(Example is based on US politics, but could apply to any equally corrupt government) In this day and age, it’s clear that rampant corruption is abound with mega corporations buying up politicians with relative pennies they found under their couches.
When words and calls to action fail. Why are there no crowdfunded grassroots movements that actively try to play the same bribery game. If anything, to finally shine a light on how broken the system is.
If the dollar has a voice, why not let the people’s dollars speak?
Of course, this is clearly a terrible idea long term for any system to work like this, plus a bit of a race to the bottom.
The question is more along the line of: Has anyone actually tried this? If so, why/why not?
Be civil please.
Would anyone accept the money if the purpose was so obviously to expose corruption?
- You can already do this. There are tons of nonprofits that lobby the government for x, y, and z.
- But these non-profits don’t tend to engage in much explicit bribery, because the people working at these organizations and who donate to these organizations think outright bribery is wrong.
- Finally, if you started a gofundme to bribe a politician, they would 1,000,000% not take your money. When you bribe someone, discretion is part of the deal, and with a public gofundme, you’ve already broken that discretion.
- You’d be a total moron to donate to some random person who claims they’ll use the money to bribe politicians
Also that!
Damn, there goes my retirement scheme!
Even large groups of people can’t put together enough money.
It also costs a lot of money to organise that kind of thing.you’d be surprised how cheap a politician can be
They go to the highest bidder.
And the wealthy have enough now to outbid whatever we come up with.Very cheap, but the cost is not only money but influence: billionaire politicians can be swayed by a measly million dollar bribe. The money is more a social norms thing in those circles. A token
Crowd funding cannot exert influence. It is not corrupt, does not own slave factories or stifle tens of thousands with unethical behavior.
There were bribe stats I read at some point. It’s often four figures. Pathetic, but yeah we could match that.
The problem is rich people will just start bribing them even more. It’s like bidding at an auction.
If you look at wealth distribution, it becomes very obvious that the top can always pay more.
OP has a point. You might be surprised how little money it takes to influence legislation. ABSCAM showed just how cheaply political favors can be purchased.
From there, our investigation led to southern New Jersey and on to Washington, D.C. Our criminal contacts led us to politicians in Camden who were willing to offer bribes to get our “business” a gambling license in Atlantic City. Then, when we expressed interest in their suggestion to get the sheik asylum in the U.S., these corrupt politicians arranged for us to meet some U.S. Congressmen who could make it happen with private legislation. For a price, of course: $50,000 up front and an extra $50,000 later.
When the dust settled, one senator, six congressman, and more than a dozen other criminals and corrupt officials were arrested and found guilty.
Admittedly, this was $100,000 in 1980 dollars, but even today, lobbyists don’t give millions to politicians to get things passed.
Occupy Wall Street rounded up $400,000 to wipe out $15 million in medical debt not that long ago. I would think that a concerted effort by progressive organizations could collect millions to lobby politicians to write and pass progressive laws. I’ve often wondered why this doesn’t happen.
To my knowledge the problem isn’t getting together the funds for any single “contribution”, it’s having the funds to pay the politician off over and over again. Sure, half a million dollars sounds like a lot more than a hundred thousand, but how many times can that half million be successfully crowdfunded? It’s much more reliable for the politicians to just accept the smaller but more consistent “contributions” from the more wealthy parties.
On top of that, outright bribery is illegal, attempting something like that is liable to get you arrested.
When SOPA was a thing the politicians were bought for under $20k
We’re not just looking at individual “donations” to single politicians. But hundreds of them, to all the politicians. And even more to create a massive “People’s PAC” that gets continuous reliable funding for donations, adds, fake studies and all the other crap we have to fight.
In America business and government are not actually separate. This is important to understand because it’s a structural feature of the American economy. We are a true capitalist libertaria. The government is comprised of the companies and people in business
American business is America itself and the government is a co-leader whose purpose is to facilitate American business interests.
This isn’t corruption like in the movies where you pay off crooked cops (which doesn’t really happen here). This is what businesses and individuals competing for political power looks like in a true capitalist libertaria.
In a way that is what trade unions do. Here in the UK they donate to the Labour party, for some reason.
Am in one in england. They’re fucking morons, that’s why. At least the northern England branch. representative of thea
The top ~5-6 people l wealthy people own more than the bottom 51% on the planet combined. Let alone a single country.
But there is something like WolfPAC
What do you think donations are? No need to do the extra crowdfunding step.
Isn’t this just taxes with extra steps?
Here’s a better use for all that money.
Start a non-profit organisation that harasses and annoys the hell out of people who take bribes. Stuff like putting laxatives in their coffee, banana peels on their path, water buckets on door, and so on. You get the idea. Also, they should video those pranks and post them online. Name and shame anyone who takes bribes.
The laxative one is almost certainly illegal
I always thought a “buy a lobbyist” would be a good crowd funded service. lets build it, I can offer up designs.
This is basically what various nonprofit orgs that people can join amount to.
Like, if you join the NRA your subscription cost is going to lobbying politicians on gun issues, among other stuff like keeping the org running and paying for nice things for the head of the org.
In civilised countries that would be illegal. In the USA - I don’t know.
To really have influence we’d have to crowdfund an island where we can film politicians molesting children.
There are a lot of large PAC’s that effectively do this, pulling together a sizeable voting block and donation base. AARP, an organization for retired people, is one of the larger ones. It just happens that it is hard to a large group of people to agree on policy.
Would be easier to just call Luigi often enough.
