Airlines have launched a lobbying blitz in Brussels to combat efforts to allow larger cabin bags to fly for free.
That frisson of fear felt by many air passengers at the boarding gate about being hit with an extra charge for a carry-on bag is generating a political dogfight.
Spain had enough of the extra fees and fined five airlines for charging people for hand luggage; now the battle over the freedom to stuff a porkier bag into the overhead bin is being joined in other countries.
Consumer organizations from 12 European countries on Wednesday joined Spain’s legal battle against low-cost airlines charging passengers to bring larger carry-on suitcases on board.
Anyone making money to lobby government should be thrown in jail.
My mom made money as a lobbyist when I was a kid.
She lobbied on behalf of family farms that wanted to limit the use of bovine growth hormones, either because they had moral objections to pumping their cows full of steroids or because its use gave advantages to factory dairy farms over small family operations.
Lobbying is a disease on democracy, but there are moral cases for its existence in certain circumstances.
I think that if it was impossible to get paid for it, they could just petition the government themselves and get a lot better results. Lobbying will always tilt the field in the direction of people with more money over those with less.
Like the people in the ACLU?
I believe the ACLU mostly fields lawsuits against those doing the oppression. But my feeling is that lobbying is on balance such a negative force fielded 95% by the ultra wealthy to further their agenda, that I’d be okay with losing the other 5% that had a positive impact. Those causes could easily be taken up by individuals and unfunded groups and have a much better chance of getting heard.
…unfunded individuals have an enormously worse chance of being heard. That’s the whole point of organizing, including unionization.
One guy saying “hey maybe we should treat people better” can easily be ignored. A group, especially a national group with a large membership contributing resources is much, much harder to ignore. Banning organizing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (And in the US, it would be a violation of the first amendment right to assembly.)
You can form groups without paying people. This ensures people actually care about the cause rather than just doing it for the money.
Banning lobbying isn’t banning organizing. It’s banning rich people being able to put their giant thumbs on the levers of democracy.
Yeah, but it limits the time they can dedicate. It means they can only do organizing outside of a full-time job. This is restrictive, and will actively hurt the ability of people to organize. The only people who will then be able to dedicate their time are those who have the excess free time and money. What you are suggesting would mean it’s individuals like you or me going up against Jeff Bezos. Who do you think would win that fight?
There’s only one Jeff Bezos. If he can’t hire people, it’s only what he can do himself in his spare time. We greatly outnumber him, even if we are only doing it in our spare time.
Yeah… And when we work together, that’s called organizing and lobbying, the thing you just said should be illegal.
Read the post. I said paying people to do it should be illegal. I don’t say organizing should be illegal.