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Comment by jklinger410 | Hacker News Reader

> The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing.

It's both.

If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass.

Also I don't really want to hear about how American citizens need to fix their government when they have no time for civic engagement. Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want, and they often have a rock bottom approval rating.

Let's start by making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world, let that marinade for a while, then let's criticize people for their lack of engagement.

Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.

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>Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.

I am pointing out the root of the problem is not TurboTax/Intuit but instead the government. Your comment is effectively the doing the same thing to my comment that I did to this article so I don't understand your criticism that I was "undermining progress". It isn't like "making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world" is a much easier to accomplish political goal than "fix lobbying".

I certainly do blame our politicians for bowing to this type of lobbying, but I think it's a little weak to claim that the companies that do the lobbying deserve a pass. Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively against the interests of most of the people in the country is immoral, regardless of the reasoning behind it.

"It's not my fault slavery is legal and I'm profiting off of it!"-Thomas Jefferson, probably

Fully agree with you that saying "This rent seeking entity with a will of its own and deep pockets to spend on lobbying, is solely a byproduct of a broken system and not also fundamentally culpable at this point for the continuation of that system". Governments and corporations are made of people who make a choice. If a company choses to profit off a bad thing the government wants to do, we can decry the industry as well.

At some point there was a complex tax code, and TurboTax et. al. didn't exist yet and were not to blame for it. At this point, they do exist and they must share in the blame.

>Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively against the interests of most of the people in the country is immoral

My point was that this is something we all do. I have never met a single person who was always on the side of the greater good for every single political issue. I don't think voting or lobbying for your own interests is inherently immoral. If it is, basically all of democracy and capitalism is immoral.

Being selfish, or: doing something extra for yourself that explicitly harms others, is inherently immoral.

No need to add grey space here.

So every time you have decided to drive your car somewhere instead of take public transportation you are being immoral? The reason we need nuance here is without it we are all evil people contributing to the destruction of the planet.

False equivalency and you know it

Well, yes, that was the point. I was highlighting the ridiculous of the previous comment’s universal statement that anything selfish that harms others is immoral. There is nuance here that a statement like that ignores.

Who cares? Complain to the Pope about immorality, and he'll make sure they go to Hell. While you work on that, hopefully someone is working on making tax filing simpler, and preventing lobbyists from blocking that effort.

> Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively against the interests of most of the people in the country is immoral, regardless of the reasoning behind it.

To solve the problem, you can either liquidate all immoral people, or harden government against the desires of immoral people. Eliminating Intuit would just result in a new company picking up where they left off. Blaming and condemning Intuit is a no-op and a waste of time.

If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass.

That's primarily because it would be unconstitutional to "fix" lobbying, at least they way detractors of the practice would likely consider adequate. It's right there in the First Amendment next to freedom of speech:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Totally. I've had this argument with some of my lawyer friends. I admit that "fixing" lobbying is a complex issue that does not have one simple answer.

But one thing it shows is that the American democratic process is supremely broken, because we don't seem to be able to punish our bad politicians who are accepting bribes. All you have to do is look at the average age and tenure of the senate compared to approval ratings and it tells it's own story.

My last point is that money is not speech, corporations are not people, and one person equals one vote. If you etched all that in legal framework you would totally still have lobbying, but I'd like to think it would help.

Bribery is illegal. Even of the form often presupposed on HN threads: "Congressman, if you vote for this bill, Exxon will make sure you have hundreds of donors contributing thousands each to your next campaign." I'm 100% sure such quid pro quos still happen, but because they're unambiguously against the law, they represent at most a tiny fraction of the lobbying dollars that flow through DC.

Most lobbying is boring stuff like proposed amendment drafting, outreach to Congressional and agency staff, highly targeted issue & message test polling, ...

"Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want"

are you saying you think people in power care about the people they rule over?

"Let's start by making voting days holidays"

if voting could change anything they wouldn't allow you to do it. they literally shot JFK, the elected president, almost 60 years ago. the idea that everything is not completely fucked at this point, is so incredibly naiive.

That's really easy to say, but not productive.

> they literally shot JFK, the elected president, almost 60 years ago

Are “they” in the room with you right now?

> if voting could change anything they wouldn't allow you to do it.

They don't have to disallow it, just make it difficult and inconvenient. The loud part is "election security". The quiet part is "voter suppression".

Like, why the hell do so many states only allow a SINGLE day to vote? I can understand not trusting the mail-in voting that Oregon and some other states do, but certainly we can all agree that letting the polls be open for multiple days with long hours would be a good thing, right?

> "Let's start by making voting days holidays"

I hate that there has been such a push for this. It's not going to increase turnout. It will not increase turnout from people that work emergency services, and will lower turnout for people that work customer-facing jobs like retail and restaurants. Just ask your cashier how easy it is for them to get Labor Day, Memorial Day, or Independence Day off of work. They will laugh in your face.

is it? if people really cared they would put more money towards it than intuit could

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