Kill Hollywood? Let's fix politics instead: kill lobbying. | Hacker News Reader

Kill Hollywood? Let's fix politics instead: kill lobbying.

238 pointscies99 comments

I read the 'Kill Hollywood' RFC, gave it some thought and came to a conclusion that killing Hollywood is not a Value Adding Intention (tm). I understand that the RFC is a response to SOPA&co which is obviously pushed by Hollywood.

My thoughts went: "Should we-the-people retaliate against some influential business (sector) every time they successfully lobby for their own interests against the interest of the wider public?"

On which I concluded: "No we should fix politics instead, that's where the problem originates, that's where we can fix it once and for all."

And the most obvious fix I see is to criminalize lobbying (= power to the wealthy) as it is against democracy (= power to the people) in its very nature.

Just to name a few sectors that successfully lobbied for changes that (imho) harmed the wider public: banks, car industry, big-oil, big-pharma, big-food, military contractors.

Some simple math: if business (sector) X puts in 5M for a lobby on issue Y; the probability of success on their lobby campaign is 0.5; then the payoff of the campaign is at least 10M. Now where do those 10M come from? From everyone that is not X. In other words: the honest people --who do not try to influence politics outside of the public discussion-- lose from the wealthy mega-corps.

Lobbying is currently a fast growing industry itself:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/01/washington-lobbying-grew-to-32.html

So please YC use your influence to fight the real bad, and "Kill the Lobby" with an RFC :)

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If you remove lobbying from a political system then the elected officials exist in a vacuum with no information coming from outside sources. Remember charities and NGO's also lobby government (as well as the churches, mosques, temples, big pharma, little pharma, oil, mothers for this or that, fathers for other stuff, governments for war, governments for peace.... this list is endless).

The problem isn't lobbying. It's corrupt elected officials who at best accept bribes/payment to fund an overly expensive electioneering machine. The problem is that lobbying happens with no public over site and now accountability.

The problem is more complex than just removing lobbying. Do you really want government making decisions without asking companies advice? The same companies that the government expects to implement strategies?

Say for example the USA predicts a 20% increase in crude oil use over the next 10 years. Where the refineries should go, where the oil is best sourced, how the petrol products are best distributed are all important questions that the oil industry is well placed to help answer. Not dictate of course but their opinion should matter.

EDIT: Before anyone accuses me of supporting the current system please give me the benefit of the doubt. I understand the system is inadequate as it stands but to remove lobbying just creates another problem of equal gravity.

The point is that greed is dependable and stable. If you can depend on something that won't ruin the economy or society, then at least that works as a guarantee against worse excesses. And let's face it, even large corporations have a stake in maintaining a veneer of free enterprise (even though they tend toward cronyism).

Consider that idealistic politicians are also capable of more damage than corrupt self-interested ones.

The solution is not to seek for selfless idealists (who may be dangerous), but to remove power from politicians (to the extent possible) or at least to move decision making as close/locally as possible to the areas affected.

In a way, those interested in politics to make money would be less interested in it for the pure sake of having (then preserving) political power.

Here's one way to start: remove direct elections of senators. It makes lobbyists having to deal with 50 separate state legislatures rather than 100 individuals.

"Here's one way to start: remove direct elections of senators. It makes lobbyists having to deal with 50 separate state legislatures rather than 100 individuals."

Lobbyists hear this and think "Oh boy! I get to deal with a set of elections that the average voter cares even less about than Congressional ones!"

Personally, I'd go the other way around, and switch to a Westminster system where you only have one vote for federal office, meaning that plans like Obama's small-donor system would be more feasible for the elections that really matter: legislative ones.

> The point is that greed is dependable and stable. If you can depend on something that won't ruin the economy or society

That statement shows exactly why "libertarianism" and all associated doctrines are built on a solid foundation of ignorance of human nature. There's nothing you could argue, really, when the other party is not even aware of the basic axioms.

Just in this context of a political system, having a self-interested politician is less dangerous than having an idealistic one. Mind you, there are good and bad idealists, but their impact is greater; and since politicians generally are negative, it's better their impact be restrained at least by that narrow sentiment.

'It makes lobbyists having to deal with 50 separate state legislatures rather than 100 individuals.'

This is precisely why I tend to be very libertarian at a federal level and not so much at the state level. I consider having a powerful single point of failure a flaw in the system, one I think the founders were well aware of.

When considering a decision, elected officials may consult existing scientific literature, may commission scientific studies or polls on the issue, or request the public comments on their specific proposal. There are plenty of information sources to inform them. If they rely just on information provided by the richest, and which represents the interest of these richest groups, the politician's decisions will be suboptimal.

You can sort through thousands of opinions, or you can organize them. Organzied groups of similar thinking folks are what the media calls "special interest groups" or "lobbyists".

Now, quick - find me some scientific literature on a 1031 real estate exchange (for example). Then tell me what you think of them. How long did that take? How confident are you that you understand the issue?

Now do that for 1,000,000 more issues of equal or greater complexity.

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of democracy.

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of democracy.

They just shouldn't be able to give politicians money.

A lobbyist can give a candidate for Federal election the same amount as you or I: $2,500.

There are other ways presidential candidates get more than 2,500 from a person. Please check out http://mydataorganizer.com/fund.html You can search for the donors who donated at least 30,000 . There are about 1000 people who donated more than 30,000 each for the 2012 US Presidential election.

Lobbyists are a necessary and good part of...

...getting 90% of your money stolen by those who have money.

I hope you have absolutely no damn idea how delusional you are. Lobbyism is the cancer of this society and of this planet, and it will destroy it if not stopped.

It's a simple equation: do you know what you get, if you add an "interest group", less than 100% systemic transparency, and give it some time? The best term for the result is "organized crime".

Agreed, I wouldn't advocate just taking the opinion of the richest. Nor would I advocate just taking the opinion of scientists as important as their work is.

It would be nice if we lived in a simple world but most of what politicians consider has no simple answer and there are diverse opinions that should guide them. Industry is just one of them.

For example, lets look at public health. It would be stupid to look at public health issues without asking pharmaceutical companies what they think. It would be equally stupid to sit at the table and think they are not trying to make money. It would be equally stupid to not ask scientist, public health officials and the public. It seems reasonable to me that the pharma companies would employ specialist PR people to deal with legislation. It does not seem reasonable to me that in order to stay elected individuals need to raise millions of dollars to fight for what they believe and are thus open to bribery. Fix that and lobbying no longer matters.

All businesses exist to make money. That is their sole goal. If you know that then there can be a reasonable outcome.

BTW: All western democracies are struggling with Lobbying. Only the US has got in to the state where it appears that lobbying has the upper hand (although many would argue the UK is close).

> When considering a decision, elected officials may consult existing scientific literature, may commission scientific studies or polls on the issue, or request the public comments on their specific proposal.

You really don't know anything about elected officials.

Look at their backgrounds - how many of them can understand any of the sources that you propose?

And then there's the assumption that they're just deciding between competing proposals. They're often creating proposals.

> If they rely just on information provided by the richest, and which represents the interest of these richest groups, the politician's decisions will be suboptimal.

Since they don't, that's irrelevant. (It's easy enough to see that they're influenced by groups that aren't "rich". See AARP, Greenpeace, etc.)

It is important to remember that an elected official's job is to get elected and re-elected because anyone who doesn't do that doesn't do anything else either.

Who's to say we can't "lobby" without throwing money at our representatives? Give information without bribing them to no end about which way they should vote. Instead they should LISTEN to both sides of an argument and make an informed decision rather than voting based on who will give them the most money.

Maybe not lobbying per se, just banning corporations from donating money to them. Money is not speech.

I recognize that Lawrence Lessig is beating this particular drum lately, and he's probably way smarter than me. However, I can't escape the idea that money is the mother's milk of politics. It's like water in that it always finds a way through an obstacle, no matter how much you put in its way. If you eliminate overt lobbying, organizations will find a way to route around whatever laws are in place to lobby covertly, in ways that are likely much harder for the average person to detect.

Furthermore, I'd point out that, depending on the form of a ban on lobbying, the recent SOPA protest might not have been able to happen. Google might have been prevented from blacking out their page as would Wikipedia, lest they run afoul of anti-lobbying laws. That's something worth thinking about.

It's also not just the business sector that has lobbyists. There are tons of other groups. The Sierra Club and NRA are two biggies that come to mind. As an individual, it's much more efficient for me to throw in with one of those groups to ensure my interests are protected than it is to do it myself. Both are exceptionally effective at getting what they want because they spend all day keeping an eye on elected (and unelected) government officials and their continued existence hinges on their success.

I'm not arguing that we have to like this current situation, but it's hard for me to think of a better scenario that doesn't infringe on the rights of people to assemble as a group and voice their opininon via financial support, advertising, etc... Just because some of the time we don't personally like the result of lots of lobbyists, doesn't mean this is the root of all evil. In the end, all the money in the world isn't going to compel ordinary citizens to vote for someone who doesn't have their interests in mind. Exhibit A would be John Corzine who had an incredible fortune at his disposal in his reelection bid as governor of NJ and still lost to Chris Christie in 2009.

Bad laws are stopped when citizens participate in the political process. I think people are realizing this. Social networks like twitter, facebook, reddit and hacker news makes organizing easier. They also make it easier to hear alternative voices (e.g. Lessig, Tim O'Reilly) and criticisms of the mainstream media. The best way to handle bad actor lobbyists is to counter them with large numbers of organized, informed citizens who participate.

I'm hoping Dodd was right and this was a watershed moment.

The way I see it, the only reason political parties need such vast amounts of money is to spend it campaigning. If you reduce the need or ability to campaign, by restricting advertising or making voting compulsory, the demand for money is lessened, and some industry or another threatening to pull their support isn't such a big deal.

How would making voting compulsory reduce the need/ability to campaign?

A huge part of campaigning is either driving your own turnout (field operations) or suppressing the other guys' turnout (negative ads). Additionally, there's a philosophy of "suppress turnout in general and it will probably help me", which statistically is a good move for Republicans, most of the time.

The argument is that compulsory voting would disincentivize these activities in favor of issues-based campaigning. I agree although I'm not sure I agree strongly enough to favor compulsory voting.

How about "single payer" campaign funding?

You want to contribute money to politics? Sure, feel free to pour some into this big barrel over here. The proceeds will be evenly divided between all candidates.

At the party level, or just to "politics" in general?

Nation-wide.

> it's hard for me to think of a better scenario that doesn't infringe on the rights of people to assemble as a group and voice their opininon

exactly. i'm not even clear on what behavior people are referring to when they say they want to ban lobbying. the act of lobbying is getting in front of politicians and convincing them to vote a certain way; is that what opponents of lobbying want to ban? when people across the internet banded together and called their representatives to fight soap, that was us lobbying!

what would the text of a law banning lobbying even look like? all the reasonable pieces of legislation i can imagine are just campaign finance laws, which i'm mostly on board with, but unfortunately, it looks like we need a constitutional amendment to pass them.

I think perhaps banning the ability for politicians to gain financially would be the key. Lobbying is somewhat just group participation in a democracy. But funding political campaigns and making deals is where it can get evil and allow corporations influence that they shouldn't have.

Lessig's point is a fair one. And it's not about banning lobbying.

The problem is the same - money in congress is distorting its policies, agendas and outcomes.

But Lessig's solution is to make the money = the people's voice. He recognizes that money will flow, and is in fact part of the process. But the idea is that you structure the system such that the candidates want to get monies from their constituents more than they want it from the big businesses.

He proposes one way to realign these interests is to publicly fund elections - in some way or another.

> I'm not arguing that we have to like this current situation, but it's hard for me to think of a better scenario that doesn't infringe on the rights of people to assemble as a group and voice their opininon via financial support

That's not a "right". That's a disease. Money in politics is the ultimate source of evil in western democracies. That is the beast that needs starving. That is the thing that needs systematic dismantling.

The rights I was referencing are freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. My point is that it is extremely difficult to remove money from politics and still allow these. Let's say you and I want to start a movement to influence our representatives to get the money out of politics. How do we do that as a team if we can't pay for advertising, a website, adwords, phone calls, etc...? That stuff costs money. period. It's not enough to say candidates can't spend money directly, but private citizens can. That just pushes the candidate spending to shadow groups that are really just mouthpieces for the candidate (e.g. Super PACs).

I'm asking this question genuinely. How do we do it and not make a hash of a bunch of other rights? I'd love to see a workable solution, the country would be better off if there could be one.

I never said it would be an easy transition.

For starters, all political campaigns should be financed from a "single payer" system. You, Joe Schmoe, want to contribute money to politics? Sure, here's the big barrel, drop your cash in it, and we'll divide it up between all candidates.

True about Google, but if corporations were banned from donating in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem now.

Corporations are banned from donating to individual Federal candidates and have been for several decades.

Corporations are allowed (after Citizens United) to spend as much money as they want to get a political message out, but hey, that's what the New York Times does, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

In particular read the section on Super PACs.

So, I am forbidden from giving you money so that you could purchase a car.

However, I am allowed to gift you the whole car.

You are missing the point. PG didn't say "Kill Hollywood" in order to get revenge on them for SOPA/PIPA. (He _did_ title the piece in a provocative manner that _suggested_ he was seeking revenge. That title certainly bought the piece some notoriety.)

Instead, PG said "Kill Hollywood" because the SOPA/PIPA debacle finally made it apparent to him that these industries are ripe for replacement. Imagine you notice that some middleman in a purchasing chain is starting to try very hard to include terms in their contracts that prohibit their customers from going directly to suppliers. This might make you realize that this middleman is scared of becoming unnecessary as customers go directly to suppliers. The middleman is in a position to know their industry really well... perhaps it's time for you to start up a business matching up the customers with suppliers directly (for a tiny cut, of course), thus killing off the middleman and making yourself a successful company in the process.

Well, that's what PG saw going on here. The SOPA/PIPA behavior made him realize that these media companies are focusing on keeping their position rather than on improving their services, which made it obvious that they are in danger of LOSING their position. What a perfect time to launch a company intended to profit from the large-scale changes that will be happening anyway.

There is good economic literature on how bribery evolves into its more transparent and regulated form, lobbying, as a society develops. There is an equally developed literature on the returns on lobbying. Book-ending all of this is the legitimate claim that no elected official can be expected to understand everything of consequence and so will probably need to be "educated" (the base claim of every lobbyist, whether in good faith or not).

Killing lobbying, sadly, is not an option. It will force the influence vectors under the table and cause all sorts of nastiness. People wanting to influence power isn't bad; it just needs to be effectively channeled.

What is needed is more transparency. Going both ways.

Going up, we need some way for politicians to effectively guage the support or opposition to a proposed piece of legislation. The ad hoc activism model we have going now is Dark Ages crap.

I can see a future where reps and senators pledge to use an online polling platform for bills that voters registered in their district sign up to voice up with, and where not pledging to use such a system will be anathema to one's campaign.

Going down, we need something that makes campaign financing more effective. By more effective I mean that instead of finding out about donation opportunities ad hoc I have a systematic way of ensuring I have considered every candidate and that every candidate has been evaluated on every issue pertinent to me. Not terrifically complicated software.

Second stage of top-to-bottom transparency revolves around informing voters, but I think that is fairly well covered for the amount of influence it has and the number of people who regularly and actively follow elections.

Lobbyists are further proof that shipping code wins and they know this. We can discuss this all we want in the blogosphere, but so long as they are the ones implementing the laws, those are the implementations and architectural decisions we're going to have to live with. Congress is a commit generator, and most of the "code" put in front of them for review are written by lobbyists.

From my understanding, it isn't Congressmen that write the laws most of the time. AFAIK, many laws are written by industry and then handed to Congressmen read and modify, and such bills are handed with explanations and arguments to why they are needed. Such a process with always result in laws that move in the interest of lobbying powers due to the very nature of how negotiation works. In every negotiation, you have an "anchoring" effect, where the final outcome will be near the starting point. With that in mind, lobbyists define the starting point and therefore where the anchor is hooked on every debate.

The only solution I can come up with to this is a requirement that every single bill needs to be drafted in the open with a commit history of who made each and every commit to a bill. Only with this in place would we be able to see how much of the laws are written not by government but by industry. It would also give the people (specifically active concerned citizens) a voice early on in the process so that the position on which the "anchor gets hooked" is more balanced and representative.

Politicians, and especially lobbyists, today say things to the effect that it is difficult to draft laws and discuss things out in the open. What those that complain about this fail to understand is that that is the very essence of democracy. Democracy starts at the beginning of the discussion of public policy, not at the point at which policy comes to a vote.

Dodd, during his speech where he remarked that SOPA was a watershed moment, even said, "the white noise has made it impossible to have a conversation about this. We've gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks." This attitude is a clear sign of someone that doesn't understand what a democracy is. That white noise is democracy in action and the best thing we can do is make sure that democracy is happening at the inception of every idea that evolves into a law.

We basically need a super easy, useable git for laws accessible by everyone.

According to this article 65% of bills are written by lobbyists: http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_15452125

So, basically, that's transparency. It's good, but it's not the whole solution.

The other part is stopping money from polluting politics.

There are too many in the tech community that are susceptible to such bullshit reductionist viewpoints. You don't gain anything from ignoring the fundamental features of reality. There are two inescapable points:

1) We live in a highly interdependent society of 300m people. Such a society needs to be governed. Indeed, it needs a lot of government, like any amalgamation of people that are forced to interact with each other. The debate about "more versus less government" is only sensible in the margins. Its really more of a question of "good versus bad government."

2) The public needs to advise elected officials. Because of (1), elected officials have a huge range of issues to deal with. It is literally impossible for them to educate themselves about those issues. Lobbyists fill to role of educating officials.

You're not going to be able to run a society that has, e.g., no regulated industries (see 1) or one where representatives of those industries do not weigh in on that regulation (see 2). Forget about such childish ideas.

Stuff like "get rid of lobbying" is as useful in political debate as statements like "get rid of gravity" are in aerospace engineering. Yes, that would make certain things easier, but...

Please provide your reasoning for your assertion in (1). You did not explain why you "need" government of presumably central authority, as opposed to something like an agreed-upon set of protocols operating at a local level.

Please also explain your reasoning for (2). It does not seem immediately obvious that the majority of the public has anything useful to say about policy whatsoever.

One can imagine a distributed system of organization, akin to what is used in the internet, but that's still organization. I'm personally a fan of pushing more authority down to the courts, which are both distributed and local. However, at the end of the day it becomes a question of where particular authority exists rather than a question of a need for the existence of authority.

We live in a highly interdependent society of 300m people. Highly specialized division of labor has given us a society where any person depends on probably 10,000 others for their basic needs, and modern technology has given us a society where nearly every human activity has the potential to harm large numbers of people. However you want to structure it, you need government to ensure the harmonious operation of such a society. Government is indeed an emergent phenomenon in human societies. As Google grew from a startup to a multi-national, it didn't have the conscious intention of growing a management layer for the sake of having more management. Yet, Google has a lot of management. Indeed, even in computers we see operating systems exploding in size and complexity as computers themselves become more functional and complex.

Techies take it for granted that startups grow management as they mature, that operating systems get more complex, that schedulers and out-of-order execution structures eat up increasingly large amounts of die-space in CPU's, yet there is a large contingent that thinks that a government running the affairs of 300 million people could be dramatically (meaning 10x, not 25%). Techies don't bat an eye at an OS that takes up 20% of your memory right off the bat, but in the face of a federal civil service payroll that amounts to 1.5% of GDP, many complain loudly of "too much government." Now, there are good arguments to be made that we could trim here and there and maybe get an effective government half the size (though it should be noted our federal system by design doesn't lend itself to particular efficiency), but do you think a federal government with a million employees and $1.5 trillion in expenditures would be so qualitatively different from the one we have now? Of course not.

Re: lobbyists, I didn't say anything about the majority of the public having useful things to say about policy. I said that 1) there are lots of policies that need to be made; and 2) there is no practical way for elected officials to make such policies without input from the affected parties (i.e. lobbyists).

Let me give you a very specific example. Here in Chicago we have two very dirty coal power plants. They're the product of an elementary market failure (the power company that profits from their operation doesn't bear the staggering health costs of that operation). They're also the product of a basic democratic failure (the health costs are highly localized to poor communities, so in effect voters choose to get cheaper electricity at the expense of a poor minority). Shutting down those coal plants is almost certainly the right thing to do, even on a purely economic calculus. Now, a legislator could read up on economic externalities, demography, and public health, and come to that conclusion. Do you think a group of state legislators, who all work part time, are going to be able to do all that? Hell, all that theory would go completely over the heads of many HN-ers, much less most Illinois state legislators! Someone needs to collect the data, estimate the health consequences of the plants, estimate the economic consequences of shutting them down, put together a policy proposal, and tell a legislator in 5 minutes why it is a good idea. That someone is a lobbyist (whatever you choose to call them).

(upvoted for good answer, thank you sir/madam)

I would agree that government through some mechanism is needed--thank you for clarifying your position in that regard.

Note, though, that some of your examples--Google's management, OS complexity, and so on--are actually very much contested in some circles. People accept that their OS of choice may be bloated, but few I believe want that.

There's an interesting question present, though, in the "running the affairs of 300 million people", right? To what degree does the government actually "run" those affairs, and ought the government do so?

As regards to the Chicago thing--that sucks, good luck. :(

I live in Connecticut, and people should be aware that we have a great campaign finance system here (best in the country, IMHO) that's made an enormous difference reducing the power of lobbyists at our State Capitol.

To show how the system works, I'll give an example. A typical State Senate campaign runs a budget of about $100k. Under our Clean Elections system, participating candidates must raise $15k in small contributions of $100 or less per person. They then qualify for a grant from the state of $85k to round out their budget.

The grants are funded by state auction of unclaimed property and the like, not by taxpayer dollars (though even if we didn't do it this way, clean elections would still be a worthy thing for taxpayers to support).

This system is purely voluntary, but 75% of all candidates participated in the last state election. Our current governor was the first ever elected under this system.

Of course, this kind of reform doesn't happen out of the blue. A previous governor of our found himself thrown in jail for bribes and corruption. Afterward, both parties found themselves competing to "out-reform" the other, and this campaign finance system was the result.

Politically active folks I know tell me that lobbyists at the State Capitol in Hartford are less than half of their former selves. They still exist, but don't hold nearly as much power as they once did, when we called our state "Corrupticut."

Our system isn't perfect, but I think it's far better than anything that's done in any other state.

More states should move in our direction, but that will require overcoming their own lobbyists first. Not easy, but we are proof that it's possible.

Sadly, many outsiders don't like our system. The US Supreme Court also might destroy it (and a similar system in Arizona). It would be like Citizens United all over again.

But don't just take my word on all of this. Here's more info for the interested:

http://prospect.org/article/clean-election-state

Money for political campaigns should be a "single payer" system.

Lobbying in its most basic form is simply free speech. I should have the right to assemble with like minded people and say whatever I want. We should also be free to contact politicians with the message, or pay for ads on TV with our message. How do you stop this and claim to be a free country? I don't much care for Citizens United, but I am certain the founding fathers considered political speech to be covered in the 1st Amendment.

I agree with the idea, but the devil is in the details. Congress should start with a cooling off period for staffers to work for lobbying firms, but I don't even know what it means to "criminalize lobbying".

Another way to look at it is that lobbying distorts free speech. Instead of each person having an equal, free, say, a person with more money has a 'greater say', if that makes sense. Sooner or later we'll have to work out whether free speech or true (as far as representation goes) democracy is more important to us.

Trying to "equalize" free speech just hands vast swathes of power to the people who get to define "equal". Speech is intrinsically unequal in effectiveness and there's no way to make that go away.

An important measure to change the skewed dynamics of political financing in the US would be the additional funding of political parties with money from the government. An example of this is Germany, where parties receive money from the state according to the number of votes they collect, in addition to other funding sources. This relieves the pressure to raise money from corporations, and makes politicians less dependent on "money interests".

EDIT: Wikipedia article going into more detail, see under 'Political Revenue': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_finance_in_Germany

Lawrence Lessig has much to say on the subject:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/02/lawrence-lessig-on-money-...

Basically, publicly-funded elections could remove the corrupting influence of corporate money. Still not clear on how we get there, but I may pick up his latest book to learn more

Great google talk on the subject for those interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc

I think it's important to note who the lobbyists are trying to speak for: it's you as a voter. Same with money.

Bottom line: you cannot buy a political office anywhere in America. You still must be voted in. You also cannot directly give money to a politician for their personal benefit; money can only be contributed to their (re-)election campaign. It's valuable because it buys media (that's 60% or more of a campaign cost).

So money, and lobbyists, are just proxies for large blocks of votes.

To fix this problem, you really need voters who stand by their own principles and aren't overly influenced by one-sided media (that's the only reason a politician needs money).

You also need to somehow disconnect the influence of media and advertising from actual voters. Would love to hear ideas on that particular problem.

More realistic changes include those that Lessig proposes: finance campaigns through what is effectively a capped tax credit offered to every taxpayer to allocate among candidates as they see fit, then repeal Citizens United.

> So money, and lobbyists, are just proxies for large blocks of votes.

No, it's not.

I only have one vote, and a few bucks to donate.

Ritchey Rich Jr., over there, has only one vote, and $100 million to donate. He trumps me by many orders of magnitude. And his money is a proxy only for his own self-interest.

That is the real problem nowadays.

Lobbying is constitutionally protected, and rightfully so. Without such a protection, the government is under no obligation to open a dialog with citizens. When people organized against SOPA, that was lobbying. That ability to talk with your representatives and leaders should not be removed.

I was very amazed to learn that in the USA you can legally give money to politicians so that they would vote for something. It is illegal in my country and I have trouble finding rationale why on Earh, could this be legal anywhere?!

>so that they would vote for something.

That is illegal, here's what wikipedia has to say

>Similarly, political donors are legally entitled to support candidates that hold positions with which the donors agree, or which will benefit the donors. Such conduct becomes bribery only when there is an identifiable exchange between the contribution and official acts, previous or subsequent, and the term quid pro quo denotes such an exchange.

> That is illegal

It is technically illegal.

What the OP really meant, I think, was kill corporate contributions to candidates/officials/campaigns.

A company should certainly be allowed to hire someone whose soul job is to educate politicians.

Probably though, they should not be able to buy them fancy dinner, give them gifts, etc. Probably it is even fair to say that lobbying must be transparent. Either through some new system which interfaces citizens with their officials; or, through some direct transparency with regard to intentions of the lobbyist.

Money is the problem, not the lobbying.

There's a number of little things that would make lobbying less effective.

- Move legislators back to their home district

- Term limits

- Permit them to only accept contributions from registered voters in their district

- repeal the 17th amendment

Congratulations, you've empowered the permanent bureaucracy.

He said "term limits" not "remove all power from elected officials." We already have what you call a "permanent bureaucracy" - it's called the civil service. It executes orders from elected officials - the President, cabinet officers, and every civil servant's paycheck is dependent on the good will of Congress.

Limiting the influence of lobbyist's campaign contributions will empower ordinary citizens since elected officials will be more dependent on pleasing us to get elected rather than pleasing large donors so they can use large donor money to run media campaigns to get elected. Reducing the influence of large campaign donors will not give the civil service any more power than it has now.

The civil service is corrupt along with staffers and legislators themselves.

The problem is the revolving door between industry and government... the promise of being able to sacrifice yourself politically translating directly into a cushy job in industry that's gained billions by the malfeasance... high profile examples are legion: Dick Cheney, Dick Gephardt, Pat Toomey, and (more timely) Chris Dodd.

I don't know the best solution but an airgap of related employment (say, 2 years) would probably slow this process down.

Should, could, would - are all nice and all.

Convincing democratically-elected representatives to stop receiving money, money they use to buy votes, is a futile fight. Even if you do, many will just be corrupt and still accept money or other kinds of payment. IMHO, I'm starting to think that this system is really good - at least you have the means to find out who paid what and to whom.

Killing Hollywood, or at least doing something to make them think twice the next time, now that's doable.

I think the money needed to buy votes is a rather US specific problem and maybe not that hard to attack. As example - in Germany we have 2 laws for reducing the dependency of political parties on private sponsors. The first is that TV stations have to send a certain amount of political spots before elections for all acknowledged parties and the parties only have to pay the self-costs of the stations for that time (around 35% of the price for commercial advertisement). The second law is that parties that get above 0.5% or 1% (depending on the type of election) receive money for each received vote (up to certain limits to prevent that parties just take part in an election to make money from that). I don't say it's perfect and there is still a lot of financing going on beside that, but it shows that the fight at least isn't futile and that it is possible to reduce the dependencies on sponsors.

If countries outside of the US can manage to run their government without extreme interference of lobbyists, then there is certainly a way for us to do it, too. The problem here isn't "well, how will politicians get accurate information without having to spend loads of time doing research?" It's more an issue of the culture in the US. If we make a shift towards a system more like the one in Germany mentioned above, it will become the cultural norm in the US. The problem is making that shift and breaking our current financially-driven habits.

The lobbying system enabled hollywood, but it didn't force it. They could have attempted to make an honest profit. Plenty of industries do. Instead they chose to attack the internet. They should be held accountable.

I'm sick of the "corporations only want to make money so shouldn't be held accountable" meme. The fact that they have no intrinsic consciences makes it more vital that they be held in check by extrinsic punishments.

I see lobbying reform as just a bandaid to the root of the issue. The root of the issue seems to be that congress just has to many opportunities and decisions to make for the welfare of a giant and growing population. They are open to input from millions of different parties all trying to grab a piece of the taxpayer pie.

I really think the solution needs to be limiting the decisions that congress can make by limiting the amount of funds made available to them. The idea that congress should control all of the tax payer dollars made sense when the only expenses were Infrastructure and Security. But now there are just too many expense possibilities.

I would love to see some "real" action against the way congress is spending our money. What if everyone didn't pay their federal taxes in April? If I a board does a really terrible job at running a company, they usually don't get paid and often lose their jobs. Sure we have elections, but it's very clear that these elections favor the incumbents (ahem, lobbying). What if we really challenged their structure?

Most people don't pay their taxes in April. Or rather, their employer pays their taxes on their behalf (withholding). Those that don't have withholding (self employed) have to pay quarterly (well, not technically, but you do pay extra). Also, there's this bit:

"The Treasury itself publicly acknowledges, in a fact sheet on the history of the U.S. tax system posted at its website, that wartime withholding not only “greatly eased the collection of the tax,” but “also greatly reduced the taxpayer’s awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e.[,] it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.”"

(from http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2092)

The fundamental problem here is not money. It is not lobbyists. It is the artificial market of privileges created by the members of the US Government.

The US Government should not have the power to regulate Doctors, drugs, food, oil, imports, exports etc. It should not have the power to go to war without clear and present danger. It should not have the power to make the Oil business viable by stationing floating fortresses in the gulf at our expense.

For those of you who want to tell me that we need "People To Regulate" Doctors, Drugs and Food: ask yourself, "Is the head of Monsanto the person I want to regulate Food?", because that's what you have. To Regulate Transport Safety, you have a man who makes high-power X-Ray machines.

The problem is not money or lobbyists. The problem is that there is a reason for them to spend their money. Of course, there will be a small number of fundamental rights that will need to be safeguarded - but they will be small, clear and understandable by Citizens.

Coming from India, I would see lobbying as an essential part of democracy. At the end of the day, businesses need a way to get to law makers and get laws passed that favor them. The alternative is in India. There are no real lobbyists like you have in America. Companies find it hard to run perfectly legal businesses in a left leaning country. They resort to bribing even to get things done, something that would be trivial in US. Here in US, you have law makers like Gingrich who take up a job as a lobbyist/consultant for companies while taking a break from their day job. In India they take bribes and continue to work as law makers to perform the same thing. I would take lobbying any day vs. bribing. I think of it like this. Left leaning parties oppose lobbying and eventually end up taking bribes. Right leaning parties OK lobbying and play it by the rules by setting up lobbying companies and declaring themselves as lobbyists.

It kills me inside when people talk about democracy as though that's how the United States always was and want to "restore the democracy"

Please watch this video before you decide to toss around the word democracy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0

When I last argued for eliminating lobbying, it was pointed out to me that lobbying is supposed to equal representation, and "don't I want a representative government?"

What about limiting lobbying? The amount of money involved is obscene, at some levels. Why not change it to one US dollar per lobbyist maximum?

Although this may not be a great idea, my general intention is to level the playing field a bit, make the job less attractive/lucrative.

The same could be done for political positions, as well. It is my understanding that when the framers put this union together, they could not make a living being a representative. When all was said and done, they went back to their real method of earning a living, whether farming, law, medical practice, etc.

The problem is not lobbying, the problem is politicians know their term in office is finite, and they must continue to work on their career development while in office. Essentially, the big corporate lobby groups and politicians have an unwritten contract: A politician that pushes for favorable industry legislation is guaranteed a good job when his term is over.

The only solution I can imagine to mitigate this problem is to keep politicians in the government after their term has ended forever. I have no idea what they would do, maybe review legislation, be in committees, or just stay home. But, given the average age of a politician, I would imagine the increased payroll would not be to onerous.

Correct, and I'd like to add to your thought. Another problem is consistency. "Business (sector) X" has an income stream, a lobbying budget, and a handful of focused and related political goals. Politicians know this. Also, lobbying is an investment with an implied ROI. This is not the case for "everyone that is not X," who will likely not repeatedly throw money at an issue for many years to come.

We must think of the system as a whole. Analysis it as a whole. Then change it for the better. Both lobbyist and politicians are running the system. I dream of a day where the Internet can support a direct democracy, instead of a elected representatives.

In Australia we have a government run registry which documents all lobbyists and their activities: http://lobbyists.pmc.gov.au

The closest I could find in the US in a quick search was followthemoney.org and the Senate Office of Public Records site (which maintains an archive of filings as required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act).

Is transparency just a matter of making these isolated pieces of information more easily accessible and transformable/visual... and using an easy call to action to petition or donate to pro-bono lobbyists who serve the public as counteraction to corporate (or even foreign) lobbying.

Part of the problem is that it's only labelled "lobbying" if you don't like the cause.

Corporations paying for legislation relating to oil drilling rights? That's lobbying. Unions paying for higher teacher salaries? Well, that's different!

Lobbying is a fundamentally stable thing. As you observed, the economic incentives to do it are strong. And lobbying is a very general thing. Truly blatant bribery is illegal, but there are many, many ways that someone with money can help a politician and communicate what they want in return. It's hard to imagine closing that off without massive collateral damage.

Hollywood, on the other hand, is vulnerable. They're a middleman in a world that doesn't like middlemen. If we destroy them once, they won't come back.

The problem isn't lobbying. The problem is the corruption that occurs when lawmakers grow dependent on campaign cash (much of which comes from those who lobby for wealthy interests).

That was exactly what i thought when I read that call: they are aiming for the wrong enemy. I thing you should add Old Media along with lobbying, they are both dinosaurs. The way to go about it is this: divert the public's attention from major mass media, give them easy access to information about politics, and promote public discourse. Make politicians unable to hide their actions and intentions, but also train the voters to look into the substance of matters, not superficialities.

Transparency is good - but keep in mind, mass brainwashing practiced by the likes of News Corp. makes it useless, or at least reduces its efficiency greatly.

I'm not expert on the subject but one should also consider how it goes into countries like France where lobbying is already illegal, but still happening in other ways or channels.

Completely agree, as I stated yestarday in a comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3500939

Lobbyists are the cancer of Democracy.

The athenians had a way to kill lobbying / corruption:

Make it a democracy with direct participation, removing professional politics out of the equation. If everyone is participating in any vote (and this should scale now much nicely thanks to technology) and magistrates / executive branches were randomly selected for short mandates and with oversee of the complete electorate, then the only person to corrupt would be the citizens themselves. And that is a lot more expensive.

Agreed, but you need to go a step further; it's the Presidential system that needs to changed.

google "Presidential vs. parliamentarian system" and you'll see what I'm talking about

Also the de facto 2 party system. It is really silly to expect all datapoints spread all over the axes of a multidimensional system to be quantized down to only 2 alternatives. This is a travesty of democracy.

The problem isn't lobbying, it's bribery. We accept as normal at the national level behavior that might be prosecuted at the local level, but would almost certainly get the rascals thrown out of office. Perhaps the strangest thing about American culture is the almost complete lack of corruption in every sphere except politics.

I don't think the problem is lobbying.

The problem is that we, as electoral body, are interested in politics only and only if something outrages like SOPA happens.

It is not enough just to show up and vote who whatever had nicer TV comercial. Know your representative, talk to him/her, call offices, etc. Be involved.

Casino Jack documentary is a pretty good insight into the more unfortunate side of the lobbying process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Jack_and_the_United_Stat...

I remember someone suggesting we monitor the democratic process using something like github for legislation documents.

It probably wouldn't end lobbying entirely, but it would make the process a lot easier to monitor.

If you criminalize lobbying, won't it simply move to the backstage (like it does in every country where it is a crime)?

On a related example from the past, how well did criminalizing alcohol work?

One way to improve the situation is to remove the limit on representatives of 435.

The constitution originally provides for 1 rep for every 30,000 people. If say we go back to that.

Why not do both? Why not kill hollywood, and kill lobbying? What, exactly in Hollywood is worth saving?

As some people have pointed out lobbying isn't all bad - the problem is the disproportionate influence of organisations with lots of money and corruption.

How about this for a solution: regulate lobbying like sex. Anyone can do it but you can't pay a professional to do it for you.

Lobbying is protected by the constitution. Best of luck.

Then fix "our" Constitution.

Money in politics is the root of all current evil.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

To illegalize lobbying permanently, we have to clean house as a nation (easier said than done). That amounts to doing at least three things on a permanent basis:

1. Purge congress, and rehab it with genuinely honest legislators (not career politicians) --- for each and every state (or at least the vast majority of them).

2. Purge at least 5 corrupt Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) members, and replace them with honest, real justices. But you can't just fire SC justices (unless we change the law, that is; see #1, above)... so this process could take time (i.e., not overnight). And two more things relating to SC justices: first, we need to remove or rehab the corrupt farm system of justices which feeds corrupt ones to SCOTUS candidacy in the first place (and probably the farm system for politicians for #1, above), and second: ...

3. We need to purge the executive office of corruption, including the political party running as both democrats and republicans --- and rehab our political system to create real choice, honest Presidents and cabinets, and select honest SCOTUS justices (i.e., second part of #2, above). Only then should we expect to make any real progress as a nation, or more to the point, only then should we expect to have any chance to derail our current national train wreck.

So, your observation and point are spot on, but we have our work cut out for us. We need Democracy to work, but ours has not been so resilient under pressures of wholesale internal corruption. Can we recover our democracy, or, as far as our national political will is concerned, are we already the walking dead (harsh, but perhaps true)?

Bottom line: we need to rehab our democracy, our nation, our culture, our political expectations, and our political will, and perhaps our political science education system (i.e., from missing in action to addressing organized corruption head-on in curriculum), and then have a go at rehabbing as a nation.

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