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Comment by reroute1 | Hacker News Reader

It's not, but hasn't money always played a big role in politics? It's hard to define where a wealthy persons legitimate advantage lies and when it becomes purchasing the presidency. I'm all for a meritocracy, but getting money out of politics doesn't seem like anything easily solved.

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The amount of money Bloomberg can/is using to buy this election is unprecedented in a Presidential candidate. The simple definition for attempting to buy the presidency is "any money you control", including your bank account, your business, dark money groups, etc. Elections should be funded entirely by donations from individuals.

Ok but I'm saying even with these rules wealthy people will have an advantage in many ways. Funding for a campaign is just one element of an elite wealthy candidates advantages, this guy has his own press and no one can do anything about that. But like I also said I agree that in an ideal system it's a pure mertirocracy for the jobs qualifications, that in practice is very hard to get though.

It would be relieving to see this effort fail. The popularity of platforms should be based on the merit of the ideas, not money spent.

Or maybe people like Bloomberg because of his policies and positions, and concluding that it’s simply because of money is a logical fallacy.

That doesn't mirror how primary voters actually rank candidates. Polling shows that many voter's first preference and second preference are often ideologically different -- you might have a primary voter who's 1st pick is a centrist democrat, and 2nd pick is socialist democrat, and vice versa.

So? That simply means that voters like inconsistent things. Or that your labels aren’t sufficient to capture their preferences.

> It's not, but hasn't money always played an important role in politics?

I guess it's a rhetorical question. In other words, let me rephrase: why money has always played an important role in politics?

In 2016 Lawrence Lessig tried to attack this problem, with little success. In this election there seemingly is another candidate, somewhat more practical than Lessig, with somewhat stronger systematic approach than others, so we can hope for some progress.

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