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That’s why we need money out of politics. Wtf is this?
This is your masters flexing their muscles.
Unfortunately, money won’t even be out of politics if you ban lobbying, i.e. legalized bribery. Even with all those lobbyists gone / hidden away, the people with control over corporations will still hold massive leverage over people’s lives and the functioning of the state. They can make life difficult for any politician and they still do so in countries that banned lobbying.
Not that it wouldn’t be good to ban lobbying. Things are just even worse that you might think!
It’s fucking crazy. I see it like that: capitalism is king at maximizing profits. That’s what capitalism is good at. Capitalism is a tool.
I hate it when someone expects big corporations to act morally. That’s none of its business. Again, capitalism is just a tool that does one thing: maximizing profit. Just like the hammer is not at fault if you hit your thumb the corporations aren’t at fault if their profit maximizing does more harm then good.
We, the people, the benficianries of why capitalism even exists, are responsible to use that tool the right way in the right situations.
And how do we do that? By creating rules and laws that restrict the ways profit can be maximized in situations where it is not at our best interest.
Now please tell me:
Whose fucking idea was it to allow corporations to hire a few dozen lobbyists that professionally influence politicians?
Why should a corporation be allowed to sponsor the election of a person? Don’t you think this is already way too much influence for the cancer that capitalism can be if allowed to grow unconditionally at the wrong places?
Please stop letting immoral corporations influence the rules they need to obey for some irrelevant profit gains that fuck us all over big time in the long run! (fracking anyone?)
The market will sort itself out, or so they say. Let’s be brave and create rules that help us tackle the myriad of problems we all experience right now (global warming, housing crises, health insurance, gun violance…) and watch in awe how the corporations manage to find ways to make a profit while still benefiting us as a whole.
That’s how you use a tool!
Peace out
P.S.: Critique at my train of thoughts or writing style is appreciated. I’m rather stoned right now and english isn’t my first language, so please be gentle.
Don’t forget class conflict! Capitalism is about maximixing profit and does so by making it so that the captains with capital (used to purchase the means of production) have inordinate power over the other classes, with the main underclass being the workers (paid a wage by the capitalist).
We the people only have power to the extent that we can contradict and oppose this class with inordinate power. But that class has inordinate power! It fights back! They control the cops and the political class (legislators, executives, judges) does their bidding. If we get too uppity, they fire us. In fact, they have such influence over society, education, and finance that they set a national employment rate target to ensure we are always yoo afraid to lose our jobs rather than employers being too afraid to lose employees.
Historically, the only way to make strides is radical organized action that goes beyond the political actions they tell us to take. Working with political orgs that leverage direct action and escalations, just as was done to fight for the rights of black Americans, women, gay people, etc.
Though we should also recognize that the real brass tacks are not truly negotiable via legislative pushes or direct actions that achieved the former victories. It may be possible to claw back bits and pieces like banning lobbying (it would take an incredible effort to achieve this, as it is not overtly about the oppression of a group) but as I mentioned before, that would not remove money from politics, just remove legal bribery. The political class would still make decisions based on threats by capital, threats by finance, and the information we consume would be generated by people working at the direction of that class. True liberation requires a more thorough, principled, and disciplined approach that overthrows the capitalist order itself - not that this is easy, but it is probably at least as easy as banning lobbying in my estimation.