So, I think the people doing that job should be making standard working class wages, and they should, for example, be elected by their respective interest group organisations to a formal legislative body that consults on and can propose legislation, but not pass it.
Like the house of Lords, but instead of being full of rich people named Baroness Killthepoor, it’s an actually useful body.
Lobbyists are an informal adhoc means of essentially legalizing bribery, that has been codified over time. While legitimate good might come from that system, as you’ve pointed out, some kind of formal democratic system by which formalise and democratize that consultative role should be enacted.
That’s not a the worst idea in premise, but the logistics of that is a concern for me.
Who decides who is allowed to be a formal interest group with a vote in the body? Is anyone allowed to form any group that has equal voting power? That is a terrible idea for so many reasons I can think of. Is it chosen by the legislature or executive? That gives it a ton of room for corruption, favoritism, etc. Are they restricted to one group per area of interest? If not then you could have proposals passed by the sheet number of co-interested individual interest groups alone. If not, then who decides what is a distinct enough interest to allow a new group?
That being said, the entire system being an above board process, publically accessible and answerable, would already be a dramatic improvement over the current lobbying practices, so… no matter how bad a mess, it likely would never be worse.
So, I think the people doing that job should be making standard working class wages, and they should, for example, be elected by their respective interest group organisations to a formal legislative body that consults on and can propose legislation, but not pass it.
Like the house of Lords, but instead of being full of rich people named Baroness Killthepoor, it’s an actually useful body.
Lobbyists are an informal adhoc means of essentially legalizing bribery, that has been codified over time. While legitimate good might come from that system, as you’ve pointed out, some kind of formal democratic system by which formalise and democratize that consultative role should be enacted.
That’s not a the worst idea in premise, but the logistics of that is a concern for me.
Who decides who is allowed to be a formal interest group with a vote in the body? Is anyone allowed to form any group that has equal voting power? That is a terrible idea for so many reasons I can think of. Is it chosen by the legislature or executive? That gives it a ton of room for corruption, favoritism, etc. Are they restricted to one group per area of interest? If not then you could have proposals passed by the sheet number of co-interested individual interest groups alone. If not, then who decides what is a distinct enough interest to allow a new group?
That being said, the entire system being an above board process, publically accessible and answerable, would already be a dramatic improvement over the current lobbying practices, so… no matter how bad a mess, it likely would never be worse.