{"id":3357,"date":"2012-03-28T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=3357"},"modified":"2012-03-28T01:23:09","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T05:23:09","slug":"are-lobbyists-misunderstood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2012\/are-lobbyists-misunderstood\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Lobbyists Misunderstood?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/032612_0610_AreLobbyist1.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lawrence Lessig argues that lobbying isn&#8217;t the &#8220;pay money to x&#8221; and &#8220;get outcome y&#8221; that most people think it is. Highlights include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If lobbyists really worked the way we thought they did then you would expect that they would spend their time trying to &#8216;bribe&#8217; those who disagree with them. But this isn&#8217;t the case. Lobbyists actually concentrate on those who already agree with them \u2013 people who are already likely to vote in their favour.<\/li>\n<li>In fact despite extensive statistical analysis, it has been difficult to find evidence for systematic vote buying.<\/li>\n<li>In a sophisticated, bureaucratically complicated legislative arena, lobbyists are actually professionals who are intelligent experts that understand the complexities of the situation. They don&#8217;t tell legislators what to do, rather, they help legislators achieve what they already want to achieve.<\/li>\n<li>But this does not mean that the practice is ethical. While lobbyists aren&#8217;t buying votes they <em>are<\/em> helping to set the agenda. Only certain issues receive the guidance provided by lobbyists, causing other issues to be left by the way-side.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To read why the problem is one of human relationships, why embedded in the lobbying world is a gift economy rather than a cash economy, how Jack Abramoff fits into all of this, and why today&#8217;s lobbyists look like boy-scouts compared to the lobbyists of old, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2012\/mar\/22\/our-corrupt-politics-its-not-all-money\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2012\/mar\/22\/our-corrupt-politics-its-not-all-money\/\"><em>The New York Review of Books<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Via: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2012\/03\/how-to-fix-politics-by-adding-more-money-to-the-system\/254522\/\"><em>The Atlantic<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawrence Lessig argues that lobbying isn&#8217;t the &#8220;pay money to x&#8221; and &#8220;get outcome y&#8221; that most people think it is. Highlights include: If lobbyists really worked the way we thought they did then you would expect that they would spend their time trying to &#8216;bribe&#8217; those who disagree with them. But this isn&#8217;t the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/032612_0610_AreLobbyist1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3405,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions\/3405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}