
Policy-Making Billionaires - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sunday-review/policy-making-billionaires.html?hp&gwh=7681EDC94FDE5A083344C9564023304B
======
jacobolus
It’s quite obnoxious that billionaires are given such deference in our society
to make policy decisions about topics entirely unrelated to their area of
competence. There is little reason to believe that tech billionaires should be
experts on education, for instance (as compared to say teachers or child
psychologists), but because as a society we’ve made it difficult to raise
money through taxes, we’re now uncritically embracing their educational
reforms because they come with money attached.

The problem with forming public policy around the whims of the super wealthy,
beyond their lack of special expertise, is that they are not accountable to
everyone else in anything like the same way government is, and we can’t expect
them to have interests closely aligned with the general social interest. Which
means that as inequality continues to increase and the rich more and more
attempt to provide public services as private enterprises, the ability for the
rest of us to influence and “buy in to” these systems is steadily eroded.

The cash can be quite helpful in particular areas, but ultimately this form of
policymaking undercuts democracy.

~~~
cpr
Oh, do you think our government is truly accountable to everyone? I think just
the opposite. The control we have over what happens at all levels of
government (most specially federal and state) is so tenuous as to be
essentially nil.

~~~
jacobolus
My local, state, and federal governments (e.g. my local school board, my state
senator, the federal appeals court) are dramatically more accessible and
accountable to me than, say, Google, the Saudi royal family, or Bill Gates.

I have the right to petition when I have grievances, I can organize voters to
apply pressure, I can sue in courts when government policies don’t live up to
the constitution or higher-level laws, I can run for office.

When politicians are corrupt, it is (at least sometimes) a scandal. When
corporate actors are corrupt, there’s only a problem if the shareholders are
negatively impacted or when the bad outcomes are so overwhelming that
government takes action.

I agree with you that our current politics has many problems, perhaps chief
among them the incredible influence of political donations, revolving
corporate doors, and so on.

~~~
cpr
And you think you can personally make a serious difference with one vote and
some organizing? Whew.

I agree that Google, Gates and Saudis are completely out of reach.

~~~
jacobolus
I think smart and dedicated activists can make an enormous difference, yes.
There’s no “some” about the organizing part though. Effecting political change
takes huge amounts of (smart, carefully focused) effort, because we live in a
complex society where lots of different people have different ideas about how
things should work, and persuasion on such a scale is damn hard.

------
cpr
Funny how the sub-text of this article is so clearly the pro-government bias
of the reporter.

"After all, we know that the only real way to effect social change is through
government action" could summarize its message.

Which is doubly funny considering how the first part of the article is
outlining just how people are working outside of government to actually get
things done.

~~~
patio11
The NYT prefers that the super-rich were a source of dumb money to fund
enlightened government policies informed less by special interests and more by
the proper custodians of our democratic heritage, journalists.

Snark aside, the NYT is a great crusading liberal paper. All four of those
final words are important all of the time.

------
ggwicz
Policy-making anythings are annoying. Let's see more policy-removing. Less
fragile and less systemically harmful.

