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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Donate money to the politicians you like. Politicians with a large number of small donors don't need to take money from lobbies.

Campaigning isn't cheap and if you don't pay them, the lobbyist will (or will get them replaced).

Complaining about money in politics is like complaining about the rain being wet. So might as well buy an umbrella like every other dry person did.

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I think I'm done donating for a while really. The sheer quantity of spam I get on my phone and email from random, semi-related causes and politicians all around the country is so irritating.

Omg yes. I'm not donating to any political campaigns again unless I can do so without giving my contact information. I donated to a Democratic campaign years ago and I've had hundreds of emails and calls since then, despite clicking several unsubscribe links, telling several people over the phone to take me off their list. It never ends. I've managed to create a Gmail filter that is pretty good at catching them, but it has some false positives every now and then. And I've just been ignoring the calls and texts for the last year.

I would love to give more but I simply cannot abide any organization that has zero respect for privacy as politicians do. I've given to a handful of charities but only when they have a clear privacy policy that is explicit about not sharing or selling information and has explicit opt-in for marketing materials

It is so unbelievably rude the only way I can think to stop it is to just simply never donate again. They must do this because it works for them.

I actually don't get hassled much by charities aside from some occasional junk mail, which I think is fine. They don't seem to pass my info around as aggressively as political causes.

Random thought, would you use a fundraising website to be the middleman in making donations, with commitments to not share personal information beyond your name?

Or just ban lobbying.

How is that supposed to work?

Are we going to ban public comment? Are we going to leave politicians to make decisions entirely on their own without any expert advisors?

You can ban or limit financing. Make an upper 10 or 20k limit per campaign per person. Lobbyist can still participate in public comment, offer dinner at three star restaurants, write the law proposition/amendment for the politician, but the checks will be limited.

Would require overturning a supreme court precedent or amending the constitution.

Because the current settled law is that throwing money at politicians and them then spending it is speech that’s protected under the 1st amendment.

Then why can't I throw money at a cop to persuade them to not give me a ticket?

We can and do limit actual donations and gifts direct to elected officials. Or at least have laws about transparency. Certainly more to be done here, but the margins of the debate are usually around things like media spending.

So, yes, you can buy an ad, or host a rally, or a fundraiser for a city-council candidate, to persuade the city council to raise the speed limit, or make parking free or whatever caused you to get a ticket. You can even schedule a direct meeting, or maybe even take out a representative for a meal to express your concern. The later case might involve some kind of disclosure, but you can probably do it.

  > the current settled law is that throwing money at politicians and them then spending it is speech

iirc the ruling is only about donating to pacs (political action committees) and not politicians directly (small distinction i suppose)

> iirc the ruling is only about donating to pacs (political action committees) and not politicians directly (small distinction i suppose)

It's about independent expenditures groups that do not coordinate with candidate campaigns (which have, after the fact, gotten the name “SuperPACs”; normal PACs can legally coordinate with and donate to campaigns, but cannot receive unlimited donations.)

right right, super pacs, forgot that specific point, thanks for pointing that out

Lobbying is banned on Brazil but it's ineffective. There's a profession called "doleiro" that basically is a guy that facilitates money laundering and exchange of favors between politicians and business. Corruption is so pervasive that politicians job is basically to create all sorts of bureaucratic impediments for everything so if a company wants to do anything it has to pay for special treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash

I thought this till I listened to a very nuanced, long discussion on the topic. It turns out that politicians actually need information from the industry to make educated decisions. Where to draw that line between getting information and corruption/ regulatory capture is easy on some cases but hard in general, especially given that those forms of corruption can happen over time not through a single event

Is it the argument that they are making educated decisions now?

just think how much worse it could be

Also, the "bad lobbyist" is always someone on the other side, or nebulous wealthy private actors, or big-bad corporations. Rarely do be people consider things like the efforts of their favorite advocacy group "lobbying" - for example the ACLU, AFL-CIO, or League of Women Voters, should they be limited in how their outreach is is performed? Remember Citizens United was NOT about campaign contributions, but rather independent expenditures that were on the same topic of an election, not coordinated with a campaign. Should LGBT+ groups be limited in how much than can spend to stop odious restrictions of their rights, or planned parenthood campaigning for maintaining the Roe/Wade status-quo? The cost of that is advocacy, influence pedaling, and media spending by other groups you may not support. This is why free-speech is always under-pressure. On the other-hand, we can do much more to require transparency.

> Campaigning isn't cheap

Isn’t it a two way street? Politicians(or lobbyists) invest in campaigning because they hope the investment will pay off if the get elected.

If you make being in office unprofitable then campaigning will get cheaper as there won’t be any competition.

Yes, but that is a function of the influence that office has in the world. If the position can influence billion dollar decisions, then there is incentive to influence the office-holder in the direction most favorable to the interested parties. The only way to deal with that is to reduce the scope of government.

It’s practically impossible to donate to campaigns in a meaningful way, especially with the limits on donations removed. Imagine you got 1 million people to donate $10 to a specific candidate, which is a very overly optimistic outlook. How can that possibly compete with companies and people like Robert Mercer throwing tens and hundreds of millions at elections?

This assumes you (for any size of "you") can exceed the amount lobbyists will pay.

Considering the lobbyists in question represent the wealthiest people on the planet, that requires a very large amount of money.

We could outlaw private lobbyists. We could limit campaign spending. We could make PACs publically show all their contributors publically. Corporations are not people.

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