Hacker News Reader

The world is a crazy complex place. Like them or not, lobbyists are useful for helping lawmakers understand the implications of laws, and eliminating lobbyists (setting aside the impracticality of such a task) and imposing term limits (thus reducing the level of institutional knowledge in Congress) would mean that lawmakers would often be flying completely blind.

View on HN

There is of course a middle ground between no terms limits and super short term limits. The longest serving member of congress made it over 59 years - I think most everyone would agree that's excessive.

So let them get bought off instead? I refuse to believe that the only two options are widespread graft or poor ignorant lawmakers who have no other way of obtaining information.

We could also elect people with integrity, as unlikely as that seems in our current environment.

My point is that hard problems rarely have simple solutions, as much as populist politicians might like to pretend otherwise. “Ban lobbyists” is a great soundbite but would introduce all sorts of negative consequences (like driving them underground and introducing more potential for corruption).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com