
American Democracy Is Drowning in Money - iamjeff
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/opinion/democracy-drowning-cash.html
======
AmIFirstToThink
I am actually amazed at how little money is needed to influence politicians.

Lobbying exists because the return on investment is ridiculously high in favor
of person asking for favorable treatment from politicians in policy making. It
is peanuts invested and Boeing 747s harvested.

If anything the cost of buying a politician should increase multiple orders of
magnitude. Currently hundred, two hundred thousands to a senator's re-election
campaign can buy really serious attention to your concerns. It needs to be
hundreds of millions to buy a senator.

Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from
supporters and then just execute on what they stand for. Bernie and Trump was
essentially that, self/people funded efforts.

~~~
unabridged
You just need to increase the number of representatives multiple orders of
magnitude. Imagine if we had 10000+ congressmen, it would much much harder to
buy influence or lobby. The votes would eventually start to resemble the will
of the people.

Bernie and Trump were just the beginning, the internet has allowed the people
to wake up and field their own candidates instead of just taking what the
political old guard give us.

~~~
craftyguy
Might as well do away with the position of president too. That's way too much
power in the hands of a single person who, as donald regularly demonstrates,
could act arbitrarily.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
Actually presidential election is only time where special interests can't tip
the scale easily. Right now that's the only change where people get their say.

Just 1/3rd of senators get elected every two years and only handful among
those races are balanced where special interest can tip scales with little
effort. Same for congressional elections, few places with 50/50 spread where
money can easily gain influence.

Presidential election is too big, at the exact same time, for money to wield
influence. I for one am glad that we have presidential elections, people have
some voice, at least.

------
cwkoss
If it costs millions of dollars to be a viable candidate, is it still accurate
to call it "democracy"?

~~~
microcolonel
It is some consolation that campaign money does not directly correlate with
success.

The Jeb Bush campaign spent roughly 130 megadollars on the primaries alone.
The Donald Trump campaign spent less than 280 megadollars from primary to
president; where the Hillary Clinton campaign spent about 1.2 gigadollars
(along with huge amounts of spending outside the direct purview of the
campaign) and lost fair and square.

~~~
dragontamer
> lost fair and square.

Depends on your viewpoint of the Electoral College vs Popular Vote of course.

In any case, its clear that Mr. Trump won with less money spent. Bernie
Sanders is similarly a candidate who famously spent less money that Ms.
Clinton but also had a chance.

The main issue is that these candidates (Trump and Sanders) were far more
willing to participate in reality-distortion-field politiking, which is
something that the mainstream candidates did not do as much. But that's a
different debate... I would definitely argue that money has a role in
politics, but it isn't as strong as most people think it is.

~~~
cderwin
I don't think it's reasonable to call winning via the only electoral system
we've ever had not "fair and square."

~~~
dragontamer
But the design of the electoral college was to deadlock the states and provide
Representatives in the US Congress the final say in the matter. In effect, our
country's founders were AGAINST the founding of political parties, in part
because they knew it'd break the system that they worked so hard to set up.

Alas, not all plans work out. Our current system is an accident, created in
the ignorance / naivete of political parties with little thought or design put
into the real operational use.

The only thing that DOES work is that our constitution can (and regularly
does) change when everyone is convinced that our rules and regulations are in
need of an update. And more and more people are beginning to think that this
whole "Electoral College" crap is stupid.

~~~
grotsnot
Sounds like the problem is with having political parties, not the EC.

~~~
dragontamer
It seems far more likely that we design our system to actually work with
Political Parties (instead of being corrupted by Political parties), rather
than trying to ban political parties.

Tribalism, Cheerleading, Echo-chambers, "Fake News", Yellow Journalism,
Propaganda... these are facts-of-life in America and no amount of legal
writing will prevent humans from being humans. We will always separate
ourselves into camps during political decisions.

Its a bad thing for our democracy because our system wasn't designed for it.
But alternative voting mechanisms or improved systems can allow us to make
progress in spite of the corrupting influence of human nature.

What have we learned in the past 250ish years of this country? And what can we
do with that knowledge to improve our country? In general, this country learns
to harness human nature, instead of trying to defeat it.

When you try and defeat human nature (say: Amendment 18), you are only met
with failure.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
>can allow us to make progress

As long as there is healthy debate on what is progress, I am all for it. No
suppression of free speech.

------
lxmorj
Singapore model. Market wages for the best talent (millions+). Huge penalties
for corruption.

------
shmerl
TL;DR: democracy is being replaced with plutocracy and legalized corruption.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, more or less, but ...

> Today, commentators in Europe often describe the American way as “legalized
> corruption.”

... and ...

> But is it corruption?

Well, maybe not, except that people get elected who further the interests of
the affluent:

> This perception is borne out by research from Martin Gilens, a politics
> professor at Princeton University, which shows that American economic
> policies over the last 40 years “strongly reflect the preferences of the
> most affluent, but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor
> or middle-income Americans.”

So yes, plutocracy comes close. Or kleptocracy.

But democracy? Not really. Just the illusion of democracy.

Wait, you may say, Trump got elected, as an outsider. Well, outsider or not,
he threw a ton of money at the sucker. And his people brought in Cambridge
Analytics, and manipulated the disaffected. But he's really favoring interests
of the affluent. It's the standard Republican thing.

------
sharemywin
From the article:

"Of course, it takes more than money to win elections. In both the 2012 and
2016 presidential elections, the candidates who spent the most money lost."

~~~
dnautics
It's generally true for all legislative seats, except ones where the incumbent
is running. (For seats where the incumbent is running, the win is strongly
biased due to name recognition and the perception of job experience and, and
thus that in and of itself attracts money). Perhaps if we were serious about
ending political corruption, we would institute term limits.

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bkohlmann
In 2016, US GDP was over 16 trillion dollars. Spending approx 0.033% of GDP
every 4 years (~6bn per the article) in a Presidential election doesnt seem
all that unreasonable to govern such a large economy.

[edited since i had my original order of magnitude too low!]

~~~
djschnei
The president doesn't govern the economy...

~~~
bkohlmann
He or she, along with Congress (whose elections are included in these
numbers), are directly responsible for the policies that impact trade,
deficits, employeer/employee relations, etc. All of which are instrumental in
how our economy functions. They may not "govern," but they have immense
influence.

~~~
djschnei
I apologize. Should have said "the president shouldn't govern the economy."
You are right, the president does have immense control and influence over the
economy. "what is your vision for the economy?" is an easy to imagine debate
question.

When the president or politicians in general have so much power over the
economy, can we be surprised when people value influencing that process as
much as they do?

------
rayiner
> “The corruption in the U.S. does not stem from officeholders putting money
> in their pocket,” he said. “This is systemic corruption of the process
> itself. When you are dealing with billions and billions of dollars, much of
> that focused on buying influence, it overwhelms the system, and it is much
> harder to defend against and maintain representation for ordinary
> Americans.”

In other words, if you accuse someone of taking a bribe, you had better be
able to back it up. If you hand-wave about "systemic corruption," no proof is
necessary.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
> If you hand-wave about "systemic corruption," no proof is necessary.

This has been looked at. It looks like government lobbying has a 400x return
on investment. If these corporations weren't benefiting from all they spend,
they wouldn't spend it.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-donius/goldmans-great-
ret...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-donius/goldmans-great-return-
on_b_549900.html)

~~~
SamReidHughes
Should politicians pass legislation negatively impacting the ability to do
business and be completely insulated from feedback?

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Should politicians maintain legislation that prioritizes corporate profits
over quality of life for its citizens?

~~~
jandrese
In the end, who are the Politicians representing? When the interests of the
multinational corporation come in conflict with the interests of the general
public, who wins? In a market economy the one with the money wins, should the
same be true of the government representation too?

Ultimately, markets have a built in bias towards the top. In a theoretical
perfectly functioning market the money will accumulate at the top until one
person controls all of the money, at which point the economy completely
collapses. Despite this flaw, markets are still the most efficient way to
allocate resources and grow the economy. So the best solution we've found so
far is to have the Government act as a backstop, draining money from the top
and feeding it back into the bottom so the market doesn't collapse itself.
Unfortunately, governments sometimes forget that and their economies suffer.

Plus, despite what many economists may think, money isn't everything. Money is
only a means to and end, where efficient distribution of resources provides
the greatest overall happiness in the population. A system where half of the
population is abjectly poor and 0.01% are so rich they have no idea what to do
with their money except to use it to make more money has failed.

------
djschnei
solution: Make the political system have less influence in our lives. Make
politicians less valuable to purchase

~~~
drewrv
I can't figure out why this attitude is so prevalent among techies. Imagine if
we gave up on computers because there was a bug!

~~~
djschnei
Far from an appropriate analogy. More like, spilling coffee on my keyboard
makes it work like shit. Better fix it by pouring more coffee on it!

------
RickJWagner
Bernie _almost_ ran a good grass roots campaign in 2016. (Funded by $27
donations). But of course Big-Bucks Clinton controlled the DNC and cheated
that race.

Trump actually spent less than his competitors and managed to win both the
primary and the election. It wasn't a budget campaign, but he did seem to get
good bang for his spent dollars.

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erikb
The thinking is wrong I believe.

Our current world system and world view has long overcome it's peak. There is
not much to gain, and the whole system slowly breaks and falls apart. That
means there are not many true opportunities to grow value anymore. And the old
profit and safety providers are getting rarer and rarer. For instance putting
your money on the bank or buying index funds is no guarantee for safety
anymore.

In that time of decline of course people pay more and more to get the same
level of safety, which really becomes more valuable by becoming rare, and also
becoming more pricey by the money having less internal value.

What is money worth if the amount of islands to stay on gets smaller and
nobody being willing to trade his island for a few slices of paper?

~~~
olegkikin
What are you even talking about?

> _there are not many true opportunities to grow value anymore_

There are more opportunities than ever in human history. The knowledge and
data are extremely accessible. The amount of spare money people have is near
all-time-high. You can literally become a multimillionare without leaving your
basement, simply by pressing keys on your keyboard.

> _buying index funds is no guarantee for safety anymore_

It never was. There's never a guarantee, your bank can go bankrupt, so can
FDIC. But it's still one of the safest ways to invest.

Your investment options are extremely diverse as well. Only 50 years ago you
had to call your broker to buy a stock. Now you can do that with a few
mouseclicks. You can invest into foreign markets, cryptocurrencies, ICOs, you
name it.

~~~
erikb
You think that because you read it in blogs and don't have the experience yet
to see which of these articles are bullshit.

It's not true though. The reason it seems that way is because the human
species is so rich, that you can make a good living for 2-3 more generations
by screwing other humans over. And if you're not one of the screwers the blog
article you read is certainly tailored to screw you.

Maybe if space flight becomes more available, but here on this planet all of
value is already controlled by someone. And they don't intend to share it with
you.

Without growth there is no stability in society, exactly because people need
to screw each other to stay floating. So the system is on a downturn. And you
can be sure that no matter what we find next to exploit, it will require
another system to stabilize on.

------
simonsarris
Democracy is a very silly way to do anything. How many people in your town or
city do you think could give you seriously valuable political advice? Think of
the most effective companies in the world: Are they democracies internally?

(No. They have a board of directors who appoint a CEO-person with wide
latitude and therefore real political will to implement improvements.
Shareholders watch or they can revolt, but not much else. Thankfully.)

If you want to do democracy, the best way to do it would be as bottom-up. The
more distributed things are, the harder it is for money to make a mark.

The best democracy would be one where people care fiercely who their local
politicians are, and are more or less disinterested in who the president might
be.

~~~
vzcx
I would take it a step further... Why should it be hard for money to make a
mark? Why should the voice of someone who sacrifices little or who has no or
next to no "skin in the game" be considered equivalent to the voice of someone
who is willing to sacrifice real, tangible resources?

In modern corporations, there is a distinction between those who have stake in
the future of the firm (shareholders), those who are trusted to act on their
behalf (board, executives, and employees to a lesser extent), and those who
receive services from the firm in exchange for revenues (clients and
customers).

Customers do not make managerial and strategic decisions for the firm, and for
good reasons. Indeed, does anyone really care exactly who is running walmart
or amazon or apple so long as their products and services provide value? Why
do people tend to see governments, essentially massive corporations, as
inhabiting such a different realm, expecting them to follow entirely different
laws of human behavior?

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yuhong
Right now I think things like the current debt based economy is a bigger
problem than campaign donations at this point.

------
SamReidHughes
"Our democracy is drowning in money" can also be branded, "Our democracy is
drowning in speech."

~~~
wmeredith
The money is speech legal argument never made sense to me. The thing about
speech is that no one has more of it than anyone else.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Then let's shut down CNN and all the newspapers.

~~~
zanny
While it is true pretty much every major TV network and newspaper exists
solely based on state bias and special privilege to get them where they are
now, you aren't mandated to consume any of them. At least with the Internet
speech is as restricted as you want to let it be - at least until Ajit Pai
gets his way.

The millions who like being misled by mainstream big money media are doing it
wilfully at least. They believe what they want to believe. The only problem I
see is how many of them have never been presented with an objective choice
between being rational and skeptical versus blind trust of major brands that
were pressed upon them from youth.

------
legulere
> In fact, the United States performed well on Transparency International’s
> 176-country Corruption Perceptions Index from last year, ranking 18th,
> behind Denmark (1st) and Germany (10th), but ahead of France (23rd) and
> Russia (131st).

This is no wonder, the index is only about perception. In richer countries
like Germany corruption in high politics and big companies is rarely seen by
the population as corruption.

------
narrator
Pay politicians multi-million dollar salaries like they do in Singapore and
you'll get top talent that doesn't need to be bribed and can focus on their
actual jobs instead of pleasing lobbyists.

~~~
Cursuviam
Seconded. It infuriates me when people get enraged about lobbyists, but also
whine about representatives being payed too much. The only thing that seems to
make those folks happy is if the person is independently wealthy (see Trump).

~~~
diggernet
Considering the tendency for politicians to be drawn to money and become
millionaires while in office through various means, I'm not at all convinced
that large salaries would cause them to turn away people handing them more
money.

~~~
narrator
You'd get different people drawn to politics if it looked like a move up the
career ladder. With the salaries beinf pathetically low, only those who have
low enough morals to make it work via corruption are the only ones who will
participate in it long term. Singapore has one of the least corrupt
governments on earth according to Transparency International.

------
EGreg
Tell me again, why do we use voting instead of polling?

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?tag=polling](http://magarshak.com/blog/?tag=polling)

Voting is susceptible to many things, including voter turnout and
gerrymandering.

Polling can be strictly better, and in fact it is what statisticians use who
actually figure out what the population as a whole thinks.

~~~
unabridged
Sortition takes this even farther. Imagine if the entire congress was drawn at
random.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

------
nickysielicki
Seriously? No mention of how Barack Obama rejected public funding in 2008 and
singlehandedly opened the floodgates on campaign spending? [1] The fact that
this isn't directly mentioned anywhere in the article speaks to how far the
credibility of the NYT has fallen. [2]

[1]:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9595714...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95957148)

[2]:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obamacnd.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obamacnd.html)

    
    
        ----
    

edit: for a visual on how unprecedented his 2008 spending was, see charts
here: [http://metrocosm.com/2016-election-
spending/](http://metrocosm.com/2016-election-spending/)

Note the stability in spending starting in 1976 when public funding was
introduced.

~~~
kevin_b_er
Because he wasn't the first: [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/16/us/bush-
forgoes-federal-fu...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/16/us/bush-forgoes-
federal-funds-and-has-no-spending-limit.html)

~~~
nickysielicki
That's just talking about funding for primaries, and Bush wasn't the first in
that regard.

Barack Obama was the first candidate to reject public funding for the _general
election_ , and the spending limits that come with it, since the program was
introduced in 1976.

See here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States#Public_financing_of_presidential_campaigns)

