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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of her either, but what do you actually expect?

Politicians are not generally domain specialists anywhere, their purpose is to make decisions and serve as a pretty face for some more or less coherent policy.

Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain. This is especially necessary at the EU level, because the main purpose of that whole organisation is to lower trade barriers and regulatory friction-- lobbyists are somewhat helpful and necessary in that.

> I think the whole EU should be reformed

What would you suggest?

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> Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain.

Industries are not the only thing affected by policy, citizens are affected too.

Not harming industries often means harming normal people, and industries have a much stronger lobbying power than normal people,

Lobbying could be ok if every interaction with politicians were recorded and public, and if the money you have wouldn't matter on how easily you can reach the lawmakers.

If lobbying were illegal, lawmakers could inform their decisions by turning to independent experts, who provide some slightly more impartial information

> To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain.

Industries that cant comply to modern standards should be harmed. We dont need industries willing to pay lobbyists to keep fossil fuels alive for example.

> Industries that cant comply to modern standards should be harmed.

Those "modern standards" need to be codified into law, and feedback from established companies is valuable for doing that.

> We dont need industries willing to pay lobbyists to keep fossil fuels alive for example.

Those lobbyists represent the interests of a good portion of the economy. If you disregard their feedback, your risk damaging/destabilizing your economy for unclear gain, and the resulting backlash is going to more than undo any progress you made anyway.

> [...] feedback from established companies is valuable for doing that.

This is exactly what led us to fall behind in electric car development and construction.

It's the "unreasonable" rules that were unilaterally implemented that made car companies panic and finally start competing.

> Those lobbyists represent the interests of a good portion of the economy

No, they represent the interests of a few shareholders.

> It's the "unreasonable" rules that were unilaterally implemented that made car companies panic and finally start competing.

I believe the margin for effective regulation is much smaller than you think.

Sure, the EU could've mandated zero-emission vehicles from 2020 on in, say, 2010. But what would have happened? Carmakers would have made giant losses because their production facilities become worthless overnight (and laid off swathes of people); prices for vehicles and transport would've invariably gone through the roof and it is quite likely that the whole industry would have picked the "wrong" technology to bet on, like fuel cells, synthetic fuel or even hydrogen combustion.

Compare how much pushback you get in the general population against costly pro-climate policy already (very important to look past your own bubble on this!) and it seems clear to me that this would have failed competely (doing great economical damage, possibly a full-blown crisis), and would have probably been rolled back by the next election at the latest.

> Carmakers would have made giant losses because their production facilities become worthless overnight (and laid off swathes of people);

This is exactly what happened and is happening now. So 10 more years didn't prepare car maker better.

In fact the CEO of Stellantis was openly talking about how much of bad idea electric cars would be.

However, during those 10 years they managed to cheat on emissions measurements.

> it is quite likely that the whole industry would have picked the "wrong" technology to bet on, like fuel cells, synthetic fuel or even hydrogen combustion.

This also happened with so called bio-ethanol and Toyota's long standing and failed hydrogen bet.

> Compare how much pushback you get in the general population against costly pro-climate policy already

In Europe it's more a question of economics (like cost of electric cars for example) than a push back against pro-climate efforts themselves.

What is happening right now is that legacy carmakers have to compete harder because their core know-how lost value. That was somewhat inevitable, but banning/destroying that industry 10 years earlier would have hurt much more and would have been punished hard by voters.

> In Europe it's more a question of economics (like cost of electric cars for example) than a push back against pro-climate efforts themselves.

This is exactly my point- people don't like to suddenly pay more for the same just to avoid "climate debt" (and I'm willing to bet that your judgement on this is distorted, because most people in your bubble would accept some sacrifice for climate conservation, unlike the majority).

I am afraid this is not a personal choice of "accepting" something. If they dont accept drastical change in their lifestyles, they gotta accept billions of immigrants given that some countries become inhabitable sooner than others. Given the current geopolitical climate I think they'd rather shoot them at the borders though. Sad world.

> What would you suggest?

Lenin once said that "Every cook should learn to govern the state."

And that's how we should do it. Random lottery, pretty much the same way we choose election assessors or jury members.

This is how they do it on the Mars Trilogy after setting up a colony on Mars. Of course the trilogy is entirely fictional, but the idea sounds like it couldn't be worse than the current situation, where those with narcissistic/psycho/sociopath tendencies winning elections i.e. those who seek power and/or those who have proficient oration abilities, not necessarily those who are most capable.

The case of the EU Commissioner is particularly grating because she leads 500 million people without ever being subjected to an election.

Could start by not having an unelected president who thinks she’s the queen of the continent.

To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain

But where are the lobbyists that prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected citizens? Are they not entitled to adequate representation?

> where are the lobbyists that prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected citizens

Voting is there to keep incentives aligned with the population at large.

On specific issues, lobbying is also feasible for non-corporate entities; consider right-to-repair initiatives or pro-climate NGOs.

Unions and NGOs.

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