Hacker News Reader

Comment by viklove | Hacker News Reader

> the populace incentivizes them to act

It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists that are funded by massive corporations that are trying to protect their revenue streams. What's the solution? Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way. That would be a great start.

Regulatory capture means all of this is borderline impossible, though. We live in a world where even 100M people will have a hard time fighting the collective power of billions and billions of dollars. Money makes the world go 'round baby.

View on HN

> Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way.

How do you feel about the citizens united ruling, which (I am paraphrasing, perhaps poorly) found that by disallowing one to spend money on poltiical speech, that freedom of speech was impacted?

I think it's actually quite a sensible point. Speech costs money. Therefore limits on the money an organization can spend is necessarily a limit on speech.

("Overturn citizens united" is the classic liberal/democrat view, but I really question how many have thought deeply about the implications of what they are proposing).

BTW, as you probably know, regulations quickly get co-opted by corporations/lobbyists for their own ends. So, if there is a true desire to funnel money to politicians, they will find a way. Now, that does not mean that we shouldn't try to make that harder, if that's what we think is the right move (I think Citizens United was a great ruling. I assume you disagree based off of the above)

Sure, money influences politics, but the politicians are still elected by voters, and if voters didn't incentivize short-term planning by re-electing politicians with short-term policies, we'd see more long-term policies.

I think there are at least three partial solutions that need to be pushed simultaneously:

  * Reduce the amount of money in politics
  * Mechanisms to reduce the impact of the money that remains
  * Mechanisms to help voters see through short-term promises

> It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists

The populace casts the votes. We have corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists because we vote for corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com