Nailed it 🔨

That's such a good idea XP

Some Doctors too re drug company's.

and debate each candidate needs to sit down and smoke a bowl and debate each other in a civil setting not this wwe setting in this civil setting to help bring order back to America and denounce donald trump and fox news

Nice stolen joke Robin Williams said this and you should credit him

Hence, the case for people paying others to inform politicians about the issues (lobbying)

@@HowMoneyWorks I don't think we really need to reinvent the wheel here. Most countries have different systems and plenty are better than our own. 1. Proportional representation: This would deemphasize individual politicians and make party apparatuses stronger. This would cause any weakness an individual politician had to be obsolete. 2. Party or congressional research apparatuses: If it's too expensive to have individual politicians have their own research team, we should at least have funding for party controlled research institutions to make internal decisions about the direction the party is headed. The alternative is just having politicians rely on bad faith research. Most congressmen just vote how the whip tell them to vote already. It's not like most do individual research with lobbyists. Realistically, most congressmen today spend a good plurality of their time fundraising, with committee and leadership appointments going to those who are able to raise the most. This is not a good feedback loop.

@@yaisef1 I've never been a fan of political partys themselves they are the most corrupt part of the process with so many backroom deals and coverups not mention creating an aristocratic class so any reforms would want to be weakening political partys not strengthening them. State funding for political partys is the first step to a totalitarian state if the can directly use state money to empower themselves they will and since they would be the ones deciding how much money they get that number would increase exponentially. honestly I don't know the solution but I do think your suggestions would lead to people like Humphrey from yes minister running the country a state controlled by "experts" is technocratic. Do you really want to live in a system where those in charge think they know whats best for everyone, personally I'll take the corrupt idiots.

@@cameronbird118 honestly, I think I form of technocratic democracy is better then what we have currently. I know many Americans will disagree with that but those system like in Germany, Norway, or NZ actually are some of the least corrupt in the world. Technocracy is only bad if it has no checks on it (like in China). But as long as you have competitive elections and an independent judiciary I honestly think you are pretty protected from both corruption and totalitarianism

@@yaisef1 Proportional representation is probably the worst system you can come up with. It leads to people joining strong parties and preaching the party politics even if they don't 100% agree with them - because those are recognizable. Otherwise they get replaced. It may sound good on paper, but the reality is pretty dark - silencing every other voice and forcing people to vote for the lesser evil. You basically end up with a fucked up bi-partisan system. So... basically what you already have in US. Party controlled research institution will result in a ton of biased research and confirmation bias affected results, leading to a total obliteration of the scientific process in the long run, plus a huge influx of shitty research that will misinform the society. In real life we call this "propaganda", but Goebbels would be proud of your idea.

No today its “who has the wealthiest friends”. The famous friends scenario can’t be any worse than what we have, I’d say its worth a shot considering the shit show

You can also implement law that doesn't allow for that

@@brandonjablasone7544 No you can't. It would likely violate the 1st Ammendment right to free speech.

George bush and Ellen just hanging out evil ppl

Looks like I'll just try to make that more clear in my next defending the indefensible video haha

Playing devil's advocate only really works if you're arguing against someone, if there's no one there with the counter argument then you are just arguing for it, especially on youtube where people are quite prone to take things out of context.

@@HowMoneyWorks you put it in the title and mentioned your objective at the start of the video. I'd say you made it plenty clear. But nothing beats calling out someone online you think you have the moral high ground on.

You do need more clarity in your intent. The phrase from your description reading "Well it’s time to defend the indefensible by learning how money works to influence politics and why we should want it to stay like this" could be said by a strong but cautious proponent of lobbying without any real confusion. As for my own opinion on the topic, I don't think large businesses need any help defending their practices. Given that a huge percentage of their money goes through front groups using the "dark money" approach, meaning it's untraceable, they obviously agree that this is some shady stuff. It's easy to post a video playing devil's advocate, it's a lot more effort posting a balanced discussion pitting both the prevailing arguments against each other and presenting statistics and expert sources backing up or criticizing both sides. Obviously you don't have to make those videos, I just don't personally see the point of advocating for something in a biased fashion that you say you disagree with.

I have to agree with the notion that "devil's advocate" really only works in the presence of a primary argument. And the "while this might seem bad" just doesn't seem to cut it.

Interesting! How does someone like Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson get informed about a complicated law about encryption that they wouldnt know the first thing about?

​@@HowMoneyWorks Our system uses subcommittees, where MPs from all parties will be chosen to work with the civil service and other advisors on policy issues in specific sectors (i.e. tech). These get fed back to the cabinet or debated in the commons/lords. It's not perfect but I really don't think that giving companies the only voice is a good idea. Not faulting the video, I really like hearing contrarian opinions.

@@TheWolfXCIX Ah yeah.. that's interesting. And I'm just genuinely curious. And at the end of the day, the series is me trying to defend the indefensible :) so, wouldn't be too hurt if you did fault the video

@@TheWolfXCIX Also, thanks for engaging with our work. Hope you enjoy it :)

so wait, without company donations, how do people have the money to run for office? i get that there's no political ads, but it still costs money to drive around the country and appear at places to make speeches. or am i getting something super wrong?

CRS is a great resource, but it's not very big. You'd need at least 30 times the size so that every Senator has a team of nonpartisan experts. I suppose we could expand it, but we didn't.

actually - yes. In first case you operate under EXISTING law and should be PUNISHED. In the second, though you don't break CURRENT law, you CHANGE it.

@@dmitrizaslavski8480 unless you have been speeding this whole time and just want it to be legal so you can go faster with the same risk as before

@@dmitrizaslavski8480 Hey politician. Make that law Retrospective. Chur chur.

The elite have a different set of rules from us rubes

I feel commercial interests should remain separate from political interest. For the exact same reason that there should be a separation between church and state.

Interesting, I didn't know this. Thanks for sharing!

@@HowMoneyWorks Same thing in Albania. Political parties or individuals are allowed to get founded by individual or companies. After the elections they can get their expenses back from the state, if they reached a predefined percentage of votes during the elections.

@@HowMoneyWorks mostly same thing in Colombia, you don't gather the proper amount of votes and you have to pay the goverment a fee for the money you spent on your campaign

But however, I think his arguments are pretty terrible. The argument that people are stupid is itself one of the main arguments behind non-democratic methods of governance. Furthermore, to have private corporations' interests outweigh citizens' interests or voices, is inherently undemocratic. This will only act in a contrary manner to what the majority of people want, as corporate taxes themselves are in place to help people in need, so that they can get educated. Further cutting such taxes would only increase the perceived disparity of knowledge between average citizens and corporate representatives. Edit: fixed a typo

@@zanderhenriksen6776 sounds like you have fallen into the same trap haha. Arguing that people aren't stupid isn't a very good argument, if you live in reality haha. Such is life

@@thereignofthezero225 I won't comment on whether or not people are stupid in general, but I do have this argument for democracy: The major change during the industrial revolution that allowed humanity to develop so far in such a short amount of time, was the concept of specialisation. The same principle can be applied to governance - while one person may know a lot, the net knowledge of the entire population however, knows a lot more things than that single person. Aw shoot, I just argued for technocracy/oligarchy. I did that with the whole concept of specialists being good at one thing. Combining them would have a larger pool of knowledge than the sum of its parts. Whilst doing that in a fair and square manner would have the lack of knowledge from everyone else cancel it out and just lead to a net negative, that is, if everyone is a specialist. As long as you have more than 2 ways to divide up knowledge, it would seem that the summary of all of them is even dumber than just taking a selected bunch, or even a single individual, despite how clueless they would be in everything except their area of expertise. The only way I would see that the sum of the parts contains more knowledge than a single component of a equal democracy, is by having two ways to split up knowledge, where you either have all the knowledge contained in set A, or set B... ... Ah nope, that again would cancel out, as one lacks what the other has. But mind you, math and social science barely every agree. Systems of governance are a lot more complex than this, and in my opinion, debates themselves are the most important part of any government. Without it, you can never see the shortcomings of your own views, knowledge, arguments, ideas, or whatever it may be. (Never say never though). Have a great day, Looking forward to anything you have to say about the funky and terrible "cancelling out" bit I had there!

@@zanderhenriksen6776 there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. But the interesting thing is that the power of a truly creative idea or discovery is so great that although most will never make one, the few that do unleash a force that still propels humanity foward as a whole. The idea itself, which doesn't even have a physical existence in our universe, appears to be the most potent force that there is. I guess we can give credit to stupidity as well, because human progress has to be moderated and slowed down so that we can keep up with the rate of change around us. So we need those that just keep the basic services going and that impede progress as a whole by consuming more than they can produce. I believe it is those that will "save" us again now, because it's time to throw a wrench into the gears again, so we need an angry mob to disturb the system and possibly even to topple it ultimately. Technology has far surpassed our current humanity so the brakes need to be pressed once again. Funny how sometimes and often salvation comes through destruction and through suffering. Life lessons are hard but they must be learned, one way or another...

Exactly. Clearly a huge corporation backed and wrote this crap.

Gawd, so your solution is more government bureaucracy? A bigger government?

“Experts” should be the subject of the next defending the indefensible video. That’s a whole racket by itself.

@@MrAkaacer Right? It feels good to think that professional politicians would be better, but attitude isn't taught, and positions of power attract the wrong kind of people--narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths. Really, the best way is to limit government as Milton Friedman saw it.

@@MrAkaacer That's not what Big Government means

@@unholyrevenger72 Are you serious? Who do you think is the government? btw government is not just politicians. It means anybody who's salary/wages is derived from the tax payer.

Don't throw them in jail, just limit the amount of times/positions a person can run with public funding. It's really not that hard. We have countless subject matter experts advising the military on everything from healthcare, to resource distribution, to cryptography, to "wokeness" and much more. Just have them also inform the politicians. Not to mention all the people that volunteer their time to make KZfaq videos, Ted Talks, to inform congress on things they're already passionate about, and so on. ~540 people at the federal level is not that many to keep informed. Especially when you can create a KZfaq video for them, or invite a dozen at a time to a teams meeting, or just have the information session in the house and senate buildings. George Washington University, right in the DC area, has ~26,000 students, an extra ~540 would barely be noticed. You talk about pointless jobs in a more recent video, but then you argue that each individual representative needs their own lobbyist to explain things to them in this video?

I need to that too, everyone does

Same

So you didn’t listen to the video?

That's not unlike how it works in my country. Once you get above 1% of votes in election you get some money from the state to campaign next time.

Our government too is an absolute joke

@@lukemorgan6166 True, there are far larger flaws in the British democratic system and the electoral regulation has since I wrote that comment been required to do whatever the government says, so that's basically gone as well.

That is going to exist across all societies

I wish The US would stand up for its citizens one day. I really admire how much the French people annoy their government with protests and strikes😂😂. Here, people focus too much on the cultural sides of things to the point that nothing happens for our economic well being. Here in California, it’s basically guaranteed I’ll have to move somewhere more affordable just to give my future kids any better of a life than I had. Money in our politics has created so many divides. If you think about it, Trump was the President of the Rich, Biden is the President of the Establishment. Within politics, they represent the same things. I had faith Bernie/ AOC could rock the boat, but Progressives are conceding too damn much and not flexing their utility

The thing is money has always been a part of free speech, citizens united didn’t change that. It also didn’t establish corporate personhood. The decent king opinions weren’t that cooperations aren’t people they argued despite the first amendment congress had a in interest in regulating election spending. Glen Greenwald wrote a great piece on the case you should read.

With those elections, if your party made more than a certain percentage, you get public financing to help cover your costs. But doesn't that create a feedback loop? The parties at the time can rely on public funding, while any new parties don't have funds to rely on.

@@aryanbhuta3382 Not really. This is how it goes : You make a candidate list before the first part of an election, the state gives a 200k€ advance to every party who did that, old and new. After the election, if you got less than 5% you get refunded at a max of 4.75% of what you spent in the first part of the election. If you made more than 5%, you get refunded 47.5%. If you're present at the second part of the election you'll get refunded 47.5% of the spending during the second part of the election. A candidate can never get refunded more than what he spent. The 200k€ advance help small parties or candidates that want to play a part in politics. Parties/candidates can also raise money, no more than 4600€ per person, companies are not allowed to give. We have a fair amount of turn over in the parties right now, and a bunch of new ones at every election so to your question I would say: not that we can see, maybe the inverse is true. I'm not saying our system is the best, far from it, just that's how it seems to be working since there hasn't been a lot of outrage from anyone ( that I can remember in 30 years).

Yeah I was thinking that also it's is really obvious that these politicians that get lobbied have some sort of responsibility or debt that they follow with policies that benefits the corporation instead of the people that they are suppose to represent.

To complain about money in politics is like complaining about paper in the office

@@SamuelKissinger not really since they are usually Funded by people who already agree with them rather then people trying to “buy” them for obvious reasond

Precisely why voting is an exercise in futility.

@@luisandrade2254 Bribery isn't NECESSARY lol

How to have influence in house without giving people the ability to withhold their taxes is the issue there...

"well informed and unbiased citizens" If we had those most problems in politics would not exist

+

If only the states didn't have such an issue with learning from others' examples. In the eyes of the US, if it isn't homegrown then it must be socialism and evil.

@@dustrockblues7567 it's a common thing though. Socialism and evil is just the excuse at hand. In my country seems like politicians need to reinvent the wheel each time a new law needs to be passed, discussing of hypothetical scenarios that can happen with that new law, disregarding the experience of neighbouring countries on the same law

Yes, no corruption where you are. I’m sure.

@@itsmegiorgio +1

Incentives do not ask for permission. "High enough" and "too high" are vague and subjective. In any sane world, people won't expect a Jesus to come down from the heavens and be their public servant.

Even if you benefit from it doesn't make it good my friend

Yeah lobbying is bad until Bill Gates literally lobbied his way to buy a Porsche that Porsche didn't bother to make US-legal, and now regular people can import non-US compliant cars under "Show & Display" rule and I kinda like that rule. Aside from that, yeah, lobbying might not be a good idea.

This is a very intelligent and thoughtful response for a basic NPC ;)

I'm shocked I tell you, truly shocked.

Donald Trump is a very stable genius.

@@andreaslind6338 🤣

Little risk of bias? HA! Academics are beyond biased! They are the epitome of left wing liberal mouth pieces and most should not be allowed to teach let alone testify before congress. No thank you. At least I know the current lobbyists are simply greedy.

If you don’t see the biases and political agendas in the universities today, well, you prove it right there.

I'd argue that none of his videos in this series are anything but bs pandering, progagands, and corporate boot-licking.

who will pas the law?

Better solution * *reloads rifle* *

You get less of what you tax. Do you want "rich" to disappear? That sounds like North Korea. No.

In Athens though they had something to counterbalance that which is the ostrication. In Athens democracy actually worked backwards where you had a small number of candidates and you voted against them. So it was more a system of "who is the least hated?".

Ahh yes because capitalism is the only political ideology with corruption 💀.

As always, a leftist idea is to make companies pay for it 🤣

@@Stinoco Currently the companies already pay for experts, but they do it because it allows them to curb laws to benefit them more than what the experts would cost (in an ideal world this would be beneficial as it prevents decisions being made due to ignorance). However there is a severe issue if governmental experts payed by these companies via taxes would come to different conclusions / give different advice. Basically if you oppose the same expenditure on independent experts it likely means the industry experts are not giving the best advice.

I would go look up the statistics before you call the US even remotely one of the greatest in the world....you'll probably be surprised at how shit it really ranks with the rest

Regulations setup barriers for competition, and limits freedom of expression in this case. It may work in the short term, but it creates a bigger monster in the long term called cronies.

Agreed.

I always thought it was funny that the United States thinks of themselves as the most democratic country, when there are areas that they control that are not allowed to vote. Also the way elections are done is messed up as they can redraw districts to win elections (as in technically you could have less than 30% of votes and still win).

@@hw5614 What I actually find to be funny is how people in the United States think that they were supposed to be a democracy. They're founding fathers specifically did not want the United States to be a democracy and went through great pains to set it up as a constitutional republic. What's wrong with democracy you ask? It's mob rule. You mentioned winning with 30% of a vote? Well what about the 70% always dominating for eternity? Essentially the 30% or the minority will actually be oppressed and suffer. The 51% will always vote in their own self-interest. The United States was constructed as A number of smaller countries (states) each having their own constitutional document with a non-represented neutral capital that several states gave up territory in order to make called the Washington DC district. The capital was specifically meant to be neutral So as to avoid enmity and favoritism between states. The states would manage their own local affairs within the bounds of the law that law supposedly being based off of their own constitutions. The federal government would be relegated to macro concerns that couldn't be handled by the state, like border security as a nation. It too would be bound by the constitution. The constitutions or not lists of things that the government could not do, they're supposed to be lists of the only powers the government had....as read. Nothing more. It is a constitutional representative Republic not a direct democracy. Direct democracy is just tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately the founding fathers , Or at least the good ones, The ones that recognize it's government that creates 90% of man's problems, left way too much open language leeway in the main constitution the federal constitution of the United States that their supreme court (The only job of which was to enforce the constitution not dictate policy) could take and run with when politicized activists were elected to its seats. They did not want to potentially hamstring the government and carrying out its legitimate duties but they left it far to open, The key killer phrase being '....for the common good of the nation.' those words have been used to justify all kinds of disastrous , destructive programs.

Politicians mess up the maxim "Start with the goal in mind" into start with my bias, and find support for it.

grilled cheese

Just because you say things in a nonchalant tone makes is acceptable. How stupid do you think people really are?