they'll still do it. But we can condemn it.
The prime objective for a business is to make money. All the ethics, right/wrongs, etc are things that we expect from the people who run those businesses. But the business is there to make money.
It is up to the people in charge of making choices for society to make the right choices. It's not the responsibility of the business. They have every right to lobby for anything they want.
They have no right to lobby for anything they want. They may have the legal right to do so, but it's still wrong in some cases.
If Company A wanted to lobby for the killing of all blue eyes babies, they could. They can make signs, start campaigns, attempt to get a meeting with a member of Congress.
All of that lobbying would be useless though because we all know that that idea is disgusting and wrong (hopefully we all know... with this current climate, nothing is certain).
The act of killing the babies is wrong, and we can pretty much all agree on that. But that company has every right to lobby for that position. No matter how crazy.
> They may have the legal right to do so, but it's still wrong in some cases.
You seem to agree here.
But then afterwards you concentrate entirely on legality. If you just wanted to say that it's legal for businesses to lobby like this, I don't disagree, but I don't see how that position is described in the original comment, nor do I even understand the point of making that comment, since I think we all already know that it's legal.
If you did indeed mean to say that it's legally allowed but morally reprehensible, then we are indeed in agreement and I don't think there's much to say here.
No one is saying they don't have that legal right; they're saying that "legal" doesn't imply "ethical".
Consider Company A's lobbying efforts succeed and people start killing blue-eyed babies. Even if Company A never kills a baby, they still did something unethical, since there's a causal relationship between their lobbying efforts and a thing we just agreed was wrong.
A business is a way for people to organize and collaborate and it does not absolve those people of their moral and ethical obligations. Individuals are expected to prioritize family, community, country, religion, etc. We need to stop giving people a free pass just because they hide behind articles of incorporation.
Hold the people who have made you promises and then failed to follow through responsible. Aka, your politicians. They are your backstop. What makes Goldman, GSK, Haliburton, or any of the other shady, scummy businesses out there responsible to you? They are responsible to the law on the books.
Our politicians are supposed to prevent business from screwing our society. Stop giving them an out. They failed, time and time again.
I mean... yeah... that's why it's an idea and not a description of how things work.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/26/pge-gets-maximum-sente...
They're not supposed to pass the fine to their customers in any way. I don't believe anything.
The state or the people grant that charter to the business, with the benefits its confers regarding liability and taxation, so we could decide to do so only if the business commits to the terms.
There's no inalienable right to incorporation in the US constitution - the corporation is a statutory fiction we've all agreed to use.
Stop expecting politicians to be perfect.
You're right, every person does.
> A business doesn't change the obligations of the individuals so put the individuals in prison if needed. Did someone sign off on dumping toxic waste or robbing people's savings? Would have been illegal if a person did it without getting a paycheck? Why does a paycheck change anything? Let them answer for their actions.
What are you trying to say here? That we should hold people/businesses legally responsible? No one is arguing against that.
> Stop expecting politicians to be perfect.
I expect politicians to do their job.
That's a laughably arbitrary choice you're making.
We pay businesses for goods and services.
Oh.
Please stop being a childish.
While you can "choose" a politician, you get whoever the group chose for 2-6 years. Don't like your president or their morals? Deal with it until the next round of choice.
I think that imbalance in individual authority and power gives everyone the right to hold public and private individuals to different standards.
You try to exercise your consumer rights next time you're in a hospital, or something unforeseen occurs, or you're subject to a telecom monopoly, etc... etc...
Your way of thinking only works in a perfect fiction that has never and will never exist, except as a sop to some egos.
Remember the time when there was a single phone out that combined flagship performance with a size that fits comfortably in one hand? Or the time when laptop manufacturers included PgUp/PgDown/Home/End keys instead of hiding all of those behind a Fn key? Or the time when I could use the internet without being tracked by every single competitor? Good luck avoiding Facebook or Google Docs when your charity has bought into those for communication?
The businesses everyone's fawning about are also the businesses who have best figured out protection from customer choice by employing lock-in and network effects. That's not choice, that's rule by moat.
Customer choice is for suckers. When a flood of ads and convenience can lure the masses, who would even pay attention to the few idiots who vote with their wallets or think of long-term market implications?
My wallet has no more effect on product availability than my vote has on the politician who represents me and what policies they support.
Then it's also safe to assume that legislators will act in self serving ways. Sure, they should represent your interests but let's not be naive.
IMO people should be held accountable for acting immorally, full stop. Just because it's particularly bad when public servants fail in their job doesn't let others off the hook.
If you're saying that's right, I'd argue the point strenuously. It's also wrong when our elected officials, predictably, bend.
If you want a better example, yes, Haliburton, GSK, and Koch, all have the right to lobby in their best interests (at least in the US).
Lobbying is speech. You can't just censor people you disagree with. That's not the basis of our democratic society. The price of being able to speak what you think is good, is having to hear what you think is bad.
Sure we can. We can complain to them, boycott them, post stories on HN so other people know they're unethical, etc.
> We can however expect ethics/morality from politicians because they are people.
Businesses are just groups of people. A business behaves ethically only if the people who make it up behave ethically. We don't lose the ability to criticize them just because they're acting as a group.
Sure, we could do that, but unless any of those things affect profit, the business won't change. Morality doesn't motivate business, profit/money does.
> Businesses are just groups of people. A business behaves ethically only if the people who make it up behave ethically. We don't lose the ability to criticize them just because they're acting as a group.
Sure, and if people feel morally conflicted an leave the business, they are replaced. If there comes a time where so many people are morally conflicted that there are not enough people to run effectively run the business, then the business will change or cease to exist. Even in that situation, you have a moral issue for the workers that became a financial issue for the business.
Businesses have no morals. The people who run it do.
> Morality doesn't motivate business, profit/money does.
…which has literally nothing to do with the ethics of Intuit's and H&R Block's lobbying.
They are knowingly doing a thing that will hurt people. That's wrong. Full stop.
That's not really a position, it's a tragedy.
I also didn't make a opinion on IG Farben... I called that argument straw man and ignored it because IG Farben doesn't currently exist.
Some people's appetite for argument and being proven correct is insatiable.
But when they start pouring money into campaigns it's a different thing. That's just a legalized form of bribery. It may be legal, for the moment. It may even be necessary, both because competitors are doing the same thing and because legislators demand it (or else). But it's wrong.
1) Is it wrong to lobby politicians in general?
This can be debatable, but I would say a strong democracy should decide that individuals, organizations, and corporations can only make their cases in public hearings and on the record. That way we see where everyone stands and what exactly the arguments are for or against something. So it may not be illegal for an entity to "talk" to a politician about an issue, but I would argue that it would be best if everything they say about a certain policy or bill should be on the record, not in the back stage. There are thousands of "little things" like these that could make the U.S. a better democracy.
2) How do you define "lobbying"?
Is it just talking to a politician or is it talking plus something like:
"Hey, we've just donated $50,000 to your campaign as well. No worries, we just did it because we liked you, right after our conversations on how it would be best for you to vote ;). Oh, and we're only doing the winking because it would be illegal for us to tell you that we're giving you this much money to vote how we want on that bill."
Yeah, I would say that should definitely be illegal - in the sense that no company or organization should be able to donate as much as $50,000 (or more) to a politician. I'm strictly in favor of sub-$500 donations a year to a politician.
The "money vote" that's represented by campaign donations is greatly skewing how a politician should vote, because he or she would then have to listen to those that donated the most by far, compared to the people that donated only $30. So the "money vote" should be as "equalized" and "universal" as the real vote is (as much as possible at least, but I think it should be under $1,000, because beyond $1,000 it still incetivizes politicians to hold fundraisers with rich people).
It is ok to think that the cause (complicating the tax code) is wrong, but the methods (lobbying) are ok.
What's the plan on censuring representatives that don't represent us? This information isn't helping us change our behavior.
The problem is our representatives have developed a sixth sense that is fine tuned to be aware how their vote affects their donors. Special interests are outspending and out-strategizing us. They are organized and disciplined and we are divided and hopelessly emotional. They have full-time policy wonks that understand the issues, and most of us don't even understand the premises behind the issues.
Even with full transparency, most of us drown in the amount of information we have to process. Something has to come after transparency and most of us are clueless as to what we really need to do.