Lobbyists aren’t inherently bad. The problem is lack of transparency and controls. Without effective controls of course a corporation with millions to spend will always have the upper hand over some NGO that lobbies for the common good.
Not even in an interesting or corrupt way. “Our engineers think it would be better to do it this way, any objections?” And then everyone talks about it.
And this was the mental roadblock I hit trying to imagine a world without lobbyists.
As if we could ignore every voice with some connection to a profit motive (ignoring thousands of experts), etc
Well said!
ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Yeah, the lobbying question is a complicated one.
In an ideal world it would be much closer to how the standards committees work. The issue isn’t people sharing their opinions and desires for how the system should work, it’s when they use inequitable means to bias the decision. My industry, security, has lobbied for official guidelines on security requirements for different situations. Makes it easier to tell hospitals they can’t have nurses sharing login credentials: government says that’s bad, and now your insurance says it’s a liability.
The problem is that lobbying too often comes with stuff like a “we’re always hiring like minded people at our lobbying firm, if you happen to find yourself in the position to do so, give us a call.”.
It’s too easy for people with a lot of money to make their voices more heard.
It’s not that the wealthy and business interests should be barred from sharing opinions with legislators, it’s that “volume” shouldn’t be proportional to money. My voice as a person who lives near a river should be comparable to that of the guy who owns the car wash upstream when it comes to questions of how much we care about runoff going into the river.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Exactly. We need to get money and promises out of lobbying. You should merely be allowed to explain the problems or benefits of a bill/law, realistic consequences, and proposed solutions.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
👏