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Comment by jpdoctor | Hacker News Reader

> While it does demonstrate that we, [...] can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies.

Influence on the P&L is great. Influence at the voting booth is one better, and somehow the tech community has to convince congress that the voting booth is in play.

(Yes, P&L leads to political donations, which lead to reelection, but politicians are always playing the trade-off game. So somehow they have to get convinced that supporting dumbass legislation will come back to kick them in the nuts.)

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Politicians don't like distractions. If support for some legislation will end up causing distractions, especially during campaign season, they will take notice.

The best distractions come from primary challenges directly attributable to their stances on issues, but even having hecklers show up to campaign events can work.

The right has been using primary threats for a long time to keep politicians in line. I suspect we could be effective using this strategy as well if we put our energy where our mouth is.

It's not a matter of distraction, it's a matter of support and influence and money.

If you can convince a politician that a sizeable percentage of influential people who are liable to donate money to a cause are for or a against a particular issue that that they are legislating on, preferably people who are from within his/her riding/ward/district and thus directly impact him/her.

Say, like well connected, high earning (mostly white, male) nerds. If you stop to think about the amount of power we are actually capable of wielding, it's actually really shocking that msft/goog/aapl etc seem to have really crappy lobbyists.

(As an aside, here for instance is a good Planet Money podcast on lobbying: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues... )

"It's all about money" is a one-dimensional caricature that really doesn't reflect the way most congresspeople actually think.

Money matters, of course, but it's not the only thing that matters.

Well, I proposed three dimensions!

Check out that podcast I linked. Short of running as or supporting your own candidate, it's kind of how politicians are swayed in any democracy.

If you walked up to a representative and say, "I have these many thousands of members in your constituency, all of whom manage or work in large companies or other institutions and we suggest you do this or that" then that politician is likely to take notice.

The sad part is money is often required to grease all of those wheels, from simply getting private quality time with your rep (see that lobbying podcast) to paying someone to have the time to write up policy recommendations and collect member names and so on so forth.

> If you walked up to a representative and say, "I have these many thousands of members in your constituency, all of whom manage or work in large companies or other institutions and we suggest you do this or that" then that politician is likely to take notice.

Nope. He'd say "you and everyone else who talks with me".

Most House members represent about 720k people. (310M/435 and small states get at least one regardless of population.) On almost any issue, there are "thousands" of people on both sides.

But it is the most significant bit, correct?

I don't think so.

The voting booth is certainly in play as a proxy, as you pointed to.

But it'll be hard to convince politicians that the voting booth is in play directly. In fact, after seeing Lessig on the Daily Show last week, it'll hard for me to be convinced:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/lawre...

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