how about making it so the government has less power, so it's not worth it for companies to try and purchase votes
If the government is too powerless to be worth bribing, then it is too weak to stop more direct forms of abuse.
If the government is too powerless to be worth bribing, then it is too weak to stop more direct forms of abuse.
That's actually a strong argument, and definitely one worth considering. I think I largely disagree - unless I'm misunderstanding, any direct form of abuse you might be referring to could still very well be illegal, so simply bringing the police in and pressing charges should do the trick.
So I can't say for sure, but if a business (or any private interest, doesn't have to be business, unions could do it just as well) wants to be sophisticated about it, it would basically come down to a cost-analysis. Basically analyze the expected cost to get something through Congress, compare it to the expected gains, and compare that whole hypothetical with doing something else with the money, like investing in a new expansion or whatever. If it's more practical to influence Congress, I would expect a business to do it - but if it's less practical, I would expect them to do something else with their money, because it's just good business sense at that point.
As always, the devil's in the details. What should the limits of power be, is that actually enough power for it to still be worth it to try and buy votes for private interests, and exactly what things should be illegal or not - these are hard and serious questions, and there's maybe 500 of them you could ask for any number of subjects - fracking, local monopolies on utilities, clean energy, oil production, and so on. But it is true that many of problems come from bad policies passed by Congress - whether intentionally bad or not, whether it was a purchased vote or not - and it may be the case that by scaling back the level of involvement and returning to the basics (protecting third parties, enforcing legal contacts, and other things), it could end up better for everyone after all. And there are many recorded cases of increased involvement from government - often with the best of intentions - backfiring in a big way, and making things worse for everyone overall.
I think I largely disagree - unless I'm misunderstanding, any direct form of abuse you might be referring to could still very well be illegal, so simply bringing the police in and pressing charges should do the trick.
I figure that if that is the case, then the Special Interests have something to lobby for.
Factories ignored employee safety, so we got OSHA. Food companies neglected quality control, so we got the FDA. A steady stream of loophole abuse creates a demand for more and more regulation, and the power to enforce it. Eventually you get a organization that is large enough for lobby abuse to get lost in bureaucratic shuffle.
Personally, I would like to see every single law below the Constitution automatically expire 10 years or so after it goes into effect, and need to be renewed on an individual basis. They'll be too busy making sure they don't go down as 'the Congress that allowed murder to be legal for 12 hours'.
More or less.
Interestingly, I saw this on the Libertarian subreddit, who had posted it from seeing it on the LateStageCapitalism subreddit.
Which, Libertarians are no less happy with the second, either. But most people seem to have the idea of "if we can just get our team™ in there, then these things wouldn't happen and Nirvana will be real!" Whereas most libertarians think "how about making it so the government has less power, so it's not worth it for companies to try and purchase votes?"
The biggest issue here is that most people think the former, and rarely the latter.