Let Me Explain Corporations in Politics

 Basically any political campaign nowadays runs on one thing, and only one thing: money. This has always been true, but now it's to so large an extent that corporations are basically running politics. Your voice gets diminished while the corporations throw a lobbying party.

So how did we get here?

In 2010 the Supreme Court had a case on its hands: Citizens United vs. the FEC (Federal Election Commission). Before the case, it had been a century where the FEC had rules prohibiting corporations from "independent political spending". Citizens United, a nonprofit group, sued the FEC for having these rules, saying that prohibiting corporations from spending violated the corporations' First Amendment right to free speech.

The Supreme Court sided with Citizens United (an ironic name, given that they definitely weren't united for the citizens, if you catch my drift). Let me walk you through what this decision means.

As an individual, you can't donate beyond a few thousand dollars to any political candidate. But a corporation can, as long as it's "acting independently" of the candidate. The basic way to do it is to set up an organization called a super PAC, donate money to it, and then the super PAC will donate money to the candidate.

If a wealthy corporation can donate as much as it wants, that means your voice is now really small compared to that of the corporations. You can't donate hundreds of thousands to a candidate, but a corporation can, and a corporation will.

Corporations act in their own interest. This isn't a bad thing, and I've talked before about how the private sector often creates the most efficient solutions if you just let them. Corporations have an actual incentive to do that in the private sector, because the only way to make money is to offer low prices for good products (as long as there's a competitor who's also chasing after consumers). Competition basically makes the corporation do something good for you.

Corporations don't have that incentive in politics.

Once a candidate gets elected through the huge campaign funds, the candidate is going to cycle money back to the corporations so that the corporations can support them again in the next election cycle. Corporate funds through super PACs are basically an anvil being held over politicians' (and by extent, all of our) heads.

Once a corporation makes sure a specific candidate is in office, the candidate gets to work helping the corporation's goal, giving them subsidies to repay the favor from the corporation. That leads to monopolies.

Monopolies mean less competition in the market. They mean higher prices for consumers, lower wages for workers, and squelching out of small businesses. Corporate lobbying is also often the reason that nonsensical subsidies (direct money contributions) get given to some corporations and not to others, distorting the market.

The government has no business that requires it to distort the market, and the corporate funding anvil makes sure it does that anyway, creating inflation along the way (remember the first post on this blog? About dumb government spending? This is where it comes from most of the time.)

A corporation's job is to make products and money. A government's job is to govern and help the country. Corporations just won't be incentivized to do that.

So how do we fix it? We repeal Citizens United, and we make sure that politicians' goal is to help the country, because that's what you want, and you should be the one holding the anvil, not a company that doesn't care about your opinion.

Take back the anvil. Take back your voice.