Comment by telltruth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by telltruth | Hacker News Reader

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To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. Just few thousand dollars to pass laws that would have massive impact! Top countries spend billions on military and trying to revive their economies. With a tiny fraction of that budget you can buy lots of US politicians legally and easily generate desired effect. The beauty of this whole thing is that everything is legal. Rich folks even made sure you can have unlimited "donations". BTW, this is used to be called bribes and people were used to sent to prison for accepting that.

I can't stop but wondering if there is a startup opportunity here. What if it was possible to create a market to buy and sell politicians which was more efficient? May be we can dress it up little better... How about buy and sell "political cause"? Unlimited money allowed for each auctioning! Each political cause can then have underlying actual politician that gets part of the proceeds via campaign donations but all parties get to remain anonymous. No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say.

  To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. [...] No
  need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction
  gets their say.

The cost of a bribe depends on multiple factors - but one of the most key ones is how important an issue is in terms of publicity and re-election chances.

A senator won't take a bribe that lets them buy campaign ads that get them 3000 votes if it requires them to take a position that loses them 4000 votes.

So it's cheap to bribe a politician to support some trivial matter that won't make the news, like not auditing the use of subsidised water for agriculture; but expensive to bribe a politician on matters voters will find out about and care about, like abortion and gun control.

This is part of what gives groups like the NRA their power; by keeping their members informed, they convert trivial, cheap-to-bribe issues into important, expensive-to-bribe issues.

I think it only looks dirt cheap if you're looking exclusively at campaign contributions. But the real influence of lobbying comes from managing entire networks of influence surrounding a person. A politician will suddenly know people who can help them manage their money, set their best friend up with investors so they can start their new business, help get their kid into the best school, help them find a lucrative career after politics, etc. I'm sure it's all extremely expensive.

I guess thats like the difference between money and power. Money can make things happen but true power is about getting things that can't be bought.

While that's all true, I'm still specifically thinking of cases where money is being utilized to purchase beneficial arrangements. It's just that a lot of those dollars are being spent on things not found in retail stores, to acquire influence in ways beyond campaign contributions. So only looking at campaign contributions vastly underestimates the "price" of a politician.

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