(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.
Poor people don’t have disposable income. Especially not the throw at a politician and hope kinda income.
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.
- 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
Damn, there goes my retirement scheme!
Just market it to Trump supporters. Say your raising money for the wall. Use the first round to buy some land near the border. Next round use it for the construction of your new house and rug pull the website. The only thing more unethical is for that money to fund a MAGA true believer.
Also that!
Even large groups of people can’t put together enough money.
It also costs a lot of money to organise that kind of thing.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.
One potential organisation type to do this would be a labor union. If multiple unions pool their resources they could make a super PAC and lobby hard.
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.
you’d be surprised how cheap a politician can be
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.
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.
They go to the highest bidder.
And the wealthy have enough now to outbid whatever we come up with.
In a way that is what trade unions do. Here in the UK they donate to the Labour party, for some reason.
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.
In a corrupt developing country, anyone can bribe officials for things, especially if its small and within that officials purview, in a dysfunctional semi-corrupt developed capitalist democracy, only the rich 1% can.
Example: One Child Policy was officially policy in China, but you pay their “fines”/bribes/extortion (or whatever you wanna call it) and voila, problems go away. Ask how I know… I am the second son in my family lol, and no, we aren’t a rich family, it was like from savings over a period time or something, or maybe my parents borrowed from relatives, idk the details… like… people just bribe for a lot of small everyday stuff, I heard about even getting jobs or getting into university, and people talk so casually about it. There’s a term for it “走后门” (2nd definition: to pull strings; to call in favours; to use the influence of someone in authority to achieve one’s goal), usually someone you know (关系 Guanxi), and you give them money, like probably in the form of a 红包 (Red Envelope, you know, the new year thing).
In America? Nah, there’s law and order… or something… you can’t just bribe for stuff…
Its a “gift” lol, not bribe. Thomas Clarance has declared so. Just ask him about it while he’s on vacation on the yacht of some random 1%er.
Wait, you wanna do the same? Wanna buy a supreme court justice or a congress member? Nah fam, come back when you’re part of the 1%.
(TLDR: Every country sucks and is corrupt in one way or another.)
In America if you break a driving law you typically get “points” on your license. Too many points and you lose it. Also more points = more expensive insurance costs per month.
Or you can just pay a few hundred dollars and not get points instead
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
Ah, rats. So much for that idea.
Would anyone accept the money if the purpose was so obviously to expose corruption?
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
Would be easier to just call Luigi often enough.
Isn’t this just taxes with extra steps?
What do you think donations are? No need to do the extra crowdfunding step.
