How many mustachians RE and get into politics?
They'd sure get my attention & likely my vote.
One of @Malaysia41's main activities in FIRE has been political activism. She wrote a book on her politics. Then she raised money to fund a "People's Lobbyist." Who then suggested someone with a little time should join the lobbyist in person, in DC, to lobby Congress. So she just got back from a 3 week lobbying trip.
Her journal title below came from a time when she cared about politics but struggled about arguing with family members. Over time, she found a more pleasant groove.
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/fair-verona-where-m41-attempts-escape-from-us-politics/msg2205259/#msg2205259
So the number is at least 1!
PS. I support her energy, even if I don't follow the same exact politics myself. She shows it can be done.
Hey BB. Just saw your shout out.
Regarding lobbying in particular: During my 3 weeks meeting with ~30 reps on the hill, I realized that really anyone can lobby congress. Staffers of our reps are all quite accessible (well, to varying degrees). For example, I booked 30 min with Bernie Sander's staffers no problem. All a person needs to lobby congress is time, and a place to stay.
Well, time, a place to stay, and the ability to research, actively listen, craft persuasive arguments, and know who to target on the hill and how to entice those key players into meeting with you.
I have time, being FIREd n all.
I have a place to stay, as couchsurfing.org continually serves up amazing hosts. My DC couchsurfing hosts were all stellar.
I can research.
I wrote a book that's pretty much all about actively listening (
shameless plug); of course
putting this skill back into practice took a few meetings before I hit my stride again.
With the organization lobbyists4good.org, I found a collaborator in that site's founder. We honed our pitch, and determined who to target on the hill. Part of the plan all along was to hire a lobbyists - but that proved hard at the beginning as so many of them represent mega agricultural corps. In the end, we at last hired a lobbyist with our crowdsourced funds. This lobbyists has deep history in ag committees and policy making, and with our help, he will shepherd our proposal into law (hopefully).
https://www.lobbyists4good.org/animal-ag-subsidiesFor me, I need a project. I'm 46, and passively absorbing life wears thin after just a few days. Make no mistake, I can relax and slack off like the best of them. But at some point I need something I'm creating. So I wrote a book. Then I got political. This DC lobby campaign was my latest project. I see it as the training wheels phase of more lobbying to come.
That 3 weeks in DC confirmed in no uncertain terms the old adage,
'IF YOU'RE NOT AT THE TABLE, YOU'RE ON THE MENU'.
Just look at where we are with the environment and with the rise of CAFOs. As
@sol mentioned in an earlier post here - unregulated capitalism can be counted on to exploit our shared resources. This includes the animals we raise for food. Did you know
the biomass of global livestock is ~3x that of humans? You think we have an overpopulation problem? We're feeding half the food we grow to our livestock. Try multiplying our overpopulation problem by 4. It's all connected. And yet, at our national gov't level, fixing problems associated with animal agriculture are afterthoughts at best. So, I thought I'd go have a chat. And I had 30 of them - to various degrees of success as far as I can tell. But the staffers/reps all thought on the topic for 15-30 min. All of them. dems and reps alike.
As far as I'm concerned, it's time we citizens take a seat at the table and demand those shared resources be valued properly and protected.
We've allowed big ginormo corps and super wealthy people to occupy those seats for far too long. And now we're at a point where somehow, 'money = speech', monopolies that prey on a captured market are just fine, and unlimited $ in our political campaign election system is the norm. It's a shit system. But it's the system we've got. In order to change it, we've got to take part in it, and steer back toward the basic principles we all learned in high school civics. Mr. Firebaugh would be horrified if he was alive to see what our system has become.
Drilling down to a particular topic: what we are doing to animals in our food system is a horror story. It's time for us to give voice to the voiceless at that same political table that mega corp ag companies have sat for years. By not listening to the animals, we are driving our own species headlong into extinction. By breeding livestock in such outsized numbers, we're ripping through resources, clear-cutting carbon sinking forests, and polluting our waterways. The situation is so out of balance that the resources on this little rock hurling through space may give out soon, and it may happen in our very own life times.
So - it's hard for me to sip my Valpolicella Superiore wine and study Italian and live the good life in FIRE when the people pulling on the political levers are screwing our future over so hard. And by 'people pulling on the political levers' I don't necessarily mean our elected representatives.
Sorry if this turned into what seems like a rant. But full-tilt is pretty much my standard operating mode these days. Okay, time to write thank you emails to 5 more of the staffers we met with in Feb. Thanks for the shout out BB.