Soros bargain watch

I've made the argument that democracy is just a conspiracy by the plutocrats to push down the price of buying political influence.

George Soros being the best player on the market. You know, buy cheap, then profit.

Well he sure knows a bargain.

See on BI:

So he's buying up leftist grassroots activist organisations. Astroturf is a booming business.

But of course the real point is not Soros buying influence. It's that he's spending a whopping... $2 million! Which is like his weekly income. Or the amount of tax breaks he can get after buying Sarkozy a beer.

We shouldn't be ofended the plutocrats are using money to influence the government. We should be ofended that it is so cheap.

I sincerely hope he finishes his life soon. the whole thing is as disgusting as the dead fish dried up ashore for a week.

Again you're ignoring the more plausible hypothesis: it's not that influence is cheap, but rather electoral politics has no real influence. It's simply impossible that significant influence on an institution that dispenses trillions every year could cost just millions, under any set of circumstances. This would violate basic economics and logic. Such pitiful sums indicate either that the U.S. democracy is virtually incorruptible, so that only a small amount of corruption is up for sale, or that real influence rests in non-democratic permanent bureaucracies. I think it's clear what the answer is.

Influence is not boolean. And please tell me what makes you think that George Soros just loves leaving money in the table

Note that there are two different issues here. The first one is the motivation of Soros and his likes. We've been through that before, and I'm not opening that topic right now. The second issue, which I'm discussing here, is why lobbying and campaign money is so small relative to the power of USG and the amounts of money it controls. You seem to believe that it's because Soros et al. have somehow figured out a way to buy great influence for cheap. In contrast, my hypothesis is that the money is small because there's simply no way to exercise a large influence on USG through electoral politics. Note also that these are not the only imaginable hypotheses, and that they're both compatible with Soros acting either out of genuine ideology or completely cynical business interest.

Also, I don't see what you mean by "influence is not boolean." Of course it isn't. My point is precisely that electoral politics can buy you only some small degree of this non-boolean influence.

So why would anyone spend money for tiny results? It's not like Soros can have any real complaint with current US policy. My working theory is that he is paying back for favors he got earlier. Many friends and family of fellow Cathedral minions will get a nice salary with those 2 million bucks.