The former head of the Motion Picture Association of America was, before that, a 36-year congressman holding several leadership positions. His annual compensation at the MPAA peaked at $3.9 million.
I don't think this is a shallow or overly cynical dismissal. I think this is the core issue: this broken lobbying system, and the intellectual property industry's outstandingly effective methods for co-opting it. No one's going to solve IP laws until something changes about the fact that Disney's lawyers have more impact in government than all the rest of the democracy. The IP law problems reduce to a broader and more intractable political problem.
You know the funniest thing? This guy is a member of the "ReFormers Caucus", which is "a group of former members of Congress, Cabinet officials and governors from both parties committed to restoring trust in our democratic institutions" by reducing the significance of money and lobbying in politics. So if you don't like what he's doing, you can write a letter to him complaining about him, and he would surely call himself to behave better next time!
"Are highly effective" is a massive understatement; they finance their campaigns and provide their unofficial retirement plans. The reward structure is what it is, and the behaviors that optimize for that reward structure are unlikely to change without somehow demolishing it and replacing it with one where the rules and their many workarounds aren't written by the beneficiaries.
"A politician is talking" should also at a minimum be treated with the same skepticism as when you encounter any other form of advertising. Even assuming the person speaking is completely ethical and aligned with your specific interests, it's literally their job to convince people of things. Assuming their job is "making laws" or "governing" is a lies-to-children version, they have to get a group of people to agree on some specific set of laws or policy for any of that to happen.
Lobbying isn't nearly as big of a problem in other countries. Your problem starts in the ballot box when you let your politicians elect themselves with mail in and electronic electronic voting machines. When they don't need you to get elected, they will instead sell themselves to the highest bidder.
Holding elections on voting computers that are by definition unverifiable and the effect being a loss of confidence in voting is not a conspiracy theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25401222
I agree. But that's not what the commenter said. They claimed that U.S. politicians are electing themselves via fraudulent votes. That's a conspiracy theory.
https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/chris-dodd-mpaa-compe...
What do *you* have to offer?
I don't think this is a shallow or overly cynical dismissal. I think this is the core issue: this broken lobbying system, and the intellectual property industry's outstandingly effective methods for co-opting it. No one's going to solve IP laws until something changes about the fact that Disney's lawyers have more impact in government than all the rest of the democracy. The IP law problems reduce to a broader and more intractable political problem.