Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

I think Google's lobbying overall is the result of being punished early on by regulatory capture of competitors. Look at the threats:

* Microsoft funded number backroom whisper campaigns in DC (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-an-anti-google-whisper-c...) * Microsoft and Oracle funded their own Astroturf lobbying groups and think tanks, to tie up the company in lawsuits and investigations (e.g. FairSearch) * Oracle funding numerous shills like Florian Mueller * Carriers and Cable Companies lobbying to demolish net-neutrality * Bills like SOPA.

Google used to spend very little on lobbying, and as a result Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, Comcast, had the undivided attention of Congress.

Now to be fair, Microsoft was attacked by its competitors with similar campaigns in the 80s and 90s. It just goes to show you that corporate lobbying can play off people's populist tendencies and weaponize them against competitors.

So when you ask, "How could Google give to ALEC", a question Googlers themselves ask, or contribute to conservatives who deny client science, you have to consider that Congress has the industry by the balls. They can threaten regulation or punishment, and then hold fundraisers on pledges to block said regulation. It's a shakedown: "nice business you have there, shame if I'd have to regulate it. By the way, I'm having a fundraising dinner next week" Why would Silicon Valley serve on Trump's advisory councils when many of the members revile Trump on a personal level? Because there's a huge risk making the executive branch an enemy.

This is the key reason.

Its the market at work - at some point the marginal advantage of investing even a little in lobbying results in more X, (where X can be anything from power to profit).

And in a competitive scenario, SOMEONE will do it.

Not to mention Even a unhappy incumbent can initiate a lobbying strategy.

People in the comments seem to focus a lot on google itself, but this is the way the game is played.

Its just that tech is realizing that they can't create utopia because the laws of complex systems still apply.

> People in the comments seem to focus a lot on google itself, but this is the way the game is played.

Just because something is commonly done does not mean that behavior is right. A reason this post is so popular is because people are becoming increasingly aware of the power & capital concentration occurring in this country.

Google has for years successfully gave an image of a company capable of rising above the typical sociopathic behavior of other large multinational corporations, and this story helps expose Google for what they really are: just another large corporation.

The world isn't black and white. The fact that large companies have to engage in lobbying because they are either threatened into it by unscrupulous politicians, or they are attacked by their competition by using the state for regulatory capture, doesn't make them all the same.

The problem that technolibertarians/utopians have long had was that they imagined cyberspace as a completely separate dimension, that would not be sullied by the ordinary concerns of politics and buying influence. And perhaps for a short time, when the internet and web was new, and politicians mostly ignored it, there was good reason to believe you wouldn't have to worry about it, but after the 90s when the Web/Net was mainstreamed, with billions of people on it, and trillions in money up for grabs, the idea that the normal corrupt politician process would leave its participants alone is naive.

I mean, take net neutrality. Verizon, Comcast, and the ISPs have clearly won. They've got their guy as head of the FCC. The fossil fuel industry has won, they've got their guys running the show now.

Would you call sustainable energy companies lobbying congress and buying politicians "same old typical sociopathic behavior", it would you recognize that this is how the game is played, and they've go to fight to prevent the government from distorting the market and letting fossil fuel companies crush them.

I'm not a libertarian, but one of the reasons libertarians don't like government regulation is that if you want to "get money out of politics" it is literally impossible as long as small investments can yield huge benefits via regulatory capture.

You mean legalized racket. When companies compete on basis who pays for the protection racket or extortion racket. This seems criminal.It is legal only because government personnel providers levers on informal individual basis.

This is not to disagree (or agree) with any of the points you made. It is more of a side note:

Tech -- including "energy tech" -- has one important distinction from other industries: there are potential technological solutions that can move faster than the legislation.

For instance, the ISPs may seem to have won, but maybe some kind of wireless technology will bring true competition.

An energy company may have someone in the government, but Solar is already cheaper (batteries have to catch up), and behind the meter solutions are ever more popular.

Sometimes the legislation just fattens the target by staving off other competition.

> Its the market at work

It's economics, sure. I don't know what qualifies as a "market" here, though. There aren't standard shares of "lobbying" that people buy and sell.

Any market in which a company sells products. If lobbying is a cost effective way to increase revenue then it's almost guaranteed that at least one company will engage in lobbying. The companies that don't lobby fall behind in competitiveness and sometimes shutdown and therefore leave the market in which they were selling goods.

If you are interested in investing in lobbying then all you need to do is buy shares in companies that engage in lobbying.

You're thinking investment markets, not philanthropic giving markets. Any think tank is competitively attempting to gain funds to stay afloat. Some do this by lobbying for grants, some by soliciting private donations. But there's a finite amount of capacity to fund think tanks regardless of the source of income.

Google can certainly find other think tanks they like better.

I can get behind this description. Though it does mean that even the most communist and/or totalitarian governments have internal markets if source-agnostic-budget counts. I'm not sure how people with an anti-capitalist ideological bent would respond to that framing.

They probably wouldn't like it, but a market is a good way to describe those types of transactional backroom deal.

    > Its the market at work

Sounds like an example of Market Failure

Agreed. It's institutionalized crony capitalism.

How's it a market failure (markets not working properly) when bad regulation/ regulator regime is to blame. One should properly term it as 'Government Failure', don't you think so?

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