What effects do you not like?
I was referring to "it produces perverse results that are harmful to the country as a whole." What perverse results do you mean?
Re-re-posting this yet again.
Rational IgnorancePoliticians exploit rational ignorance by conferring large benefits on certain constituents whose costs are widely dispersed and borne by the general population. Take the sugar industry. It pays the owners and workers to organize and tax themselves to raise money to lobby Congress for tariffs on foreign sugar. If they're successful, it means millions of dollars in higher profits and wages. Since they are relatively small in number the organization costs are small and the benefits are narrowly distributed.
As a result of price supports and import restrictions, millions of American sugar consumers pay a few dollars more per year for the sugar we use. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that Americans pay between $1 and $2 billion a year in higher sugar prices. Forget about finding out and doing something about these costs. After all how many of us are willing to board a plane or train to Washington to try to unseat congressmen who made us pay $5 more for the sugar we bought last year? It's not worth it; it's cheaper just to pay the $5 and forget it. For workers and owners in the sugar industry it is worth it to descend on Washington to try to unseat congressmen who refuse to support restrictions on foreign sugar. It's worth $1 or $2 billion to them...
You say, "What's the grief, Williams? Five dollars won't kill you." Washington is home to thousands of business and labor union lobbyists... According to some estimates, restrictions of one kind or another cost the average American family $5,000 to $6,000 a year in higher prices.
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What's worse is that the system is set such that Congress is playing the lobbyists for more money by screwing with our tax code to keep these businesses guessing and lobbying. The two groups--the legislators and the lobbyists--are screwing the country for their own benefit.
And this
Is money's deep role in politics the root of our woes? - CNN.com
...a few of the most striking facts he marshals are worth recognizing. Among them:-- ... from 1974 to 2008, Lessig notes, the average cost of a re-election campaign ballooned from $56,000 to more than $1.3 million, a more than twentyfold increase that far outpaces inflation.
-- ...Candidates have to spend between 30% and 70% of their time raising money. (Lobbyists, however can ease this pressure through many kinds of what Lessig calls "legislative subsidies" -- advice, research, support, and most of all, campaign cash.)
-- ... In the 1970s, just 3% of retiring members of Congress went into lobbying. But by 2004, in the previous seven years more than half of all senators and 42 percent of House members had made the switch.
-- ...Business leaders argue, for example, that they are not investing as much as they might in new jobs because they face so much uncertainty that they don't know what to expect from the government from one year to the next.
... this complexity and uncertainty is no accident, and that's because politicians in Washington have an interest in keeping business...
Pass a tax law for five years and lobbyists won't need to come around with contributions for a long time; make it a one-year law and they'll be back next week. ...keep the code incomprehensible, and the voters won't know if they're getting hosed.
But compelling national interest has a very specific legal meaning. It doesn't mean "I think things are bad."
That is true.
Well, see, now we've finally gotten to the point. Lobbying is NOT making donations or golf trips.
Are denying that these things happen and the lobbyist do them? Or are you trying to carefully define a term? Or what?