A lot of people say lobbyists don't have a place in society, but what about those cages medieval cities used to hang corpses in as a warning to others?
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I'm saving the oubliette for all the landlords so that I can call myself a housing provider with a cute, rustic basement apartment.
Shit, I thought it was just made up to look cool in, like, faux-medieval settings like Dark Souls
It's hard to say exactly how common, or ever real, a lot of medieval tortures actually were.
CW Sexual Assault
spoiler
Having studied Medieval Europe the answer is more often than you'd like, but not as often as you'd think. Also, the benefit of most torturing practices in Medieval times is that it pretty much killed you. There were some pretty nasty drink concoctions (i.e. 'Swedish drink' during the 30 years war) that were meant to torture you, but most of the time it was rape and mutilation, with not a lot of weird shit. It's one of the reasons the Inquisition gets mentioned at all is because they were one of the few people (and royal families) with the time and money to do weird torture stuff and even then it was pretty out of the ordinary. Most things were just wild execution methods (which was one of the reasons the guillotine was introduced, to universalize the execution method).
What's really wild is how things are today. At least back in the day you could go on hunger strike and try to starve yourself to death or go unconscious. These days they'll give you stimulants and force feeding tubes down your throat and hydration tubes up your ass. Horrible grotesque stuff that is all the worse because of how medicinal they pretend it all is.
Have you seen that video of mos def getting a feeding tube put in? Difficult watch honestly, the torture we're apparently capable of now is horrifying
build a toilet on it, call it the pooubliette
We can't just put people in crow cages! That's inhumane! Which is why we use lobbiestes.
This just unlocked a core memory from when I had a temp job in high school at a major banking Corp and for whatever reason had to take their course on mortgage lending stuff.
At one point the instructor asked which out of the things in the slide was discrimination: refusing to lend to someone based on their race, their gender, their income level, their religion. I answered all of them and was gently corrected. The right answer was of course that all except income level was discrimination because poor people are not a legally protected class.
That last sentence is perfect.
The reminder that the only distinction of bribery and lobbying is that, if it is legal, it is lobbying, if it is illegal, it is bribery. There is no deeper distinction than that.
Illegal: Handing a government official a $20 bill
Legal: Giving the official a $100k donation
Isn't the gift limit for public employees like 25$?
In my state it's $5
Damn. Don't want to buy anyone's loyalty with a cup of coffee.
Unless it's coffee for the office. only $5 if for a personal item but okay if merch for everyone
"This thing is illegal (bad) because it's illegal, and this other thing is legal (good) because it's legal"
I was gonna call this a perfect example of a circular argument, but then I realised it's not even that. It's even worse somehow.
Lol they said it out loud at the end.
"If you were able to steal $1 million dollars without anyone noticing and catching you, would you do it?"
Why do HR people act like anyone is being honest when they answer "no"
“Corporate wants you to tell the difference” IRL unironically.
It's nice they just come out and say it at the end.
Americe delende est
Part of the trick is that the way lobbying is defined, both writing a letter to your senator and taking them on an all expenses paid trip to your private island then buying them a mansion count as "lobbying"
Look we called it a different name so it's legal when the people we want to give us money give us money
"As you're being trained against corruption, we want you to understand that you can get away with bribery using this one simple semantic loophole."
the ~~main~~ only difference
"Lobbying is legalized bribery" makes it all make sense
politicians can have little a bribery as a treat
No, see, I didn't buy this heroin, I merely influenced my dealer into giving me heroin through a financial contribution directly to him.
Bribe a man and they call you a criminal, bribe a man with thousands and they call you an esteemed businessman
My job's training said almost verbatim "Don't give gifts to public officials unless it makes good business sense"
It's better than some bullshit quiz where the answer is "no they're both super illegal and you go to jail for it"
At least it's realistic and says "as long as you call it lobbying it's legal"