> In my opinion, you are conflating cause and effect, but per an earlier comment I made it is incorrect for anyone to believe that their passions are not shared by others. And when those others have more money than time, that is how they "help."

If its okay with you, I'll go with the people with doctorates in the field over your opinion on the internet.

Out of curiosity, how many academic papers would it take saying you are wrong before you'd believe me?

> If you run for office in the US, you will form an organizing committee. And you will put in your organizing documents the things you believe should be true about the world that aren't (this would be your platform) and because that is a public document, it will be published by the State or Federal elections commission with all the other platforms out there.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that I don't understand how it works. I do. That is the problem.

> And you will be surprised, perhaps pleasantly so, perhaps unpleasantly, that your "agenda" or platform may line up with what some billionaire thinks is the right thing as well, or maybe they just want to use you to steal votes from another player in the race (this is politics after all) and you will get donations to your committee from weird sounding names like "Higgly Piggly Partners, LLP" which are people who generally want to remain anonymous and want to help you get elected. Some of those people might be billionaires. You probably won't know but it is always good to ask what they hope to achieve by getting you elected.

No, I won't be surprised.

There was a good guy I know that tried this sort of thing, no billionaire would back him. In the end, people like me and his millionaire brother did. It amounted to nothing because enough "other people" funneled money into the election to "anonymously" send out mailers that implied his brother was a "Chinese citizen" and his campaign was funded by money from China.

Similarly, a councilman with platform similar to what I'd like failed to get elected.

How you ask?

Well, first they slanted the system to prevent the guy from getting elected. There was a court case that found the voting method violated the population's civil rights. They then found a guy with the same name and a different middle initial to split the vote. He's been used as a proxy in such votes before. He'd have won except for the 4% of people who voted for the wrong guy. [ Remember, the proxy doesn't actually do anything other than get his name on the ballot. So his contributions are basically payment for services rendered. ]

I could go on about all the other things money has bought that I've seen first hand if you like. Shall I?

> Politics is people. Its people collectively trying to achieve a goal, some for themselves, some for the group. Whether you are in a company or a government or on an island competing for a million dollars, politics is the process by which negotiation, decisions, and change is effected. It is perfectly legit to say that you don't understand how it works, but it is incorrect to say that you cannot participate. And sometimes participation can lead to understanding which can lead to great things. But you won't know unless you try.

No, Politics is money and the ability to buy people to do your dirty work for you.

No one is going to give me $3+ million to lie to people to win a single congressional seat. However, they are perfectly happy to do that for people who hold the sort of views. How much do you think the opposition raised? Less than a million.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th...

But hey, money doesn't matter. The ability to hand a man a large chunk of money to run as a candidate whose sole job is to put his name on the ballot to confuse people [he didn't actually use any of his campaign funds to campaign, fyi].

But hey, prove me wrong. Go right ahead. Go find some nice district where there are some large incumbent players and run for city council against their interests. See how far that gets you. [ Hint: They'll hire a guy with a single character difference in the name, fund half a dozen candidates with larger treasuries than you. ]

Hell, I'll even tell you what happened to the last guy so you know what to expect.