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Comment by ryan_lane | Hacker News Reader

This particular libertarian has accepted large donations from ByteDance. Though I think the decision he made was ultimately correct, it's very likely he wasn't doing it out of principle, but because he wants to keep getting bribes.

We should make buying politicians illegal, so that we can see their actual character.

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Isn't it more likely that he's just being consistent with his prior principles, and bytedance donated to him knowing that he'd be a reliable ally and thus wanting him to remain in Congress?

Almost certainly not. It's not very likely for him to be voted out, and companies don't "hope" their dollars go toward what they want.

Of course they do. All political donations involve "hope" because you can't directly control what a politician says or does with money. You can only fund allies and then hope or assume they remain allies. In the case of Rand Paul it's a pretty good bet he won't suddenly turn on them, because his principles are consistent with what they want, so it makes sense to make big donations.

I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

If this was a democrat, would you still give the benefit of the doubt?

I simply can't trust the word of a politician that's arguing in favor of the company that bribed them.

It's not about dems or repubs it's just that 2 parties can't possibly represent all the diverse groups and agendas in this country and a libertarian option would go a long way to remedying that.

But like you said whether it's on principle or not the reason for his objection is beside the point.

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