I call I corn holing.
My wife doesn’t let me out much
Please, thank your wife for me 😉
As does much of the rest of the county. I slip my chains a few times a week when the cats distract her with snuggles and bringing her lizards for her to eat (my wife has the strangest diet). (it is very light on the lizard but please do not tell my cats it will hurt their feelings).
No they still have corruption
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I’m going to play devil’s advocate and be pedantic. Lobbying doesn’t purely mean bribery. By its strict definition, lobbying means influencing. Was the civil rights movement corrupt for lobbying to allow equal rights for black Americans? They did donate and promise to elect the Democratic Party in exchange for passing the Civil Rights Act. Unions has and always lobbied as well. Environmental groups lobbied to pass stricter environmental regulations.
Lobbying has understandably gained a bad connotation, but not all lobbying have evil intentions and consequences. It ultimately depends on the context. If lobbying disproportionately empowers only a select few at the expense of others’ rights, like billionaires lobbying to dilute worker’s rights and environmental protection because it affects all of us, then it is unquestionably bad.
I think we can compare it to advertisements. Not all advertisements are bad. Some advertisements are about public service announcements which could be good. However the vast majority of advertisements are about how to increase demands for products we dont need and manipulate us into thinking better about bad corporations.
The nuanced picture is therefore that advertisements isnt all bad, but the big picture is that it is mostly bad.
We can also compare corporations. Not all corporations are bad, but in the big picture they are mostly bad.
Don’t compare it to advertisement, compare it to the medium that contains the advertisement.
Some TV is advertising. Some TV is the shows you wanted and got the thing for to begin with.
The goal isn’t to eradicate the medium, it’s to get rid of the ads, or at least limit them to a reasonable and regulated set of public service announcements.The problem isn’t your right to petition the government. It’s that it’s easy for a business to likewise petition them, and they can make it clear that people who support their policies often get seats on boards with nice perks later, when they’re out of office.
You want to keep your right to petition. That’s called lobbying. Outlawing lobbying is saying it should be illegal for you to try to get your representative to vote in a particular way.
I see your point. But if it’s advocating for a good cause to influence politics, what should it be called to avoid the negative connotations associated with lobbying? I might sound like I am splitting hairs, but if lobbying is to be banned because of bad faith actors, then it leads to the slippery slope of also banning advocacy for a good cause. This is ultimately an ontological debate and maybe even coin a new word to describe “good lobbying” to separate it from bad lobbying".
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There is a whole load of Wikipedia entry for you to actually read what lobbying means.
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OP literally says A→B means B→A.
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Anyone know how the neoliberal sunglass smiley became a symbol for neoliberalism?
Denmark being at the top of these lists is always so fucking funny to me. We just hide the corruption in a few layers of abstraction and whoops look at that, we’re rated extremely well on all the charts!
I don’t think we agree on what corruption is. I hear this a lot from Danes in the context of “The farmers and bankers have whole political parties in their pockets” and “all our MPs are career politicians” and “you can’t get a nice job unless you know someone”.
While these statements aren’t fully true, they’re definitely real issues. But I would suggest these are not corruption. You could consider them problematic, sure, but corruption is about using your public authority to steal and misappropriate resources to enrich yourself. Stuff like bribes, embezzlement, etc. Which happens far less in Denmark than most other places I’d say.
The main exception is the royal house, which is super duper corrupt.
Yeah. I laughed seeing Sweden up there. It’s as if our right wing Nazi collaborator government hasn’t been privatising and selling our welfare.
They’re currently vowing to double the amount of surveillance cameras. Oh, and what powers the police force? Palantir. Nevermind the fact that chat control originated with a Swedish politician.
I guess the scale works if corrupt and morally bankrupt is the top of the scale.
Nazi collaborator? what???
The only reason we have a right wing government is because they are actively choosing to work with the Nazi party. Otherwise they’d be a minority.
Table of Nazis and all that.
But is that due to corruption or just the state wanting more power for itself? Those problems aren’t necessarily the same.
Privatising public welfare to sell off to your grubby little friends is corruption. Taking bribes from Peter Thiel is corruption. One of the leading Christ Democrats has a secret donor financing her private security.
If all it takes to buy a politician is to send a threatening letter or DM, and then financing their private security on the down-low, then our politicians are easy to buy.
Sometimes Swedish corruption is even simpler. Politicians get such a high salary – motivated by that making them less bribeable – that they realize “when I’m out of politics, I’m fucked”. What are they going to do, go back to a quarter of their salary? Then a lobby org. hands them a piece of legislation, and they know what it means. It is not a threat, they know they have just been saved, they have a way out from politics.
Johannes Klenell describes this type of corruption (among other things) in his latest book, summarized in parts in the interview here: https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/935202361/scocconomics/i-bananrepubliken-med-johannes-klenell
Could you give me a few examples?
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) aggregates data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions by business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector.
Each data source that is used to construct the CPI must fulfil the following criteria to qualify as a valid source:
• Quantifies perceptions of corruption in the public sector
• Be based on a reliable and valid methodology, which scores and ranks multiple countries on the same scale
• Performed by a credible institution
• Allow for sufficient variation of scores to distinguish between countries
• Gives ratings to a substantial number of countries
• The rating is given by a country expert or business person
• The institution repeats their assessment at least every two years
Okay so definitely some institution bias there.
13 data sources were used to construct the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2025:
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African Development Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2023 (AFDB)
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Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2024 (SGI)
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Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2026 (STI)
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Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service 2025 (EIU)
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Freedom House Nations in Transit 2024 (FH)
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S&P Global Insights Business Conditions and Risk Indicators 2024 (GI)
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IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2025 (IMD)
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Political and Economic Risk Consultancy 2025 (PERC)
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The PRS Group International Country Risk Guide 2025 (PRS)
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World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2024 (WB)
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World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2025 (WEF)
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World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 (WJP)
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Varieties of Democracy Project 2025 (VDEM)
Looking over the short blurbs in their methodology reads like a list of “freedom index think tanks” that are the exact people that claim it’s not corruption it’s lobbying. Especially when they land on conclusions like Israel is basically as corrupt as South Korea because we just mark the west bank and Gaza as no data…
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Yes that is the point of the propaganda being pointed out in the meme. To get the perception incongruent with reality. Good job!
I’m pretty sure it’s not just the countries colored red. Even China allows lobbying
Hey skill issue not our fault we have the best marketing departments. /s
didn’t know norway was cool like that
Many politicians take jobs in pr firms when they leave. They retain their access badges to Stortinget for life for some unfathomable reason. So the lobbyists trained by being career politicians have unmitigated access to our current ones.
There have also been articles lately about how the right side parties have received orders of magnitude more money in donations than the left.
Both of those things reeks of corruption if you ask me.
for some unfathomable reason
Seems pretty fathomable to me
effectively unregulated lobbying. Lobbying is just asking the government for stuff.
Can I legally enter the Capital Building to speak to my Congressman?
If the only access to your congressman is through privatized channels and pay-to-play events, then Lobbying is de facto Bribery.
Alright, in all honesty: do you see the distinction between making an appointment and “occupying” a common space in a congressional office building?
“A group of people legally entered the Cannon House Office Building after they went through screening,” U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement to The Hill. “Demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings, so when they started to protest and refused to stop, we began arresting them. Approximately 66 people were arrested for D.C. Code § 22–1307 – Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding – for illegally protesting inside the Cannon House Office Building.”
As it says in the first sentence of the police statement, they legally entered the building, so… Yes, you can legally enter the congressional offices to speak to your congressperson.
How do you picture people making requests for the government to do things in a world where lobbying is illegal? How do you see it being different from applying regulation of literally any kind?
do you see the distinction between making an appointment and “occupying” a common space in a congressional office building?
Largely in how it is reported. You can make an appointment and your Congressman can fail to show. There is no consequence.
You can go to a Congressman’s office and camp out waiting to speak to them, and that’s a crime.
Demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings
Passive Voice. Who made this rule? Who enforces it? Who is it enforced against? What is the purpose of the rule?
How do you picture people making requests for the government to do things in a world where lobbying is illegal?
Lobbying IS illegal, outside the channels of private donation and sponsored solicitation.
You cannot demand to see your Congressman and your Congressman is under no obligation to speak with you. Any attempt to approach your Congressman without permission is a crime.
Lobbying IS illegal, outside the channels of private donation and sponsored solicitation.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-7-13-5/ALDE_00013494/
That’s patently untrue, and why the distinction matters between what we have, which is lobbying where corporate entities can create a quid-pro-quo situation rather easily, and what any reasonable person would support: people telling their represtitives their interests and how best to represent them.
Sending a letter is lobbying. A phone call or email is lobbying.You’re not upset that lobbying is legal, you’re upset that people with the ability to offer things more valuable than their personal vote as an individual aren’t stopped from doing it.
So again, how do you envision people asking for things from their represtitives that isn’t just “properly regulated lobbying” rephrased?
That’s patently untrue
It is evidenced by constituent lobbyists being dragged out of Congress in handcuffs
Yes, because “can’t hold a demonstration in one office building” is precisely the same as “no citizen right to petition their representative”.
Are you just picking bits you think you can argue against and ignoring everything else? What’s the point of that?
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Canadians are the worst.
