Interest Group Formation: Crash Course Government and Politics #43

So last week we talked about what special interest groups are and how they influence the political system, and today we’re going to focus on why we even have them in the first place. As to avoid getting too cynical, we’re going to focus on five benefits of special interest groups and look at how these factor weigh in a group’s formation and size. We’ll also talk about lobbyists, recent congressional action to limit their influence, and finish with a discussion of both insider and outsider strategies that interest groups use to influence policy.
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[@zacharysickles9348]

A refreshingly barely biased video. CrashCourse, you do a good job of making videos with minimal bias, keep it up. We need more of that kind of information on the internet and television.

[@ArthurB-roonie]

+Zachary Sickles Don't look at their economics course... I hear it's more biased to the left, but you'd have to judge for yourself.

[@space5339]

+Randy Drews I don't know I felt it was pretty centralist, not saying your wrong. It probably says more about our own personal opinions than the course it self and you may well be right, but I just wanted to give another point of view. I actually disagree with the course more than I agree with it, which would make sense since I'm not centralist. I'll point out though that unbiased doesn't necessarily mean the average of all opinions.

[@ArthurB-roonie]

***** I haven't watched much of it, but reading through the comments (super credible, I know) I've seen people get annoyed at the fact that they think it's left leaning. Idk, I'm personally not interested in it either way and I really like this course so it's all good! :)

[@jabawockez333]

+Randy Drews I have watched many of the episodes and I have to say it's incredibly left leaning.

[@FieldMarshalFry]

+Randy Drews honestly, that's because economics HAS a left wing bias, Keynes has been proven correct time and time again while Austrian economics keeps getting discredited

[@calculon000]

I'd say one of the largest forms of "bribing" by interest groups is the revolving door; When an official is promised a cushy, high paying job after they leave office as long as they play ball. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned in the video. It's called the revolving door because it often works in reverse too. Many regulators were lobbyists for the industries they're regulating before becoming regulators.

[@qwertyuiopzxcfgh]

Regulators were lobbyists for the industries they regulate? Now why does that sound like a very bad idea...

[@simbamartens7192]

+qwertyuiopzxcfgh Because it is... :(

[@fidelodjo5388]

vjj

[@chocolateandbroadway]

Or regulators run businesses that they are supposed to be regulating. That's what id call a conflict of interest...

[@Petrichorus-]

I think they mentioned that in a different video

[@brycebagley8278]

To Craig, jokes are like the 4th dimension. It's just impossible for him to comprehend how being funny works but that doesn't stop him from trying.

[@maddiel.castillo314]

"Even more well known than Pepper, was Salt" HAHAHA Good one!

[@Dream-bebe]

This is an amazing youtube channel. It will help me study for Political Science exams. I wish he didn't talk so fast though

[@Julianna.Domina]

Earliest I've been to a Crash Course video so far. Feels good, man.

[@jordandunfee5614]

Y'all should make a crash course on Oceanography and Marine Zoology

[@ChrisSeltzer]

This was one of the better Crash Course politics videos.

[@Babyshoes777]

Craig's lisp is so fucking adorable, he's my Morgan freeman. I can for real listen to this guy talk for hours

[@KenrickBrown75]

What is a person's Morgan Freeman?

[@Babyshoes777]

+Kenrick Brown everyone likes Morgan Freeman's voice, I like Craigs. He's my Morgan freeman

[@Celeste-in-Oz]

+ricecristi I have a Morgan Freeman; one of my teachers. It's like when you scratch behind a dog's ear and they go all goofy. Once he was talking to me and I was just basking in that voice... when I realised he'd stopped and was waiting for a response. I had no idea what he had actually said. He just thinks I'm an idiot. Too bad.

[@Babyshoes777]

+CelesteofOz hahahaha I bet we all have Morgan Freeman's

[@StarMagyk]

+ricecristi What's his lisp?

[@jakubkuberski448]

Congratulations on your 500th video, CrashCourse!

[@kidmoviesjoemorgan29]

I feel like a nerd when I get excited about these videos.

[@bryanwan6169]

How interesting.

[@bryanwan6169]

I heard that pun down the groupvine.

[@JulieFrancois33]

I wonder how many views these videos skyrocket every year during AP testing season

[@shintsu01]

i wonder how many europe viewers crash course has. Since i really like them to spend some effort on europe based items instead of US based only.

[@dbyesyesyes378]

it would, althogh im british and i find it interesting to find out about us politics. they could have this series talking about us politics and another series talking about other political systems

[@creapuretivity6780]

i think he should stick to the US. I dont think that he is that good in European politics

[@dbyesyesyes378]

+Reloud it doesnt hav to b him presenting it. and has he presented an episode on a non us government before. if it, how do you know he wont be good?

[@peka2478]

..a bit late for that now, aint it? :/

[@chocolateandbroadway]

I think they do a lot of US focus because crash course is based in the U.S. but would be cool to learn about other governments as well :)

[@user-xq6so8bp9y]

continue these high quality video!

[@DrewDvorak]

I love this crap, keep making it. Thanks.

[@litchgath]

Thank you for making this, it helped me explain Lobbying to a friend!

[@HansJSchroeder]

Thank you for answering my Economics question.

[@waffleman383]

I love how they made the TV brand "Sorny" in the thoughtbubble

[@jy3n2]

There are political groups for video games. The Entertainment Consumers' Association and Entertainment Merchants' Association are the first that come to mind.

[@somebodytookmyname1]

Keep singing Craig!

[@gradientofthoughts_1017]

Yes!

[@joshbobst1629]

I can't believe the Audubon Society was not the first one you mentioned for bird interest groups, or at all. WTF?

[@rasmus7748]

want more space :(... good episode as always....

[@marisatranchitella8042]

Could we get some videos on the media/mass media in government and politics?

[@coltenhunter2000]

I love your lisp

[@sydznl]

is this part of Olson's theory of calculative rationality?

[@sinomirneja771]

You know what? I would say it would be interesting to learn bout world politic. I really like to know how do the rest of the countries like England, or none democratic ones like Saudi Arabia run their countries.

[@bz3105]

Yeah, like apparently a lot of people, here, I was a little thrown off by the comments at around 5:00 when he talked about how there's "no real evidence" for political bribery and that it probably doesn't happen "that much." I would direct the creators of this video to a joint study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern Universities. This study covered about 1,800 policy positions over a period of about 20 years and found virtually no correlation between public opinion and the laws that actually get passed in Washington, yet a direct correlation between political contributions and, again, the laws that get passed in Washington. In other words, at the moment, bribery is frankly the norm in the policy-making process in Washington (due to our RIDICULOUS "corporations are people" and "political contributions are speech" policies that the Supreme Court has given us) and it's a real problem for the 99 percent of us who don't happen to be ultra rich/powerful.

[@Tyler2534]

Pls link to the study, I'm interested. But correlation is of course not causation. In this case, causation may run opposite the way you imply. Many political contributions tend to follow after a candidate's position is already known. If I'm trying to protect Roe v. Wade, and I'm a corporation, I look for candidates who are ALREADY pro-choice, and then donate a lot to them. I don't go out and look for someone who doesn't have an opinion, or else is pro-life, and try to change their mind. So in the data, you see a huge contribution from "pro-choice corporation" and you see a candidate voting to protect Roe v Wade. Super strong correlation! But of course the contribution had no affect at all on the way the candidate voted. I'm not saying it never happens, and I'd like to see the study because I'm sure it gets into this problem, but from your summary it doesn't seem very convincing. Lots of studies on a more micro level show that Party influence, constituent sentiment, and personal ideology all play a much more significant role in congressional voting behavior than campaign contributions.

[@themike97_58]

this saved my bacon

[@vegedarien6450]

I've heard the term 'grassroot' thrown around a lot- especially in Bernie Sanders interviews- but I never really understand what it meant. The explainanation in this video is helpful, but I'm still left wondering if grassroots are found on both the left and right or if they are more of a liberal thing?

[@BlackysComments]

Since the american political right wants the government to be as small as possible, so that it doesn't interfere with individual interest, they don't care very much about grassroots. It's typically more of a leftist thing, since they want the government to be more powerful, which makes it necessary to adopt certain methods to ensure that it acts in the interest of the people. And that's were grassroots come into play.

[@abieseadee7102]

You should make a new CrashCourse series hosted by CGP Grey.

[@kiwi8133]

GUYS GOOD LUCK ON THE AP EXAM!

[@TheCommonGentry]

when and how did pbs become affiliated with crash course or vice-versa?

[@theLoveRocketjr]

5:52 made me want to play GTA V Online, but I'm stuck working on a project....

[@mariec2362]

Great video. The only complaint I have is using the Civil Rights Movement as an example of an interest group. Social movements and interest groups aren't the same. Anyway, subscribed.

[@animalia5554]

Technically they are. It's just interest group has a negative connotation so it's hard to associate anything good with them even though as this video shows there are plenty of good interest groups like said civil rights movement.

[@bonestobunnies3444]

Free riding reminds me of NAFTA

[@audretwelch3328]

This is their 500th video!!!!

[@afyqazraei]

scrolled to the comment section to see the raging war, just realised I'm too early

[@Idrian10]

without gubmint who'll build the rooooadss??

[@lachlanmacrae7054]

the thing about lobbying in Britain is that it is publicly advertised and has been done for hundreds of years with a donation of £25,000 In the Conservative Party you can have dinner with David Cameron and from documentaries like politicians for sale you can see that Politician's do these things behind closed doors anyway

[@ThomasstevenSlater]

I think that politics makes a lot more sense if you uses the lense of what I call "preruption" that is whose already believe that the influencing party want get a huge advantage. E.g. Running for office is very expensive and time consuming so people who are rich and/or have rich friends have a systematic advantage in getting elected, therefore congress has a bias towards rich people and their interests even before the lobbyists turn up. Likewise these rich people shower those that are more on their side in their heart of hearts with so much money they have a massive advantage in elections. Preruption is fair bigger problem than corruption as if far more subtle and omnipresent and if more based in systematic problems then personal misconduct and criminality. If relates to the classic corruption of guilded age or a keplotocracy the same way the open racism of Jim Crow and the KKK compares to the more subtle racism or being far more likely jail a black person for the same crime then a white person and then on average jailing them for much longer. In an perticular case it would be almost impossible to prove wrongdoing, even the person who did might not even know, but when you put all the cases together it is clear that something is up.

[@LunarFox__]

When he mentioned salt, I legitimately got my hopes up that we would talk about Socialist Alternative, or SAlt.

[@bensmith6846]

First time I have seen an apparently unbiased presentation of how our corrupt political system functions. Now can you make a video of how citizens of America can recover our Constitutional Rights?

[@pingukutepro]

Everyone is not equal and so the interest group. Interest group is important but their inequality killing us

[@georgemiller1316]

4th under 100

[@colonelgraff9198]

Come on and take a free ride

[@DuranmanX]

How can you free ride, when you are paying taxes? Unless you mean you came from another country, and are riding on that countries roads, but you don't pay taxes that pay for the roads

[@krombopulos_michael]

I guess if you don't work then you don't pay tax but it's hard to see how you can deliberately do a lot of free riding. It's not like you can just choose to not pay taxes, if you could then the whole system would fall apart.

[@krombopulos_michael]

***** They're not freeways when they have tolls, because freeway means it is free. They're just motorways.

[@chocolateandbroadway]

So the point is let's say people wanted to fix a really beat up road with lots of potholes that the government wasn't fixing (happens all the time), that's what he's talking about is why we don't have interest groups for that because they would have this problem. It's an issue interest groups have, not the government cause they can make people pay taxes but interest groups rely on donations.

[@OsirisMalkovich]

how much did you have to pay for Craig to sing that one line of _Free Ride?_

[@SassyP17]

come on and take a free ride yeah yeah yeah yeah badada baa bada

[@chaoswebz]

Thats a broad claim that without taxes roads would not be built

[@qwertyuiopzxcfgh]

If everyone suddenly decided not to pay taxes you'd need to start a kickstarter for new roads or something, don't really see that happening.

[@LamLawIndy]

Government collects taxes = coercion (hint: knowingly or intentionally not paying taxes = felony)

[@SlugHatchet]

didn't mention super pacs. shame

[@georgemiller1316]

Yo

[@sayuas4293]

Didn't really touch on the worst and most effective forms of this: offering politicians very lucrative jobs after their political careers in exchange for legislation and paying for political campaigns in exchange for legislation.

[@turkeykillerex9509]

hi

[@chrisray9653]

What about the self-righteous Twitter hashtag spamming?

[@aviedw1]

my only complaint is that they talk way too fast

[@spoopish]

Firstgj

[@chrismok2472]

@peta lmao

[@jazmineatayde7931]

Cool I'm early!!!

[@superafrikanmedialabs8237]

second

[@elijahfordsidioticvarietys8770]

Lobbying, a.k.a. bribery.

[@ulysses7157]

when it comes to politics. anyone can claim propaganda.

[@savion949]

first

[@elysium8404]

+Savion D'Mello congrats on first

[@savion949]

+M. Toast thanks

[@M_Chen333]

2:07 Craig, or any other Crash Course hosts for that matter, cannot sing. Like, at all.

[@soojongha6381]

Actually, Hank Green is in a band..... He wrote (and sang) a lot of songs

[@Gregoryzaniz]

fix the title; andPolitics

[@davidkimlive]

I'm going to free ride into this comment section.

[@yehudamenachem8357]

love how u showed the jews with romney when talking about bribes

[@AndrewBoniface09]

huhuhu. why cant i be first?

[@Gregoryzaniz]

early

[@sarahchen3097]

Wow I early

[@connorgabor4972]

Are Lobbyists free to give as much money as they want to politicians now? Didn't trump pass something that lifted the limit?

[@KaempactMC]

hue

[@sycoforbidden]

The title needs a fix.

[@jenniferhundley1379]

Can u talk louder and more clearly?? Pls??

[@brycebagley8278]

When Craig sang I felt like throwing up and dying and nuking the planet because we've failed a species by letting this happen.

[@edensmith977]

xD I thought it was beautiful.

[@RiseofNick]

what's up with the anonymous masks

[@WillElMagnifico]

Anonymous hackers. Google it.

[@RiseofNick]

I know who they are, why are they in the video is my question.

[@WillElMagnifico]

+Nicholas Eaton "anonymous + 2008 financial crisis"

[@qwertyuiopzxcfgh]

Because anonymopoopy was one of the driving forces of the occupy movement, he talked about occupy so he showed people wearing guy fawkes masks

[@RiseofNick]

thank you for clearing that up

[@davidzubiria3783]

That eagle should have done some thing really bad to you.

[@mjpanicali]

Hmmm, maybe singing isn't a career for you Craig...don't quit your day job, whatever it is....

[@game______on]

illuminati

[@taylorwatkins1200]

GAy

[@Leftistattheparty]

TeaParty has become an astroturf movement.

[@MartinAhlman]

And it's universal, not just for one government! Mr Last Week, could you please present it as NOT from any country in the world? The largest democracy doesn't really make us guess it. "American", you forgot that tiny word, didn't you... India is, btw the largest democracy. Not the American definition, but there are poor people, so there's that. When are you going to stop using words and mean "America"? You really are not making sense to the rest of the world, and not in your own. There are more countries in world. America is not "the rule after which all other follow!"

[@jabawockez333]

This is a American channel. He will continue to say what he pleases and how he says it.

[@MartinAhlman]

Manchester Is blue what I like best is that he doesn't say its American. USA, USA, USA. Who would do that?

[@Tfin]

+Martin Ahlman I needed help with an order from Amazon yesterday, and try as I might, I couldn't find a link to a text chat with their "Indian Call Center." Had to use the generic one.

[@MartinAhlman]

R3Testa And you think that's relevant to this? I want them to say it's about American politics, not a generic all-fits-one, and you're having trouble with Amazon? Are you mad at any Indians or at me? If you're mad at me, you'll be fine, if you're mad at anyone from India, well... You're at least outnumbered, and you're being silly.

[@Tfin]

Martin Ahlman I want them to say it's an Indian call center. They don't.

[@NietzscheanMan]

Muh roads! Muh feelz! Communist BS.

[@y8r113]

+NietzscheanMan What?

[@ensnaredbyflesh1030]

How is that rhetoric communist?

[@NietzscheanMan]

Here is the answer: www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y5TGGZU

[@y8r113]

Or you could explain how it's communist to have public roads.

[@davidtiger]

If this host had different working ethics, how amazing it would be for people who are not english speaking. This kind of speech rate makes your listeners work too hard. Most of the videos published by "Crach course" are like this. If you have committed to educate others, please change your working ethics. For the most audience it's not "normal". You are speaking too fast! Pushing constantly a pause, rewind back and again stop button is unproductive for the user. Don't read from your teleprompter like a robot but like a teacher who cares. Pay attention to intonation and the speed. Remember who is watching your videos, age, education level, country.

[@nero8631]

+Constantin Jenson k.

[@sawyerknight2344]

OK they should probably slow down a little, but is it really "disgusting!"that they don't talk really slow for the few people that can't speak very fluent English?

[@davidtiger]

Sawyer knight I change my mind and edited my comment. Its not disgusting, its...i wish my english was better so i could replace the word disgusting. Any suggestion? Thank you.

[@chocolateandbroadway]

Psst...turn on the closed captions

[@benkugel9003]

PBS Anti semitic alert: Why shows Jews when showing lobbyists influencing politicians? I find this offensive!