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Comment by istvan__ | Hacker News Reader

It is not. This is why US is not ranked high on any corruption list, while maintaining the highest level if private financial influence not only in the lawmaking but also in national security. These are very dangerous, and as the Princeton study points out it threatens democracy in the long run very much.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

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You could even argue that lobbying is democracy's way of having "corruption" built-in.

When there's a dictatorship, no one is surprised when the dictator is bribed. In a democracy, you can't just walk into the president's office and drop a bag of money on his desk, but you can lobby the shit out of him.

Either way, you get to bribe someone who's in a position to hand out favours. That's just how political power works.

Some country the size of Massachussetts can rank better but let's ignore Italy and Greece.

You say this as if lobbying/corruption doesn't happen from the top (federal) to the bottom (local/city) in the United States... We don't need to compare the federal government's issues with "security" spending to European countries to see how there are questionable spending practices at the state level, e.g. public works contracts.

Well that is going to be a hard argument to sell because so many laws are local and you can't really successfully condemn every small jurisdictions decisions without condemning the people that voted for them.

Saying that it's unfeasible to criticize the elected without criticizing the electorate is silly. It's not that the laws are wrong in spirit, it's that they are crafted or operated around so as to benefit the people that put them in place (or their cronies). I think that making the argument that the elected are separate in many ways -- socially, ethically, and legally -- from the electorate is a very easy one to make. It's also a lesson repeated throughout history: see Rome (and the transition from Republic to Empire), Britain (and their 19th century colonial exploits), and others.

You can criticize the personal traits of the elected but when their policies are overwhelmingly supported it is hard to condemn that without involving the people who voted for it. It sucks to have the majority against your beliefs but pretending doesn't address the real problem.

Doubling down on the good old "appeal to the majority," I see... guess we won't be getting anywhere in this thread. The real problem is the one that I am addressing: it starts with the offices themselves and continues as the revolving door continues to revolve. The masses have less and less of a chance to get their desires implemented if lobbying occurs.

"Appeal to the majority" is the basis of democracy and failed minority positions have no choice but to oppose it.

Yet again, you've missed the point. Lobbying and its disproportional impacts are the antitheses of majoritarian rule. They are examples of failed (or more accurately, untested) minority opinions crafted into law and policy without passing under public scrutiny. Your argument boils down to "things are currently the way they are because they are right," which belies the complexities of the situations at hand. That is the appeal to the majority that I am pointing out. It's ironic that you bring it up in the context of lobbying for the reason I've stated above.

Note: I don't think that all lobbying is unethical or contrary to public opinion. I do think that a good majority of it is untested and inorganic. It's monied interests preserving monied interests.

You are attempting to handwave away the fact that virtually all policies have majority support. You can argue they were tricked, you can argue they are wrong, but you cannot argue that long standing policies are not supported by the majority. That may not jive with your world view but too bad, it is on the minority to convince the majority.

To say that the positions lobbyists are lobbying for "virtually all have majority support" is a much bolder claim than the one that I making, which is merely that they are untested opinions that run counter to the spirit of democracy. Lobbyists are in the business of keeping them untested. Why try to engender grassroots support or genuinely benefit constituents when you can spend the money more effectively (i.e., a better ROI) on a handful of representatives? For example, can you say with a straight face that Gramm-Leach-Bliley was genuinely supported and understood by a majority of the population?

If achieving policy based on majority opinions was actually the end game of lobbyists, why would they need to exist in the first place? Majority opinions would elect majority abiding politicians who would enact majority policies. Where's the step that necessitates lobbyists?

[1] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gramm-Leach-Blile...

I am just pointing out the status quo.

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