this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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The whole concept of industry co-writing laws and regulations has utterly failed. How much precedent do we need?
Lobbyists are not counselors, it's just legalized corruption. This is not a healthy part of democracy, but eroding trust.
It's working against the people.
We know this. Reagan knew this when he opened the door for lobbyists.
According to Marx ( Das Kapital ) corruption of the government towards the interest of the owning class is inevitable.
We still don't know an effective way to keep government public serving. Marx recommends the end of hierarchy, but that model needs some development.
But yes, government is intended to serve the public and when it doesn't (such as with regulatory capture) that is government failure. US federal and state governments typically fail, only rarely enacting policy consistent with public interest.
I think if you read beyond Marx there are several ideas that are valid alternatives.
Not that I am a well informed political scientist (so speculating robust political systems is well beyond my pay grade), but I am certainly open to ideas.
Here in the States we haven't been able to engage in some basic improvements, like disposing of the Electoral College, which was a white-power motivated backdoor from the beginning. So finding the path from regulatory-captured late stage capitalism is going to be a challenge.
The problem is that you want people knowledgeable in the subject to have input, and unfortunately knowledgeable people are usually those that work in the industry as they are up to date with the latest tech, challenges, information, etc.
If you didn't have that input it would just be politicians and lawmakers making the rules all willy nilly with no real understanding of the nitty gritty details.
There does need to be a better way, but I don't know what it is.
Who watches the watchmen?
sometimes it's a good influence on some otherwise self absorbed politicians. Most of them are going to vote for whatever gets them reelected. trick is to use the system to benefit everyone. Each pol has a staff of career law-writers who know far more than their boss but make them look good for a paycheck. I worked in a college with lots of premadonna phDs whose ignorance about technical details made it hard to sit through a speech without laughing. Smaller scale politics over projects the rank and file had to implement for a paycheck. Still managed to do useful work now and then.