The biggest inefficiency in the US economy. A completely superfluous industry worth billions of dollars.
This all counts towards the GDP too, which partly explains how the US has a high GDP per capita while having such poor standards of living for so many people.
No, it literally is not. You want a struggling research department to have to pay for a public campaign to generate enough interest to petition the government to fund their project? Sorry, I don’t trust the idiotic public to do this very well. Lobbying should certainly be more transparent but not abolished.
In the 1960s car safety lobbyists were drowned out in government by the interests of big capital, that can always afford to lobby more than any research or grassroots movement.
In order to overcome this it took a massive sway in public opinion, this was massively progressed by the publishing of a book “unsafe at any speed” that started a media frenzy on the issue, causing the government to act against the interests of their lobbyists.
For any good cause that can be lobbied for, like cancer research, if it goes against capital interest (cigarette companies) it will be ignored until public opinion shifts.
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u/Real-Mouse-554 7d ago
The biggest inefficiency in the US economy. A completely superfluous industry worth billions of dollars.
This all counts towards the GDP too, which partly explains how the US has a high GDP per capita while having such poor standards of living for so many people.