Silicon Valley, the new lobbying monster

I wouldn't say "new". This has been a thing for decades. While the companies who are the top spenders may have changed, Silicon Valley tech as a whole has been pretty aggressively represented for some time.

Eumenes5• 2 years ago

My thoughts exactly. This article calls out crypto but tech lobbying has a much longer history with Amazon, Google, and Meta. I view crypto as an extension of the financial services industry at this point (look at the boards and execs of these companies; they are more finance than tech), which obviously is the king of financing campaigns.

alephnerd2• 2 years ago

And the corporation that owns the The New Yorker (Condé Nast) is a notorious lobbyist in both the US and EU around AI Regulations and AdTech.

Goes to show that most political op-eds are just entertainment.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

A bit more than a decade.

A while ago software companies where taking every kind of abuse from the US government, coming from well represented entertainment, finance, and all kinds of other industries. This suddenly stopped when they started to lobby.

MangoCoffee• 2 years ago

Microsoft intensified its lobbying efforts when it faced scrutiny for bundling IE with Windows. Similarly, Facebook, Google, Apple, and others have increased their lobbying over the years.

As you pointed out, this is nothing new. When companies or entire industries feel threatened, they ramp up lobbying – even Huawei hired Tony Podesta to advocate for them.

Hillary Clinton's call to repeal Section 230 for stricter social media regulation will likely prompt tech companies to boost their lobbying efforts.

Sooner or later, companies in emerging industries will start lobbying to protect their interests or advance their agendas.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/huawei-hires-tony-p...

alephnerd2• 2 years ago

Yep! For example, the EFF was notably supported by Google back when Google was taking on Microsoft, the ITIF has been active for decades, and the Obama admin was notorious for being overrepresented by Google leadership.

Ain't no point adding morality to lobbying - it's just what it is.

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

teaearlgraycold• 2 years ago

The worst are the seed stage founders complaining about the proposed paper gains tax (while not knowing enough about it to answer if it would apply to startup equity) because they’re definitely going to have enough value for the $100MM threshold to apply to them.

dgs_sgd• 2 years ago

When the income tax was first passed it applied to less than 1% of citizens, yet look where we are now. Just because a new law doesn’t apply to you personally doesn’t mean you can’t be concerned about the potential downstream effects.

xienze• 2 years ago

because they’re definitely going to have enough value for the $100MM threshold to apply to them.

Tax cutoffs have this habit of drifting downward over time (the whole, "eventually you run out of other people's money" thing). See the original revenue act of 1913 (modern US income tax). At first it was 1% starting at today's equivalent of $93K and didn't go any higher until you made the equivalent of about $500K. And today, well, it's a little different.

New taxes are always pitched this way -- "oh it'll never affect you, just those rich people, what's your problem?"

xhkkffbf• 2 years ago

Why are you being a Democrat shill? Didn't you see that recent video of Democratic party boss Hillary Clinton saying the quiet part outloud? If the social media isn't censored, "we lose control." And by "we", she didn't mean you and me.

I just don't see this as "SO much better."

Eumenes5• 2 years ago

cyber-libretarians like Ron Wyden

This dude is a certified ghoul.

In May 2017, Wyden co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Senate Bill 720, which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment,[88] for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government. The bill would make it legal for U.S. states to refuse to do business with contractors that engage in boycotts against Israel.[89] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Wyden#Israel

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

game_the0ry2• 2 years ago

Hillary Clinton went on TV and said we should get rid of Section 230 in order to moderate content. So is it really that surprising that SV made a right turn?

ajuc2• 2 years ago

SV made the choice before (by accepting money from dictatorships for political influence via social media). Attempts at regulation were a reaction to that.

There's no way the situation can stay like that forever. There will be regulation like there's regulation of TV, radio, press, etc.

Without regulation you don't get a libertarian utopia - you just get oligarchy.

AlexandrB• 2 years ago

This argument doesn't hold water. Hillary Clinton is kind of irrelevant at this point. She doesn't hold any kind of elected office and remains pretty unpopular among lefties after losing in 2016. Meanwhile Trump openly tried to reduce the protections of Section 230 while he was president[1].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/05/28/what-is-s...

jkaptur• 2 years ago

Donald Trump is strongly against Section 230.

https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/trump-and-section-230-what-know

robertlagrant• 2 years ago

Bernie Sanders is a cyber-libertarian? What does that mean?

Manuel_D5• 2 years ago

Folks that think that Trump and his friends like "freedom of speech" or any of the type of techno freedoms we take for granted are in for a deeply rude awakening. The reality is that democrats are so, SO much better on most cyber issues that you're actually a deplorable if you are voting for trump.

I'm curious as to why you conclude that Democrats are better than Republicans in terms of IT liberty. Trump ended operation choke point, a program of essentially harassing banks into dropping certain customers [1]. De-banking is, in my opinion, one of the most important threats to "cyber liberties" since it's absolutely crucial for any business to survive. Individuals who are de-banked also find it incredibly difficult to survive: Plenty of services, including apartments and HOAs, do not accept non-electronic payments.

The censorship of "misinformation" (much of which later turned out to be true) also grew considerably under the 2020 administration, which did in fact reach out to social media companies to try and influence their decision making. One of the more salient examples was covered by HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41365868 To be clear, I'm not concerned about private companies autonomously deciding what to host. I take issue with the government coercing companies into making moderation decisions. This has huge potential for abuse, such as forcing the takedown of politically disadvantageous material.

Both Republicans and Democrats are in favor of getting rid of Section 230, but for essentially totally different reasons: Republicans seem to want to return to the precedence set by Cubby Inc. vs. CompuServe [2]. Democrats seem to want to narrowly repeal Section 230 to empower the government to dictate the contents of social media. Both are negative in my opinion, but the patter seems more insidious and prone to long term harm.

And to be clear, these issues are far, far from enough to get me to vote for Trump. I'm interested in hearing the counter-claim, that the Democrat party is better in terms of cyber liberties.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

bpodgursky• 2 years ago

The right-wing turn is absolutely disgusting and should be shattered as soon as possible with prejudice.

Do you understand how you are the problem here?

Silicon Valley didn't care about politics until politicians started getting involved and attempting to impose censorship regimes, aggressive unrealized gains taxation, and killing crypto assets. Tech startups were find being ignored.

But as you illustrate, you can't ignore DC if it chooses not to ignore you. If people like you want to use the power of the state to "shatter" anyone you politically disagree with, well, of course the tech companies will hit back.

AlbertCory6• 2 years ago

Porter, who had initially polled well, lost decisively in the primary, coming in third, with just fifteen per cent of the vote.

She was running against Adam Schiff, who had much broader name recognition. It also didn't help that she's overweight and "Porker" became her nasty nickname.

This is a shoddy piece of reporting. Tech lobbying didn't start with Chris Lehane, Uber, Lyft, or crypto. Anytime government is capable of helping or hurting an industry, they form a lobbying group. The more money involved, the bigger the lobbying effort.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

It didn't help that the Schiff campaign (backed by the CA democratic party) donated to the Garvey campaign to force her out of the primary. Seems weird to not mention this.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-06/californ...

whatever1• 2 years ago

I like how they started with different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense).

But they ended up exactly the same. Helping the worst regimes, all-in in military complex, taking advantage of screen addiction and teen insecurities.

But hey at least they don’t wear white collars like the old bad guys.

azinman24• 2 years ago

In terms of numbers, there aren’t that many SV companies that exploit kids via insecurities and screen addiction. But I don’t doubt their impact.

drawkward16• 2 years ago

I am not sure what your subtext here is. Are you saying it doesnt matter as much because there are fewer SV companies?

csomar• 2 years ago

The ones that do are so huge that the number of companies doesn't matter. Facebook market cap is 1.5 Trillion and has $150bn of revenue every year. That's more than many countries around the world. (and I am comparing revenues to GDP).

A4ET8a8uTh0• 2 years ago

Money and power is clearly one hell of a drug.

jajko• 2 years ago

Also a collective mindset - if most people one knows are doing exactly the same, morality lines tend to conveniently blur, it requires very strong personality to keep the inner compass untainted for decades.

And its a grey business so to say, you can see various justifications for it also here since many folks here work for them, its not some Zyklon-B factory. At the end, everybody under certain circumstances has a price, and kids tend to blur this even more for many.

Rebuff5007• 2 years ago

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain"

kibwen• 2 years ago

I like how they started with different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense).

They started with the same values: make as much money as possible, even if it destroys the world. Any entreaties to the contrary were a smokescreen to deflect criticism until they could shore up their position. This is the natural end-state of incentivizing profit maximization.

safety1st• 2 years ago

How does your worldview explain the GPL?

linguae2• 2 years ago

Exactly. Silicon Valley used to be countercultural, an alternative to Corporate America. Yes, there was always a money-making emphasis, and there’s a long history of less-than-ethical practices, but this was countered by many positive aspects of the Valley, such as the paying-it-forward ethos and the feeling that technology matters. There’s a reason Xerox PARC was placed in Palo Alto and not in New England. There’s a reason why many of personal computing’s pioneers had a countercultural vibe.

Today Silicon Valley is the establishment. It seems less like the nerd mecca it used to be (remember Weird Stuff?) and is now a place that is much more obsessed with money. When a basic 1960s suburban tract house within a reasonable commute from work costs more than $2 million, it’s hard not to be obsessed with money. There are still good people and awesome technologies in Silicon Valley, which is one of the main reasons I’ve decided to stay in the Bay Area, but it seems like some companies in Silicon Valley have gone absolutely mercenary, and they have eroded the goodwill the area had as recently as a decade ago.

But I think this is part of the natural evolution of industry. The same could be said about the history of the railroad and car industries in America. Think of how essential telecommunications and electricity are to modern society, yet I’ve yet to meet a person who loves Comcast and PG&E.

cornercasechase• 2 years ago

I used to think this was the case as well, even though I suffered through the reality: computing was always a rich person's game. Even more so in the early days. Even a C64 was an upper middle class toy. Cosplaying counter cultural (really well) doesn't change the fact that if you cold afford to build the foundation of the computer industry, you were at least very aligned with capital. Now that alignment has been exposed, highlighted and scaled to global proportions.

mempko• 2 years ago

You need to watch "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace" by Adam Curtis which outlines Silicon Valley's long Libertarian roots. Making money and greed has been deeply embedded from the start.

CPLX• 2 years ago

Silicon Valley used to be countercultural, an alternative to Corporate America.

Turns out this is bullshit.

It's fine I bought into it too. But it's a pretty unbroken path from today back through the history of business in Silicon Valley. It's always been a smokescreen.

I recommend this book, it's highly illuminating and specific: https://www.amazon.com/Palo-Alto-History-California-Capitali...

literallycancer• 2 years ago

It has nearly nothing to do with the tech industry or counterculture and everything to do with being shit at urban planning and selling land to speculators on the cheap, so you end up with nowhere for the sprawl to go, and the land owner voting block that sabotages any attempt at building high density settlements.

d_burfoot• 2 years ago

different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense).

To play devil's advocate a bit, I think those old industries started out just as idealistic as the tech sector. The oil companies pursued amazing feats of science and engineering to power the new industrial economy. The defense companies made remarkable technological advances to help deter Soviet aggression and win the space race. And before the link to lung cancer was discovered, tobacco was like coffee: it gave people a nice cognitive boost, as well as possibly helping them stay thin.

AlbertCory6• 2 years ago

This is in no way to defend smoking. I've never smoked, and good riddance to it.

However:

Amidst all the talk about the causes of obesity, surely "not smoking anymore" is in there somewhere?

joecool1029• 2 years ago

And before the link to lung cancer was discovered, tobacco was like coffee: it gave people a nice cognitive boost

Now you can just buy nicotine products for that boost with a substantially reduced risk profile (it's not a carcinogen). Some writeup on it: https://gwern.net/nicotine

sangnoir3• 2 years ago

it gave people a nice cognitive boost,

Does nicotine give a cognitive boost, or does it return one to their pre-addiction baseline?

mistermann• 2 years ago

One similarity between the scenarios: fake democracy, with minimal (and easily compromised) checks and balances.

Theatre at its finest. But this shan't ever be discussed.

__MatrixMan__2• 2 years ago

If you let money drive, you end up where money wants to go.

patcon• 2 years ago

I like this framing.

Anyone care to suggest what money "wants" or where it wants to go?

I know it's a flawed question, because money is in many ways inert, but we have similar caveats around genes and evolution. Non-sentient things can still create persistent structures that we can label with our human values. Or something :)

usefulcat• 2 years ago

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

--Charlie Munger

whoomp12342• 2 years ago

hoodies are the new white collar

karmasimida• 2 years ago

Maybe because when the government looks to regulate them, that is why the lobbying effort takes up?

Nothing ever has changed

scoofy• 2 years ago

Tim Wu discussed this at length in The Master Switch back in 2010:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switc...

flakiness• 2 years ago

Also "The Curse of Bigness" is as relevant as that book. https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Bigness-Antitrust-New-Gilded-eb...

ericmcer• 2 years ago

I don't think the 'they' you refer to exist anymore. It isn't that tech workers got corrupted by power. There was a brief (20 year?) period where workers had more leverage than owners. Asset owners were forced to bend to workers, pay huge salaries and beg to invest in companies they didn't understand.

Now asset owners have the whole thing comfortably under their thumb, every large tech co has MBAs throughout and schools have been pumping out engineers for 20 years so workers have no leverage. It has become the same as every other large industry.

beezlebroxxxxxx• 2 years ago

The Andreessen and Horowitz quotes in this are particularly hilarious and pathetic. The desperate attempts at linking their greed to the fate of the country itself is so nakedly self-serving (as are many of the quotes from these lobbyists and other VCs) that they should make them a laughing stock.

The Citizens United decision will be a cancer in American politics and a boon for the ultra-wealthy for generations.

coredog64• 2 years ago

What specifically in Citizens United is bad? Are there any positive outcomes from CU?

drawkward16• 2 years ago

For one thing, it equates money with speech, which destabilizes our democracy by giving more power to those who have money. Obviously, money does that in many ways outside of the electoral process, but one would imagine that any serious democracy would want to keep its democratic processes maximally equitable.

fallingknife3• 2 years ago

Citizens United was the correct decision. The alternative is our government deciding who gets to engage in politics. Without Citizens United politics would be even more restricted to a much smaller set of even wealthier people and established politicians who have access to the governemnt approved outlets of political speech.

drawkward16• 2 years ago

The correct decision is to set a limit on campaigning, and fund it with tax dollars, no outside spending.

calgarymicro• 2 years ago

Without Citizens United politics would be even more restricted to a much smaller set of even wealthier people

Really? Because there are many countries with far stricter regulations on campaign financing than the US had pre-Citizens United, that also have much more working class representation in their politics than the US.[0]

[0]https://www.noamlupu.com/Carnes_Lupu_ARPS.pdf

p_j_w• 2 years ago

This is a reasonable sounding hypothesis that has been shown to be completely false.

ikrenji2• 2 years ago

citizens united = sell the election to the highest bidder. no need to put lipstick on a pig

smaddox2• 2 years ago

False dichotomy. Prior to CU, individuals could contribute to any candidate of their choosing (up to an annual contribution limit). Companies are compased of individuals. CU was twisted logic to reach a preconceived, corrupt outcome.

samatman• 2 years ago

Indeed. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, which in clear language protects free speech for corporations. That includes the right to engage in political advocacy, which is what Citizens United v. FEC was about.

A lot of people have a, let's say filtered understanding of the decision, which has become a sort of shibboleth rather than a direct reference to the Supreme Court's ruling.

I encourage reading up on the ruling itself, at least the Wikipedia summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Or should you prefer primary sources (as ideally you should) just read the ruling https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/

The canonical source, just for completeness. Justia has the same text https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf

insane_dreamer4• 2 years ago

That might have been the “hopeful” argument for Citizens United but the the reality has been the opposite. There is so much more money going into politics by large companies and the wealthy than ever before. It’s a poison on democracy and one of the absolute worst SC decisions ever.

renewiltord2• 2 years ago

Makes sense. Lobbyists for legacy competitors tried to screw them so they picked up the game. In Canada and Australia they tried to screw them on the news / search linking debacle. The problem is that when you come at the king, you best not miss.

architango2• 2 years ago

The excellent financial podcaster/youtuber Patrick Boyle has a related entry, "Crypto Has Bought The 2024 Election": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpZvC_5leDY

nickpinkston• 2 years ago

+1 for Patrick Boyle's channel - very informative and his dry humor is fun too

mistercheph4• 2 years ago

An unprecedented peek-behind-the-covers at the inside of mainstream media brain.

Man with wide eyes and stock photos and nordvpn sponsorship on set with full makeup and steampunk costume rambles through various headlines, not forgetting to show you how to (mis)interpret facts, and how to manifest life as a rabid political fanatic, ready to ruin any dialog you come across with barking and screeching and red eyes.

There is nothing in that video that even resembles thought or rationality, it is just classic mainstream media non-sequitur that adorns the regalia of knowledge and batters the viewer with meaningless "facts" and "figures" until they are in a state of ready-to-be-filled aporia.

architango2• 2 years ago

I guess I fell for it, then - I’m not particularly intelligent nor media-savvy, so perhaps that’s no surprise.

In your estimation, what’s an example of a fact that Boyle misinterprets in this video?

keiferski• 2 years ago

Steampunk costume? Are you watching the same video?

sillyfluke• 2 years ago

Curious if there is a reference for his 86% win rate from 42 primaries for the crypro Super Pacs that another poster also mentioned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41720799

drawkward16• 2 years ago

Dismantle what SV has evolved into under venture capital.

When tech was scrappy and didnt have billions at stake, its products seemed to benefit humanity. Now it is (the most powerful?) part of the oppresive regime.

ericfr11• 2 years ago

At least the media and public are aware. The oil industry: not so much: they are destroying the whole planet, and their lobbying is so much more secret and politically motivated

drawkward16• 2 years ago

One has to wonder if we are truly aware. How much is AI ruining the environment via its constant demands for electricity and water? I'd expect more harms will come to light way down the line, as was true with big oil, tobacco, etc.

wslh• 2 years ago

The media is also part of the corrupt system though. They also have an agenda, use clickbait, and focus on the topics that maximize conversions.

insane_dreamer4• 2 years ago

Not sure the public is aware. And media is complicit since they are happy to use dark patterns to drive readership.

lacy_tinpot2• 2 years ago

If VCs disappear overnight most tech would not change ideologically. It hasn't changed too much ideologically for the past few decades.

Most were libertarian and continue to be libertarian.

The minor shift is from being left libertarian to more right libertarian, though that's mostly due to the political landscape where there isn't much room for contrarian leftists.

sangnoir3• 2 years ago

If VCs disappear overnight most tech would not change ideologically. It hasn't changed too much ideologically for the past few decades.

What has changed is that the proportion of people who wind up in tech primarily due to passion has drastically dropped as it became more prestigious. I'll paraphrase something I read elsewhere that rang true to me. In the 80s and 90s, amoral,greed-is-good, get-rich-by-any-means people got into banking and finance because it paid well. Now they go into tech.

zelias2• 2 years ago

Semi on-topic: Why should the federal government even entertain a "strongly" pro-cryptocurrency agenda, when the real goal of cryptocurrencies is to displace/reduce the power of the U.S. dollar, from which the federal government (and the American people) derive many, many benefits?

snowwrestler4• 2 years ago

That’s not the real goal of cryptocurrencies.

It started off that way—remember people buying pizzas and domain names with bitcoin? That is the sort of thing that people do with dollars.

But it became quickly apparent that cryptocurrencies suck as currency because they are so strongly deflationary. However, that makes them work great as commodity financial instruments.

So viewing crypto as a financial market (not a currency), it benefits the U.S. to have as much of the market transacting within the jurisdiction as possible. Then you get the tax benefits, and ancillary benefits (e.g. rich crypto owners buying things).

RestlessMind• 2 years ago

Because blockchains can be a great weapon against dictatorships who cannot allow free expression.

US has enough cultural and institutional flexibility to accommodate dissent. First amendment protects almost any speech against the government, including insulting the president.

Compare that against China, who simply cannot tolerate citizens having any freedom of expression beyond what the party allows. See "tanks of tiananmen" smart contract[1] or "winnie the pooh" NFTs [2] - the only thing CCP can do at that point is to ban the entire blockchain ecosystem. But if blockchains are a big success in the rest of the world, CCP also has to cater to it just to keep pace with the West's tech progress.

[1] https://bscscan.com/token/0xb79c9c73e8c7b4be7244e697e6bdb9f5...

[2] https://opensea.io/collection/poohsnft

mac-attack• 2 years ago

Because you need to be/stay elected in order to enforce policy.

As an aside, one could easily replace 'crypto-currency' with 'fascism' in your comment to accurately describe why Republicans are following a similar tact in spite of the benefits of a democracy

googledocsftw4• 2 years ago

Crypto people care about the price. They know it cannot be a mainstream currency because of how wasfeful, slow or insecure it is (pick 1+ depending on the coin) so really BTC/USD number goes up makes us richer is the game. Also encouraging degen gambling is the game. As is Ponzi. All of which makes insiders money.

The best coup would be Bitcoin as a gold that backs USD. This would force the price up well above a million. It might also make the world dark. $1 per kwh. $10 per kwh and so on.

Other coups would be lebanon style power interruptions while energy is diverted to mining with various subsidies.

ModernMech• 2 years ago

From "Don't be evil" to "We're the baddies".

rlewkov• 2 years ago

What a politician wants most is to win reelection. This explains everything

resters3• 2 years ago

If anyone needs to see what happen, read Marc Andreesen's cringy posts on X. The guy is a MAGA promoter and sounds more and more like an elderly "the country is going to hell in a handbasket" geriatric conservative every second.

Too many years in a bubble of undeserved wealth where people suck up to him constantly.

YC helped fund/promote Palantir, the dystopian surveillance company.

The Iraq war defense contractor boom pumped tons of money into pro-war entities and this is just the result of that capital finding its way into new ventures. Ideology comes along for the ride. It's the very definition of dystopian, government propaganda and big-lie-driven malinvesment and (in hindsight) massive financial fraud on taxpayers.

I'm personally shocked that PG touches any of this dirty money. When is enough enough?

marxisttemp4• 2 years ago

PG is good buddies with Peter Thiel. Why do you think he’s not a part of this neo-monarchist SV milieu?

dang2• 2 years ago

As far as I know, that's not the case. I mean, I don't know who all of PG's friends are, but I assume you don't either.

pj_mukh2• 2 years ago

YC does fund defense companies, esp tech innovative ones, a posture change they made due to the situation in Taiwan and Ukraine [1]

But they didn’t fund Palantir or Anduril or any of the companies that blew up during the Border Panics of 2016-2020.

Unless you’re playing guilty by association games in which case ..carry on.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ares-industries

resters3• 2 years ago

YC gave Palantir a massive platform at startup school to present the company and vision and recruit talent. Far more than the seed investment would have been worth.

With respect to the ares industries, YC buys into the neocon view strongly enough that it wants to help create the next wave of military tech. The only reason anyone perceives these "threats" and perceives the US to be "woefully unprepared" because of the marketing budget the defense industry has after profiting handsomely from the Iraq wars, etc.

The US is not in danger and does not need new and state of the art weapons systems. We are not losing in Ukraine because we don't have adequate weapons but because we are playing a very stupid and risky strategy. See the comments of Jeffrey Sachs on all of this.

lovich6• 2 years ago

“New”

They’ve been this way for decades. The whole “don’t be evil” facade slipped away once the money started flowing

farseer• 2 years ago

Innocent question: what other major lobbying monsters are there in the US?

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Something that surprised me recently was learning that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a private organization. I assumed it was some office funded by the government in a town, that worked with local businesses—or something along those lines. But no, they're a lobbying group, and they are the biggest lobbying group in the country. I'm not saying they are a monster (I clearly don't know anything about them) but at that size, how could you not be?

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders

lovich6• 2 years ago

Id posit that they are simply from giving themselves that name and not disabusing anyone of the notion.

They like to get puff pieces in the news with their analysis on legislation and most people have the same misconception as a result

js2• 2 years ago

You can view it sliced various ways here:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying

auntienomen• 2 years ago

Oil/energy, real estate pros, health insurance, ...

mlinhares4• 2 years ago

Car dealers. Also the biggest financiers of the Republican party.

AnarchismIsCool• 2 years ago

See also, MLMs and the supplement industry. They're contributing for the legal right to screw average people out of their money.

it_citizen• 2 years ago

Boeing

julianeon• 2 years ago

A lot of the action has moved upstream now that Citizens United is the law (January 21, 2010: "this decision allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns"). Ideally from the corp. perspective you don't wait until a crisis point. You spend early and shape the narrative to prevent a crisis from ever happening. The Koch brothers created a network of donors who operate on this strategic plane more than the tactical "this specific regulation has to be changed" level. See Mayer's "Dark Money" for a comprehensive history.

insane_dreamer4• 2 years ago

Citizens United has got to be one of the worst and most anti-democracy rulings of the Supreme Court ever.

b3ing• 2 years ago

Healthcare

Sytten• 2 years ago

Those articles kept reminding me that I am right to be very cynical. Is lobbying #foundermode? /s

chollida1• 2 years ago

One of Microsoft's biggest lessons out of their anit monopoly trial was that they were not political enough.

Before the trial Bill Gates though spending money on lobbying was a waste and its a widely held belief that their anti trust trial wouldn't have happened if they had spent on lobbiest like healthcare, finance, and anything military do.

Post 2000, silicon valley learned this lesson and became one of the biggest lobbyers of the government. To the point where they eclipsed the oil and farm lobbies.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 2 years ago

Any time the message is "We should do X because if we don't, the bogeyman will do it," it should be a red flag. Seems to be one of the common themes in the article.

It's always admitting that the thing you want to do is bad, but wanting to do it anyways. And more often than not, it relies on a mischaracterization of the supposed bogeyman: "the democrats eat babies and wouldn't hesitate to do X, so that justifies us sinking lower unless we want baby eaters to win."

Or maybe it's just inevitable that anything structurally resembling a race to the bottom ends up with everybody on the bottom.

llamaimperative• 2 years ago

It should definitely be a red flag and warrant deeper inspection, but that doesn't mean it's always wrong. The dems do eat babies, obviously ;)

smoovb• 2 years ago

The Valley’s enthusiasm for Biden, however, was short-lived. The President quickly appointed three prominent tech skeptics—Gary Gensler, Lina Khan, and Jonathan Kanter—to oversee the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, respectively. Soon the government was suing or investigating Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and dozens of other companies.

Gensler, Warren and Khan have been exceptionally anti-tech. Nice of this article to notice there is a growing number of techies putting their money where their mouth is in response.

tptacek• 2 years ago

Katie Porter is a progressive House newcomer who punched above her weight in earned media with a series of populist House floor stunts that got her a lot of attention in Northern Virginia and Boston, but probably didn't do as much as you'd think to raise her profile in the suburban communities in California that turn out in primary races.

Schiff is an undefeated 12-term House Democratic mainstay with a reputation as one of the savvier players in the party.

Cryptocurrency lobbyists didn't tank Porter's primary campaign. Schiff beat her 2:1, as observers expected. Just compare the endorsements. California has a jungle primary, so you can end up with two Democratic candidates after a primary, but Garvey beat her 2:1 as well, and you don't swing from a Republican MLB first baseman to Katie Porter based on an independent ad campaign.

Silicon Valley, the new lobbying monster

Related Stories