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Comment by Nanana909 | Hacker News Reader

> The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.

Let’s say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and discusses reasons for (lobbies) him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery? Because it is lobbying. But under your definition of lobbying and bribing being equivalent terms, they are the same! And to call such an action bribery isn’t really making your case - it’s just nuking the utility of both of the words.

This is a problem with modern political discourse - all rhetoric is flattened. No - lobbying is lobbying. Bribing is bribing.

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>Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery?

most people would tend to agree that if it required something it was at the very least an exchange, perhaps a bribe.

one could ask why the request for support couldn't be done over the phone; the answer is "because of the dinner." -- well, then, isn't the dinner being exchanged for the support?

what is the value of the dinner? Does the value represent a monetary amount that would throw red flags up regarding the dinner being an exchange of value rather than a living expense? Does this exchange of value represent a bribe?

It's not as cut and dry as "A is lobbying and B is bribing.", that's why most political corruption scandals are generally handled by committees of people that try to go through the events to extract meaning from them.

The dinner is not necessarily buying support. It is buying access. The lobbyist can drown out my voice because I don't get the same access to my supposed representative. Welcome to a republic.

Do you have an idea to improve on this? Perhaps there could be 100 designated dinners per rep per year and up to four competing voices could be at the table. We could vote for the candidate who has a 100 dinner topics list that we like the best.

Of course it's still bribery. The definition doesn't change just because you happen to agree with what they're getting bribed for.

Okay, if you think having dinner while talking about cancer research is bribery, let me find you an even more bare bones example.

Your representative has a town hall and afterwards you get a few minutes to speak with him. You argue that the number of stop signs in your neighborhood isn’t enough and causes danger. In other words, you lobby him to pursue increased stop signs in your area. He hears you out, you guys shake hands, and leave.

As you have now engaged in lobbying, have you engaged in bribery? Clearly not. The two words are not synonyms.

I think you are trying to make a point where none needs to be made.

Lobbying has, for a very long time, been another term for bribery. Even as recently as the COVID crisis. Why do you think Pfizer got all that juicy government money? Go look at open secrets and see who they paid. If you want a real shocker, look at their top donors and then look at their voting record. Look at all the politicians that end up at Pfizer, Exxon, Northrop, Google, etc. Look at all the executives for those companies that, as if by some miracle, end up running MAJOR parts of our government.

You are correct in the literal sense lobbying was supposed to be about the everyman talking to their representative and convincing them to do right by them. However, now, the everyman has no voice. If you don't donate $X millions you won't even the time of day from most congressmen. It's corruption at it's core and an affront to democracy. It's disguised as "lobbying" because Citizens United allowed it to be. That's all.

It's not even X millions, lots of Congress critters have been bought for much less. Still, most citizens can't donate 20k to 50 Congress critters on the same committee to get their agenda pushed through.

A representative talking to a constituent is an okay form of 'lobbying.' Notably, the representative isn't getting a tangible benefit. Lobbying is broad spectrum and on one end is politicians doing the right thing, and on the other end is corporations making huge donations to political campaigns which is effectively bribery. Lobbying, as it's practiced in US politics, is overwhelmed by the cash that corporations can splash around that individual constituents can never compete with. Your stalwart defense of the practice as a whole is missing the forest for a dead tree.

Even in this case representative is getting a tangible benefit that he is possible getting an opportunity to do something which they can in turn take credit for. A lobbyist getting an audience with someone in power therefore may lead to something that is mutually beneficial to the lobbyist and the person in power, without need for materialized bribes. Shutting nuance out of a discussion will mislead us.

Look, we've got a right to petition our government. Corporate personhood is an abomination that blows that into a barn-door of a loophole. There's a ton of gray area here, but material benefit is, or should be in my opinion, a pretty bright line between legitimacy and bribery.

There's tons of nuance here; I'm responding to a person who appears to be insisting that there's absolutely nothing wrong with lobbying when in fact there are lots of problems with the actual practice as observed in the US.

> Shutting nuance out of a discussion will mislead us.

Frequently, lobbying is used for corruption. The insinuation that nuanced perception can somehow alter this dynamic, is not compelling.

I think the problem is that the behaviour that is called "lobbying" is better described as "bribery" when you look at the mechanics of what is actually happening. The words of course mean different things, but what is happening in the US is actually bribery.

Not only in the US.

> Okay, if you think having dinner while talking about cancer research is bribery, let me find you an even more bare bones example.

wait

Didn't you go from lobbying (getting a dinner specifically to discuss and convince):

> Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery?

to having dinner and talking cancer research en passant:

> having dinner while talking about cancer research

With that being said, these matters are supposed to be debated on a parliament's floor and an elected parliament member should have his stance about cancer research in his program, that's what he sold/promised to people who voted for them.

> You argue that the number of stop signs in your neighborhood isn’t enough and causes danger.

It's fine for normal people to lobby their representative. But if you're a billionaire telling your representative to close the roads near your house because you don't like normal people driving by, and anyway you travel by helicopter, and you donate millions every year to your representative's campaign so they'd better listen to you - then you're using money to increase your influence beyond "one man, one vote" and that's basically bribery.

> Okay, if you think having dinner while talking about cancer research is bribery, let me find you an even more bare bones example.

Who's footing the bill ?

If the dinner bill is split it is ok, otherwise it can be considered bribery.

It is still bribery. We don't really see it, though, because it's politically popular enough to direct support to cancer research so that lobbying is hardly necessary.

Dinner is bribery? I can see how it would be bribery if the cancer researcher made a campaign donation after dinner, or left a suitcase of cash under the table, or even paid for dinner, but simply having dinner is not bribery.

I agree that conflating these terms leads to less productive conversations.

Yes, dinner is very much bribery if the bribee doesn't pay for it. Even though I skip past those annoying HR trainings as much as possible, I still gathered that much from them.

>Dinner is bribery?

it very well could be.

I know plenty of people that could be persuaded to do things by the mere chance to meet someone that they adore.

'Dinner' is often just code for "let me introduce you to X business associate", which has definite real-world persuasive power for people that need to make those connections.

It would be unsurprising for an oil-tycoon to try to purchase a plate at a dinner with lots of oil-state-politicians. This isn't for the sake of good company, it's to further business interests.

A lot of companies forbid employees from having vendor-paid for lunches, among many other restrictive anti-bribery policies. I'd go so far as to say private companies are more ruthless about this than the government.

Ironically enough, I'm pretty sure these companies do a lot of lobbying.

Every company I've worked at has had compliance trainings, and free dinner is always listed as a form of bribery that needs to be run past the compliance team.

If we had proper standards of course it would be bribery. Offering anything with economic value should be considered such. Dinner, cup of coffee, campaign donation, lucrative position after stay in office, drugs, money, gold. All should be treated exactly same and result in extremely lengthy sentences in prison.

In my basic corporate training, we are told spending any more money than non trivial swag on people in the government is strictly prohibited because it can be considered bribery. So, I’m pretty sure the definition of bribery is very flexible.

That training is given to general employees, not to the lobbying firms that the company hires.

You realize that lobbyists have to be registered and have laws around appropriate behavior?

I’ve been involved in lobbying efforts before as an employee of a firm. It’s not bribery. The company pays a lobbying firm to strategize around an issue, put together talking points or a white paper and leverage their network (as registered lobbyists) to argue their point with various politicians. There is no money transfer happening.

The EU has a very healthy lobbying process as well.

Campaign donations are a different matter, but I can donate up to $5000 to any member of Congress as a citizen and likely get time with them. Am I “bribing” when I do that?

I mean lobbyists can break those laws, but you can break any law.

Apologies, I wasn't drawing enough of a distinction between lobbying, legalized campaign contributions by corporations, and other forms of influence peddling.

Bribery is a very strong word, but I think we can all agree that lobbying gives undue influence. Using money to increase one’s influence corrupts the representative in a representative democracy. I can certainly see why people would chose to call that bribery.

Generally agree. However, you're only describing the way it should work. The other, more problematic, part is when these groups give large contributions to candidates campaign, or even their "charity".

Because of changes in the law, during that dinner the lobbyist will causally mention their client sent $500k to the “Citizens for Some Bullshit the Congressman Cares About”

If he's buying dinner it's bribery. In other coutries giving money (or things that cost money) to politicians is just called corruption.

Cancer Inc. is your example of harmless influence ?!? you embarrass yourself here, perhaps unwittingly. Source: US citizen

Can you provide a better source? I know about the waste in large nonprofits, but am also personally benefiting from grant-supported research that if it otherwise didn't happen would leave me and a lot of others dead.

yikes! your healthcare is more important than the politics of funding; let's be very clear that my comment is about overall funding, not specific people and cases. Good wishes to you and yours

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