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Comment by BrainScraps | Hacker News Reader

Reading this just makes me think of all of the lobbying dollars and campaign contributions that must have been paid by the super-rich to get these tax breaks.

Am I the only one that feels some populist rage welling up when he hears how much money is wasted on campaigning for office and influencing people in office? Aren't there more worthy uses of wealth and scarce resources?

And it just pains me that so many people think that they "have to play the game" to get things done by politicians. Non-profit organizations that use large percentages of their spend on "wining and dining" elected or appointed officials to try to make things beneficial things happen. Ugh.

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They only do that because it pays off. If the government was more decentralized and controlled significantly less dollars the incentives wouldn't be there and it wouldn't happen. It's a structural problem that happens in any system. Where power is concentrated it becomes beneficial to influence it - the more concentrated the more that can be spent.

I bet it wouldn't phase them a bit. They would create a watchdog professional organization (see US Chamber of Commerce) that makes sure local elections and appointments are influenced just as effectively as federal ones.

This already happens in judge elections in many states. Certain "business-friendly" candidates are showered in campaign money, with the expectations that when certain cases are appealed those judges will end up making "the right choice".

It's easier for people to control their government at the local level, than at the national level. For instance, the city of Cambridge a year or so ago removed all the DHS cameras that were put up after 9/11. That wouldn't happen if they were controlled at the national level. Look at gay marriage or marijuana, only a problem at the national level - let the states do what they want; it's less of a chance of one group going in and ruining it for everyone. Sure, it's probably not optimal there will be some laggards, and perhaps even backward progress. But overall, the system will be more stable and allow the most amount of freedom for those who want it - being able to vote with your feet is much better than voting in an election.

> being able to vote with your feet is much better than voting in an election.

I've had this idea for a while already. Indeed, it would be interesting to set up a free market system for the governments. US seems to be an ideal place for this sort of experiment given the ease of movement. Competition between states could be quite healthy.

I really do not understand why people in America elect judges. I find it perplexing. It is like electing a scientist, or a novel writer. Just weird.

It's not necessary (or even wise) to decentralize government in order to remove the influence of money on politics.

One relatively easy change that would almost completely remove the quid pro quo bribery effect of campaign contributions is to anonymize contributions so that candidates never know who their contributions are coming from. That way there would be no payback possible, and influence peddling through campaign contributions would become a thing of the past.

Here's one, of many work arounds.

Candidates expresses their opinion on X; those with a vested interest in X pour tons of money into his campaign so that the candidate that they agree with is selected. And since that candidate already shares the position with them, when he needs backing from industry that's who he'll meet with.

I suspect that forcing donations to be anonymous would come into conflict with the first amendment.

If you really believe that campaign contributions are constitutionally-protected speech, then outright political bribery should be legalized.

Anonymizing campaign contributions wouldn't have an effect on political speech and it wouldn't have an effect on who you gave money to. (You'd still be free to say who you contributed to. You'd also be free to lie about who you donated to.) It would only change the way the money was handled, with the ultimate effect of removing the quid pro quo from donations.

Do you think you should limit how much time someone can volunteer on a campaign? What about famous people expressing their opinion? These have the same effect as someone donating money. They just favor different groups of people.

It's not bribery to try and support someone whose views you agree with, or to have experts available to answer questions on complicated issues. Remember, campaign contributions don't give them a house, or boats, or planes, etc.

You're missing the point. Limiting campaign contributions is not a part of this. The point is to anonymize donations so that there can be no way for the candidate to correlate a contribution to a donor. That way the quid pro quo that is implicit in campaign contributions would go away. Politicians would have to go back to representing voters again.

I'm saying it's not the quid pro quo. I'm saying that generally are multiple sides to an issue, and people want to represent their side. A corporation would just fund the person who represents the views that are most inline with theirs. Corporations would tell the candidate what they feel is important, and then when he espouses the views the candidate receives anonymous donations.

And by corporation I don't just mean GE etc, I'm thinking of any group of people who have a shared ideology and are working to influence policy.

I'm sure that it pays off for a percentage of organizations, but for many, that game represents a lot of time, money and effort that create no value.

And with campaign contributions? Come on. For the federal elections of 2008, we used $5.3 Billion dollars. What did we get for it? The exact same number of elected officials we would have if we spent $0.

What value was created? Better representatives? Quality entertainment?

What else could that money have been used for? As I said earlier: Ugh.

Because that is true, it becomes worthwhile for lobbyists to invest money in encouraging the government to centralise control.

If lobbyist money can affect government policy - and it can - then it is always a worthwhile investment for those who have money to invest.

Basically, decentralizing government is, surprisingly enough, not a magic bullet.

The problem is not how much money is being 'donated'. The amount is fairly insignificant. The problem is the influence it buys and how that influence impacts the bigger picture.

So yes, I agree with you that this kind of corruption is a big problem. But how much money goes around in that circuit is not what concerns me, personally.

I'm not overly put-out by the amount of money "wasted" on campaigns and elections. I understand that there are many different ideas on the nature and function of government and I believe debates on such subjects (and campaigns and elections, which are effectively the same thing) to be extremely important. Personally I think we should do much better and have higher quality campaigns and higher quality candidates, but I think it is fully justified that such enormously important processes require significant amounts of resources. Though also I could imagine, and might prefer, a scenario where the process was not nearly so expensive.

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