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points by Gormo 1 day ago | 0 comments
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.