<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>serf</author><text>&amp;gt;Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery?&lt;p&gt;most people would tend to agree that if it required something it was at the very least an exchange, perhaps a bribe.&lt;p&gt;one could ask why the request for support couldn&amp;#x27;t be done over the phone; the answer is &amp;quot;because of the dinner.&amp;quot;  -- well, then, isn&amp;#x27;t the dinner being exchanged for the support?&lt;p&gt;what is the value of the dinner? Does the value represent a monetary amount that would throw red flags up regarding the dinner being an exchange of value rather than a living expense? Does this exchange of value represent a bribe?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not as cut and dry as &amp;quot;A is lobbying and B is bribing.&amp;quot;, that&amp;#x27;s why most political corruption scandals are generally handled by committees of people that try to go through the events to extract meaning from them.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Nanana909</author><text>&amp;gt; The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.&lt;p&gt;Let’s say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and discusses reasons for (lobbies) him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery? Because it is lobbying. But under your definition of lobbying and bribing being equivalent terms, they are the same! And to call such an action bribery isn’t really making your case - it’s just nuking the utility of both of the words.&lt;p&gt;This is a problem with modern political discourse - all rhetoric is flattened. No - lobbying is lobbying. Bribing is bribing.</text></item><item><author>sonofhans</author><text>Of course it’s bribery. Everyone involved knows it’s bribery. The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.&lt;p&gt;Now, everyone tries to hide behind levels of abstraction — “It’s just lobbying!” — but those are just fig leaves and reasonable people should see through them. E.g., “Exxon gave the money to my campaign committee, and I’m not involved with the finance end; my vote in favor of Exxon was just a coincidence.” That’s pure bullshit and everyone knows it.&lt;p&gt;So yes it’s bribery. Calling it something else is disingenuous.</text></item><item><author>Nanana909</author><text>&amp;gt; lobbying&amp;#x27;. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.&lt;p&gt;That’s not really the definition of lobbying though. We should try to avoid hyperboles. Additionally, bribery is not legal and that’s not even remotely the form that the vast majority of lobbying takes today.</text></item><item><author>boomskats</author><text>SPOILER ALERT: the answer is &amp;#x27;lobbying&amp;#x27;. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.&lt;p&gt;I, for one, was not surprised.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paraquat-weedkiller-epa-ban</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>bastawhiz</author><text>It is still bribery. We don&amp;#x27;t really see it, though, because it&amp;#x27;s politically popular enough to direct support to cancer research so that lobbying is hardly necessary.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Nanana909</author><text>&amp;gt; The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.&lt;p&gt;Let’s say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and discusses reasons for (lobbies) him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery? Because it is lobbying. But under your definition of lobbying and bribing being equivalent terms, they are the same! And to call such an action bribery isn’t really making your case - it’s just nuking the utility of both of the words.&lt;p&gt;This is a problem with modern political discourse - all rhetoric is flattened. No - lobbying is lobbying. Bribing is bribing.</text></item><item><author>sonofhans</author><text>Of course it’s bribery. Everyone involved knows it’s bribery. The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.&lt;p&gt;Now, everyone tries to hide behind levels of abstraction — “It’s just lobbying!” — but those are just fig leaves and reasonable people should see through them. E.g., “Exxon gave the money to my campaign committee, and I’m not involved with the finance end; my vote in favor of Exxon was just a coincidence.” That’s pure bullshit and everyone knows it.&lt;p&gt;So yes it’s bribery. Calling it something else is disingenuous.</text></item><item><author>Nanana909</author><text>&amp;gt; lobbying&amp;#x27;. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.&lt;p&gt;That’s not really the definition of lobbying though. We should try to avoid hyperboles. Additionally, bribery is not legal and that’s not even remotely the form that the vast majority of lobbying takes today.</text></item><item><author>boomskats</author><text>SPOILER ALERT: the answer is &amp;#x27;lobbying&amp;#x27;. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.&lt;p&gt;I, for one, was not surprised.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paraquat-weedkiller-epa-ban</url></story>