Trying to leave miners without jobs seems very corrupt to me.

The only thing worse than your spelling is your opinions on child labor.

You broke the site guidelines badly here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. Note these ones:

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." (a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls)

"Don't be snarky."

"Edit out swipes."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've been having to ask you this kind of thing for many years:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32603262 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27070806 (May 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20055249 (May 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391113 (March 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16538476 (March 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15859440 (Dec 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14274043 (May 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003094 (June 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8796661 (Dec 2014)

That's not cool. Can you please fix this?

It was a joke. The joke was that he misspelled "minors" and wanted kids to work. I thought it might be too obscure, it looks like it is.

Ok, I see. Sorry!

No problem, I was thinking "nobody will get this" as I was writing it, but I figured the payoff would be big for someone who did get it. I didn't realize it might look like an attack, partly because it's such a random thing to say in a thread where kids aren't mentioned and the spelling is correct, but I was wrong.

Lobbying in exchange for any kind of favor (money, influence, etc.) shouldn't be legal. As an individual you can lobby too but anything you do will always be dwarfed by the lobbying-for-money that big interest groups do. Why would you want to focus on the almost inconsequential lobbying "for words" the regular person can do, instead of the kind of lobbying "for money" that is accessible only to the few and only to their advantages?

Lobbying for money is a form of legalized corruption, almost identical in form and function to the illegal one, except it's available just to those who already have a lot of money and power, hence coming only with rewards.

Hiring someone to lobby on my behalf is an important part of our political process. If there’s an issue I care about, my ability to show up at a random time in DC to lobby “for free” should not be my only recourse.

If I donate money to the EFF or Louis Rossmann for a cause I care about, that should not block him from lobbying on my behalf.

Everyone complains about professional lobbying that they don’t like. That’s hardly shocking.

People complain because it links your net worth to how much you are represented which is anti-democratic.

> Everyone complains about professional lobbying that they don’t like.

I think you picked the laziest understanding of both the issue and my answer, and made my point in the process.

I'm not talking about you paying someone to represent your ideas to lawmakers, regulators, judges, etc. but about paying those people to directly enact your interests. The latter is what happens in effect, even if the incentives move from the interest groups to the key people through so many lobbying laundromats that they look completely clean and disconnected. And straight up buying laws or legal decisions is just the first problem.

The second is that as you confirm, real representation in democracy is not with your vote but your donation power. Even when your chosen lobbyist isn't buying anything straight out, just having a voice and representation takes money. The EFF or Louis Rossmann have to struggle so much to be heard is that other people pay more to be louder. If you have problems being heard for money, imagine the people hoping to be heard for free.

Poor people can only spend one vote every few years to choose representation, rich people can spend a lot of money to hijack that representation at all times and either make their voice heard above all else, or just purchase exactly what they want. Everyone praises professional lobbying as long as they are in that position to bribe.

This is simply bullshit.

Congress can simply bring people to testify in the open instead of cowering in the shadows like they do now.