On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 11:14 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 1/15/2013 8:18 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > >> >> On 15 Jan 2013, at 00:38, meekerdb wrote: >> >> On 1/14/2013 10:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> Lobbying should be forbidden. >> >> >> But it's just another name for "petitioning your government". Lobbyists >> provide a lot research and expertise to the legislative process, >> >> >> Biased by personal interests. >> > > Exactly. And let's not be naive here, the "research" is just to make the > decision look good in the public's eye. What really makes lobbying work is > money. Lobbyists pays for politicians careers. > > >> >> >> >> so I don't think it is workable to just forbid them. >> >> >> I did not say it was easy. Note that in Europa lobbying is more or less >> forbidden, but by lack of bipartition, we have often coalition which >> succeed in defending some special interest too. >> >> We have to think to prevent democracy being swallowed by corporatism. >> When Romney said that "corporations" are people, I get the chilling ... >> > > Another (counter-intuitive) measure against lobbyists and special > interests groups would be aggressive deregulation of everything. People who > want to fight corporatism with state regulation are trying to extinguish a > fire with gasoline. Regulation is what they thrive on. Regulation always > end up granting the powerful groups all the liberties they want and > restricting the individual liberties even further. > > > Sometimes, but not always. Restrictions can be useful to to consumers and > corporations, e.g. FAA regulations for airline safety are not only good for > the consumers but they make the public feel that flying is safe which > serves the airlines. > Sure, restrictions on public space. That's why we need a police force. But let's be very careful with the definition of public space: the atmosphere is public space, the Internet is a network of private spaces. The current lobbying systems gives us the TSA along with the FAA. > > > > Let supermarkets sell rotten meat. Soon businesses will appear to tell > you which meat is ok to eat - because the demand will be there. > > > And who will pay them more - the consumer or the meat packing industry? > In the long run, always the consumers - is we're dealing with agents that operate sufficiently close to rationality. If the certifier accepts the bribe, it will risk destroying its reputation. The worse the meat, the higher the risk. For it to be worthy to for the meat packing industry to bribe the certifier, the certifier has to already have significant impact with the consumers. So it would have to be willing to trade the stable business model for a quick buck. Some will be, sure. But then natural selection takes care of it. > I think consumers have no trouble telling bad meat. The more typical > problem is something like cigarette smoking - the tobacco industry hired > 'researchers' to obfuscate the issue for decades. > I would love for private companies to exist that hired top scientists to tell me what are the healthiest choices. I would trust it more than the government - you just have to look at FDA's food pyramid - another fiction created by lobbying. But ultimately, I would have to want to be healthy, I don't feel it's the government's job to force that on me. > Now the same PR firms are hired by the oil and coal industry to > obfuscate the problem of global warming. > And meanwhile we disregard other options out of ideology, namely geo-engineering. There are a couple of very interesting proposals on that front that are dismissed without proper thought. Global warming can kill us all, but so can energy shortage. Telmo. > > Brent > > There certifiers would have an incentive to tell you the truth, because > that's how they'd make money. The government rarely has an incentive to > tell us the truth. > > >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >> Brent >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > > No virus found in this message. > > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2013.0.2890 / Virus Database: 2637/6023 - Release Date: 01/10/13 > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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