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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

So how do you get your message out without spending money? Do you only consider it freedom of speech if no one has a chance of hearing you? 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.

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Stopping the treatment of money as speech doesn't ban money, it just means it has to be spent transparently.

Actually that’s exactly what it would do. Citizens United was about the government banning a film because it was illegal campaign spending.

No, banning money would make campaign spending illegal for any reason.

So you’re fine with the government telling you it’s illegal to distribute a movie?

What do my feelings have to do with what the current law says?

Presumably, you’re telling me what you think the law ought to be. As far as the law is currently concerned, spending is protected as speech.

I did mean "used to be", you're right. I was saying that pre Citizens United money was not banned, it was regulated. There is a huge difference.

Personal face to face communication does not cost money. So, the only thing being banned is paying other people to do something for you which does not seem like speech to me.

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.

Protection against persuasion?

Propaganda works on different principles than persuasion. Repeat stuff enough and just about anything starts to sound reasonable.

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)"

> So how do you get your message out without spending money?

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.

What if people are not upset about spending money on the activity of lobbying, or getting your message out, or spending money traveling to D.C. ?

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.

That’s already heavily restricted. You can only give a few thousand to each candidate per election cycle. The problem is that then you have arms-length third-party organizations (Super PACs) that, by virtue of not coordinating with the candidate they support, are able to spend unlimited amounts of money. And the candidates know who donates to those, so once in office, they know who to reward, just as if the donations were made directly to them.

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 going to need a citation that 20% of the US population are college-educated professionals. Any way you want to slice it: of voting-age, registered, or that actually went to vote.

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.

> I'm going to need a citation that 20% of the US population are college-educated professionals. Any way you want to slice it: of voting-age, registered, or that actually went to vote.

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

Lots of people with bachelors degrees don’t have professional jobs.

Have you lobbied? Testified? Written to any of your representatives?

Does't cost much. Is pretty effective.

Huge sums of money is really only needed for GOTV and propaganda.

“Propaganda” is just a pejorative way of describing attempts to persuade people of something you don’t like.

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?

So you haven't lobbied?

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.

That’s all great, but if your ideas are anathema to what the major political forces want, then it’s not going to work. Sometimes you have to take your case to the people.

Dude. I feel like you need a bro hug more than advice. Don't despair.

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).

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