EquALLity wrote:
Why do the companies continue to give money to politicians?
Government is a huge employer.
If there are two construction companies, Builder and Construct, and Builder gives to the politician but Construct does not, Builder will get the government jobs. If they both give, they both have a chance for the jobs. If neither give, then they both have a chance for the jobs.
It comes down to a bad example in game theory where the equilibrium is harmful to the companies because it wastes their money.
The state of public competition for votes is also bad for politicians, since they don't get to keep that money, they have to spend it on advertising just to keep their jobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCcVODWm-oY
There are other videos on the topic, but it's hard to find because there's some channel called "game theory" that is about video games.
It pollutes the search to a ridiculous degree.
EquALLity wrote:
And why do republican politicians, who disproportionately get money from certain companies, almost always support policies that benefit those companies?
They don't get that much more (and the money they get may be less useful).
They are fiscally conservative, they're pro-business. They support policies that benefit most businesses.
And a lot of rich people give them money because they really believe that's what's best for the country.
Businesses don't usually want to give them money, though, since it wastes money that could be spent on the business and lowering prices.
Money flows primarily from ideology, or competition (businesses that have to give money or else).
Some rich also give them money because they're bigots, but that's changing and fiscal conservatism is becoming uncoupled from the anti-choice anti-gay religious right.
EquALLity wrote:
By the way, when exactly did your opinion change regarding this, and why? From my understanding, you used to agree that money corrupts politics.
I said if you don't like it, address the companies who are giving to the politicians. That's the best way to stop it.
You can't, as Sanders wanted to do, interfere in free speech (and using your personal money to amplify your speech is part of free speech).
Trump wants to limit corporate contributions, but leave personal contributions unlimited.
This is why: It's very difficult to limit personal contributions without running afoul of personal liberty and free speech.
It's not because he's rich, it's because he has more sense than Sanders (which is sad).
And as I've said, it's very likely that the money given to liberal candidates goes further (results in more vote payoff) than for conservatives. If they're both getting a roughly equal amount, or conservatives are only getting a little more, it's likely more helpful for democrats than it is for conservatives.
The better your message is, generally, the less it costs to spread it and win votes.
Votes = Money * message quality.
A perfectly crafted message could spread across the world with a budget of a couple dollars.
Conservatives have tied themselves to an anchor in their socially regressive beliefs for a long time, and now society is rising up against that.
Hopefully liberals don't put on that anchor now as conservatives are removing it.
I wrote:
If some big company funds conservative or liberal candidates, and you like or dislike that, then either refuse to buy from them, or buy from them, and tell them why.
Like it or dislike it, the consumer is in control if informed and willing to act on that information. That's the way to stop harmful corporate contributions.
If we want to destroy big oil, we have to hit them where it hurts and promote viable alternatives like nuclear. The enemy of our enemy must be our friend. Liberals are anti-nuclear, though, so thus far we have no viable options.
On the plus side, there's not much evidence that oil actually has control of politics if we get our facts straight and can unify the parties on this.
If conservatives were really in the pockets of big oil, they would be anti-nuclear too. They're just pro-energy and pro-anything that benefits the economy.
If liberals were really in the pockets of big oil, they'd be against cap and trade. They wouldn't have to be for it if they could overcome the oil industry brainwashing on nuclear (see how it's the propaganda, and not the cash, that's the real problem?).
EquALLity wrote:
Lets just weigh the different issues.
Bad:
Oil industry influence, coal industry influence, private prisons, tax loopholes, tax breaks, not regulating Wall Street, stricter drug laws, war bias, public education diminished, healthcare availability lower, unequal pay, no mandatory paid maternity or sick leave, less gun control (NRA lobbying), higher wasteful military spending, etc. etc.
Good that I agree with at the moment:
Nuclear energy, GMOs
1. It's not a matter of just counting things. Weight matters.
2. Not all of these things are demonstrated, or demonstrated to be bad.
The medical lobby is strong, and wants greater access to healthcare and more support, and much of it also supports a single payer system (because it's more efficient and easier for them).
Mandatory paid maternity and sick leave are problems for businesses, and employees will take advantage of these laws.
Unequal pay probably isn't a thing, and it's not demonstrated to be harmful in the way of oil if it is.
Gun control is highly debatable; this is very visible, but the actual life and health toll is small and mostly limited to gun owners.
Wasteful military spending is an issue, but where do you think that money goes? The military is one of the most progressive industries there are, providing a huge number of jobs, and one of the best ways out of poverty there is in the country. It also goes into research and technology, and national defense (not all of the budget, but a significant part of it is actually important).
Wall Street IS better regulated than it was, and regulations also have costs. This is not the problem Sanders imagines it is.
Tax breaks on business stimulate the economy and create, "bring home", or keep more jobs in the country. I don't care much about this, but it's a legitimate concern for conservatives who are pro-U.S.
Tax loopholes are an issue for both parties: more so for democrats, but that's because they're a witch hunt, it's actually hard to close some of them and in many or most cases wouldn't do much
http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2013/11/13/taking-a-hard-look-at-democrats-never-ending-search-for-tax-loophole-closers/
Education is primarily a state issue, and is funded mainly through property tax. It has little or nothing to do with any of this stuff or lobbying.
Drug laws are mainly a state issue too, and based on social conservatism. When people's children get addicted to drugs, they lobby as human beings. We need good treatment facilities to handle addiction and reduce human loss, thus eliminating that human lobby force of grieving mothers (which in no way will campaign finance reform change). And the Rehab industry should be able to push hard for drug legalization for financial reasons if they were profit motivated.
Coal is mainly supported by conservatives as an alternative to oil for national security and self sufficiency purposes.
Oil is a problem, but I already went over that. The same applies to coal, which is mainly advanced as an alternative to oil to meet energy needs.
Private prisons are already going to be taken down; even Hillary promised to do something about these. It wasn't hard for her to say no to their money.
EquALLity wrote:
Well, republicans get more money from all the bad sources I examine.
Irrelevant. And Democrats fund these sources' propaganda themselves for free, which is even worse (the anti-nuclear nonsense).
EquALLity wrote:
You can argue that it still helps dems because more people agree with dems, but I don't necessarily agree with that. And even if it helps dems get elected, it makes them beholden to the donors.
Irrelevant if it's not doing harm. So maybe they're more likely to give some company rather than another a government contract. Bit of a waste, but it's also already illegal so we just need more crackdown on corruption.
EquALLity wrote:
but economic progress? It's getting worse.
Sanders' policies would make that even worse. One thing can be said about oil and coal: it is better for the economy than being energy starved.
EquALLity wrote:
Environmental progress?
Wouldn't be a problem if liberals would stop spreading anti-nuclear propaganda and doing the oil industry's lobbying work for it. Oil knows nuclear is the only real threat to its hold on power.
EquALLity wrote:
Prison progress?
Like I said, already being addressed. The next generation of conservatives are more socially liberal, and want more personal rights when it comes to drugs, and less waste on prisons and foreign wars. We finally have some kind of political consensus building up. The prison industry can't fight that, it's on death row.
EquALLity wrote:Education progress?
Local issue.
EquALLity wrote:How is it a protection racket?
Presumably you don't mean it's protecting their corporate interests, so what is it protecting exactly?
Very often, the threat of the government illegally hampering their business because of corruption unless the company pays up. And things like being locked out of government contracts. It's a problem, and also illegal; we need more of a crackdown on corruption to deal with that.
EquALLity wrote:For example, there is a prison company called the 'Corrections Corporation of America'. It gave $69,200 in this 2016 election already (12% to Democrats, 88% to Republicans), before the general election has even started, as of the end of April.
Where does that company operate mostly?
That statistic suggests it functions in mainly red states. They may be spreading it equally among politicians, and most of the politicians there just happen to be republicans.
You can't make such assumptions that it's an ideological bias.
Prison companies are in competition with each other. If they want the contracts, if they want illegal tips and heads up, if they want to buy a vote in their favor and beat their competitors, they need to pay up.
This is nasty stuff in business functioning in the corrupt intersection with politics, but it's not buying policy overall, it's very often just buying protection from government persecution that would destroy their businesses.
EquALLity wrote:Interesting, they gave a lot more money to republicans, who conveniently are stricter on drugs and crime on general...
Coincidence is not evidence of conspiracy.
And even if they do, that doesn't mean it does much or influences meaningfully the politicians' beliefs.
Propaganda is probably much more useful (frightening the constituents about drugs and criminals).
EquALLity wrote:If that worked better for them, why aren't they doing that instead?
They do when they want to affect policy. But the trouble is when you have competing companies, they can't easily conspire together to do things that will help all of them.
Let's go back to Builder and Construct, and think about game theory.
Builder spends a million dollars on propaganda. Construct spends nothing. The propaganda benefits Builder AND Construct equally since it's for something that favors the industry generally, or hurts an alternative.
Now Builder is at a huge disadvantage to Construct, and lost a lot of profit. Construct can now cuts its prices, and win contracts, and Builder goes bankrupt as Construct pulls ahead and wins all of the bids.
Propaganda is very effective, but doesn't give you an advantage over your competition in a non-monopolistic industry.
Only if companies can conspire together, and contribute money to a pool to fund the propaganda, can this really be useful.
EquALLity wrote:Actually, I made a mistake there. I was confusing Super PACs with 'dark money groups', which are related to Super PACs and basically as significant a problem in practice:
And that's already illegal: non-profits can't donate money to politics like that. The non-profit could lose its non-profit status, and suffer a lot of fines.
The IRS needs to crack down on that more. Apparently some have already been broken up.
Unfortunately, that kind of auditing may not be very profitable for the IRS, so they may be less inclined to pursue it.
EquALLity wrote:brimstoneSalad wrote:I disagree, I think they're worse.
Why?
Why not?
Look how long the propaganda about nuclear lived. This stuff gets eaten up, and then it turns Democrats and liberals into anti-nuclear lobbyists. I can't imagine a more cost effective campaign on behalf of the oil industry. They don't have to give money to Democrats, they were born from big oil's propaganda and drank all of their beliefs straight from its teets. They don't support Big oil's competition, so there's no threat from them.
EquALLity wrote:These politicians are really intelligent people. Ted Cruz attended Harvard Law School.
You really think he's just too stupid to understand that climate change exists?
The word is delusional.
The same thing for the age of the Earth, the Virgin birth, etc.
EquALLity wrote:To clarify, are you referring to individuals, or people like teachers who hold government positions?
Anybody and everybody who has a platform.
EquALLity wrote:brimstoneSalad wrote:Evidence?
See the section of this reply where I way the different issues impacted.
You didn't weigh them, you
listed them.
It's like saying "this bucket has a hundred rocks, this one only has three, so the one with a hundred is heavier" No, no it isn't. One rock can easily be heavier than a hundred smaller rocks.
Also, your list was mostly wrong. Many of those things are not evidenced, are not meaningful problems, or are problems at a different level of government.
EquALLity wrote:
brimstoneSalad wrote:The green revolution, Nuclear power, Cameras on cops, Rule of law, Property rights, Modern medicine, Free trade and pressure to world peace (which is good for business).
How do the ones I highlighted apply?
The green revolution is modern agriculture and GMO. Cameras on cops is great for the tech industry which gets contracts to build and supply these systems -- so much money. Free trade is good for businesses generally. Medicine is good for business, and makes a lot of money (it's a big industry). Rule of law and property rights are both business issues; companies push for consistency and reduced corruption, because it makes investment safer. It's why Africa is still so terrible for business, it's not stable.
EquALLity wrote:
We're not talking about capitalism. We're talking about corporatism.
Same thing; they're inherently linked.
EquALLity wrote:
I don't think so, because then they won't get money in the future.
So? Politicians usually want to believe they're doing the right thing. Hillary could have taken that money from the private prisons and then banned them all the same. So, they're gone and they no longer have money to give her opponents either.
Worst case, politicians aren't that reliant on those jobs; it's an ego thing, and if they take down a giant and retire there's not much of a greater reward.
EquALLity wrote:
Do you really think that most of the republicans who support Israel are doing so for Armageddon? That sounds like a massive conspiracy theory.
It's probably a mix. Their ultra conservative base do. Maybe just because their pastors told them to, but it ultimately comes back to that.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a transparent part of their religious beliefs. You can ask them.
EquALLity wrote:
Do you really think a significant portion of republicans support Israel because they are looking forward to Armageddon?
Yes.
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/jesus-christs-return-to-earth/
And prophecy is quite clear on the subject.
EquALLity wrote:
I don't think that religion is the biggest issue in the republican party; I think corporatism is (when it comes to the politicians).
For republican voters, I think that faith in unregulated capitalism might also be more significant than religion. Unfettered capitalism seems to be a strong dogma for them. It's pretty close though.
This is only the case with the more liberal, and libertarian voters.
Most republicans do not believe in unregulated capitalism, just less regulation of certain kinds, and they don't agree with significant wealth redistribution.
Republicans probably think there's more welfare than there really is, but welfare is a significant cost today.
EquALLity wrote:
It's not an option in terms of that it's bad perception-wise, but according to you, Hillary Clinton supports trade deals that hurt the US economy because she cares about third world economies.
That's fine for her base currently, because they don't understand economics very well. The wealthy tend to understand it better, so there's less chance to get away with that kind of policy change.
Fiscal policies are a serious problem for the Democratic party.
EquALLity wrote:
They are supposed to in theory, but they don't in practice because of tax loopholes (tax loopholes that exist because of corporatism).
I think you've been misinformed of the magnitude of this "tax loophole" problem.
EquALLity wrote:
If we raise taxes on the rich and close loopholes, we could afford to help very important social programs.
That's not correct. It would probably raise very little money. Sanders' economics is not based on reality.
EquALLity wrote:
I mean, the prison population skyrocketed as a result of the War on Drugs. To say that the prison population just happened to skyrocket than due to some other factor seems pretty off-base.
That's a guess. There are many other ideas too:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/
The war on drugs probably increased the crime rate, which increased prison population (because of an increase in violent crime too), but it's a conspiracy theory to suggest that this was all engineered by politicians and the industry. They're human beings: you think they want the crime rate to rise and for more people to get killed for some lobby dollars? Can you even imagine a human being in the prison industry wanting that, much less the hundreds or thousands necessary to participate in such a conspiracy?
EquALLity wrote:
It's a fact that they give tons of money to politicians. Obviously I can't prove that a specific corporation gave money and that a politician voted a certain way blatantly and openly because of that. It's not something that politicians are really inclined to be transparent about.
It's a conspiracy theory. No, that's not the answer.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684
There are many causes to the spike in crime, and they were all well intentioned accidents derived from ignorance and incompetence. I don't believe in that widespread malevolence, and I don't believe humans are good enough secret keepers or competent enough to keep a lid on something like that.
EquALLity wrote:
You could've at least watched the video to learn what it was about and learn the argument. It's like two minutes.
I did, see my post above, and it wasted like an hour of my time and it was all nonsense conspiracy theory stuff. That's why I didn't watch it to begin with.
He's a conspiracy theorist. I'm not interested in conspiracy theories. I need evidence, and I won't humor conspiracy theories, because as that article explained, they're pretty much mathematically impossible.
EquALLity wrote:
Well, Paul Krugman (an economist who won a Nobel Prize) agrees that we very much need more regulation (to reinstate Glass-Steagall). He's generally considered left leaning, but he's been critical of Bernie Sanders, and doesn't identify as a democrat.
I'd need to see more economists on this; it's easy to find an outlier. Larger studies would be good.
There are logistical problems in regulation, though, and much bigger problems.
EquALLity wrote:
You don't really have to take Warren's word on it, because CNBC tries to argue against everything she says, but they can't because she's just using facts.
Or she's just lying with statistics, and the journalists were not equipped to keep up.
EquALLity wrote:
It may not impact us much personally, but a large portion of the United States is living below the poverty line and has been hurt significantly by governmental policies that IMO are a result of money in politics.
They're hurt by their own behavior, inability to budget, propensity to debt, bad spending, and poor life choices. We need public education programs to teach them how to get out of poverty, not to give them more money to waste. They don't know how to spend or save, and that's the problem.
But Liberals will never support that, because the regressive left calls that "victim blaming", which really makes liberals the worst enemy of the poor today. This is incredibly unfortunate.
There's no evidence that any of this is due to money in politics.
EquALLity wrote:
it's broken because the system allows bribery that leads to negative policies.
Claims like this need evidence. What negative policies? How have they affected people negatively? Proof?
It sounds like a conspiracy.
Bribery is an issue, and it results in a lot of wasted money (which mostly ends up in advertising), but there's not evidence for the kind of conspiracy you're talking about. Bribery works on a very small scale.
EquALLity wrote:
Not really. According to you, fossil fuels are cheaper than solar energy. So how can individuals who are poor boycott the oil industry?
If they have a monopoly, we need to single mindedly support their only viable competition: nuclear. Then we can.
There may be oil companies that lobby less, though, and that don't lie: we need to identify and support the lesser of the evils. This is how we change competition to be about ethics.
EquALLity wrote:
How can we boycott companies that build weapons for the military? How can we boycott private prisons?
Those companies, or those working with them, also make civilian goods. Easy to boycott. Follow the money, and look at where the lobbying is.
We can also encourage prisoners to choose prisons which do not engage in lobbying, or engage in less lobbying, and target the companies working with the worst offenders.
EquALLity wrote:A lot of these problems can't be solved through boycotts.
But nobody is going to boycott even if they could be.
They could all be stopped by boycotts of the right kind, as long as they don't have a monopoly.
However, that people are too ignorant and not responsible enough is why we can't trust a pure democracy either. If a pure democracy could work, so could boycotts. There's no reason to believe it's a good thing to take money out of politics through legal methods just to hand over control to the fear mongers.
