"In modern day America most legislation has nothing to do with protecting people from violations of their rights. Most legislation is not a measure to protect but to redistribute rights and wealth from one group to another. Modern day politics is almost entirely about transfers."
True, most of it is, but is that more or less of a problem then the current attack on individual rights? (I'm not including property rights in that definition)
While I agree with your assessment of the problem here, your solution does not relate well to market theory. The problem is that there is a business demand to restrict people's rights. The money used to influence politicians is still going to be there, businesses will simply find other means to influence the public into getting what they want. This is just supply and demand. The US political system had constitutional protections to prevent the breaches of rights which are now possible, that did not prevent them from happening. Your solution has almost socialist thinking - attack the symptoms not the root cause.
I agree that the far left is equally in the dark, a more centrist stance is about the only solution I see. Don't let either the political or economic influences gain too much power. Allow businesses to campaign, but do not allow large anonymous spending that influences the public. Any funding should be plainly visible, and not just if you go looking. The US is currently suffering from far too much influence by market forces.
David: If you read this site regularly you will see that I speak of the current attack on rights across the board regularly and probably more on the attack on social freedoms. I do not exclude property rights from individual rights as property rights are individual rights. And most social freedom is an extension of one’s property rights.
What I say does relate to market theory if you have any familiarity with public choice economics. There is always a demand among some to take instead of produce. Some of the worst welfare abuse in this sense is from big business. Big business rarely supports free markets. They prefer to suck off the state or have the state redistribute. This is why they promoted anti-trust laws -- to keep competition down not to encourage it.
The root cause is govt. igrnoring the US constitution. But that is a problem that the Left introduced when they reversed, over decades, the way it was interpreted. Instead of enumerated powers they argued govt. could do anything not expressly forbidden. Instead of rights be vast and beyond the ability to enumerate they argued that unless specifically mentioned it did not exist.
And campaign donations are very visible. You can check them out on line. I do!
Jim - I think David has a small piece of it, but your analysis engulfs that piece. Excellent work; I apologize for relying on Tom to pick up your stuff for RRND; this one's going in tomorrow from me.
Steve, not in the mood for the full discussion at the moment, but echoing much of your perspective and applauding the presentation.
"The root cause is govt. igrnoring the US constitution. But that is a problem that the Left introduced when they reversed, over decades, the way it was interpreted. Instead of enumerated powers they argued govt. could do anything not expressly forbidden. Instead of rights be vast and beyond the ability to enumerate they argued that unless specifically mentioned it did not exist. "
This is a problem for sure, but I would not say it is the root of the problem. In order for the government to have the control to make the changes that have and are continueing to occur; they must have some support from the population. This support has been generated via market forces. While the law has some influence on a population, over time it's effects deminish, the market's influence however strengthens over time. Society is defined by the combined influences placed on the population, not necessarily the original ruleset put in place. The sociological implications of market theory are in my opinion most often misunderstood by both sides of the political spectrum.
"David: If you read this site regularly you will see that I speak of the current attack on rights across the board regularly and probably more on the attack on social freedoms."
I do, love your work.
"I do not exclude property rights from individual rights as property rights are individual rights."
I wouldn't take a hard line view of this myself, but you've probably already figured that out 
"And campaign donations are very visible. You can check them out on line. I do!"
This isn't enough in my opinion, people do not have the time to check up on every bit of information the media throws in their general direction. The source of funds must be shown at the time of an advertisement.
Campaign finance limitation and transparency regulations exist because those who advocate them and manage to get them passed hold the view that the majority of political candidates are not honest or objective enough to resist financial influences from certain special interests. In other words, "Everybody has their price."
That's probably true of most statist politicians, such as U.S. Republicans and Democrats. Most alternative political parties, including their candidates, tend to be more principled, and thus less apt to allow campaign contributions from special interests fester into a form of bribary in the way of influencing their legislative votes and proposals.
David: Again I would point you to public choice theory. In a very vague sense you can say there is a market but it is a distorted market where govt. creates perverse incentives which screw things up.
And it is false to say govt. needs wide support for bad policies. They don’t. All they need to do is make the costs of fighting the bad policies higher than the cost of the bad policies. The diffusion of costs thus means that fighting the policy costs more than the single policy. Cumulatively they are bad and if people could fight them cumulatively they would. But the laws are introduced one at a time. A redistribution might cost every citizens $1 in additional expenses. They aren’t likely to spend much time lobbying to save $1. The benefits get concentrated on specific groups who reap big benefits if it passes so they lobby strongly for it.
Another way the incentives are perverted is when govt. concentrates costs on one small group and gives benefits to lots of people. The small group gets financially raped but since they are a small group the politicians don’t care. Rent control is like that. It takes from a small group of landlords and benefits present tenants only -- future tenants are in fact worse off as the housing supply deteriorates and shrinks.
Or take how present generations spend now and use the state to burden future generations with the debt and the higher taxes as a result. Again the incentives are very perverse. Govt. intervention can create bad incentives. I would also recommend Bureaucracy by Ludwing Mises. You can find it on line in pdf for free.
As for your proposal of showing who funds the ad when it runs this is impossible. Hundreds of thousands of people contribute to a fund for advertising. Do you list all of them? If so the ad would be several hours long. If you only list the group collecting the funds from the many donors that is what happens now. So it wouldn’t change.
I never said wide spread support, I said some support, most policies do not go through without some support from the population, and if/when they are they are often reversed.
As for listing everyone who funds an ad, no, that's not quite what I meant. I was mainly referring to large brands/companies.
David: There has never been a policy that didn't have the support of somebody! So your first statement is true but not important.
Your second statement is misinformed. There are no campaign ads run by "large brands or companies". So that statement is irrelevant.
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