CrowdLobby

Corporate interests in government are powerfully represented by lobbyists. Some of those lobbyists are smart and dedicated. But of course they’re there to represent their clients and not necessarily public interest. Can the madness of crowds have a lobbyist of its own? Today, I supported a Kickstarter project called CrowdLobby, which aims to do exactly that: hire a lobbyist to represent whatever the crowd directs it. I have questions about how it would actually work in practice, and whether it could itself be co-opted by special interests. But its an experiment worth examining.