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...Removing the Money from Politics

On this Leap Day, the United States is in the midst of spending billions of dollars to decide who runs this country for the next four years. Needless to say, this is a big business. However, the power that comes with being in charge is even bigger business, so those who put the billions in are doing it to make tens or hundreds of times as much. 

What people see is the initial movement of this political process. They see that some group hires a lobbyist who spends their money to get a politician elected, who then passes (or blocks) legislation to help the lobbyists' causes. This makes the politician worth supporting further, which perpetuates the cycle. 

So what do we do about it? After all, we seem to have the proverbial perpetual motion machine here: The money from the lobbyist passes to the politician, who then uses the government to refill the spigot of the cause who hired the lobbyist in the first place. But the key to all this motion is money: remove the money and the machine grinds to a halt.

Here, there are two sources of money. The lobbyist is getting money from some source, such as a corporation or group of corporations, which could be private, but also could be a public sector entity as well. But then the government generates money through taxes and borrowing and that money is what the other money is chasing. Money does not want to stay in one place; it wants to move so the rest of the economy can move freely: goods, services, discoveries, and knowledge. 

Since money wants to chase bigger money, it will go where it can catch the biggest money. There was an old saying: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." This means that if you have something that is clearly better than the alternatives, those who need it will gladly pay to get it. And for the majority of United States history, that was the big money option. Trains and cars replaced horses; calculators replaced hand-done arithmetic, only to be replaces largely by computers, search engines, smartphones, and now it appears artificial intelligence may replace these. 

But nowadays, if you don't have the best product, that no longer means you are going to be replaced. Instead, you can legislate yourself into a better position if you have enough politicians on your side.  Who cares if you can't provide your service as well as your competitor if your competitor's methods are declared illegal? What does it matter if you overcharge for your services if no one else can provide it by law? And what do you care about what the customer wants when you aren't being paid by them as much as you are getting in a government subsidy to exist? And who is going to solve a problem if the government pays you to do something as opposed to the right thing? 

All these go to show that the biggest money currently is government. This is why we see so much money in politics. But this depends on government being able to make such pronouncements as winners and losers. If government is too limited to do that, it no longer becomes the biggest money source, and the corporations have to find new ways to chase after money, things like actually helping their customers. With this, the conclusion becomes clear: If you want to take the money out of politics, take the politics out of money,

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