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Well done; but what if we can BribeEvenBetter?
Many times, you just want to get a few specific politicians out of the way. Maybe they are on a specific committee, or are deferred to because of perceived domain expertise, or whatever. BribeWell's business model isn't likely to work here -- it's just not believable that (e.g.) a Wisconsin politician suddenly had a come-to-Qualy moment and is going to start championing pro-vegan legislation.
The traditional means of getting rid of politicians is expensive and doubtful -- financing a serious competitor takes massive coin, and re-election rates are rather high. On the other hand, creating scandals can be a very cost-effective way to get rid of one's political enemies. Consider ABSCAM, which netted seven members of Congress (including a senator). Unfortunately, that "led to stronger rules and safeguards on these kinds of investigations within the FBI." In other words, the politicians' complaints weakened the ability of law enforcement to run similar stings. Since then, if a politician is caught with freezers full of cash, we usually haven't learned that from proactive attempts to rid ourselves of bribe-taking politicians.
BribeEvenBetter will use false-flag operations to bribe politicians whose continued tenure in office is particularly net-harmful, and then ensure that selected knowledge of the bribe reaches the right ears in law enforcement, media, social-media influencers, and/or the general public. The theory of change involves those lawmakers resigning, being expelled, and/or being sent to prison. At a minimum, they should be marginalized and rendered less harmful. One drawback is that Congress seems to be very hesitant to expel its own, although recent events show that it will still do so if the optics are terrible enough.
Further research is urgently needed to determine whether to use the old standby cover stories (generally private individuals seeking official acts that make them more money) or whether we should try to further increase impact by establishing false-flag entities that appear to be aligned with an adversary (e.g., AI acceleration efforts, big ag). The latter approach does seem high risk, so perhaps sticking with the tried-and-true is best for now.[1]
- ^
Although the satirical tone is hopefully obvious, I have seriously thought that there should be regular attempts to bribe senior government officials. If someone is amenable to bribes, the public should know that. And I want any public official who is offered a bribe to worry that it is actually part of a sting operation!
So BribeEvenBetter will serve the public interest more generally by rooting out bribable politicians. However, it will probably lose efficacy as knowledge of its interventions grows amongst the political class (and it removes the most suspectable politicians). We need to start researching interventions to counter this effect now, before it happens.
Fantastic stuff, there are some amazing lines here.
"It's about cutting through the bureaucratic red tape with green bills."
"Our critics may accuse us of moral bankruptcy, but we prefer to think of ourselves as investing in ethical liquidity.
"Together, we can ensure that the road to hell is not just paved with good intentions but funded by them, too."
I shamelessly admit that AI wrote all of those, leaving me in awe. I thought I'd need to write in some zingers, but honestly, it was just my job to get out of its way. There's a metaphor there somewhere...
Oh wow I use chat GPT 4 but am actually surprised that they are this good, was it Chat GPT or Claude.
Yeah, ChatGPT - this is first response, few edits, and it was unusually full of zingers. Maybe the bullet points I used mentioning Eastern Europeans brought our sense of humor over to it.