Space Station grabs SpaceX Dragon ship

I think part of the problem is that we're willing to accept bad behavior when it's done on behalf of the team we agree with.

If something is bad, then it's bad even when it's done by your team.

The end does not justify the means.

Can anyone tell me why lobbying is inherently bad?

It's not. If not for lobbyists we'd have no bill of rights, we'd all still be driving cars that exploded whenever they got rear ended, our rivers would still catch fire on a regular basis, etc.

There is no problem with private economic interests consulting government. It is in the interest of society for government officials to hear what is best for the economy from the major economic organizations.

Lobbying is berated because economic organizations should not be granted larger influence on governmental officials than the people en mass in a democratic republic, and most people would argue that is the current state in the US.

It's not, unless you disagree with the ends the lobbyist is lobbying for.

I don't believe that it is.

I was just saying that if that is your position, then you must object to it for all parties.

It's a self-reinforcing thing. Corporations don't hire lobbyists until their interests are threatened by government. For example, Microsoft didn't start giving money to Congress until the DOJ started investigating them. Same for Google.

Once a company invests in lobbying, lobbyists have an incentive to keep clients on retainer, so they look for rent-seeking opportunities that they can justify on an ROI basis. Hence all the shenanigans around taxes. Spending $500k on a lobbyist to save $1 million in taxes is a no-brainer.

That all sounds like lobbying from non-corporate entities.

False. Those were corporation. Perhaps you didn't realize that Sierra Club, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, etc. are corporations?

Corporations are not just businesses. They are the way that people with a common interest can pool their resources to coordinate on a common goal.

Well, then, I meant non-profits -- my mistake.

That is, all this "good" lobbying was by organizations operating on behalf of a large group of individuals who don't have the same shared profit-driven interest.

Nonprofit advocacy organizations may be incorporated but it's really not what the parent poster meant by "corporations".

Well, people aren't inherently bad, but when you get lots of people living in the same space, bad things often happen because it's hard to coordinate.

The same thing goes for people in the same "political space."

The problem with lobbyists is that there are always competing interests on any issue and legislators should weigh them with the overall good of society in mind. But lobbyists' campaign contributions make it hard for legislators to fairly weigh the competing interests, instead they favor the guys that cut them the biggest check. So all our legislation is now tailored for the wealthiest and most powerful interests.

Hm, this argument sounds morally equivalent to pacifism, and I don't mean that in a good way. While in an ideal world there would be no lobbying, in the real world, if the bad guys have lobbyists, the good guys should too, if just to defend themselves from the lobbyists of the bad guys.

If lobbying were just groups of vested interests putting their best foot forward, that would just be free speech.

But "Lobbying", the practice, is understood by the public to be the process whereby monied interests essentially buy votes via graft, bribery, etc and/or buy votes via contributions to re-election campaigns.

The result being that it is (usally) not the speech and thus the data or moral argument that changes minds in government, but the money.

And that is what's inherently bad.

So profit = evil is the crux of the argument? The Chamber of Commerce is a non-profit while many Sierra Club sponsors are businesses who benefit from the regulation they promote.

When people or organizations get together and lobby the government so that their business or industry makes more money as a consequence of the changes they're lobbying for, then yes, that's bad. Sure, corporations should be able to influence policy, but this influence must happen democratically and out in the open, and potentially opposing parties must have an opportunity to comment.

The fix doesn't lie, however, in hoping that businesses will voluntarily stop lobbying, so I won't criticize back-country tourism companies from giving money to the Sierra Club to ensure that their venues remain unspoilt. Even if a business didn't want to, it might nonetheless feel compelled to lobby congress for reasons of competitive advantage. When many entities feel compelled to act in opposition to their ethics, it's a sure sign that the system they operate in is broken.

(That said, many businesses sponsor the Sierra Club for P.R. reasons, which is fine and categorically different from the "bad lobbying" explained above)