> You think its a problem only in the US? Its a problem everywhere.
Your parent comment:
> How or why are any lobbyists allowed to be part of the legislative process? It's understandable in the US with the total citizens united capture of campaign finance etc, but it's not normal or understandable in the context of more democratic countries.
seems to say the opposite: the legislative foundation is clear in the US, but it's less clear how the same problem, which the comment acknowledges exists, develops elsewhere.
(I'd submit that this point of view just comes from being more familiar with US law than with other countries' laws, which I'm sure have their own peculiar histories of regulating lobbying, but it definitely doesn't deny the relevance of lobbying in non-US governance.)
> it's less clear how the same problem, which the comment acknowledges exists, develops elsewhere.
The how? As I understand it, most people are lazy and disinformation works. Especially if it's loud enough or tied with some sort of gift/bribe to both incentivize and ensure your messaging is the loudest. This is why anyone can see money talking in every culture over a few hundred people. The most effective politicians attack and defend in their political arena, as possible. Any lobby that can contribute to that fight, is a boon. The most effective politicians accept lobbyist (or some other form of outside influence) money/resources and it becomes an ingrained part of the political culture.
Ofc, eventually someone amasses enough money and power to take control of the political system with intimidation (effectively becoming an on-site lobby of do or die) and you end up in a dictatorship. This is easier, the more a political system has bottlenecks, and the population that operates in that system are under crippling financial collapse.
Plato's Republic was a philosophical analysis of this problem. Kallipolis was little more than a thought experiment, demonstrating the futility of staving off this kind of corruption.
How does this apply to the UN? I can't say, but it seems like the Plastics industry is hard at work to sway them.
Yes, the rest of my comment suggested that the point of view that the US is uniquely prone to this might come more from over-familiarity with the US than from causes that truly don't generalize.