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'The Laws Are Written By Lobbyists,' Says Google's Schmidt
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Atlantic:
"'The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists' to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. 'It's shocking how the system actually works.' In a wide-ranging interview that spanned human nature, the future of machines, and how Google could have helped the stimulus, Schmidt said technology could 'completely change the way government works.' 'Washington is an incumbent protection machine,' Schmidt said. 'Technology is fundamentally disruptive.' Mobile phones and personal technology, for example, could be used to record the bills that members of Congress actually read and then determine what stimulus funds were successfully spent."
We discussed a specific example of this from the cable industry back in August.
In other news, Sherlock Holmes claims he is not shitting anyone.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We should hire lobbyist to represent us to our represemtatives... but that would be redundant ,right?
Tomorrow is another day...
This isn't news. Anybody who hasn't been asleep the past 20 or more years already knows that organizations have stolen the government.
Real news would be if somebody actually found a way to counteract their deeds.
How is this still not common knowledge? Oh yea, there's no free money in knowing or fixing the system.
For better or worse, Google is considered authoritative now, so someone might listen. I predict nothing changes.
I was ridiculed YESTERDAY for saying this...
Oh, I WTFV, but still, like there have been other oracles before him, it matters not. Technology has change government, it has given it more methods to keep people in line, to feed them what they want, to play one class off another, to better mince boundary lines to keep officials in power, to better redistribute wealth to do what boundaries cannot, and a host of other abuses. We have all the fun of McCain/Feingold followed by an Administration that seems to have free speech if it is of a differing opinion. One that takes the worst of the previous abuser and exaggerates them.
China operates like the Orwellian nightmare of a business, uprooting people and destroying history and nature in its relentless march forward, hoping to get where its going before something irrevocably breaks. China has to look over its shoulder as well, up and coming countries arise all the time, each more hungry than the last. Let alone their real problem, how to keep North Korea from causing an all out war next door.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Despite comments to the effect that this is not news, these comments are quite interesting. Google has a capitalization comparable to the lobbyists of the kind of ATT and others, but here as well, they play differently, and more transparently. Mr. Schmidt's comments here reflect this difference.
This is why this company still has the sympathy of slashdotters. Google's effort to advance Net neutrality and other issues pertaining to civil liberties and the Internet are to be appreciated, not derided cynically like I am reading here.
And this ("laws written by lobbyists") is why I don't think corporations should have free speech rights. They can have revocable *privileges* to run ads but should never have the right to hire, for example, a Microsoft lobbyists or RIAA lobbyists to block-out the voice of the people in the halls of Congress. Or to run ads to support their favorite puppet for Congress. The corporations have no more rights than a building.
If Bill Gates or the RIAA CEO wants to lobby, let them hire the lobbyist from his personal salary, rather than using the corporation's billon-dollar treasury.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I suspect it's simply impossible to create a non-corrupt government that manages a country that big and is so far removed from its citizens. Going back to the roots and organizing ourselves into something akin to city-states might allow us to keep closer control over the people we designate.
Diversity of laws can be a problem, but at least nowadays with online communications it'd be easier for such city-states to cooperate on treaties.
A question that arises is whether it wouldn't actually empower corporations more, with smaller states having smaller budgets than industry leaders.
From the first line he refers to "average Americans" who do not realize the process.
This applies to most societies, and is a euphemism for uneducated people(without a tertiary qualification).
Or to quote a line from Blazing Saddles "...the common man. You know....Morons."
"You know....Morons" will find the clip on You Tube I believe.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Who do you want writing laws that govern complicated industries (high-tech, medical, etc.): a bunch of politicians, or people who actually work in those respective industries? Does the average congressman with a law degree understand the nuances of intertube technology (too soon? nah.), for example? I have no problem with industries proposing or even drafting legislation, provided that our elected representatives and their staffs actually read and digest the bills to ensure that the law is fair, enforceable, and beneficial.
Cynicism, like dogmatism, can be an excuse for intellectual laziness. - Susan Shirk
Google is doing very well these days - they can afford to be the white hat guy.
Wait till their fortunes start to decline. Then we'll shall see what they're truly made of .
Anybody can weather adversity. There's no strength in that, no quality of character to be discerned.
If you truly want to see a man's character, give him power. Give him free reign. Don't try to confine or constrain him, but let him act at his every whim. That's when you learn what someone's made of.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Despite what some whiners online may say, America really is a free country both in that you can say what you want, and that the people have the power to change the government. What that means is that if you want to organize around candidates to change the current system, the government can't stop you, and that if you vote those candidates in to power, that is that.
The only obstacle is people who are whiny and say nothing can be changed. Bullshit, it can so. Doesn't mean it is easy, doesn't mean it won't take time and effort, but it can be done. One of the first steps is just getting the message out. Let people know what is going on, and so on.
This is precisely the same as the "third party" bullshit. "Oh voting for a third party candidate is throwing your vote away." No, that is only the case if idiots continue to believe that and not vote third party. If you look around, you find that at a state level third party candidates have won and held office. There is no evil force that keeps them out, only the force of apathy/whinyness from people who say "It can't be done."
Americans DO have the power to change their government, however to do so they have to understand this fact, and exercise it. Bitching does no good.
that’s the tough one some ideas of the top of my head
1 get rid of a lot the states powers,
2 the parties need to get party discipline and throw out the "nutters".
3 have strict uk style election campaign limits
4 replace the vast expenditure on tv campaigning with uk model of party political broadcasts.
5 have more equal constituency sizes (which will stop small agricultural states leaching of the bigger ones)
6 force all organizations (Unions and Company) to run a political fund for any lobbying and have it confirmed by vote every 7 years with opt out allowed)
The founders in an incredible amount of foresight and wisdom knew that an "efficient" goverment is a dictatorship - one man making decisions and implementing them immediately. This is the best it could get to be as there would be no need for endless debating, no filibusters, no gridlock.
The only problem is, how well can you choose your dictator? Experience and history shows that a really good choice of dictator is rare and doesn't last very long even if you get a good one. So this idea of an efficient government was discarded.
There is another problem with an efficient government. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million laws - probably not an exaggeration. A new law takes days at a minimum regardless of it being a municipal, state or federal law. Some take months or even years to enact. Can you imagine a process that made passing laws "efficient" so it only took minutes? What would we be saddled with?
Sure, the US government has grown to the point where the Congresscritters are unable to keep up and are relying on external help. Can you just imagine what it would be like if there was no gridlock, no filibustering and things got done in an efficient manner? We might have to double the size of Congress just to be able to process stuff and keep things flowing. That would be the goal, right? To keep things flowing and passing more and more bills, laws, regulations and requirements.
The US government was designed to be horribly inefficient and to have so much momentum that it was virtually impossible to pass anything unless a lot of people really, really believed it was necessary to do so. And still we have millions of laws and more all the time. I'd say it is working as designed.
Something to think about:
Companies depend on selling their products to the masses. Therefore, you may not realise it, but we actually hold the key to destroying them if we wanted to. The problem is that people are undirected, they do not wish to take a stand. It is only the chosen few who actually become 'leaders' , and usually they start doing what suits THEM instead of what suits the masses.
When the masses stop being controlled by the media, and are able to THINK - and decide that they do want change, and realise that THEY hold the power - then the world will change dramatically.
But that's never going to happen, so I guess we're stuck in this hellhole.
I don't know how many people know that most laws are written by lobbyists, but I wonder how many people know that the recently released Republican Pledge to America was written by a lobbyist for AIG, Pfizer, Comcast and others.
To quote "Pissed on Politics":
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Bad-assed blogger Sam Stein expands:
You are welcome on my lawn.
Remember the old cliche, "the victors write the history books"?
It's incomplete. The victors - both military AND economic - also draft the laws.
Most of our legislative burden, that portion not derived directly from common law, is all about serving primarily the interests of our "captains of industry" and "pillars of society", preserving and increasing the control and material resources acquired at the expense of everyone else. Any beneficial fallout for the rest of We The People is purely accidental and not really intended.
There's lots of talk and theorizing, but little research on the effect and influence of lobbyists. Thankfully, there is a large ten year study of lobbying, Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why (available at your favorite bookstore). There's a pretty good review of it at Miller-McCune. An excerpt:
The real outcome of most lobbying -- in fact, its greatest success -- is the achievement of nothing, the maintenance of the status quo. "Sixty percent of the time, nothing happens," says Frank Baumgartner, one author of the book and a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "What we see is gridlock and successful stalemating of proposals, with occasional breakthroughs. We see a pattern of no change, no change and no change -- and then some huge reform."
But those large reforms -- such as health care for 32 million uninsured Americans under President Barack Obama, the scheduled phase-out of the estate tax under President George W. Bush, and the normalization of trade relations with China under President Bill Clinton -- are far more often linked to a change in who inhabits the White House than to campaign contributions or K Street hires.
The weak link between money and policy change is counterintuitive but understandable, the authors say. The balance of power in Washington already hugely favors the rich. The status quo reflects the considerable advantages the wealthy have managed to secure in the law, down through the generations.
"bills that members of Congress actually read and then determine what stimulus funds were successfully spent."
Members of Congress read the bills?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
You're a retard, you know that? He just said he barely makes enough to support himself despite working hard every day. The top 20% of the country owns 87% of the wealth. The bottom 60% owns less than 1% of the wealth. What the heck is anyone supposed to do when half of those paupers vote for politicians who want to give MORE money to the rich?
See, you not only don't know how to read, but jump up on all the typical bullshit. For starters, I am trying. I have been trying, I go to college all day, work in my spare time, and I have been working on several inventions, and trying to sell them in what time I have left. I work my ass off every day of my life, and yet have no choice but to live in debt slavery, no matter how hard I try to fix shit. And I do all of that with Cluster Headaches, the most painful medical condition known to medicine. Most of the time I am working to improve my situation, but I wasn't born into money, so I will still be living in debt slavery working at some corporate giant giving away my expertise for a tiny ass paycheck watching my ideas and ingenuity going to make the world worse instead of better.
Also, I like what Fox says, I WISH it were true. But it is a load of bullshit that keeps hard working people like me inpoverished and overworked while getting nothing back. I am also an eagle scout and spead a good deal of time doing voluntary community service.
At least those people can Afford to go to a 3rd world country to fix it. I could live for a month of the cost of a plane ticket, and I frequently have to. Now is it ok to whine while at the same time doing everything to get into a better situation? Yes it is you ignorant jack ass. go back to living the easy life getting mad that the poor people who work 20 hours a day are so lazy. Fuck you.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Let me impart a little lesson on reading between the lines. You read that sentence and see "family values." Why shouldn't taking care of your home and raising your children be more important than taking an interest and participating in your government?
I read that sentence and I see the destruction of the nuclear family. Why is the parent picking up a child from daycare rather than caring for it at home? The reason, of course, is that most families are now dual income, with both parents working, which means that they do not have time to stay home and raise children. This was not true 50 years ago. It seems obvious to me that this is not progress - twice as much work must be done to achieve the same standard of living, though granted, with more cool gadgets. How did this come to pass? Politics. So, it seems obvious to me that taking an active interest in politics might be easily as important as many of the mundane things we do as part of our regular schedule.
It is less immediate, sure, but not less important.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
There will always be ways to manipulate or get people to do what you want them to do. Bribes may be the best way but threats work very well on people who have a lot to lose.
I would put it to the readers that overall "the great experiment" has turned out better than one could have hoped.
Depends on whose perspective you are taking. If the goal of the experiment was to achieve domination of the public mind and the turning of everybody into an acting sociopath, then it's been very successful I would say.
Secret wars, deals and shenanigans are generally less prevalent as the decades roll on (granted this is also evident world-wide).
What are you basing that on? I think people are, if anything, MORE easily trained into going along with lies and manipulations than ever before. Who needs a secret war when people will go along with a public one? Who needs shenanigans when people are willing to put up with corruption happening right in front of their eyes. Consider the bailout fiasco, as a massive for instance.
There are no more Rothschilds/Habsburgs.
That's not true.
-FL
Oh, no. Not the same standard of living. Not remotely.
We live much, much better. In fact, if you want to live with all the gadgets from the 60s, you don't need double income. You probably only need part of the first income. data
Do we live better? well, living better depends not only on income, but also health and education. And there was significant progress. more data -- but only since the 80s, although I will submit to you this interesting graph of child mortality: graph .
So what is obvious to you is in fact plain wrong. And this is a big issue, because you are not the only one: hardly anyone looks at the actual data to decide whether things are really getting worse. BTW, one of the things is getting worse in the US these days, and that is inequality. Look for the graphs showing the gini coefficient.
And before I conclude, one last graph, showing the effect of women's education on family size -- because you are arguing, whether you realise it or not, that half of the potential workforce should get no education. And sadly, this half will be women. graph Push the play button. Largish families of the sixties and stay-at-home mothers are a consequence of a largely uneducated female population, forced in that role. And it's a guy telling you that.
Income mobility is remarkably low in the US. There was an economist article on that a while back.
Also, about the government being inefficient: this is a huge strawman: the government is meant to fill those niches which cannot be filled by the market, because the externalities are hugely positives but there is no profit (roads for example). Also those niches which are natural monopolies: in this case profit can be extracted, but this profit is pure loss for the society, utilities tend to be like that, telcos can tend to that point, collectively, health insurance companies are like that. This is something the US gov does badly, in that it doesn't take over these roles as much as it should.
Also, the UN recommends lowering the income inequality, because this helps growth. This is obvious: markets depending on the choice of a few select individuals are vastly less efficients than markets depending on the collective choices of a great many individuals: in other words, although some guy is a really clever investor and became hugely rich, you cannot depend on them to invest efficiently all of his money: the choices are too numerous and complex.
"Yet another stubborn attitude"
Perhaps it's a little stubborn on both sides, no? If you know that your attitude towards them triggers the response of them digging their heals in (which you blatently do know, because it's a bit hard to miss that there are people like this!) and you do not adapt your interactions with them to try to avoid this from happening, then you're being just as stubborn as they are with the same results (their and your stubbornness results in them digging their heals in).
"I know that most people are like this, and that it's simply illogical"
It's not in the slightest... this just comes down to you not making enough attempt to understand things from others points of view (or you make the attempt but lack the experience to achieve the understanding). How do you expect to sell somebody on the idea that what you're proposing to them will result in them being treated better, if you won't even show them a basic level of respect (or you do but then drop it as soon as they challenge you or disagree with you on something)?
I know it's a pain having to bite your tongue for stupid/complacent people, but if you're not even willing to do that, can you really expect someone else to make the sacrifices that will affect their family for the same thing?
"protesting, for example, won't take up all or even a majority of their time"
Oh come on, being a complainy-pants won't achieve anything, because people protesting doesn't mean anything. Sorry, I know protesters hate to hear that, but let me give you an example as to why. In my country at the moment there are people protesting left right and center over public spending cuts. Problem is, the government was only voted in a few months back, and they were voted in saying "we're going to make massive cuts"!! Despite massive protests over the Iraq war, both Bush and Blair both got voted in again! Protests are just talk because they're not backed up by the actions that actually matter, like a change in how the majority votes, or boycotts.
And boycotts is the important one here. What people need to wake up to is that democracy doesn't start and stop at election times. Every pound, or dollar, is a vote, and it's up to you who you give it to. You buy cokacola, and you have blood on your hands, plain and simple. You can fill the streets with people protesting the arming of militias that kill union leaders in developing countries as part of the process of removing workers rights, but if those people then go quench their thirst by buying cans of cokacola... their protest said one thing, but their actions said another, which is "we support the murder of union workers so that we can have a cheap fizzy drink".
That's where real responsibility lies. So you're not asking families to take a day out here and there to protest something, not if you really want to make a difference. You have to get them to stop supporting evil - at least to the best of their abilities (as you can never be 100% sure about everything you buy) - at least enough for there to be an obvious competative advantage for companies to stop oppressing people because they know their profits will be slashed otherwise.
You can blame the government or expect the government to deal with these issues all you like, but if you're serious about actually working towards solving the problem, rather than just "feeling" like you're doing something about it, then you have to stop passing the buck to the guys at the top, and start looking at the people who're putting and holding them there.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia