Comment by BSousa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BSousa | Hacker News Reader

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Ok, I'll admit I don't know much about the laws about US donations/lobbying on the political trail, but I'm assuming you can run for a slot for Congress using your own money for whatever is needed right?

Why not get Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey, Mark Zuckenberg (sorry about spellings) and most all other internet billionaires to threaten to run for congress if Congress keeps doing stupid shit like this? This would probably scare Congressmen more than anything else as I doubt, anyone running against these guys wouldn't have a chance of winning, and thats all they care about.

Because apart form threatening with force (a.k.a. as shooting them), only way I see the people get their power back is if some of these billionaires stand up and make it really hard for some people to be re-ellected again.

Bill Gates can make more change for good before breakfast than congress can in an entire session. Locking him up in there with those cretins would be a crime against humanity.

I think they have more important business to take care of than squabbling with Congressmen all day.

True. What if they selected a member of their staff to be the actual officeholder?

Exactly. I'm not actually saying they should be in congress, God knows they are way too competent to be there. But if these smart rich people can threaten to do something (run themselves, say they will do all donations to maximum permitted by law to other candidate, support some aide of them, etc) that will cost the election for the current candidate that is supporting SOPA, they may think twice about being shells for some industries.

What I am advocating is actually fighting fire with fire. You have politicians that get elected mostly by the donations made to them by these companies. So, why not get other companies that matter (Google, Mozilla, MS and Apple (not sure they stance on this) FSF, etc) together and start pushing the agenda as well?

Again, I don't know enough about the US system to even think what I'm saying is possible.

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