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points by mcdonje 1 day ago | 0 comments

There's a good chance it could have the opposite effect. The public doesn't pay as much attention to the workings of the government as donors do.

It's essentially an extension of the Sunshine Act of 1976, which made congressional votes public. There were claims that before it was enacted, legislators were able to vote their consciences, but then lie to donors and tell them they voted for their interests instead of their constituents' interests.

Since it passed, the public has been paying attention, but not like the donor class has been. Something needs to be not only bad, but have some sort of novel or salacious quality to make the news. If it's not near an election, people forget, if they paid attention to begin with. Donors pay attention. Representatives know this.

Ultimately, the problem is the money in politics, but this sort of thing can exacerbate the effects.

[–] estearum 1 day ago

Yeah the real answer is banning private funding from politics in as many ways as possible.

[–] tomaskafka 1 day ago

As long as there are people who allocate billions with a sign of the pen, with zero personal responsibility and skin in the game, there will be whole industries dedicated to swaying their hand.

[–] godelski 1 day ago

I think everyone understands this already. But there's also a big difference between making it easy for industries to sway politicians and difficult. That's what actually matters.

To put it another way, I still put a lock on my door even though lockpicks exist. I still use passwords on my accounts even though people could guess or brute force them.

Don't trivialize things to uselessness

[–] estearum 1 day ago

Right, and there can be laws that make their efforts more or less effective.

For example, we could behead people convicted of corrupting or being corrupted. That would be a significant deterrent.

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> we could behead people convicted of corrupting or being corrupted

This has historically done nothing for corruption and everything for one-party rule.

[–] cael450 1 day ago

Yeah, all we really need to do is pass laws that make some of this corruption actually illegal instead of "constitutionally protected speech."

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

We need to amend the Constitution to strike pardon power and give the Congress the power to pass property taxes (aka wealth taxes) and regulate donations to campaigns, candidates, parties and partisan causes.

We also need law establishing mandatory retirement for Congressmen and judges, including justices, and a system where each President appoints (with Senate consent) one and only one justice to SCOTUS. Finally, yes, pass McCain-Feingold, pass a SCOTUS ethics bill and make corruption charges easier to bring.

[–] InitialLastName 1 day ago

> a system where each President appoints (with Senate consent) one and only one justice to SCOTUS.

This is my only significant disagreement with you. This should be two justices:

1) An 18-year (9*2) term is more compatible with age limits than a 36-year term

2) Each Senate class gets to participate in the appointment of one justice.

[–] kown7 1 day ago

While I like the sentiment, the law of unintended consequences will most likely strike back hard.

[–] estearum 1 day ago

I don't think this is necessarily a good policy. I'm saying it's obviously blatantly untrue to suggest that just because people will always want to corrupt public officials, that they will be equally successful in all possible universes.

It's also untrue to suggest that any intervention will necessarily create a worse outcome than the status quo.

[–] onefiftymike 1 day ago

I don't know what the answer to public votes is. I see the benefit in them voting their conscience. But I also see how they can vote against my interests and then lie through their teeth that they are helping me if I can't see their record.

But voting today is such a performative act for them. There are great pieces of legislation that can't pass because someone has labeled it as radical so one side or the other can't be seen with their name on it so they don't pass it even though they know it is good and would benefit their constituents.

[–] xxpor 1 day ago

is money the problem or just that most people don't care about most things, but a few people REALLY care about a few things? There's plenty of groups without much money that still gum up the works because they're persistent.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

This is a basic concept of Public Choice Theory.

People worrying about money in politics are overemphasizing the instrumentality of money, rather than the underlying structural incentives that tend toward special interests dominating complex issues.

If money were removed from the equation, the concentrations of power, motivations to influence it, and asymmetries in those motivations will all continue to exist; political influence will just be exercised through other means, and some particular faction or class of people will still be at the sweet spot of having the greatest competence and the greatest motivation to apply those means.

A lot of people are reluctant to acknowledge it, but this is inherent to politics itself, and there is no straightforward way to fix it, other than to limit the reach of political power.

[–] WillowWithAWand 1 day ago

In a vacuum I absolutely agree with you. In fact my PoliSci 101 prof defined politics as “who has power and how they use it” but in a system like ours where money also is a form of power (or at least a force multiplier of power) unto itself, money helps concentrate political power into fewer hands and magnify the ways they can use it.

It certainly would be naive to think that simply “getting money out of politics” would “fix” things but it is still a desirable goal for anyone who, themselves, does not currently have extremely large quantities of money.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

How do you figure money itself as a source of power, independent of political influence?

[–] snapplebobapple 1 day ago

It's slightly more complex though isn't? Because the actual problem is how to limit the reach of political power while still having an effective government.

[–] xxpor 1 day ago

Thank you, this is a much more coherent way of saying it.

[–] tern 1 day ago

Yeah, the right mental model might be:

- The donor class is really in charge, and completely unaccountable

- Public servants are our representatives in a fight against them

- Protecting them from exploitation by the donors is in our interest

[–] sbseitz 1 day ago

The politicians don't either, the lobbying groups do it :)

[–] yeahwhatever10 1 day ago

Because donors can't just count?

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

It's amazing how you've managed to position "politicians were pursuing their own hidden agendas and then lying about it" as a desirable state of affairs.

It sounds like they were defrauding people into giving them donations under false pretenses, and the transparency measures were effective at mitigating that.

There's quite a lot of strange bias in your comment: the unjustified disjunction between "constituents" and "donors", the concept of a "donor class" as some singular bloc rather than an arbitrary aggregation of anyone who donates on behalf on all sides of all issues, the idea that donations are more important than the actual votes, etc.

[–] snowwrestler 1 day ago

> It sounds like they were defrauding people into giving them donations under false pretenses, and the transparency measures were effective at mitigating that.

There are no pretenses in political giving (at least at the U.S. federal level), because it is illegal to tie a donation to a particular position, vote, or action by the politician. It’s called a quid pro quo and is the test for whether a donation is a bribe.

In the U.S. the political system is based on people, not positions or policy. Donations to a politician are to the person. It’s not a proxy for buying an outcome.

In practice, of course people are going to support politicians who they like and think agree with them. But under the law, a politician can’t rip you off by taking your money and then voting contrary to your desires.

[–] ninalanyon 1 day ago

> the test for whether a donation is a bribe.

Donations are always bribes.

> Donations to a politician are to the person.

Isn't that how bribery is normally done?

> It’s not a proxy for buying an outcome.

Perhaps not precisely, but it is a proxy for attempting to influence an outcome.

> under the law, a politician can’t rip you off by taking your money and then voting contrary to your desires.

Isn't that in conflict with:

> it is illegal to tie a donation to a particular position, vote, or action by the politician.

Are you saying that if I give a politician money and express my desire that they are then legally bound to vote according to my desire? Sounds like buying votes; I'm pretty sure that's not condoned by the law.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

Which makes the initial promise to vote a certain way in exchange for donations itself illegal. That seems fine. So what is the problem with transparency, again?

[–] snowwrestler 1 day ago

What initial promise? You’ve fabricated something that was not in the comment you replied to.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

This subthread is a discussion about pertains to politicians misrepresenting their voting intentions in order to get donations. My comment was a response to an argument that allowing politicians to do this is a good thing because it allows them to vote their "consciences" while pretending otherwise to people donating to them.

[–] snowwrestler 1 day ago

> This subthread is a discussion about pertains to politicians misrepresenting their voting intentions in order to get donations.

It is not. You’re not reading carefully enough.

[–] catlifeonmars 1 day ago

In practice there is a donor class and constituent class who are largely not the same set of people. The point you’re missing is how the donor class is instrumental in influencing the actual language that goes into the laws, this happens peripheral to the democratic process. For example, a spending bill where the language favors one vendor over others because that vendor paid to submit their suggested language. This is not hypothetical btw.

[–] JoBrad 1 day ago

My read was that the people who are getting fleeced aren’t paying enough attention.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

That seems like an assumption, and a counterintuitive one: wouldn't you expect someone getting "fleeced" by the political system to be motivated to pay attention due to that very fact?

If you have a system of open transparency, then everyone who is motivated to pay attention has the means to do so. If they're not paying attention, it means they're not sufficiently motivated, and are choosing not to pay attention, not being constrained artificially.

This seems to be converging to some sort of "false consciousness" argument, where someone speculatively projects motivations and intentions onto other parties, then criticizes those other parties for not acting in accordance with the motivations strangers have projected onto them.

Needless to say, these sorts of arguments are utterly disingenuous, and in this case, somewhat ironic, because the people arguing that outcomes should conform to their speculative ideologies -- even in defiance of what the public themselves are manifestly choosing -- are themselves special interests trying to exert their own influence over politics.

[–] klrefg 1 day ago

> motivated to pay attention has the means to do so.

Yes, exactly, people who profit directly from certain decisions can afford to spend a lot more time and resources on this than ordinary voters.

[–] Gormo 16 hours ago

Right, that's basic Public Choice Theory, and it holds in all cases. With respect to transparency, there are really only two potential scenarios:

1. A closed an opaque political system operates outside of direct public view. Those with the strongest interest in influencing it invest efforts into gaming the system, co-opting its participants, and manipulating it through back channels also outside of public view. Those who suffer from the negative externalities of political intervention have no visibility into the process that created them.

2. An open, transparent political system operates in full public view. Behavior of politicians, relationships with special interests, and their explicit votes are all public record. Those most motivated will still invest more heavily into influencing the political process, but those who are affected by negative externalities have visibility into what's creating them, and if they should become motivated to act, e.g. if the effects of those externalities hit a tipping point, they have the knowledge and means to do so.

The perfect world that you're envisioning depends on politicians being presumptively trustworthy, well-intentioned, and having perfect knowledge of what their constituents' interests actually are. None of that is possible, and shielding politicians from direct accountability will only serve to make them more beholden to the small set of interests best suited to navigating their way into the system.