• howrar
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    4 months ago

    We still need lobbying for its original purpose of getting information from experts on topics that government official don’t know much about. How do we reconcile that?

    • Adalast@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      What you described is an “expert advisory” not a “lobby”.

      Lobby (n): a group of people seeking to influence politicians or public officials on a particular issue.

      Expert (n): An expert is a person who is very skilled at doing something or who knows a lot about a particular subject.

      Advisor (n): An adviser is an expert whose job is to give advice to another person or to a group of people.

      A lobby has no prerequisite of knowing a damn thing about the topic they are trying to influence on, hence why we have lobbies related to women’s health that think women can hold their period.

      Abolish lobbies and place stringent criteria on advisory groups requiring that they reasonably demonstrate competence in their advisory field, are only allowed to advise on specific narrow topics, have to be recertified every N years, all advisory actions on subjects not related to national security are public record to be made available and on an indexable public access database (including what the subject was, what the advice was given, who requested the advice, who gave it, and a list of all officials/staffers who received it), and are not allowed to engage in financial transactions with sitting or recently retired Congressional officials or staffers. In this case, I would say “recently” would be on the order of 10 years.