UN plastics treaty: don't let lobbyists drown out researchers | Hacker News Reader

UN plastics treaty: don't let lobbyists drown out researchers

nature.com

83 pointsadrian_mrd17 comments

How or why are any lobbyists allowed to be part of the legislative process? It's understandable in the US with the total citizens united capture of campaign finance etc, but it's not normal or understandable in the context of more democratic countries.

You think its a problem only in the US? Its a problem everywhere.

> You think its a problem only in the US? Its a problem everywhere.

Your parent comment:

> How or why are any lobbyists allowed to be part of the legislative process? It's understandable in the US with the total citizens united capture of campaign finance etc, but it's not normal or understandable in the context of more democratic countries.

seems to say the opposite: the legislative foundation is clear in the US, but it's less clear how the same problem, which the comment acknowledges exists, develops elsewhere.

(I'd submit that this point of view just comes from being more familiar with US law than with other countries' laws, which I'm sure have their own peculiar histories of regulating lobbying, but it definitely doesn't deny the relevance of lobbying in non-US governance.)

> it's less clear how the same problem, which the comment acknowledges exists, develops elsewhere.

The how? As I understand it, most people are lazy and disinformation works. Especially if it's loud enough or tied with some sort of gift/bribe to both incentivize and ensure your messaging is the loudest. This is why anyone can see money talking in every culture over a few hundred people. The most effective politicians attack and defend in their political arena, as possible. Any lobby that can contribute to that fight, is a boon. The most effective politicians accept lobbyist (or some other form of outside influence) money/resources and it becomes an ingrained part of the political culture.

Ofc, eventually someone amasses enough money and power to take control of the political system with intimidation (effectively becoming an on-site lobby of do or die) and you end up in a dictatorship. This is easier, the more a political system has bottlenecks, and the population that operates in that system are under crippling financial collapse.

Plato's Republic was a philosophical analysis of this problem. Kallipolis was little more than a thought experiment, demonstrating the futility of staving off this kind of corruption.

How does this apply to the UN? I can't say, but it seems like the Plastics industry is hard at work to sway them.

Yes, the rest of my comment suggested that the point of view that the US is uniquely prone to this might come more from over-familiarity with the US than from causes that truly don't generalize.

policy makers need to be informed to make smart policy, how else would we trust a bunch of polisci majors to implement climate and tech and ag policies? this is unfortunately too easy to game by hiring people to go put your thoughts in ears.

also, it's important to remember that there are lobbyists on all sides of an argument (some with much more paid time on their hands than others, but) its not hard to be one for an issue you want to impact if youre a subject matter expert.

i dont think we should or could be eliminating lobbying but tightly controlling how money/gifts/time are allocated to people who are speaking to politicians and policy makers about a particular issue

>policy makers need to be informed to make smart policy,

Yeah, very important :)

There was a case a while ago of...I think (vague recollection - I can't track it down exactly alas ) funding for some important disease research for orange trees in California being axed unexpectedly. The agro industry was like wtf, and I remember an interview with some politician expressing regret, it was cut because they thought it was useless research, and they really strongly recommended that that sector set up some lobbying body to that there'd be a line of communication between the industry and the government.

Lobbies can be malign, but, yeah they also serve some useful purposes.

Absolutely politicians need to be informed. No one would disagree with that. However the job of lobbyist is not to inform - explicitly. That's not the purpose of a lobbyist. The purpose of a lobbyist is to influence public policy in favour of private interests. Usually industry, but sometimes individual corporate interests. The relationship of lobbyist to politician is similar to advertiser to broadcast audience. Hypothetically there is an informational component to the communication - but only so far as its effective in manipulating its intended audience.

Instead what politicians should attend to is published research and organisations like the National Science Foundation which exist in part specifically to foster, explain and communicate the state of the art of knowledge in a given domain to politicians.

I guess it depends on your definition of lobbyist. But why shouldn't they be allowed? And why would any democratic country disallow it? Disallowing lobbyists doesn't seem very democratic to me.

Lobbying is not only normal and understandable, but I’d argue essential to democratic governance. What you (correctly) have an issue with is corruption and undue influence, not lobbying per se.

Most democratic decision-making is fairly boring stuff that involves trying to strike a least-worst balance between the interests of various groups. In order to do that effectively, governments need input from all the stakeholders involved. This includes industry bodies, local community groups, unions, individuals, and any other affected people or groups. Lobbying is that conduit.

Hard disagree. Lobbying is moneys end run around public debate, and public interest. Where conversations happen in public (aside - they can't currently in US, due to the near complete ownership of all media outlets by a few conglomerates) - politicians can be swayed by public opinion. When conversations happen in private, especially post citizens united - money literally talks. There is no evaluation of context beyond electoral consequences. Frequently all too easily manipulated with campaign finance and scare mongering. By conflating the lobbying of corporate institutions, investment firms and wealthy Super PACs with the requests and communications made by citizens and non commercial groups, you serve to disguise the nature of lobbying in the US. Which is explicitly legalised corruption. Cash for votes.

That's not a hard disagree – that's a hard agree with what I said.

For some reason I never got excited abt the Kyoto Protocol. This however is very exciting if it isnt killed by lobbyists. Maybe its because I can see plastic—esp on beaches—whereas I cant see carbon atoms.

Simple Question: how could I as a private party contribute to help this get more friction & ultimately more success?

I'd like to see graphs connecting politicians, lobbyists, geos and tainted policy proposals and a sufficiently large political/social group bringing awareness to such graphs, getting experts talking about them, etc.

IMO the goal is not one treaty, it is to make the cost of selling out sufficiently high that every treaty round improves every future round instead of so low that every round adds to the percentage of participants who are sell outs still participating in the political system.

Depends how much money you have.

Simply put: don't be a "private" party. Join an association or affinity group, and then you can more effectively lobby your representatives. An association with leverage, especially, is effective. Principally, economic leverage in the form of either capital or industrial relevance, ie a union.

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