Is Lobbying Colluding with Evil or Self-Defense or Something Else?

[nathanm]

At which point is the moral line crossed when a business chooses to employ lobbyists to either shield or benefit their business?  I'm having trouble figuring out what could be described as proactive verses reactive behavior in this realm.  Obviously the state itself is evil, but is the business also evil or just being a dick, or perhaps just throwing up their arms in response to the beatdown?

[MRW]

That's a really good question and I think you can expand the question to a lot more than just lobbying. I think the same thing applies to stuff like patent trolling and licensing as well.

 

To answer your question, the practice is colluding with evil. However, I think the current business environment forces that behavior. From the company's persepective, they are at a severe disadvangtage if they don't pursue stuff like lobbying or various corporate protections.

[dsayers]

It's immoral to point a gun at somebody. It's not immoral to point a gun at somebody who threatens to point a gun at you. This is why "gun" is a bad analogy in the context of determining morality: Because a gun is a tool that has moral and amoral purposes. This in contrast of the state, which is immoral by nature. For this reason, the very act of trying to grab a hold of it is immoral by extension.

 

I know Stef has argued that this is like steroids being legal and playing sports without them; You're just going to lose. I don't think that that is a valid justification. That the State alters the ground on which people compete in the business world is a reason to get rid of it, not a reason to make use of it.

[cab21]

i think it depends on what the person is lobbying for.

[travioli]

I would say businesses that lobby, and use the force of government, (subsidies, regulations, barriers to entry), to achieve their ends, rather than the voluntary actions of individuals, are immoral indeed.But at the same time, we can see that the incentives in place are supporting and encouraging immorality. This does not justify immorality, but we can see what the cause is. Another analogy Stef used was the problem when a hockey net becomes bigger, but business that don't lobby are still trying to shoot the puck into the smaller, prior version of the hockey net. I don't know if anyone has heard the idiom "Don't hate the player, hate the game," but I think it's pretty applicable here; even though the businesses that collude with government and use force to get what they want are in fact immoral, we should look at the root of the problem which is the political-economic system that is in place. It is the precondition to lobbying behavior, creating huge incentives to be immoral and use force to get ahead. To focus more on the immorality of the lobbyists, rather than the government, is to not see the essential problem here.

[Livemike]

If the lobbying is to increase coercion it's evil, if it's to reduce it it's good.

 

http://reason.com/archives/2014/01/28/crony-capitalism-vs-market-mor/1

[tasmlab]

One of the Koch brothers just released an article in the WSJ (I think) carrying the libertarian banner and denouncing cronyism.

 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286.html

 

These guys have been investing in libertarian education via things like Cato and Reason for 30 years.  They tagged Murray fucking Rothbard himself to launch it.

 

Yet they lobby government and invest heavily in elections.

 

What frustrates me is that, unlike other oil concerns or any corporation, they KNOW and PROFESS the right answer but go crony anyways.  So they are wholesale hypocritical.

 

BUT, if they came out and said something like this I could almost nod along:  "We embrace libertarian ideals, but in order to react to the reality of today we engage in manipulating the government.  We have to or we will go out of business.  And, in fact, our naked and studied understanding of government's true role and mechanism make us especially adept at doing so."

 

To your original post, I really don't think there's going to be a really clear-cut, high quality conclusion/answer. But maybe I'm giving up to easily.

[cab21]

lobbying for the government to not have a bad law is self defence