I haven’t seen any good reasoning or evidence that allowing businesses and titans to bribe politicians via lobbyists actually results in worse laws. People gasp when I say this, but the default doesn’t seem that much better. If Peter Thiel had been able to encourage Trump to pick the cabinet heads he wanted then our COVID response would have gone much better.
Most billionaires at least seem to donate ideologically, not really based on how politicians affect their special interest group. There’s definitely a correlation there, but if billionaires are just more reasonable on average then it’s possible that their influence is net-positive overall.
I haven’t seen any good reasoning or evidence that allowing businesses and titans to bribe politicians via lobbyists actually results in worse laws. People gasp when I say this, but the default doesn’t seem that much better. If Peter Thiel had been able to encourage Trump to pick the cabinet heads he wanted then our COVID response would have gone much better.
To me the reasoning seems pretty straightforward:
If the politician is trying to appease special interests, that will usually comes at the expense of society. I guess that is arguable though.
If (1), that would be “worse” because goodness depends on how the policies affect society as a whole.
Most billionaires at least seem to donate ideologically, not really based on how politicians affect their special interest group. There’s definitely a correlation there, but if billionaires are just more reasonable on average then it’s possible that their influence is net-positive overall.