The Public Good

When the public good is pitted against the interests of the private enterprise, the private enterprise has almost never lost. Every one of those battles was waged on the pretense that protecting the private enterprise would serve the interests of the public good, but so few have actually turned out that way. For every bill introduced on behalf of a public need, there are lobbyists standing in the corridors of government with suitcases of money and campaign donations to essentially "influence" it out of existence. Those lobs of funding are a lot more influential than a bunch of disparate constituents back a thousand miles away.

Corporations know about the fickle nature of the voting population, for it has lost all hope in its elected officials. And since private entities are not in the same public spotlight, politicians have more to lose by placing the needs of their constituents before those private interests than they do by signing on and towing the corporate line (and thereby avoid having to air their dirty laundry before the public via the corporate media). After all, in the next election cycle, he or she who made the most corporate friends in their tenure will most likely be reelected-- all constituents do is just put in the physical votes to ensure that the process takes place. Campaigns with the most money have the most resources, staff, and publicity, which is why those campaigns get elected.

This is why there has never been a politician in the last hundred years who has favored constituents over businesses. It turns out that businesses can afford to hire lobbyists. Those lobbyists can court their preferred politicians during all the various formal receptions and private meetings, and thereby gain a rapport with them in a way that constituents will never have the opportunity to do. Those lobbyists then use that special rapport to make the case that whatever is in their best interest is actually also in the public interest, and that it will undoubtedly benefit that politician's constituents should he or she get behind whatever they propose, no matter how far fetched the rationale has to be. The politician is then left to ponder the benefits of "killing two birds with one stone" before they break out the cigars.

That, kids, is the story of how politicians that win usually end up in the pocket of multinational corporations that actually don't give a damn about constituents. That is how the worst outcomes usually follow from the best intentions. That is how democracy gets auctioned off.