Most Hated Meddling Billionaire

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My area of interest in the whole thing is where the line is drawn; when does simple activism become disproportionate influence? I don't see anything wrong with wanting to change the world, I'm sure most of us here would like to in one way or another, so I'm not surprised or outraged when other people from different strata do as well.

Also, with the notable example of Michael Bloomberg, buying elections hasn't been a terribly effective strategy, with Meg Whitman in California being only the latest example. I think if someone wants to get angry about disproportionate influence, lobbyists are the more appropriate target. I mean sure a billionaire could bankroll organizations and pay for advertising, but it still has to convince people in order for it to work, I mean no amount of advertising and agitating is going to make a committed liberal vote conservative and vise versa. However, anyone can give money to a lobbyist and do far more damage as far as actually affecting the law and policy, that's the real rotten apple in the bunch IMHO. Fixing THAT cesspool is a beyond the scope of this thread however.

When you get your news from nakedly partisan publications like the ones mentioned, you can't legitimately complain when other people get theirs from a moderately partisan outlet like Fox.

That depends on how committed to notions of democracy one is. As long as money can buy political influence (either through elections or, as you mentioned, through lobbyists) then true democracy is incompatible with any significant disparities in wealth distribution.


But most people aren't really committed liberals or conservatives, and can be swayed by advertising. At the very least, "swing" voters who decide an election can be bought with advertising dollars.

IMHO, the dumbest and must gullible voters are going to be the 80% that vote straight party tickets; if anything the swing voters are more likely to actually look at the candidates and where they stand. As can be demonstrated by some of the recent elections where self funded candidates have blitzed the airwaves to no avail, I think money actually has less of an impact than most people think.

A while back Master_Pedant posted several studies aimed at dispelling this myth of the well-informed independent. Generally speaking, an intelligent person who takes an interest in politics and is informed on the issues will usually have relatively settled views and so have thrown in their lot with one side or the other.


I can't think of recent elections where an independent candidate outspent the major party candidates and lost. You can, however, often find a strong link between spending and electoral success.

I think one thing we can all agree on with regards to Soros and the Koch brothers is that to actually fund action is more useful than to fund marketing campaigns for ideas. Though, given what the Koch brothers' ideals entail, I guess they wouldn't really fund any action anyways. Maybe some TV commercials along the lines of "do it your own damned self, you lazy bum" since that's about all their political posturing amounts to.

I vaguely recall him posting something about that, that doesn't jibe with my experience but I'm also not willing to invest that much effort debunking 2nd hand hearsay from Master_Pedant (who'd doubtlessly call my sources "ultraconservative" shills regardless of who they were).


Here's an article on the (non)impact of certain political spending, I'm not going to post the whole thing, but the conclusion is good: (bold is mine)

http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/10/cant-buy-you-love



I think we may be at an impasse on the intellect of the electorate; I seem to give them more credit than you do and I don't see either of us swaying the other on this point.

Strictly using myself and my politically active acquaintances as examples of swing voters, we tend to have settled opinions on discreet issues, but vote for candidates of various affiliations depending upon how well they conform to our own beliefs. That put's us in the camp that isn't easily swayed by advertising, since we're quick on the Google trigger for a fact check. For example in 2004 John Kerry tried to muddy the waters on his gun control record by suddenly developing an interest in hunting. Needless to say, a quick web search easily exposed the distortion, and the 2nd amendment vote turned out in force against him. My point is that even in the face of a massive advertising campaign, it's not all that difficult to check the facts, especially given the massive amount of archival information now being stored online. It may be easier than ever to spread a lie, but it's also easy to expose the lie.