Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Picking up the tab, but at what price? on the subject of lobbying reform, or the lack thereof. It’s apparently legal for lobbyists to give legislators whatever they want so long as the gifts (in excess of $100) are disclosed. According to the legislators, the lobbyists are deeply stupid individuals for giving the legislators all this free stuff because, say the legislators, the free stuff doesn’t gain a thing. Absolutely no influence at all. Poor, dumb lobbyists.
In my mind, the way it typically works is this. The legislators aren’t corrupt. They probably don’t even consciously favor a generous lobbyist when considering policy. However, legislators are ordinary people asked to shape policy on a bewildering scope of subjects. Inevitably, they are going to have to make decisions on subjects they know little about. When they need more information, as it turns out, they know someone who knows a lot about a particular issue — the lobbyist working for an affected industry. And, because they’ve created a relationship through donations and gift giving and going to a ball game or dinner or two, it’s really, really easy to pick up the phone and ask the person for information. The lobbyist is probably going to even shoot straight as far as the information provided — lying to a legislator really is a dumb thing to do for a lobbyist — but the information is going to be framed in a way that benefits the industry represented by the lobbyist. Subsequently, the information is probably not going to be balanced out with opposing information coming from the point of view of an amorphous public who is affected by the issue, but not terribly well-defined as a constituency. And, suddenly, the playing field has been tipped just a little bit more.
You know, if government were to stay out of regulating industry altogether, you wouldn’t have this problem.
The best way to get business out of politics is to get politics out of business. Then they’ll have no need to try to buy favorable legislation, or buy their way out of unfavorable legislation.
I don’t think business would like that very well. After all, they rely on government quite a bit to do things like enforce their contracts.
That’s not exclusive to businesses.
Nor is regulation.
Exactly.
The state is not a master or a peer, nor is it even a servant.
It is a slave.
Kurt –
I want to live in YOUR world. But what color is the sky?
Parker:
Probably black.
–Ayn Rand
[1] My old Rand materials are boxed up, but this probably comes from an issue of The Objectivist Newsletter (later just The Objectivist), so Rand wrote this likely sometime in the 1960s, possibly as late as 1971.
Branden –
I’m reminded of one of the philosophical observations in Illuminati:
I think this applies to Ayn Rand’s observation (in some sense…).
I’m pretty sure there are Capitalists that have done things which have benefited me, but very few Marxists, if any – I’m not sure about Objectivists.
Are there still any around?