TL;DR: the key is to insulate lawmakers from concentrations of wealth.
A law that prevents corporations from spending resources on politics would do this. Or low contribution limits could work, to limit billionaire influence.
A lot of comments in this and other privacy threads correctly worry about the combination of "diffuse costs, concentrated benefits" and the electorate's short attention vs sustained private lobbying. My feeling is those effects cannot be overcome once in effect, so we have to roll back to prevent the effects in the first place.
Sounds politically unlikely, but stranger things have happened in American politics.
True, but we all know the people are so self-enlightened to not stick their neck out.
I've been wondering lately if the solution to politics (at least at the state and federal level) would be to have a two level representative democracy. Meaning instead of one person getting the vote for 700K people and being very bribe-able (1 of 435), you have one person actually at the legislature but they have a different role. They must negotiate based on another set of real representatives. They must collect facts and evaluate laws for this other set. These 14 (e.g.) people would be responsible for a much smaller number of people (50K) and have a much smaller geographical region. These 14 would be the ones who actually vote for/against the laws and the top level must cast their vote in their stead. The top level could also be elected and serve at the discretion of this set of 14. Each representative has a smaller sphere of influence and concern. Bribing (lobbying) becomes much harder since it goes up by a factor of 7 (or more). Gerrymandering becomes much much harder because of all the little sub-districts that would be created. It also helps give a truer voice of the people unlike certain states/districts where you may be blue in a sea of red or vice-versa. Of course, the powers that be would never let this happen but I think it is at least an interesting thought experiment.
A law that prevents corporations from spending resources on politics would do this. Or low contribution limits could work, to limit billionaire influence.
A lot of comments in this and other privacy threads correctly worry about the combination of "diffuse costs, concentrated benefits" and the electorate's short attention vs sustained private lobbying. My feeling is those effects cannot be overcome once in effect, so we have to roll back to prevent the effects in the first place.
Sounds politically unlikely, but stranger things have happened in American politics.