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Comment by hoopd | Hacker News Reader

Spoken like a lobbyist.

Government administers regulations on behalf of the people. If they're failing to do so then the political process is broken. Lobbyists do not fix broken political processes.

> Uber had been working on the council members for months. “They kinda run this,” Alpert said in February. “I keep feeling they will just wear you down. If we end up in court, we will have to lose just based on resources.”

This doesn't sound like they're simply informing legislators of new information nor does it sound like the legislators had the resources or the time to do anything but roll over.

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I'm not a lobbyist, though my wife used to be. She lobbied on behalf of a construction trade organization. 98% of her work involved telling legislators about the benefits of integrating design and build phases of construction (instead of hiring a separate architect and contractor and doing design and build in separate phases).

Lobbying is a way of structuring administration of regulation that shifts responsibility from unelected bureaucrats to people. Do you think politicians should be sitting around reading papers about the reputation economy and thinking about where those ideas can be applied? It would be intractable and a huge waste of time considering the vast universe of concerns involved. And it's not like ordinary citizens are clamoring writing letters about how the reputation economy enabled by smart phones makes certain taxi regulations obsolete. It's far better for lobbyists to do the relevant work and tell politicians what they should fix and why.

"Lobbying is a way of structuring administration of regulation that shifts responsibility from unelected bureaucrats to people"

Or does it "shift responsibility from unelected bureaucrats to" corporations looking to maximize their financial benefits, regardless of its impact on society?

No.

The entire point of elected officials is that their decisions aren't based on who has money. If we depend on lobbyists then only companies big enough to afford them get a seat at the table. That's a plutocracy.

> Lobbying is a way of structuring administration of regulation that shifts responsibility from unelected bureaucrats to people.

Wait, are you asserting that corporations are people? Uber is not a person and the article suggests that they used their considerable power to take the decisions regarding their regulations out of the hands of the government officials of Portland and thus farther away from the people of Portland.

> Government administers regulations on behalf of the people.

Is that meant to be descriptive? Because I don't know where to start. "The people" isn't even an entity expect in a defunct branch of classical political philosophy.

And I do think this isn't an ideological claim. I believe this could be stated by socialists, libertarians, democrats..

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