This is what a PAC is. Political Action Committee.
They primarily only get headlines for outrage topics when people don’t like what they’re pushing toward. Many of the top PACs are from groups like realtors or sheet metal workers lobbying for their interests.
Most people skip PACs and donate straight to political candidates instead. Individual donations to candidates outweigh anything the AI companies are spending by a huge number.
Yes, and it’s trivial to form one! If you look up the documentation necessary you may not believe your eyes.
Why should it be hard? It's something which should be completely unregulated in a free country.
Letting mega-billionaires spend mega-millions to buy the conversation around elections isn't my definition of freedom.
> Letting mega-billionaires spend mega-millions to buy the conversation around elections isn't my definition of freedom.
Spell out the details: Exactly who will not be permitted to speak under your definition of "freedom"?
If you say that only people with a billion dollars can be punished for speaking: Do you think the limit won't be lowered over time?
If the issue is that no person should be able to spend more than N million dollars in one "conversation", how do you allocate broadcast licenses when the price in an auction would be more than N million?
Overturn Citizens United.
Which people do you allow to work together for their political goals then, oh grand hacker?
Do you understand the basics of a free society, which include freedom of association? You don't have much of a democracy left if you remove that.
America wasn't a democracy before the 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed corporations and wealthy donors to spend unlimited money on elections? That's news to me.
I don't feel more free at all on account of that ruling. Maybe if you said "freedom" one or two more times, that would do the trick.
"The political action committee emerged from the labor movement of 1943. The first PAC was the CIO-PAC, formed in July 1943 under CIO president Philip Murray and headed by Sidney Hillman. It was established after the U.S. Congress prohibited unions from giving direct contributions to political candidates."
The above from Wikipedia.
But I'm wasting my time talking to you, you are just raging and putting words into other people's mouths, because you are too high on your own supply of resentment to want to have a good discussion.
I'll put my opinion clearly: Everybody should have the freedom of association and be able to get together with likeminded to work for any political cause they want to advance, as long as they do it within the limits of just law.
Political donations by large groups of special interests aren't unique to America. Many countries have very strong labour union super-PACs.
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
No, these do not make me feel free.