Lobbying is blamed for a multitude of evils by people from every area of the political spectrum. While it is extremely unpopular, its role in shaping the US’s regulation and national character is undeniable. This seems like a non-statement, but the normalization of lobbying as it is currently done has greatly damaged both America’s institutions and political credibility. While the Constitution protects lobbying as a form of free speech in the first amendment, the current form of lobbying would be troubling to the founders, who were constantly cautious towards special interest groups. Lobbying inherently damages the ability of the government to uphold two of its fundamental responsibilities: protect people from one another, and protect people from the government. Lobbying enables small groups to overpower the rights of others, and lets them do so in a way that necessarily leads to more regulation.
This article was originally published by Schiff Gold.
While not grounds to abolish it, a primary problem with lobbying is the difficulty of regulating it. It is an inherently relational industry, and getting rid of it would require draconian levels of government control. The right to free speech makes it difficult to determine whether an individual is a lobbyist or just someone expressing their opinion to a politician. The majority of lobbying happens in personal conversations and dinners, so to effectively abolish it, one would have to seal politicians in an isolated environment. While that might not be the worst idea, it would also be quite impractical. Even defining lobbying is difficult, as it is done by so many different entities using different means. The lobbying industry is only a subset of the people who actually do lobbying. Anyone who speaks to a politician is in some way “lobbying” for representation of their world view. Politicians deserve a right to hear the wishes of their people, but lobbying exploits the humanity of elected officials. Even if receiving money to speak to politicians was illegal, people would still lobby for free, leading to the same negative outcomes. While the solution is not to ban lobbying, careful guardrails must be put up to prevent unstable institutions and regulatory capture.
Lobbying’s first problem is that it unpredictably degrades the institutions that protect people from one another. Equality becomes a victim of special interest groups whenever institutions are changed in favor of the lobbyists. Lobbying always calls for a change of some sort, and this change confers an informational benefit on the lobbyists and forces everyone else to transition to the change. Even for bad regulations, sometimes stability is better than an unpredictable institutional change. It is already difficult enough for people to adjust to governmental instability, and lobbying is always disruptive. Not only is this lobbying disruptive, it reorders the world in a way that gives the lobbying party some sort of government-conferred advantage. This manifests in numerous abuses of the rights of the non-lobbying party. The abuses are always subtle enough that the lobbying party can make their situation seem far more worthy of pity than the rest of the country after the damage done by lobbying. The collective burden of lobbying policies is usually far greater than the benefit conferred on the lobbying party. While lobbying has done much social harm, the measurable economic damage is a compelling picture of the damage done to the whole for the sake of the few.
While lobbying can cause some short-term deregulation, for the most part it leads to greater regulation and government overreach. One example of this is the oil and gas industry. They were able to lionize themselves as helpful industries unfairly persecuted by environmental regulations and government standards. They spoke of their desire to reduce energy costs for the average American, and how they could provide benefits to every industry. However, rather than sticking to their deregulatory platform, they ultimately decided to promote protectionist policies, which would drive up energy costs. While they claimed to be against regulation, they actually provided the government justification to regulate trade in an industry that would have previously had no protectionist trade policies. This example is not unique. Industries will claim to be cutting through unnecessary regulations then quickly pivot to promoting their own regulations. Lobbying has never been about fairness or deregulation. It necessarily promotes institutional change in the favor of specific groups. Lobbyists can easily get support when they masquerade as deregulation heroes, but history shows that that streak is never the end of their agenda. Lobbying’s tending towards an increase in regulations means that it must be limited before politicians will ever be able to clearly represent their voters.
