I'm not sure how much blame can be placed on Congress for this. What they receive as protection money is a pittance compared to the effect their laws can have, and this is why lobbying is such lucrative investment now - you can't beat the returns. Moreover, it isn't outright bribes most of the time although it might seem like it; actually transferring money from campaign coffers to personal accounts is of course illegal and difficult to get away with. Most don't bother. (That is not to say that Congressmen don't take advantage of their position for financial gain in other ways.)
Big corporations want it this way. They have money, and the more they can conflate money and speech in the business of government, the better off they'll be. Don't confuse members of Congress with people who have considerable power over what the American government does. But I don't know if the right course of action is for tech companies to compete with more entrenched interests in the lobbying game. Not for any particular reason, but it seems to me that while lobbying is the lever the ruling class currently uses to control government, if tech companies - who for the most part are young upstarts and not part of the establishment - try to subvert that, then the groups actually in charge will just switch to something else and they'll have wasted resources. Perhaps in the short term for particular things it might be a good idea, but only to bide time. The problem isn't going to be truly solved until the existing order is defeated completely and overthrown - until then expect further and more well-funded assaults on all personal liberties technically and otherwise.
From Silicon Valley, instead of more focus on lobbying and influence in Washington, I'd prefer to see emerge a robust alternative to the centralized internet, one that is inherently unregulatable, for technical reasons, rather than just granted some measure of indulgence for the time being.
Thinking of government as a protection racket is an interesting angle, by the way. Not in the sense of Congress extorting money for campaign finance, but in the sense of the government demanding taxes in exchange for a justice system and a military, and coming down hard on you if you don't pay. This is not to say that it's such a bad thing.
Big corporations want it this way. They have money, and the more they can conflate money and speech in the business of government, the better off they'll be. Don't confuse members of Congress with people who have considerable power over what the American government does. But I don't know if the right course of action is for tech companies to compete with more entrenched interests in the lobbying game. Not for any particular reason, but it seems to me that while lobbying is the lever the ruling class currently uses to control government, if tech companies - who for the most part are young upstarts and not part of the establishment - try to subvert that, then the groups actually in charge will just switch to something else and they'll have wasted resources. Perhaps in the short term for particular things it might be a good idea, but only to bide time. The problem isn't going to be truly solved until the existing order is defeated completely and overthrown - until then expect further and more well-funded assaults on all personal liberties technically and otherwise.
From Silicon Valley, instead of more focus on lobbying and influence in Washington, I'd prefer to see emerge a robust alternative to the centralized internet, one that is inherently unregulatable, for technical reasons, rather than just granted some measure of indulgence for the time being.
Thinking of government as a protection racket is an interesting angle, by the way. Not in the sense of Congress extorting money for campaign finance, but in the sense of the government demanding taxes in exchange for a justice system and a military, and coming down hard on you if you don't pay. This is not to say that it's such a bad thing.