That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.
Y’all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn’t stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.
We’re so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?
Annoyingly it also turned the word “lobby” into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.
Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.
The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.
I don’t think they plan on voters being an insurmountable problem.
That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.
Y’all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn’t stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.
We’re so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?
Annoyingly it also turned the word “lobby” into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.
Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.
The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.