Hacker News Reader

Comment by AmIFirstToThink | Hacker News Reader

I am actually amazed at how little money is needed to influence politicians.

Lobbying exists because the return on investment is ridiculously high in favor of person asking for favorable treatment from politicians in policy making. It is peanuts invested and Boeing 747s harvested.

If anything the cost of buying a politician should increase multiple orders of magnitude. Currently hundred, two hundred thousands to a senator's re-election campaign can buy really serious attention to your concerns. It needs to be hundreds of millions to buy a senator.

Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from supporters and then just execute on what they stand for. Bernie and Trump was essentially that, self/people funded efforts.

View on HN

You just need to increase the number of representatives multiple orders of magnitude. Imagine if we had 10000+ congressmen, it would much much harder to buy influence or lobby. The votes would eventually start to resemble the will of the people.

Bernie and Trump were just the beginning, the internet has allowed the people to wake up and field their own candidates instead of just taking what the political old guard give us.

>Imagine if we had 10000+ congressmen, it would much much harder to buy influence or lobby. The votes would eventually start to resemble the will of the people.

I agree, but there would be interesting ramifications.

Almost like direct democracy but not quite there. So, essentially you have to earn the right to vote. Very close to what founders thought who should be voting. Mind blown!

The Reapportionment Act of 1929[0] is the culprit for this problem. Up until then, the size of the house grew with the population of the country.

It was one of a series of early 20th century foundational changes to American government that opened us up for the legalized corruption we're suffering from now.

The 17th amendment[1] is another, which allowed for the direct election (and thus hyper politicization) of Senators.

With 50 states, the country would still have 100 senators, but special interest groups would have to write checks to thousands of state assembly members to influence the election of Senators, rather than just writing a few dozen to influence the Senators directly.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929

[1]https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am17.html

>The 17th amendment[1] is another, which allowed for the direct election (and thus hyper politicization) of Senators.

The time before the 17th Amendment wasn't exactly all roses, that was the age of outright bribery of state legislatures for Senate seats. William Clark's famous quote "I never bought a man who wasn't for sale" was about this and the surrounding corruption of his election brought the 17th Amendment around.[0]

Listen to the 6th episode of the Constitutional podcast for some extra background, it is very interesting. Some states really wanted this because they were unable to even elect Senators due to political parties of the time simply not agreeing on anybody.[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Clark

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/constitutional/

I suspect the number of influential representatives in a body is something like sqrt(n). When Pericles lived, the Athenian assembly was similarly large but only a handful were consistently influential (like Pericles)

Gerrymandering would be a lot harder with more representatives too.

Might as well do away with the position of president too. That's way too much power in the hands of a single person who, as donald regularly demonstrates, could act arbitrarily.

Actually presidential election is only time where special interests can't tip the scale easily. Right now that's the only change where people get their say.

Just 1/3rd of senators get elected every two years and only handful among those races are balanced where special interest can tip scales with little effort. Same for congressional elections, few places with 50/50 spread where money can easily gain influence.

Presidential election is too big, at the exact same time, for money to wield influence. I for one am glad that we have presidential elections, people have some voice, at least.

What's interesting is we already have the political infrastructure in place to do this. Lose the presidency and let each member of the cabinet run their own section of government.

In addition to losing the single executive, you'd need to make some other constitutional tweaks e.g. deploying the military would require a consensus between the Secretaries of State, Defense, and DHS (and maybe Treasury?).

Something like that could end the imperial executive branch with a very simple distribution of power.

I don't think you would need to do away with the presidency. But it does need additional controls and safeguards put in place. Controls and safeguards that have existed but have been removed over successive generations.

>Might as well do away with the position of president too.

I actually half support this idea. Why do we need a President? What powers does that one person in that one office have which couldn't better be delegated to the states?

Definitely. I would rather have a parliamentary system with tons of representatives.

> If anything the cost of buying a politician should increase multiple orders of magnitude.

How about lowering the possible returns from buying politicians, say, by lowering their influence on how the republic is actually being run?

Because then the money just moves to whoever does have influence on how the republic is actually being run. Or, worse yet, the money just buys the power it was previously trying to influence and simply wields it directly.

Weakening the formal power of government officials doesn't make that power dissolve, it just displaces it to somewhere even less visible and answerable to the public.

I guess ssambros is being downvoted because it seems tautological that politicians run the Republic.

But we really should stop to ask whether legislatures should be doing the kind of micromanagement where they routinely divert billions towards one private interest or another. And we should adjust our political rhetoric, voting behaviour and expectations about propriety and the law accordingly.

> Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from supporters and then just execute on what they stand for.

if somebody dangles 6-7 figure checks in front of many people, those people will find that their former concept of "livable wage" has suddenly been revised upwards.

If a politician is honest they can be honest within the lobbying framework or outside of it, the issue I think is making it so a honest politician with no access to extra funds can compete on issues against a well funded opponent (meaning getting people to know who they are without having to buy tons of ads): this can only happen if election campaigns are extremely regulated.

Doing that would mean things like no ads for anybody ever, only exposure via live debates, fixed identical travel schedule for everybody with access to the same rallies in terms of facilities etc. etc.

Even with all of this I am not sure it would work in the current social-media society, because as things stand now if you are well funded you could easily drown your opponent(s) on social media just by buying comments/influence and regulating those seems pretty much impossible (how do you distinguish between a genuine groundswell of support and a paid-for one?)

>if somebody dangles 6-7 figure checks in front of many people, those people will find that their former concept of "livable wage" has suddenly been revised upwards.

yes, but next serious challenger would be just $4500/month patreon campaign away.

The revolving glass door would remain a problem where someone seeks one time election, votes a certain way and is then given a advisory job at a think tank for couple of years.

But at least, they would be able to burn people just once, instead of what we have now. Plus people may use recalls often.

> Politicians should start Patreon campaigns

That's kind of what CrowdPAC (https://www.crowdpac.com/) already does. Even though I'd say it's more like GoFundMe than Patreon. It'll be interesting if people starting creating campaigns like "Vote for H.R. 9999 and get all the money from this crowdfunded campaign."

> Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from supporters and then just execute on what they stand for.

How little do you think politicians make? I don't know of any poor politicians at the federal level.

Average net worth is $1MM [0]. Funny how they're "representative" of the people when median income is $35k/year [1] and most Americans don't have $1k in savings [2].

[0] http://moneynation.com/the-net-worth-of-congress/

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2016/11...

[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/25/how-much-does-the-...

Politicians are looking for people to represent. Democrats in 2016 was textbook example of that. Not the kind of people I was referring to in my comment. To be fair to you, I did say "Politicians should...".

I would like to rephrase that as Representatives among people should start patreon campaigns. People should choose a person among them to represent them and really believes in what they want, not give in to an professional politician looking to represent you no matter what their individual beliefs.

>> Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from supporters and then just execute on what they stand for.

They'll just seek more and more funds to become richer and richer. This is how corrupt democracies work.

The only people who should be politicians are the ones who'd do it with no campaign funds and median wage. They need to be in touch with realities of their electoral base and have the desire to change it for everyone.

>The only people who should be politicians are the ones who'd do it with no campaign funds and median wage.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Representing people is full time job and must be paid living wages.

People competing to represent people deserve to get funding to support living expenses while they run their campaigns.

Do you want a factory worker delivering pizza at night to represent people like him? If so, then he needs funding so that he can put food on the table while he tries to get elected. If people don't crowdfund it then there is no other option but to seek lobbyist money. No different than soldiers and police and firefighters.

The problem is that there is not enough turn over of representatives. More people being able to get living expenses crowdfunded mean there will be more competition for representatives, competition to win and keep supporters, not a competition to seek and win lobbying funding in support of re-election.

>> Do you want a factory worker delivering pizza at night to represent people like him? If so, then he needs funding so that he can put food on the table while he tries to get elected. If people don't crowdfund it then there is no other option but to seek lobbyist money. No different than soldiers and police and firefighters.

I want a person who is educated and has the desire to improve lives to represent people. The extreme rich are far too detached from reality, the poor are struggling and probably have enough problems to not have had the acumen and experience to deal with issues of others.

A person who was rich or middle class before and is going to continue to earn middle income wages for this new job will only take this job because he/she cares, not because they see this as another path to wealth.

> The only people who should be politicians are the ones who'd do it with no campaign funds and median wage

Perhaps a better way to phrase this is to only allow candidates who make within, say, 10% of the median wage for their district, and they would only get paid median wage in office.

I don't know, that sounds arbitrarily limiting. Everyone should be allowed to participate.

I just think that technology has allowed to seek support and sustenance while one fights for a cause. When the support is gone, you go back to earning your living. No strings attached in either direction. Employment of representative, and continuous patronage by the represented, at will.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com