But relatedly, money being treated as speech is antithetical to a functioning republic democracy.
So if you're reading this, instead of down voting everyone on the other side or yelling about democracy in a reply, I'd just urge you to leave this site of random pseudo anonymous opinions, and maybe go somewhere else to learn a little about the case instead.
Radiolab's More Perfect does a great job of providing the backstory:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/citizens-united/
The oral arguments on Oyez have even more back and forth if you like, including I think even a few arguments and turns Radiolab missed.
I think you can leave that episode with either opinion about the finding. But either way you'll leave that episode smarter, which seems like a hackery sort of value.
Quick, before it all devolves further, fly you fools!
I think the problem is that this isn’t a philosophical question. It’s an ethical one. But, the only way to be ‘fair and balanced’ is to purport it as philosophical.
Money does, however, enable speech, and restrictions on things which enable us to exercise fundamental rights is at least potentially a restriction on that right. That's the framework the Supreme Court used.
If you disagree, consider: Pick a right you quite like (gun ownership, abortion, speech, voting in an election, etc.). Clearly a law banning that activity outright, or severely restricting it ("you can't obtain an abortion", "you can only speak in favour of Trump", "you can't own a handgun", "you can only vote for the Democratic candidate") would be absurdly illegal. It follows that a law preventing you from spending money on that right ("you cannot pay for an abortion", "you cannot spend money on criticising Trump", "you can't purchase a handgun", "you can't spend money travelling to the polls unless voting for a Democrat") would also be illegal (if severe enough at least).
The scope in which government can make your ability to exercise fundamental rights more difficult is non-zero, but sharply proscribed (witness the long string of court decisions striking down red state abortion laws).
It's possible that the restriction at stake in Citizens United was so minor that it should have been permissible, but I take your argument to be that it was anything but minor. In which case, the restriction probably was unconstitutional. In the US system, speech is protected, and (like it or not!) political speech is the most protected form. Any law which meaningfully impacts any real person's ability to speak about politics is presumptively unconstitutional, by design. And the more meaningful the restriction, the more that applies.
And there are plenty of laws limiting speech for example in schools. So, outright limiting say TV advertising would be completely constitutional and have the side effect of limiting exactly the types of speech you're talking about without constitutional issues.
If you're on the left you more likely than not like Michael Moore movies. They are often very political. Should they be banned? That was the topic that came up in Radiolab.
Citizens United, inspired by Michael Moore's movies, decided they wanted to do the same thing. Someone decided Citizens United didn't have the same rights to release movies with a political message as Michael Moore and the studios that funded and distributed his movies. The Supreme Court I think saw the problem. Where does it end? Is Transformers political speech? Is Sense8 political speech? Is Milk?
I don't know how to solve the issue of getting money out of politics but I can at least see the argument that deciding which movies are political and which are not is not as easy as it sounds. Maybe Michael Moore's movie should have been prevented from release within N months before the election? I think that was the actual law used to prevent Citizen's United's movie coming out even though Moore's came out within the same type of time frame before an election.
The whole point of free speech is to prevent single origin messages. To promote more ideas and perspectives. And prevent people from shutting up opposite views.
But the constitution isn't perfect. Its hard to make sure your hard rules will work for all context.
I think in this case, there's a fear that now that money is getting more and more disproportionate and concentrated into a single origin. The power to speak will follow into that same disproportionate single origin.
Maybe free speech still enables all to speak, but the uneven distribution of money causes some to speak much louder. So the question is, could this be detrimental to democracy? Is it possible it hurts our political ability to focus on what trully matters to most and to come up with the best ideas on how to effectively get it?
I don't know, its hard to say. Maybe we need some simulations. But if it were true, then clearly something should be done to address this loophole. Forcing transparency into who spent the money is one possible solution. Maybe you could cap out money each one can spend to speak. There's probably other ways also.
Does't cost much. Is pretty effective.
Huge sums of money is really only needed for GOTV and propaganda.
Please explain how the actions you list have any chance of successfully promoting anything but already popular ideas.
And would it be okay for Fox News or CNN to engage in propaganda, and spend billions of dollars on it, as long as it’s under the guise of journalism? Are judges going to start ruling on what is propaganda and what is news?
I encourage you to head to your closest legislative body (city hall, county council, state legislature), just to see what they're doing. (In person.) If something's on the agenda that piques your interest, sign-in to speak.
Then keep doing it.
There's got to be something under discussion that warms your belly. Once you find it:
Call any of your reps (city, county, state, federal) and ask for a 5 min appointment. Show up with a one pager summary of your position. Show up, say "Hi!", thank them for their service (even if you don't mean it), hand them your paper, tell them why your issue is important to you. See what happens.
Or just figure out when your locals are doing public meetings, town halls, events. Just show up, see what other people are working on. For example, my state reps have a joint monthly beer & hotdog event. Maybe 20-50 people show up (depending on the weather) and talk about whatever. I love just eavesdropping, seeing what people are working on.
Then take it to the next level. Find your allies. Get them to support your position. For instance, you could have your local party (whatever flavor) pass resolutions, which you then bring to your reps, to demonstrate support for your position.
Policy work is a tough marathon. But anyone can do it. Just hang out, note who gets things done, copy their methods. Camp Wellstone has a road show for activist training, which is fantastic. Many many other orgs do the same.
Good luck.
My friends work on and have milestone achievements on marijuana legalization, marriage equality, campaign financing, DREAM ACT, family leave, increasing the minimum wage, etc, etc.
The biggest impact any of us can have is on the local level. The cliche is that states are incubators of democracy. Well, cities are the incubators of states.
While the federal government is AWOL, it's left a huge vacuum, which many states, counties, cities have chosen to fill.
The opportunities have never been more insurmountable (h/t Yogi Bera).
They could be upset about paying money directly or indirectly to the poiticians.
i.e. perhaps it is fine spending money trying to lecture politicians, but not giving the money to politicians and policymakers.
Honestly, I think the best system is to just allow unlimited donations directly to candidates, with full disclosure.
Money isn’t actually that much of a problem in my opinion. Look at how much Jeb spent in the primaries, only to get savaged by Trump, who spent barely anything.
The general control of politics by the “rich and powerful” isn’t because they spend money on campaigns, it’s because the social class represented by them, the top 20% (college-educated professionals, typically working in large urban areas), controls culture, media, ideas, and expertise. Regulatory capture doesn’t happen because of corruption, but because the people with the expertise tend to be the ones who work in the industry being regulated.
I'm actually curious what is the real percentage, but it's got to be way less than 20%. You surround yourself with people like you, but there's a lot of people and the world is big.
Per the US Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey, at least 27.24% of the voting-age (18+) population has at least a Bachelor's degree. That’s based on the number from the Over 25 population meeting that description divided by the whole over-18 population; for some reason they only report a count of over-25 with at least a bachelor's degree. [0]
Turnout increases significantly with education [1], so the share of the actually voting population with such a degree must be even higher.
So, you were right to suspect 20% was way off—just in the wrong direction.
[0] (Description page) https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-a...
(Data table) https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/voting/...
[1] http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
Further, there are many options out there which don't involve spending money to spread a message. Write a book and you can be paid to spread your message. If don't have the time a YouTube commentator can also get paid as can bloggers etc.
Granted saying ideas that can't spread virally can't spread at all may not be great. But, it does offer some forms of protection and IMO is more in spirit with the core idea of Democracy.
This is used by just about everyone, "Save the Whales!" and "Think of the Children!" are calls to action without support. They boil down to "Do this!" as a slogan and it works.
Propaganda can also frame issues, saying "Job Creators!" ignores the demand side of the equation. Without revenue companies will fire people, but the people doing the firing are still defined as "Job Creators!" Use automation and replace 1/2 the workforce with robots and their "Creating high paying jobs in automation!" It's not about changing people's minds it's about changing how people think.
Trickle down at least pretends to have an argument. This is closer to a religious. "We must appease the people on high that make everything work, (with tax breaks or whatever)"
You use the fact people who won't listen unless you spend money won't hear your message.
> Spending money is how people with novel ideas expose it to more people and can hope to compete against established ideas that don’t need to be marketed.
It's also how you mix and dilute your idea into an ocean of meritless crap that nobody would care about unless someone spent money to have the likes of Facebook and Google shout it at them.
It particularly cements the idea that the only way to get novel (usually you'd aim for "good") ideas heard is by paying money to Facebook, Google or that other big media conglomerate (where their money buys "nation-wide local" "news").
Problem is, people with the good novel ideas are usually not the parties with a lot of money (because both are statistically rare).
And that means that the parties with a lot of money will decide which people get heard at all. Regardless whether they have good ideas, novel ideas, or even remotely plausible ideas.