Mainly looking for an excuse to avoid the annoying lines at In n Out! But yeah, they’ve rubbed me the wrong way in a couple ways so no need to support them personally. They’ll obviously be fine financially so can continue to pay well, provide benefits, etc. I don’t actively seek out businesses to avoid but when it comes up, it’s usually not a tough call unless it’s one with an Amazon-level market share.
As someone that would love to see Feinstein retire and replaced by someone 50 or so years younger, support of her by the Ag Industry isn’t a redeeming quality!
“Subversive” may be a little strong. And having been in the government relations business on both sides of the fence for many years, I’d say access and influence are by no means the same thing. Many times it provides access to folks over whom you have no influence whatsoever. In any case, the reality is that the practice is so ingrained and so pervasive that you’d find yourself with few available products and services if you refused to purchase from everyone who does it. Edit: For what it’s worth, the practice is most certainly not limited to for-profit businesses. Non-profits and consumer advocacy groups play the same game.
To be honest while I love the In-N-Out Double Double I am not a fan of the fries and will go elsewhere because of that.
But I guess my point is at what point do you boycott a business that does what every other business does. And while In-N-Out is a family owned and controlled business, a conservative one for sure, they are better to their employees than probably any other business in their industry.
That should be obvious. If I’m paying both sides for influence, what I’m buying is influence, regardless of what the voters wanted.
I’m not a believer in the perfection of markets, but if corporations continue to give large sums of money to people on both sides of the political spectrum, it’s because they believe they’re getting something for it, something beyond ‘access’. If no corporation ever derived benefit from contributing to politicians, they would not contribute to politicians. It would be a pointless, wasted expenditure.
Sure, but advocacy groups are generally advocating on behalf of people, which is to say voters, for specific things. They exist for no other purpose than to advocate on behalf of those people for those things. They arguably have no ulterior motivation. Their motivation is something other than enhancing the profitability of their organization and the wealth of their management team. So if it is a coercion of democracy, it is at least a transparent one, one you can judge on the merits.
I generally agree with you in that the access occasionally results in the politician being persuaded to their point of view. And many businesses do, indeed, come to the conclusion that the occasional victory isn’t worth the cost. My only real disagreement here is the suggestion that the corporate motivation is ulterior. Even the most naive politician knows their motivation is profit. They use arguments that the result they’re seeking is in the public interest, but the motivation is obvious to all.
Which means it is ultimately corruptive in nature. That takes me back to my original point, which is that corporations contributing to all sides are engaging in corruption. I get that it is legal, at least under the prevailing regime, but it is corruptive nonetheless. I don’t think that’s a controversial view.
Edit: Even if all they’re buying is access, they’re buying something the average voter can’t buy, because the average voter lacks the means. So their voice is nearly always more likely to be heard, which means they are more likely to persuade.
Yes, there are groups that exist only to lobby for certain shareholders and/or owners. For instance, the American Petroleum Institute.
But I’m not sure why that matters. If Wal-Mart stopped all lobbying efforts, and instead gave the money it would have spent to the American Wal-Mart Lovers Club, which existed only to lobby for Wal-Mart … would it make you feel better about democracy?
Nope. corporations that exist for no reason but to lobby for other corporations are no better than corporations that lobby for themselves. Still corruptive of democracy.
Edit: It should be obvious to you that I think the whole ‘corporations are people, my friend’ position is nonsense on steroids, so it isn’t really going to sway me.
I don’t see how the API is more corruptive of democracy than, say, the AFL-CIO. Even if I agree more with the latter, that doesn’t mean it has greater right to be heard.
Can you name a powerful right-wing or pro-corporate lobby that isn’t “corrupting democracy”?
Nope. The API represents 400 corporations, while the AFL-CIO represents 12 million actual people, who give it their own actual money to use for lobbying.
Indeed, about half their money comes from opaque corporate and individual donor sources. Which is to say, they’re representing something other than people.
Yet the NRA is supported by countless “real people”. The NRA bumper stickers I see every day aren’t on fleet vehicles, they belong to real people who want to support the gun industry.
And since those on the right are generally much more pro-corporate than those on the left, arguing that anti-corporate voices have more right to be heard than pro-corporate voices ultimately amounts to a hopelessly biased approach to democracy.
If you agree to get rid of all but low-denomination annual membership fee revenue, then I’ll stipulate that an NRA of that form was not more corruptive of democracy than the AFL-CIO.
