Given the ongoing lobbyist scandal/trials in the US, I’ll share some thoughts on that topic. Let’s start from somewhere basic.
I think it fairly obvious that in a modern democracy, there is a correspondence between money and political power. No one will vote for you if they don’t know about you, and getting the message and/or image out to the people tends to cost money. Money spent on planning campaigns and doing prior studies is also a big factor in the success of a given candidate or party.
In turn, this creates a shift of power towards people or companies with large amounts of money at hand. While the system is still “one person, one vote”, these players are the ones who can determine which politicians get public exposure, and how wide that exposure is.
I view this as a bad thing, since these entities will naturally shape politics in their own favor, and because of this the interests of the populace will not be as important in the decision making as they should be.
What can be done against this? (tovább…)