What would it take for the people to buy back Congress?
theelectors.org
theelectors.org
Isn't this just like the "if only 1%..." fallacy, except it's "if only 100%..."?
It's $36 per year -- people could donate more -- you can donate up to $2,000 per candidate per election. And $3 per month is to outspend all contributions and all lobbying expenditures combined -- you could spend much less to be an influential player.
For the most part, the people that currently donate to political organizations will keep donating to those same organizations - they're happy with them, they voluntarily chose to donate to them, and they will need a lot of convincing to move their donor-dollars. So you're going to need to get people who don't currently donate money for political purposes to join your effort, and have their money used to pay for corporate lobbyists. How?
But more importantly, the top corporate donor is AT&T (http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/index.php) -- if you click on AT&T's name, you will see that AT&T contributed $4.5 million total in 2008. At $3 per month, that's only 125,366 users.
The $3 per month per registered voter is to outspend all contributors and all lobby expenditures combined -- including what individuals gave. You don't need to raise that much to be an influential player.
The lobbiest advantage is that they can afford to raise money quickly and be able to focus it on specific issues.
Although every citizen can together raise a ton of money, once that money is raised it will be very difficult allocating it.
Imagine if people had to come together in order to raise money for museums rather than relying on large individual contributions. It's likely that many fewer museums would exist.
For a deeper look at this I recommend reading the book by Mancur Olson - The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. It takes a look at special interest groups and their effects on economic growth.
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation-Rigid...
Do you really want to play One Dollar, One Vote?
Can we say "boil the ocean"?
Finally, the other big problem with these approaches is that people tend to think in the back of their head that deep down, everybody agrees with them, and the reason the government doesn't reflect their exact desires is that special interests and other things are getting in the way of how everybody feels. That's wrong. People genuinely want different things. How are you going to prevent this from becoming a more expensive clone of what we've already got? It's all very easy to imagine this great getting together of people that will all pull together, but it's the same people that are in the old system.
You're really better off just getting corruption out of the system. Yes, it's harder than anything else, and may very well prove impossible, but if it is, nothing else is going to work anyhow.
It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- you need enough resources to feel safe in your position before you can function effectively. Right now corporate lobbyists are providing those resources to politicians, and if politicians don't play ball, the lobbyists will take the resources away and give them to the politician's challengers.
Politicians can rationalize it away with expressions like "you can't govern if you're not in office." This is a bad position to be in for the American people. It's hard for us to win in a game like this unless politicians have a better option for raising money to get elected. However, if the people are able to overpower corporate lobbyists, then maybe we can persuade politicians to enact laws that reduce corporate lobbyists' ability to influence Congress.
Also, the ability for the community and system to debunk propaganda is key because you're absolutely right, it could amplify corporate positions if people keep buying into it.
Propaganda works in part because we're so busy that we don't have time to verify all the claims. With the help of the community, the system would make it easy for people to get true information on the issues they care about.
Most propaganda I've seen can be easily debunked with hard evidence (links to the actual bills, etc) -- you just have to take the time to look into it. When you reveal the secret to a magician's trick, it loses its effect, and that's why putting lobbyist's methods front and center could go a long way to reducing the effects.
Careful, I hear tell that the ZFS people are working on that very idea.
If you want to stop the "bad" lobbyists, you need to develop a more accurate description for what it is you are fighting.
(and who can lobby that committee?)
Think of something like gun control. As someone who lives in a city, if I could participate in the US political system I would be in strong favour of aggressive nationwide gun control legislation, as would most of the people who live around me - and I wouldn't be interested in giving money to a politician who was strongly against that, full-stop. Likewise, being pro-equal marriage and abortion rights are deal-breakers for me and many of my friends.
I recognize, however, that there are many people who feel the exact opposite of me, with equal ferocity. For issues as divisive as these, how do you plan on deciding what the "common good" is to support?
Regarding how to handle majority vs minority positions, that's a good question that I have been debating myself. One way would be to use money allocated for each position to hire separate firms to lobby for the given position. The pro is that if the competing positions are truly what the people want and have not been manipulated by corporate lobbyists, then at least the people's voice is being heard. The downside is that you are creating an arms race so the people are spending more money than they need to because money from either side is canceling out the effects of the other.
Another way you could approach it is make it so that money from the minority nullifies the money from the majority before it's paid to lobbyists so users in the majority and minority end up paying less (the minority pays nothing and the majority only pays the difference). This keeps lobbyists from being the major benefactor and saves the people's money so they can use it to support other issues. The downside is that the minority might want its money spent anyway and then you get into a type of Prisoner's Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma).
Allowing the money to be spent may be the best way since it is the voice of the electorate -- even if the electorate has opposing views because at least it's the voice of the electorate, not corporations.
As always, "Who watches the Watchmen?" What ensures these other lobbyists don't become part of the corruption problem?
This project is not a solution to the problem of money in politics. It's a "if you can't lick 'em, join 'em" project.
You are right, changing the system from within probably won't happen so you need an external solution. That is what this proposal is -- an external solution that can be implemented regardless of what Congress does.
Outspending the lobbyists is not a sustainable solution.
What would prevent lobbyists from spending more? (requiring an increased "tax", etc...)
How would this "tax" eventually be weaned off?
Please help make the implementation better -- share your thoughts. This is a work in progress, and we appreciate input from smart and talented people.
Didn't that get tried by MoveOn?
We are leveraging previous social waves to enable people to take action, to do something about the problems, rather than being relegated to spectators in the political game. And they can do it from the comfort of their homes as they watch the issues debated on the news.
I agree that people do not currently always vote in their own interest, and one of the reasons for this is that lobbyists are able to convince people that they don't want something they should. That's the power of propaganda. Lobbyists don't just lobby politicians -- they lobby the people too. One of the systems primary services will be to debunk lobbyist propaganda.
Also, $3 per month isn't a hard number -- $3 just shows how little money it would take to change the game -- compare that to how much extra we are paying in taxes to pay for unnecessary expenditures.