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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fred Gohlke who wrote (10892)	2/6/2006 4:51:25 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541572

the assertion that the corrupting influence of campaign contributions is debatable. Do you see no contradiction in calling the corrupting influence debatable and, immediately thereafter, providing a link to Daniel Henninger's essay describing how the corruption is carried out? If you really believe the issue is debatable, please explain why huge commercial enterprises "contribute" multi-millions of dollars to the political parties (usually both.) First there is some ambiguity about what is meant by corruption. It can be anything from political decisions being determined by bribery, to much more subtle influence. I do think there is some corruption from contributions to parties, but I don't see it as being any more corrupting that any other type of political contribution. Often all that the money gets is access. But of course if one side of an argument has access to plead its case face to face to the politicians and the other does not the access can be decisive. Often two competing sides might get access, so things might seem balanced, but other ideas don't get heard. To the extent that politics is shifted towards wealthy contributors I don't think it is as much a factor of corruption , with politicians selling their vote explicitly, or being influenced by the money (although this certainly does occur), as much as it is that politicians who don't have the support of some organized wealthy contributors don't have the resources to compete. Are you assuming every possible method of selecting our representatives would require campaigning? Well maybe not quite assuming that there is no possible method of selecting representatives that doesn't involve campaigning but that there is no good democratic way to select representatives that doesn't involve campaigning. In a representative democracy many thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of people vote for the winning candidate. How are you going to reach all those people without a campaign? You can change the methods campaigns use (although I don't think this should be mandated by law) but there has to be a campaign of some sort or the voters will not know who the candidates are (except possible the incumbent or a celebrity candidate). Can we not conceive a method that does not leave our candidates beholden to financial backers? Receiving a political contribution doesn't necessarily make you beholden to anyone. Also there is always the possibility of public finance, but I don't think that works too well for several reasons. If private finance plays a part then you still have the potential corrupting influences. If you outlaw private political contributions than 1 - You attack free speech rights, 2 - You have a problem determining who receives the political contributions. Does that nazi party or the communist party get as many resources from the government as the republicans or the democrats? A lot of people would have a problem with that, including me. You are making people support horrible and deadly ideologies with their tax money. And if you fund those parties, what is to stop me from setting up "The Elect Tim Party" and insisting that I need tens of millions to compete with the major parties? OTOH if you don't give minor and/or obnoxious parties enough resources to compete and you don't let them raise their own resources you are cementing the duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats to an even greater degree than the current situation. re: "I don't think it (a method open to all citizens who have attained maturity) would be a proper goal because I don't think the end justifies the required means and in fact I don't think the end would be achieved by implementing the means." What an extraordinary statement! In the first place, we already have a method open to all citizens who have reached maturity. To assert it is not a proper goal for a new method is ludicrous. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. If by open to all citizens that have reach maturity you mean all citizens can be candidates that isn't true. Its not even true that all citizens who have reached maturity can vote. I read your aim as being beyond anything we already have. That all citizens that have reached maturity should be able to get on the ballot, or should have some realalistic chance to at least get considered by the voters. In the second place, you speak of the "means" but give us no indication of the means you have in mind. True I might have been assuming means that you would not actually use. I've made assumptions because its hard to understand what you are really supporting. Exact specifics might no be needed but at least some sort of framework would give me something to evaluate. You seem to not like the idea of campaigning and contributions as important parts of the political process. I'm not sure there is any way to avoid them without rather extreme interventions against them, or without just junking representative democracy. We don't have the answer, but we're working on it. At the moment, we're trying to figure out what we want, and letting candidates advance on their individual qualities is one. I haven't been brainstorming, just trying to throw out the best possible combinations of everything I might want without regard to the practical problems. What I want is and has been affected by my thoughts as to what is possible. If your asking for a utopian political vision from me, the changes that such a vision would entail would not primarily be ones of reducing corruption, and would not deal with issues like the role of the parties and campaign contributions. When I start talking about things like parties and campaign contributions and political corruption I deal with the issue in a very practical way. re: "You can't have a multi-way political conversation with millions of people all participating." You may not have considered all the possibilities. Have you factored time into your analysis? My statement was not limited to instant communication with everyone communicating at once. Other than that I'm not sure what you might mean by "Have you factored time into your analysis?", in this context. re: "Under any system politicians will have incentives to act other than honorably on our behalf." re: "Under any system it will be expensive to get your message out to scores of millions of voters." It seems you are rejecting any ideas we develop ... before they are presented. That's like the child that cries in anticipation, before he's spanked. Instead of asserting what can't be done, please consider what can be done. You may surprise yourself, and, if so, we'll all benefit. I could consider plans to change the current system but as you said any plans will have to deal with human nature, the plans have to deal with reality. I don't see any way around the facts that you quoted above. You might reduce how much they are a major factor but the factor can not be eliminated. Communication with and promotion to millions of people is going to be expensive. You might be able to reduce the cost, you might be able to reduce some of the real or potential conflicts of interest arising from the need to acquire and spend the money to get the message out, but I don't see any reasonable method to eliminate these problems. Not even a glimmer or a hint of one. I can think of plenty of ways to attack these problems but they would be either ineffective, or worse than the problem. re: "Its very hard to predict how people will react to anything very different than the current situation, no matter how carefully you consider the changes." I don't think that's valid. The work of B. F. Skinner and the behavioral scientists has taught our leaders (political and commercial) to predict public reaction with great exactitude, and the growth of mass communications has provided the means of doing so. We know with some certainty that what we perceive as need can lower our moral boundaries and the absence of need raises them. We can apply this knowledge. Well at least we have discovered some of the differences in the assumptions we bring to the table. Incidentally, does it not strike you as odd that we protest the use of profiling in crime prevention For the most part I don't protest profiling in crime prevention. But than there is some ambiguity about what is meant by and implied by profiling. People use the words differently. but fail to condemn its use to record, categorize, and sell the preferences of a large portion of our citizens? If profiling in pursuit of criminals is bad, how much more heinous is the profiling of our citizenry? Depending on what you mean by "profiling in crime prevention" it can be far worse. If the profiling is realalistic and the actions taken based on the profile are reasonable I don't have a problem with it. If on the other hand the profile is not based on solid data but on faulty racist assumptions than it will actually hurt the investigation and also be more likely to lead to some from of abusive or otherwise negative behavior. If by "profiling in crime prevention" you include unreasonable, even abusive actions than it is a severe problem. Using profiling "to record, categorize, and sell the preferences of a large portion of our citizens", doesn't involve law enforcement hassling people unlike at least the less reasonable forms of using "profiling in crime prevention". I don't think creating, organizing, maintaining and even selling such records deserve a blanket condemnation. Perhaps there are specific examples I might condemn if someone brings them to my attention but I don't see anything inherently wrong about the whole idea. Tim