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Comment by WillAdams | Hacker News Reader

My solution for this is to rate-limit political contributions --- they may only be made in an amount equal to what a minimum-wage worker might reasonably be expected to donate from a week's wages (say 10% of hourly min. wage * 40), as a physically written out check or money order physically signed by hand (at least an "X" mark) and mailed in a first-class envelope with at least a similarly signed cover letter explaining the reason for the donation.

If this causes the extinction of the political lobbyist, I'm fine with that.

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Most of the money in politics isn't direct contribution to candidates, it's PACs.

PACs are just groups that do advocacy of some sort. Some do things like advise congress people on legislation they'd like passed, some run ads to campaign for positions or candidates, some advocate for movements.

What they're not supposed to be doing is directly coordinating with a candidate, or running ads just for a candidate. But that's a line that has been continually fuzzed.

An example of a good PAC might be something like the HRC (human rights commission) that campaigns for LGBTQ rights.

It should apply to the checks which they issue as well --- either they are popular and will have lots of work to put volunteers to, or they will have to hire lots of min. wage folks to make marks on letters and checks --- think of it as a job creation program.

This is the central problem with Citizens United. The supreme court tends to be unusually deferential with 1A cases and ruled that infinite money can go into formally unaffiliated PACs. Undoing this would require activist judges or a constitutional amendment.

Activist judges?

The supreme court is majority activist judges. Why cant new judges undo the old activist judges wrongly decided law? Why are the other new judges suddenly activists?

In the case of Citizens United, it's actually a pretty straightforward case. Without a constitutional amendment, it would take a very unorthodox reading of the first amendment.

The "problem" with Citizens United is that it's a very clear case.

Corporations are amoral immortals who cannot be placed behind bars. Therefore they should never be given the rights of human beings.

They don't have the rights of human beings. Humans don't lose their rights because they are in a corporation, that is the outcome of Citizens United.

"A corporation is people" is the singular of "corporations are people". Anyone saying anything different is lying or misinformed.

Think about all the times someone who definitely knew better implied that it meant a corporation is a person and trust them less.

PACs and dark money have been a disaster for this country

must be pretty upsetting that sitting president Trump has tens of billions in 2 dark money shitcoins and owns a majority stake in crypto company World Liberty Financial. Just 0.001% of the total sum Hunter Biden was allegedly corrupt over (no evidence).

who could have seen this coming.. twice.

These days instead of paying out politicians you just buy social media bots or even the whole platform to push propaganda to the general public so they start agreeing with you.

Private money in politics is one of the counterbalances to the emergence of a totalitarian state. The government gains a huge advantage over the opposition due to the fact that it is the government and receives free media coverage.

What's to prevent them from just ignoring those restrictions?

Bundling would get around that to some extent

1 check would require 2 x marks and 1 envelope and 1 stamp (or other indicia) --- just paying minimum-wage folks for stuffing envelopes and making "X"s would probably result in this being equivalent to a job creation program, and it would probably save the USPS.

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