Comment by jack_tripper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jack_tripper | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Well, under this interpretation all lobbying basically circumvents sovereign democracy, there's nothing out of the ordinary I found out in this article other than business as usual.

And the thing is, lobbying by domestic and foreign interests has been so normalized, that most people are already numb to it. Like Putin was even visiting his Austrian politicians buddies who then got jobs at Russian oil and gas companies after their terms and nobody in EU kicked much fuss about it when it was all done public and in the open and in 2022 we got to experience the consequences.

So as long as nobody from politics is going to jail for treason or insurrection, or at least lose their seat and generous pension over such blatant cases of corruption and treason, this will only continue or even grow larger, as those in power have proven to be unaccountable to anyone.

I don't know how we(the public) can fix this peacefully an democratically, as any party I can vote for gets captured by lobbyist interests who seek to undermine our interests.

This _is_ democracy. Europeans don't vote left and green.

Those groups have only 235 seats in the EU parliament out of 720.

Then no lobbying against the politicians would be needed to be done.

It’s easy to reduce it to party lines, but that kind of thinking is just wrong. Details matters.

Is there a word for reducing it to something abstract and then attacking the abstraction, even though it is leaky?

It's not only "left and green" that have a policy agenda on climate change. Parties in the centre and centre-right do too. Of course there are disagreements on various trade-offs, but it's only really the far-right that strongly objects to action on climate change.

I don't vote left and green, rather the opposite and I still care about "human rights and climate law".

Then you might be voting against your interests.

No. I actually don't want abolishment of private ownership and actions (left) and I also don't want forced adoption of remote polluting energy sources ( aka. renewables) and gender ideologies (green). I want inclusion of exernalities into prices, which is an agenda of liberal and right-wing parties.

But are the people you're voting for doing this, or are they more so just complaining about gender ideology while economically and environmentally fucking you up the ass?

Because I'm betting it's the latter.

I think they do, otherwise I wouldn't vote for them. But my voting preferences are kind of orthogonal, what I wanted to point out is, that every party, which does not work against the constitution, cares about human rights and the climate. This is not a left/right issue.

>Europeans don't vote left and green.

Not difficult to see why when both parties have implemented policies that have become very unpopular with the masses. You're not gonna win voters on "let them eat cake" policies when the no. 1 concern of voters is keeping their job and affording the ever increasing bills.

Both left and green parties have been writing cheques that the working class had to cash, so now they're experiencing the backlash consequences of their actions. It's just democracy at work.

They need to "git gud" and give the people what they want if they want votes. It's really not rocket science, but self reflection seems to be heavily lacking in politics due to how detached the ruling class are from the working class.

Social policies and a clean environment is what I want

What social and environmental policies are you currently lacking? Be specific please.

And we all want many thing in life, like for example I would want my bus to work every 5 minutes instead of every 30 minutes, but everything nice in life has a hefty price, and if you make a large part of the economy bankrupt or leave and workers unemployed or broke from rising costs, in exchange for financially unrealistic environmental targets that only a small part of the population can tolerate("let them eat cake"), then that might not sit well with a large part of the democratic voting population who has to bare the brunt of your wishes.

A balance has to be found between what's nice and desirable and what's economically feasible without causing economic hardship on others, otherwise something breaks and you get rising extremism and .

That' true, but now everything depends on "what is economically feasable" and unless we are experts ourselves we can't really know. We need to rely on experts to tell us what is economically feasable, but those experts are the ones under pressure from lobbyists to say one thing or the other. Some parties says that it's economically feasable and that will actually save money, other parties say that it's not feasable and it would cost too much.

Oil companies and countries that sell oil will say it's not feasable and companies that produce panels says that it is.

We cannot rely on "what is economically feasable" because unless you are and expert you will have to get that info from one side or the other, and even independent bodies will be under lobbying pressures.

Then vote for it. Seems a growing majority disagree with you now. Maybe those policies haven’t worked well for them.

When the majority agree with me, it's just democracy working as intended.

When the majority disagrees with me then there must be some anti-democratic meddling or foreign interference going on.

In my experience, it’s almost always the right wing parties who harm working class while supporting their own.

They just do a fabulous job of convincing the working and lower classes that they’re “one of the people” while shifting the blame onto other people (immigrants, disabled, anyone who wants a living wage from their 40+ hour job, etc).

Left and right are just sides of the same cleptocratic coin, catering to different audiences but ultimately doing the same thing.

Because wealth inequality and housing unaffordability has increased regardless if left or right wing were in power.

There's no good and bad one here, they're both just cosplaying.

I’m don’t think either the Uk or the US have had a properly “left” party in power. They are just a cosplaying, as you say. But that doesn’t mean that left wing parties don’t exist.

What exactly is a "properly left party" that we don't have?

Is that like the meme on how communism isn't bad, because we never had "real communism"?

No. More like central or Western European parties. Or Green in the UK. Most left-wing politicians in America would seem right wing in, for example, Netherlands.

I think bringing communism into the discussion around left wing parties is as daft as saying all republicans or Tories are Nazis.

The problem with the UK and US is we’re so used to right wing policies that anything moderately left is considered “extreme”. There’s no nuance left because people are closed off to it. (And to be fair, may left wing folk don’t help when they call their right wing peers “racists”. There definitely needs to be more tolerance on both sides)

>No. More like central or Western European parties.

That couldn't be more vague. That's like saying I want a car like the ones in that parking lot over there.

You have no idea that some parties in Poland, Hungary or Romania would make Donald Trump look left wing.

When I asked you what type of left parties you claim are lacking, I expected to hear the exact policies you want but are lacking, not pointing at random parties that not everyone knows.

And we've have enough left wing and green policies in Europe since they're the ones who championed the "refugees welcome" open borders problem, gas dependence on Russian gas and denuclearisation.

> That couldn't be more vague.

That’s why I then gave examples ;)

> You have no idea that some parties in Poland, Hungary or Romania would make Donald Trump look left wing.

You’re now talking about nationalist parties.

But yes, I do agree that there are right wing leaning counties in Central Europe as well.

To be honest, it feels like the whole world is heading that way right now.

Lobbying is part of the democratic process. There are many interests in society and it is right that their voices be heard and considered by the government and parliament when deciding on law and policy.

It is important that there be rules to keep things transparent but lobbying is not a problem in itself.

A simplistic example might be: Let's say that a group calls for a ban on all vehicles then it is right for groups relying on vehicles to make their voice heard to explain what the negative impact would be. Once government and parliament have heard all sides then they can make up their mind. If whole groups are banned from expressing their point of view and from defending their interests then it is no longer a democratic free society.

Interference by foreign powers is a different thing altogether.

Calls to ban lobbying are the usual "slippery slope" that leads to authoritarianism.

Your voice being heard is one thing. What we have here is the consequence of huge wealth disparities. Those with the money can influence the “democratic” process in outsized ways. That is the opposite of democratic.

The implication of your comment is that "those with money" should be silenced or at least treated differently... slippery slope again.

You can limit the amount of money spent on lobbying and/or political activities. That's about it, and that's already not easy to do.

No, their voice should have exactly the same value as everyone else's.

no less, no more.

Unless we are done with pretending that there are no power disparities.

And one of few ways to do so is to either:

- completely ban lobbying, any form of privilege/monetary exchange is considered a bribery. Introduce a public open dialogue when working on a new legislation. Rich can still make their own campaigns for specific issues - just targeting voters, not politicians directly.

- introduce system of checks and balances where any form of lobbying must be publicly visible and attached to image of politician, so voter can easily make informed decision. Including something correlated with amount of money donated, counting shell organizations in it too.

good luck - no politician will vote to cut their own paycheck.

No, my point is the root cause is wealth inequality, which is fundamentally undemocratic, and a different issue than free speech. The solution is wealth expropriation, not censorship.

Right, so it's "democratic" as in "dictatorship of the proletariat", then. Yes that does sound like many commenters!

Wealth inequality is not inherently undemocratic, WTF. There's way more poor people than rich people, meaning poor people have more votes and say in democracy. Lobbying is undemocratic since it bypasses democracy.

Trying to get millions to agree on things is hard, that’s why they focus on bs. They have us fighting a culture war so we won’t fight a class war. That’s why controlling media and other propaganda is so important

Exactly.

Yes, the system is "pay to win", always has.

> lobbying is not a problem in itself.

It kinda is though, since massive sums of money never comes for free with no strings attached but favors are expected in return. And those strings attached typically are to undermine the best interest of the working class to enrich those paying the lobby money.

>Calls to ban lobbying is the usual "slippery slope" that leads to authoritarianism.

Where do you see me calling to ban lobbying?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com