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Comment by pdx | Hacker News Reader

Imagine you are a legislator in the US. You are one of 535 people who pass the laws that effect every industry and group of the country. How arrogant would it be to assume that you can make good decisions about a certain industry or group, without actually talking to representatives from that group?

Now imagine you're a key figure in an industry, such as, say, the internet industry, and you have opinions about things, such as, say, net neutrality. How foolish would it be for you not to attempt to influence the decision makers by providing them with your view of the issue?

This is what lobbying is. It has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with information flow. You certainly would never outlaw it.

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Except the problem is the only people whose voices are heard in this are the rich. Telecoms can afford to do this, while the people on the other side of it don't have the time or means to.

That is not true. In years past, money helped a lot, but letters and phone calls have always had some level of effectiveness. Dollar for dollar, a letter signed by a constituent is more effective than an expensive lobbiest (it helps that the cost of letters are disproportionately low - unfortunately, it takes a lot of letters to be effective).

There are a lot of "grass roots" lobbying going on for nearly free based on emails, web pages, and social media. In fact, it is so effective that many lobbiests have adopted "grass roots" mechanisms to lobby - see "astroturfing" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing.

A corporation is a group of people. A group will tend to be richer than a single person.

And a letter from that group is probably more representative of the collective opinion of the people working there than (say) a Senator's votes are representative of their state.

I've never worked for any corporation whose corporate opinion had any relation to my own. If employees can be required to distance themselves from their employers when stating an opinion on their blogs, employers should be required to state that the opinion of the corporation does not necessarily represent the collective opinions of its employees.

It doesn't work this way. The corporation could get sued if an employee (representing the corporation) says the wrong thing. The converse won't happen.

What the fuck?

A corporation is made up of SHAREHOLDERS, not employees.

Yes, I was one of those, too. And yet, people use employees in arguments for corporate free speech (as did the post to which I originally replied ("people working there")).

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