Have you ever tried to explain lobbying to a European?
Neither have I. But George Hotz just did the opposite: he explained it to everyone who is not American.
Read it. It is short, funny, and devastating.
His version goes like this.
Corporations and rich people give money to politicians. Not directly, of course: to their campaigns. The politicians then listen to the people who paid them, and pass the laws those people want. It is not a bribe, because a bribe would be illegal. It is a “Super PAC”. And if a politician was really helpful, he can leave politics and get a comfortable consulting job with the very people who lobbied him.
He ends with the sentence every European hears:
You just don’t get it cause you aren’t American, lobbying is definitely not bribery.
He is right, except for one detail: as a European, I understand the concept, but I do not use the word “lobbying” to describe it.
I use another word: corruption.
I opened the Wikipedia page, and the first paragraph made me smile.
Corruption is defined as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, and it explicitly includes bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement, and fraud, “as well as practices that are legal in many countries, such as lobbying”.
That is the trick, written in a neutral encyclopedia voice: the practice is the same, only its legality changes. The page even has a section called “legal corruption”, where power is abused within the confines of the law, precisely because those with power can write the laws that protect them. Depressing.
So we don’t really disagree George, we just name the same animal differently.
It seems the trend in the US is to rebrand absolutely everything, including “corruption”.
So, in conclusion and as a European, I understand that lobbying is corruption. The main difference is that lobbying comes from a guy in a nicer suit, with a lawyer supervising.
Simple, basique.