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▲ antonvs 3 hours ago

> The term for holding representatives accountable is "lobbying", which the public believes is an abhorrent act!

That’s a misrepresentation. You see plenty of exhortations to “call your representative”, which technically could be called lobbying, but that’s not what people find problematic. The issue is professional lobbying, which involves people paid to lobby, and often involves money or other incentives for the representative being lobbied. This kind of lobbying is not actually focused on holding representatives accountable, but rather on changing their positions.

As such, the above quote really doesn’t have much bearing on how much the public holds, or wants to hold, representatives accountable.

▲win311fwg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> That’s a misrepresentation.

No matter how much you try to apologize it away the reality remains that the public abhors talking to their representatives. According to the 2016 US census on behaviour, only 10% of the public do. Which, conveniently, is exactly the same proportion of the population whose livelihood comes from ownership of a business. You're right to point out that business lobbying doesn't have the same stigma (or more likely when survival is on the line you stop caring about what other people think), but I think the earlier commenter already recognized that.