It's so cheap that normal people could band together and re-buy democracy. It's the banding together part that is hard.
- The AARP ($21M annual spend) has 38M members
- The National Association of Realtors ($54M annual spend) has 1.5M members
- The American Medical Association ($24M annual spend) has 300K members
Of course that doesn't mean that their interests necessarily align with your interests.
``` Core Legislative PrioritiesMedicare Reform:
Fighting to fix stagnant physician payment formulas and account for inflation.
Prior Authorization: Pushing to reduce administrative roadblocks and delays enforced by insurance companies.
Scope of Practice: Opposing laws that expand independent clinical roles for non-physicians like nurse practitioners and pharmacists.
Burnout Reduction: Supporting federal and organizational relief to help doctors manage workplace stress and administrative tasks.
-- Public Health and Science
Public Health Crises: Supporting science-based policies on vaccinations, gun violence prevention, and chronic disease reduction.
Digital Health: Guiding regulations for artificial intelligence and telehealth integration in medical practices ```
Most of these are about keeping the gate (i.e., doctor's compensation high). The US doctors are the highest paid in the world (among developed countries like UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, etc.) by a long shot. Kind of mad if you think about it.
Disclaimer: My spouse is a specialist doctor. You can say I have selfish interest in keeping doctor's salaries high in the US. But I can't help highlighting that doctor's guilds (like AMA) are part of the reasons why the healthcare expenses are so high in the US.
Quality of life (at work) for many physicians is arguably pretty bad due to long hours, administrative requirements, and insurance requirements / prior auth. Physicians should lobby to get some of these things fixed by regulation, because it's likely the only way they will get fixed! However, a physicians lobby of any kind is going to have a tough time reducing healthcare costs because they have a significant financial incentive to gatekeep and their members can pay high dues to spend a lot on lobbying.
I wonder if the AI meant PAs instead of pharmacists -- as I understand it, a pharmacist's scope of practice is quite distinct from a physician.
Besides, if I were to gather up 4 million to lobby, the opposition would simply spend 8 million instead which they could come up with just as easily. They don't have to outrun the bear, the just have to outrun you.
j/k, but then again, it's not like we have other means to "help make good governance decisions" that we haven't already tried before. Maybe except the failed cybernetics experiments that came a little before their time and in the wrong political regime, but then those are effectively replicated by any large multinational internally to some extent.
the ~$2M just gets your foot in the door, that's it.
Over $5 billion was spent on lobbying in 2025 [3].
To truly move policy you need to get pliable representatives first and that's not just money. There is a pipeline here. First, you get the right connections. That could be coming from a wealth family, be the nephew or grandson of some politician, do your time as a staffer or whatever. Going up through the ranks acts as a giant filter to make sure you will maintain the status quo. So you have to find candidates to run for these offices who have been weeded out by the existing processes. And if you don't have enough of them, the DNC or RNC will spend selectively against you in the primary and general election. And an increasing number of races have over $100 million spent on them.
Buying back democracy would be very, very expensive.
And then after all that there's the income and jobs pipeline. Your children get six-figure jobs with think tanks and interested companies. You leave office and get placed on boards of large companies. You can't compete with that.
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/2026-el...
[2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5818507-gop-super-pac-...
They primarily only get headlines for outrage topics when people don’t like what they’re pushing toward. Many of the top PACs are from groups like realtors or sheet metal workers lobbying for their interests.
Most people skip PACs and donate straight to political candidates instead. Individual donations to candidates outweigh anything the AI companies are spending by a huge number.
Do you understand the basics of a free society, which include freedom of association? You don't have much of a democracy left if you remove that.
I don't feel more free at all on account of that ruling. Maybe if you said "freedom" one or two more times, that would do the trick.
The above from Wikipedia.
But I'm wasting my time talking to you, you are just raging and putting words into other people's mouths, because you are too high on your own supply of resentment to want to have a good discussion.
I'll put my opinion clearly: Everybody should have the freedom of association and be able to get together with likeminded to work for any political cause they want to advance, as long as they do it within the limits of just law.
Political donations by large groups of special interests aren't unique to America. Many countries have very strong labour union super-PACs.
No, these do not make me feel free.
Spell out the details: Exactly who will not be permitted to speak under your definition of "freedom"?
If you say that only people with a billion dollars can be punished for speaking: Do you think the limit won't be lowered over time?
If the issue is that no person should be able to spend more than N million dollars in one "conversation", how do you allocate broadcast licenses when the price in an auction would be more than N million?
Search for “Wire transfer of” to jump to them.
Plus a couple of $1,666,667 which stand out in contrast to all the zeroes.
Everything that we want to do can be done through ordinary collaboration with no need for the state. The special services which the state provides (violence and threats of violence, imperialism, inhibition of movement of people and goods across imaginary lines, etc) are the kinds of things that are really only interesting to the kinds of people who are already spending their money on lobbying.
"Pro business is pro business" was my reply to your naive "Pro business is pro consumer" declaration of faith.
My second sentence clarified that my first sentence carried no judgement of businesses. That's just their nature, it's what they do.