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Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Lobbying used to be flat-out illegal in the USA, but, over the past century or so, the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed it as protected speech under the First Amendment, and therefore something that basically can't be restricted in any meaningful way.

So I don't think it - or a number of other socially corrosive aspects of the American political system - is likely to change without an amendment that would be extremely difficult to pass.

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The trouble with lobbying is - where do you draw the line?

Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to petition my elected representatives?

Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to organize with fellow citizens to petition my elected representatives?

Do I, an individual citizen, who owns a business, have a right to organize with fellow citizens who own similar businesses to petition my representatives?

The problem with lobbying is a fundamental issue with representative democracy, not with the American political system. Lobbying by monied interests is simply more overt in the American system. I can't think of a Western democracy where industry interests don't have a huge say in the legislative and even executive processes. From the perspective of the politician, they are looking out for their constituents by helping out industrial interests, because in their eyes, that means jobs and development.

I agree there is a huge problem with the outsized influence of industry in the political realm, but I think it's a very complicated problem to untangle. The only way we have to fight it is to organize ourselves, which is usually extremely difficult.

Lobbying as a citizen who happens to own a business is different from a business itself lobbying. I'm perfectly fine with the former.

But then you somehow need to encode that belief into law in a way that doesn't trample on the constitution.

And maybe this is a bug in the system, but trying to fix it has some truly scary question marks attached.

There's nothing about the US Constitution that says that different elements of it don't conflict. The question precisely is working out where boundaries exist, and what trade-offs to make.

No, but changing the constitution is not a minor affair. You can't just propose one amendment through the legislative process, you have to launch a convention, and the country you get on the other side of that may not have much in common with the country now.

You certainly can change the Constitution without a convention. The federal legislature passes it with a 2/3rds vote and then the states ratify it.

I don't think this boundary would be that difficult to delineate and enforce. Political donations ought to come from personal bank accounts rather than corporate ones. Is it any more difficult than that?

So then you don't believe individuals have the right to organize to petition their representatives? Because any organization is going to mean pooling resources into a legal structure...like a corporation.

That's a good quibble. People should be allowed to organize. I suppose there should be a distinction between political organizations and profitable ones.

So a group "Whigs for America" pooling donations is fine, but a for-profit corporation spending millions on lobbying would not be fine.

The difference being that the former group is a non-profit collection of people concerned about some aspect of government.

Whereas when for-profit entities funnel millions into lobbying, and we get profit-oriented results like this http://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-lobbies-lawmakers-ta...

Please don't conflate lobbying with bribes. We all have the right to lobby (petition) our government.

Various Supremes expanded the notion that corporations are people, that money equals speech, and so forth. So many ways to rig the game in favor of capital (over democracy).

As an optimist, I predict the plutocrats will demand public financing of campaigns when they realized they're wasting their money. The money chase is an arms race with ever diminishing returns.

In this context, "lobby" doesn't just mean petitioning the government. It specifically means when you have someone whose full-time job is to try and influence legislators and other policymakers on behalf of one's employer.

In the early USA it was considered antithetical to democracy precisely because it gives a great advantage to people with the financial resources to hire a lobbyist. So for over 200 years now, the word "lobbying" has already had a particular definition in the context of the money=speech debate. I don't think that trying to redefine the the term in the way you propose makes your point so much as it hinders it by muddying the waters.

Fun fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern...

What does that even mean, to "ban lobbying"? You can't approach legislators and advocate for legislation?

>extremely difficult

You underestimate the will and anger of the American people.

Maybe we could have a licensing regime for a newly defined lobbying organization, and then delegate the licensing requirements to a federal agency who has unilateral and arbitrary authority to alter licensing compliance

one of which will be to drastically limit actions possible for lobbyists

> nd then delegate the licensing requirements to a federal agency who has unilateral and arbitrary authority to alter licensing compliance But then the lobbyists would start lobbying to loosen these restrictions...

yes, they would. in a couple election cycles they'll have their own people running the agency

and then that generation of newly politically-aware young adults will have to tackle that

I think its a pursuable solution to address today's problem to get a better reflection of what American people want

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