Political Office as a Product (ie a capital asset)
Posted by davidmcnab 9 years, 4 months ago to Politics
What is the opinion in the objectivist community around buying of elections?
Given the relatively recent SCOTUS verdict allowing effectively unrestricted election campaign funding, and the known capability for money to sway mass voter opinion, we have a situation where political office can be bought with relative ease, given enough money and stage-management of the (at least reasonably presentable) candidate.
This transforms political office from a democratic choice into a capital asset, bought and sold on the free market. With this comes the ability to create advantages for some people and industries, and create disadvantages for others. Laws for sale.
Does this demand an abandonment of democracy in its current form? At this stage, I'm not seeing any 'outs' from this contradiction apart from hard-core anarcho, or heavily refereed centrist, or an entirely new model of appointments to government office.
Given the relatively recent SCOTUS verdict allowing effectively unrestricted election campaign funding, and the known capability for money to sway mass voter opinion, we have a situation where political office can be bought with relative ease, given enough money and stage-management of the (at least reasonably presentable) candidate.
This transforms political office from a democratic choice into a capital asset, bought and sold on the free market. With this comes the ability to create advantages for some people and industries, and create disadvantages for others. Laws for sale.
Does this demand an abandonment of democracy in its current form? At this stage, I'm not seeing any 'outs' from this contradiction apart from hard-core anarcho, or heavily refereed centrist, or an entirely new model of appointments to government office.
Agreed that outright buying of elections can be difficult. But money can certainly shift double-digit percentage points.
I cannot understand why campaign money is still powerful now that anyone can get ideas out for free. I would expect it have become more of a "marketplace" of free ideas where popular ideas go viral.
My thought is the ads work on people who are not really into policy and don't follow it that closely. This make me wonder if it would be better if it were harder to vote. I know that could be abused, but I wonder if it would elevate the level of discourse and decrease the influence of campaign contributions if candidates knew people swayed by stupid attack ads would mostly not be voting.
That is reality.