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Comment by siscia | Hacker News Reader

From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general.

The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.

I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.

But all of this seems quite too much.

Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.

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Yeah, I don't mind walmart making a psa about theft if that's what they want to do with their money. I very much do have a problem with them putting their thumb on the scale and donating millions to one political candidate over another.

You want to hire a lobbyist to show up and educate a senator on soybean production, more power to you, but it shouldn't come with a check.

Lobbying is legalise bribery, plain and simple. You pay money to get politicians to return the favor in terms of regulations and policies that benifit you (even if they are harmful to the general public)

The issue is that lobbying puts the power in the hands of the one that has the most money. Yes, politicians should hear out expert opinions when discussing policy matters because nobody knows everything. However with lobbying, the only people that get a voice are the ones paying the most.

Combine that with these megacorps with infinitely deep pockets, it becomes extremely hard to hear both sides of an issue, and we end up in the opposite of the original issue, where the only context legislators get is the context paid for by monied interests.

It's blatant bribery. I come from a 3rd world country where bribery takes the form of slipping a cop or judge some cash to let you off the hook, and in my mind this is in no way different. Hell, it's maybe even worse because we pretend it isn't blatant corruption and is somehow recognized as okay!

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