I see what you mean. I’ve written in some detail elsewhere here, about a more detailed…outline of how to deal with the issue of lobbyist, and the movement of former elected officials to the feed trough of lobbying and consulting.
Basically, there would have to be term limits, and then time limits of when former elected officials could go into the lobbying/consulting business after having been in office.
You don’t see lobbyists/consultants as part of the overall problem? Institutional knowledge? Like the professional bureaucracy/swamp that exists now and is so objectionable?
Average citizens don’t have the money/influence to ask “you want fries with that”, IMO.
Someone going to petition their elected official at town hall is also lobbying.
It’s not that it exists in and of itself that I don’t like, it’s that they hate me and want me dead that I don’t like.
We do actually in some ways, like violence or general strikes (of actual productive workers like farmers, truckers, factory workers, rail engineers and conductors etc. not lib arts people with tech industry sinecures) but we have been convinced those aren’t viable paths or are inherently immoral.
Frankly it starts to become convoluted to try and distinguish between “lobbyist” and person petitioning their government. Define it as someone paid a salary to lobby? Well now they are given gifts, or paid in stock options, or some other form of compensation.
It’s not the lobbying itself that is a problem but the people who are being listened to and what the people (politicians) listening are doing.
Yeah…well…I’m not against petitioning or giving feedback to elected officials, obviously. It’s that the average citizen can’t afford access due to the system in place, which is what I would like to see changed.
The best way to change that really is decentralizing power and pushing more power downward to the states and local governments. And preventing things like district shopping. Your voice is more powerful if your e.g. state representative lives in your neighborhood.
Well if we take Moldbug’s analysis to be accurate, and my experience points to it being so, it’s inevitable; it’s entropy, the natural process. Or as he says “Cthulhu swims leftward”, leftward including centralizing power.
My experience working for the US government and being around the kind of people who work for the US government and working in an academic setting analyzing historical political violence, ideology, and activity etc. etc.
And also experience fucking your mom. She’s very Cthulhu like.
Every single time Lant3rn replies to me it isn’t actually in good faith and more often than not is just another variation of “you stoopid” because he doesn’t understand whatever subject is being discussed. I’ve even gone out of my way to be nice and try to take him seriously but he can’t help himself.
