> Paying a professional to talk to lawmakers about something that is in your best interest

And I believe that if it were that above-board then many fewer people would complain. But it's not.

Because the professional will host a fancy dinner that you're invited to. Or they'll make an entirely legal contribution to your re-election fund.

And even if you think all of the above is totally fine, you have to consider whose voices are more loudly heard in this kind of system. Do you, or your neighborhood, or even your city in most cases, have as much money as a megacorporation, to fund all of these activities at a similar scale? Do you think it's right for the richest companies and people to have the most say in how the country is run?

> no lobbying or money in politics legally ... there is no way to legally speak your mind or pay someone to do so

You could speak your mind at a meeting with a policy maker, rather than at a $500 a plate dinner you've invited them to free of charge. You could pay someone to advocate for your interests in a smart way, without also contributing a million dollars to someone's re-election campaign. If there was less money flowing into politics, it would be more difficult to sway public opinion at large through expensive campaigns.

Yes, these are good points!

My quick summary is that I don’t think only wealthy people/companies should have their voices heard. I just don’t think that attempting to squash lobbying or even “money in politics” is the means to achieve it.

I’ve called my congressman/senator a few times to speak for/against something, and it’s made me wish it was easier for citizenry to meaningfully band together. Im glad I had someone to call, but it was certainly not the access that a fancy political dinner would have afforded me.

I despise and fear corruption, and agree that there an overlap between lobbying and bribery/kickbacks. And I don’t think buying the sitting president’s meme-coin should purchase access. But of course we have (had) laws against such blatantly poisonous arrangements. And many legal arrangements are not much better.

So I don’t mean to say that all “lobbying” is good in all forms, but the term has become so conflated with other illegal or borderline activities, that it’s actually lost meaning, and is actively harming our ability to meaningfully discuss it. It wouldn’t surprise me if this conflation benefits the very criminals that we wish to shut down.

When someone uses ambiguous terms like “money in politics” or “lobbying” to mean everything from running a newspaper ad to slipping someone an envelope full of cash, we will see calls for blunt instrument fixes. Those fixes usually benefit incumbents and existing power structures, and often happen to make it illegal to amplify one’s speech. There are plenty of countries that have very little legal money in their political system, but they also don’t have elections that can be swayed in the first place.

We would see less money in politics if the government was weaker and could not sway an individual’s or company’s fortunes by millions of dollars at the stroke of a pen, or declare that encrypted communications are illegal, or decide that certain ethnic groups are no longer welcome. But since they can, many companies or individuals or civil liberties groups will do the math and purchase whatever insurance they can to increase the chance their side is heard, whether we agree with that side or not.

I wish I had better proposals to fix the things we agree are bad, because we probably agree on a lot of it. I am mainly trying to call out that saying someone or some group is “lobbying” is NOT the same thing as accusing someone of being inherently corrupt, and the fact that it “sounds” like it is just benefits the actually obvious corrupt criminals and disadvantages anyone else who would want to use money to advocate for a position.