Money does have a big influence on politics, but only indirectly. Each factor of two a politician outspends their competitor in an election by only tends to get them another 1% of the vote. Not nothing, but not really worth the appearance of corruption that you risk if you just give your donors what they want.
But the important thing that money does is allow you to hire lobbyists. Congresspeople need to pass legislation on a wide variety of issues. As anybody who's ever heard their rep talk about the "intertubes" knows, our legislators aren't necessarily experts on everything. The executive branch gets around this by hiring experts, but somehow we've decided to steadily cut Congress's staffing budget for the last few dozen years.
But there are a class of people who are personable, who have been cultivating relationships with the right people for years, and who have persuasive sounding plans for legislature that could "Save America and benefit your constituents" who are perfectly happy to step up to help out. And if their advice isn't exactly impartial, well, I honestly worry a bit more about incompetence than venality so I won't say this is the worst possible thing. But I'd be very supportive of any motion to say, bring back to the Office of Technology Assessment[1] or such.
And many of the other things the article brings up are just standard Public Choice[2] problems. Taxi cab drivers will vote as a block to stop Uber, consumers will vote based on other issues. Dealership owners and employees vote for state legislators, Teslsa employees are mostly off in some other state and consumers have more important things to care about, etc.
But the important thing that money does is allow you to hire lobbyists. Congresspeople need to pass legislation on a wide variety of issues. As anybody who's ever heard their rep talk about the "intertubes" knows, our legislators aren't necessarily experts on everything. The executive branch gets around this by hiring experts, but somehow we've decided to steadily cut Congress's staffing budget for the last few dozen years.
But there are a class of people who are personable, who have been cultivating relationships with the right people for years, and who have persuasive sounding plans for legislature that could "Save America and benefit your constituents" who are perfectly happy to step up to help out. And if their advice isn't exactly impartial, well, I honestly worry a bit more about incompetence than venality so I won't say this is the worst possible thing. But I'd be very supportive of any motion to say, bring back to the Office of Technology Assessment[1] or such.
And many of the other things the article brings up are just standard Public Choice[2] problems. Taxi cab drivers will vote as a block to stop Uber, consumers will vote based on other issues. Dealership owners and employees vote for state legislators, Teslsa employees are mostly off in some other state and consumers have more important things to care about, etc.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Choice