Why civilians don't crowdfund bribe money for politicians?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ArkyonVeil@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

(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.

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Comments

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Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Even large groups of people can’t put together enough money.
It also costs a lot of money to organise that kind of thing.

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- markz@suppo.fi ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  If you look at wealth distribution, it becomes very obvious that the top can always pay more.
  
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  - Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    When you are worth hundreds of millions giving away a million to get a ten million dollar contract or return makes sense. This is not a game anyone but the wealthy can play.
    
    The government should absolutely be designed to prevent this type of corruption. It is not though and we are stuck with a system that only works for those with lots of money.
    
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- Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - olafurp@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- scholar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  you’d be surprised how cheap a politician can be
  
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  - BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - limer@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They go to the highest bidder.
    And the wealthy have enough now to outbid whatever we come up with.
    
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Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If you are talking about lobbying They do

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- Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  ACLU, EFF, FFRF…
  
  The problem is, these groups try to do things honestly.
  
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blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.
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- glimse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  You’d be a total moron to donate to some random person who claims they’ll use the money to bribe politicians
  
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Also that!
    
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  - flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Damn, there goes my retirement scheme!
    
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
To really have influence we’d have to crowdfund an island where we can film politicians molesting children.

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oeuf@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
In a way that is what trade unions do. Here in the UK they donate to the Labour party, for some reason.

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- bryndos@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Am in one in england. They're fucking morons, that's why.
  At least the northern England branch. representative of thea
  
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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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, my point is: Every country sucks and is corrupt in one way or another.)

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- gustofwind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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
  
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markz@suppo.fi ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Would anyone accept the money if the purpose was so obviously to expose corruption?

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FelixCress@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
In civilised countries that would be illegal. In the USA - I don’t know.

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TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think the main reason is that your average working class person, even if they have the money to contribute to that, doesn’t have the time and energy to get involved in politics. Looking at history, most people seem to be happy as long as they have food on the table, a roof over their heads, and some pretty basic rights, and only start to act when something big goes wrong, usually famines, but also things like plagues and cases of injustice that a lot of people hear & care about.

The reasons I think this doesn’t happen:

most people don’t have enough interest, time, energy

a lot of people don’t have enough money to contribute

this would require lots of organization and connecting to others who agree with the idea

it’d probably be easy to get caught, and a lot of the time (especially in countries where corruption is widespread) poor people will get punished harsher than the ruling class.
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atro_city@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Would be easier to just call Luigi often enough.

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SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Isn't this just taxes with extra steps?

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gustofwind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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- Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Who would of guessed a bunch of wealthy landowners would design a system to enrich themselves and their friends!?
  
  Bonus points for making people believe in lofty ideals like justice and equality meanwhile allowing pure unfettered corruption to run everything.
  
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JASN_DE@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
What do you think donations are? No need to do the extra crowdfunding step.

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Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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

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llooll@feddit.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I always thought a “buy a lobbyist” would be a good crowd funded service. lets build it, I can offer up designs.

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