Lobbying Is Corruption
- ID
- 34049
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 10 Oct 2026, 9:05 PM
- Fetched
- 10 Oct 2026, 11:54 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://carette.xyz/posts/lobbying_and_corruption/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 2.0
- Created
- 10 Oct 2026, 11:54 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
In a short post dated October 10, 2026, writer Antonin responds to George Hotz's explanation of US lobbying for non-Americans: donations go to campaigns and Super PACs rather than politicians directly, politicians then legislate for their donors, and helpful politicians can later take consulting jobs with those same interests. Antonin argues this is corruption by another name, citing Wikipedia's definition of corruption as abuse of entrusted power for private gain that explicitly includes 'practices that are legal in many countries, such as lobbying', plus a 'legal corruption' section. The HN thread drew 281 points and 132 comments.
Why it matters
There is no technical, tooling, or Malaysian market takeaway here: no code, product, pricing, policy change, or measurement is described, only an argument about naming a political practice. The concrete content is one Wikipedia citation and a paraphrase of a George Hotz explanation, so builders should not expect anything actionable from it beyond a debate prompt.
Discussion angle
The post's one substantive claim is that the practice and the legality are separate things — Wikipedia lists lobbying under corruption while calling it legal in many countries. Ask the room whether that framing changes how they read any policy or regulatory news that affects their own work, or whether it is just a vocabulary argument with no consequence.