Lobbying is how businesses talk to government. And I get that that sounds nasty—and sometimes it is nasty—-but it’s necessary.
Most of us work for businesses and when a rule comes out that legitimately threatens your business, you want to be able to tell the government in realtime.
Remember the rule change to the amortization of software expenses, which inadvertently would have killed thousands of software companies? Well, a big push from businesses got the rule amended and eventually removed, which is better for everyone. That’s lobbying.
Many businesses and local governments hire people who specialize in that work due to the sheer volume (America has a lot of layers of government).
I understand why the profession has such a bad reputation. When we think of a “lobbyist” we think of Big Tobacco or Big Tax Prep Software…companies who are trying to preserve their position by paying off the right people. But for every one of those, there are a hundred companies trying to make sure the law doesn’t screw then over and a hundred local communities trying to convince their state capitol to fund their schools and parks and bridges.
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Edit: there’s a dangerous assumption that lawmakers are corrupt and in it for the money. If we allow that assumption, we discourage the best people from choosing civil service because they think the only way to make it is to accept backroom deals. We have robust ethics laws, and we should expect everyone to follow them.
And if it were just talk, I think people would understand, but it's the mode of discussion, and obvious quid-pro-quos that make it so alien and unpalatable to the actual electorate. And by that I mean everything that isn't a discussion in your office or theirs, with the same treatment they'd have were they to meet with a voter. A cup of coffee and some homemade cake, wonderful. An expense-paid weeklong fishing expo in Bermuda? Nah.
It's hard to have this conversation while the current US administration pillages everything not screwed down and openly give themselves immunity from prosecution, but lawmakers at all levels of all branches should serve the electorate, not themselves. That's the job.
I'm sure your company only does positive, representative things, but the relationship some of your peers have with politicians and judges is unacceptable.
Ok, but does the government generally decide based on what’s in the best interest of the people, or the best interest of those who paid the most in the lobbying.
I think the answer to that should tell you how good or bad lobbying is.
> Lobbying is how businesses talk to government. And I get that that sounds nasty—and sometimes it is nasty—-but it’s necessary.
Sure. Its a just a shame people don't get a chance to talk too. I don't want a de-anonymised internet, for example, even if most businesses and the governance system think this is a 'good'.
Actually, we don’t need to speculate here. There are many, less corrupt, developed countries where lobbying isn't as deeply intertwined with political money as US, and we can look at them to see what the substitute is. For example in France, corporate political donations are simply banned, and campaigns are publicly funded. In Nordic countries like Sweden, the substitute is institutionalized consultation. Of course corruption exists, but how deep is what practically matters here! So the answer is, access is granted based on your relevance to the issue, not by how much money you can spend and people would be voting for the government that can do this better when they see their voices are actually heard.
> Remember the rule change to the amortization of software expenses, which inadvertently would have killed thousands of software companies?
While I’m sure this was lobbied heavily against by many companies, I don’t think that’s what did it. This was bad legislation done on purpose to poison the next administration, then undone as convenient.
People educate lawmakers without contributing money all them time. Think about AI…how many lawmakers could even tell you what a token is, much less how AI should be regulated? They learn from experts.
Should the public have an expectation of total privacy for their chats? It seems responsible for a chat provider to report things like this.
If they were to offer total privacy, is it ok for the public to use chat to get advice on _how_ to commit a crime? Basically everyone agrees that crime-committing advice is inappropriate…but if it is not ok to get advice, that means there must be a portal for law enforcement to step in when that may have happened. Then the question becomes what is the line for when to report? In other words, the issue needs to be adjudicated.
But we don’t want OpenAI/Claude to have some $20/hour reviewer making decisions that are this high stakes…we need the courts to do the judicial work because they (1) have a public charter, (2) have meaningful expertise and specialization at interpreting the law and (3) we can hold them accountable.
It doesn't really matter if they "should or shouldn't" have an expectation of privacy IMO, they already do have that expectation.
> If they were to offer total privacy, is it ok for the public to use chat to get advice on _how_ to commit a crime?
Yes it should be, but it should be illegal for a company providing chat service to respond with anything other than a refusal when doing so.
That detection and refusal should be a private closed loop though, anonymizing any data that will be passed into a training pipeline, or ads targeting. This requirement for closed loop private chats should be mandated by law sooner than later. Otherwise we're getting into very tricky territory where the temptation of alerting on things like pre-crime grows too close.
I learned this the hard way with OpenAI last week. A key got hacked and a Chinese-language bot used $300 in tokens in an hour.
I had a spending limit on for $30, so why did it keep charging? Because the spending limit is meaningless without a hidden checkbox called “enforce spending limit,” which is (or at least was for me) off by default.
He stayed at the Steelers too long. He should have gone somewhere with a better QB, the Steelers should have bottomed out enough to be able to draft a good QB.
Andy Reid is retiring when he gets his 303rd regular season win. At nearly the same time, Tomlin is going to find he once again has the zest for coaching.
A good friend of mine works for them. It’s a weird combination of (1) probably the long-range future and (2) absolutely not going to use my kid as a test subject.
If you believe, as I do, that half of students only achieve half of their academic potential, then experiments like this are some of the most valuable work we could do in society.
But again, let me know how it goes in 25 years and my children can enroll my grandkids.
A lot of negativity here on Buffett. I doubt any mega-billionaire is a total saint, but by comparison Warren seems like a guy who tried to do good in the world.
We should hope for fewer billionaires, but as long as we have them, we should hope for more Warrens.
Warrens team was famous for extracting undervalued companies from the market, and formed a solid rational investment posture that lasted decades.
By comparison, most other companies including your Bank are often just a group of clowns in cheap suits offloading their mistakes onto suckers. I used to think people that complained were crazy, until I started comparative investing a few ETF.
Warren drove the same old car for years, as unlike most of wall street is not selling his image. You don't have to like the guy, but we can respect his resolve. If he is leaving, it is a bad sign or his story is ending. =3
true he drove the same old car for years, however he traveled via private jet for most of his milage. Which brings me to a fun story:
Buffett originally called corporate private jets an "indefensible" luxury. When he did eventually buy a jet he named it "The Indefensible", later changing the name to "The Indispensable."
There are some things to like. Despite being so wealthy, he advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. I think that in itself is worthy of praise and worthy of ignoring anything else. The fact he distanced himself from Gates because of the Epstein connection. In addition I get the general feeling amassing wealth was more of a game to him. Obviously he did not use it that much or even abuse it. Still, I do think the way he made money was investing in a lot of basically monopolies where it's questionable if that's really doing a service to society. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I don't think that it's very beneficial to really anyone except himself. If you are a big believer in the free market economy and investment (which I am not), you might also disagree with his views. For instance, he was always very openly critical about investments like cars etc. because you can't pick the winner out of the thousands of entrants into this invention. This makes a lot of sense if you want to grow your wealth. But if you think about it, if everyone did that, there would be no car and ultimately nothing else, and so even his returns would be much smaller because the economy would be much smaller. That people rush in to create a booming market where a lot of wealth is ultimately squandered is a prerequisite to progress. In a capitalist world at least.
For a billionaire, it's probably the most we can except from anyone really.
What about all the people that Berkshire provides with gainful employment? What about all the goods and services its businesses provide to communities? What about all the tax it pays? What about the wealth he created for his investors? What about the high standards of corporate governance he upheld in the companies he controlled? You don’t hear about corporate sleaze and kleptocratic management at Berkshire companies. What about the fact that rather than consuming his personal wealth he’s left it mostly to a charitable foundation?
I literally said in my first sentence that the fact he's a billionaire advocating for paying taxes makes him praise worthy and more important than any criticism you might think of. I do think there is a lot to admire and I've used some good advice he's given (not to me personally).
I just think it's interesting that the people who should be criticizing him are actually other capitalists. Because real meaningful economic progress comes from investing in new groundbreaking things, not getting a good return on insurance float or See's Candies. That is all. He says he won't invest in cars, but also that it was obvious it was a machine that would change the world. Coca Cola is another big home run of his, yet a company who's contribution to society is probably overall negative. Etc. That I admire some things or a lot of things even does not mean I idolize anyone.
Well I think you need both. You need stable, well run businesses like insurance or confectioners, and you need high risk moonshots. I
want the people with most business acumen running the former and the people with the most creative energy running the latter. Businesses like SpaceX wouldn’t be possible without a highly developed financial sector.
I can agree with that, but even with this perspective you should be critical of parts of Buffett's position since he basically advocates never investing into such companies because you can't predict the winner.
From a policy standpoint…I wonder about creating a rule that anyone who got a DUI could get an amended license where they could legally operate only autonomous vehicles. First DUI is a permanent AV-only license.
Since 7 million people have DUI’s, that one policy change would completely reshape the industry.
Lobbying is how businesses talk to government. And I get that that sounds nasty—and sometimes it is nasty—-but it’s necessary.
Most of us work for businesses and when a rule comes out that legitimately threatens your business, you want to be able to tell the government in realtime.
Remember the rule change to the amortization of software expenses, which inadvertently would have killed thousands of software companies? Well, a big push from businesses got the rule amended and eventually removed, which is better for everyone. That’s lobbying.
Many businesses and local governments hire people who specialize in that work due to the sheer volume (America has a lot of layers of government).
I understand why the profession has such a bad reputation. When we think of a “lobbyist” we think of Big Tobacco or Big Tax Prep Software…companies who are trying to preserve their position by paying off the right people. But for every one of those, there are a hundred companies trying to make sure the law doesn’t screw then over and a hundred local communities trying to convince their state capitol to fund their schools and parks and bridges.
===
Edit: there’s a dangerous assumption that lawmakers are corrupt and in it for the money. If we allow that assumption, we discourage the best people from choosing civil service because they think the only way to make it is to accept backroom deals. We have robust ethics laws, and we should expect everyone to follow them.
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