Lobbying is "directly advocating for or against particular legislation or regulations." Writing your representative is lobbying. Fighting bad legislation is lobbying. Any good faith attempt to argue a position on a government policy is lobbying.
Giving money to politicians or their campaigns is not lobbying, and it is already illegal for lobbyists to do so.
What could and should be made illegal is allowing unlimited political campaign donations via Super PACs. Political donations aren't lobbying.
It's worth being clear about what you actually want to make illegal because you probably don't want to ban anyone from arguing a political position.
It's one thing when a bill on technology is misunderstood by regulators and insiders provide context on unintended consequences, another when checks are written such that the voice of polluting industries outweighs voters' desire for clean air and water.
isn't it an attempt to give structure to something that surely would have existed illegally otherwise? banning something doesn't automatically stop it.
Who is going to lobby to make it illegal? Our system is broken and won’t fix itself.
Inequality is going to continue to increase until society collapses. If we want a better world we need to prepare for this eventuality by building avenues of popular action to return power to the people. Once the oligarchs have fucked up enough people’s lives, popular action becomes a realistic way out of this mess.
Friend, they choose our legislators. They control the political process. They own the mass media and the social media companies. Denial isn’t a strategy.
You say this literally minutes after Hungarians elected them selves out of a dictatorship.
I know many democracies around the world are in critical failure modes at the moment (particularly in the USA). But there is still hope. With enough pressure democracy can be reformed.
Make lobbying illegal, I don't understand why it's normalized.