I mean it still feels like a lobby-proof democracy should be the aspiration, rather than resigning oneself to lobbying as an inevitability
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It's kind of weighted as to what counts as 'lobbying.' Constitutional issues aside, what are we aspiring to ban - probably not letters from constituents or whatever.
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I mean I'm given to understand corporate interests dispense a great deal of money to elected officials
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*Bribery* is different from lobbying Bribery itself is explicitly illegal at multiple levels, including in the Constitution itself Most of the laws around lobbying are intended to try to keep anything they do from being bribery
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Obviously rich people can and do look for loopholes to get around this and have ever since George Washington built his career on throwing parties at his giant plantation house But it's not clear that "not having lobbyists" would make that any better
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To be clear, I'm specifically criticizing the juxtaposition Noah was making, saying if the options really came down to perpetual gerontocracy or perpetual lobbyist power I'd much rather have the latter and curb its worst excesses
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Well no I'm not sure it was really responsive to the point he was making He's saying that some kind of "gerontocracy" - a "seniority system" - is inevitable, it's just the way the world works "You want to talk labor laws, that's Bob's thing, he's been doing it 20 years"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
There's always some guy who's effectively in charge of the thing because he's been doing the thing longer than everyone else and knows everyone else who works on the thing Noah is saying if that guy isn't the actual elected politician it'll be the lobbyist
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
I.e. in some Prez Rickard situation where it's actually the law that the politician has to be a teenager with no previous experience (like it apparently is on Naboo) you won't actually get a constant flow of fresh, new exciting ideas
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Bob will still be there, he just won't actually be the senator You'll get a constant flow of new senators and they'll all have no idea what the hell they're doing and when they ask whom to get advice from they'll be told to have a meeting with Bob
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And that this ultimately makes things worse The power system is still there, there's still an entrenched old boy network, it's just now hidden from view and less accountable to the public
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
I mean, even on Naboo, there was the super creepy Senator pulling the strings who, uh, destroyed the Republic
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