Lobbyists aren't necessarily bad. They're _supposed_ to be there to educate those who make decisions. But they go far far beyond that and we need to regulate them massively.

> we need to regulate them massively

If you put the blame on the lobbyists then no regulator can save you, because you forgive corruptable regulators.

When you want to be educated on a product do you ever look to the marketing produced by the sellers for that education?

The US was NEVER a democracy. It was founded as a “democratic republic”. And basically operates as a republic, in which the aristocrat class sneers in contempt at the “deplorables”, utterly convinced they are the only ones fit to make decisions and thus driven to a mad desperation to keep direct representation out:

Republicanism (supposedly) offers a solution to alleged instability, rashness, impetuosity, and social and political tyranny of democratic politics because it recognizes that the majority does not equal the whole of the community. US citizens elect what are basically proxies for power, but those proxies have only a facade of accountability. Instead, the elected enter a sphere where they ultimately control the institutions that control life for everyone in the US. It allows them to erect sets of rules that are never uniformly applied, it thrashes violently against efforts to combat such corruption, and have known for centuries that ultimately the voters are immaterial to the perpetuation of this system.

Absolutely no one in the US does any kind of governing whatsoever. The chickenshit house and senate AND executive branch punt lawmaking into the Supreme Court. Laws are all written by the Praetorian guard of lobbyists, piece of shit attorneys, and NGOs/think tanks. The judiciary exists to rubber stamp plutocrats’ agenda, nothing more. Binding arbitration ensures that the “deplorables” are forced into a parallel legal system, which robs them of the opportunity to take companies to court.

Hey now. As a liberal, I really don't like the way you're talking about the US government. They're the good guys and they are only corrupt when republicans are in control. What are you, some kind of racist nazi?

Lobbying is not a magical activity. The public servants whose salaries come from money you have no option but to give them should not be giving in to lobbyists.

I view it as a First Amendment issue. We can call out "privileges" that lobbyist groups have that ordinary citizens don't (which as far as I know are not granted by law, they just have to do with the size and influence of the groups). But a lobbyist is just a person or group that voices an opinion to law makers. In theory, literally any individual person can be a "lobbyist" and preventing the practice would prevent people from talking about issues to lawmakers. Which would be the exact opposite of what we would want in a democratic system.

It is a perversion of free speech. Money should have no place in a functioning democracy.

Double-edged sword. We may not even have this version of right to repair at all if not for lobbyists...

What is the substantial difference between an ethical lobbyist (that is, one who just hounds a law maker all the time, but does not engage in gift-giving, favor trading, political donations, etc) and a particularly engaged citizenry? The lobbyist takes a pay check?

Lobbying is the engagement with members of the government to promote a certain agenda. The reason the offices of our legislators are open to the public is so that the public can go in and do exactly that. It's called "lobbying" because it is what is done in the lobbies of state houses.

There is nothing wrong with lobbying as such, but the combination of campaign-donations-as-protected-speech-for-corporations with lobbying makes for a very powerful, legal flavor of corruption.