I read the 'Kill Hollywood' RFC, gave it some thought and came to a conclusion that killing Hollywood is not a Value Adding Intention (tm). I understand that the RFC is a response to SOPA&co which is obviously pushed by Hollywood.
My thoughts went: "Should we-the-people retaliate against some influential business (sector) every time they successfully lobby for their own interests against the interest of the wider public?"
On which I concluded: "No we should fix politics instead, that's where the problem originates, that's where we can fix it once and for all."
And the most obvious fix I see is to criminalize lobbying (= power to the wealthy) as it is against democracy (= power to the people) in its very nature.
Just to name a few sectors that successfully lobbied for changes that (imho) harmed the wider public: banks, car industry, big-oil, big-pharma, big-food, military contractors.
Some simple math: if business (sector) X puts in 5M for a lobby on issue Y; the probability of success on their lobby campaign is 0.5; then the payoff of the campaign is at least 10M. Now where do those 10M come from? From everyone that is not X. In other words: the honest people --who do not try to influence politics outside of the public discussion-- lose from the wealthy mega-corps.
Lobbying is currently a fast growing industry itself:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/01/washington-lobbying-grew-to-32.html
So please YC use your influence to fight the real bad, and "Kill the Lobby" with an RFC :)
My thoughts went: "Should we-the-people retaliate against some influential business (sector) every time they successfully lobby for their own interests against the interest of the wider public?"
On which I concluded: "No we should fix politics instead, that's where the problem originates, that's where we can fix it once and for all."
And the most obvious fix I see is to criminalize lobbying (= power to the wealthy) as it is against democracy (= power to the people) in its very nature.
Just to name a few sectors that successfully lobbied for changes that (imho) harmed the wider public: banks, car industry, big-oil, big-pharma, big-food, military contractors.
Some simple math: if business (sector) X puts in 5M for a lobby on issue Y; the probability of success on their lobby campaign is 0.5; then the payoff of the campaign is at least 10M. Now where do those 10M come from? From everyone that is not X. In other words: the honest people --who do not try to influence politics outside of the public discussion-- lose from the wealthy mega-corps.
Lobbying is currently a fast growing industry itself:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/01/washington-lobbying-grew-to-32.html
So please YC use your influence to fight the real bad, and "Kill the Lobby" with an RFC :)