AirBnB Announces Plans To Get Out of The Bribe Business

Here’s a small case study in how my mind works. (Pam: Wait, your mind works?). Whenever I am reading a news article about anything having to do with politics I do so with ears wide open and a barnyard manure filter working overtime, not because of media bias necessarily, but rather because it is impossible for me to ponder political things without reading between the lines. Nothing is ever as it appears. Here’s a perfect example.

This morning I learned that several American corporations have turned against politicians who voted to decertify the 2020 election results. This particular sentence stood out:

AirBnB, Verizon, Comcast, Marriot and others have stopped all donations to politicians who voted against certifying the election results.

My response to this rather prosaic sentence was probably not what its writer intended. All I could think was...Why in Sam Hill is AirBnB making political contributions in the first place?? Seriously. Why would an online vacation rental marketplace feel the need to give money to politicians? Am I the only one who thinks this way? Couldn’t that money be put to more productive use elsewhere, like say...making their website more user-friendly? Why do the men and women who run such a fabulously successful enterprise feel it wise and necessary to donate cash to Congressmen, Senators or Presidential candidates? The question answers itself. 

My mind always seems to be at cross purposes to conventional wisdom. If I were the CEO of a successful new venture it would be my goal to remain invisible to politicians. I would want the lowest possible profile when it came to my business and its relationship to Washington DC. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near their radar screen. By donating money to them I come to their attention. The last thing any self respecting enterprise wants or needs is to have the undivided attention of elected officials. Not that my business would be up to no good. On the contrary, my company would be busy making the very best product or providing the very best service possible to its customers, so busy in fact, it would be oblivious to who its political representative even was! 

Spare me the lectures. I fully understand why AirBnB and all those other corporations bankroll politicians. When your country’s tax code is 2,600 pages long, with another 60,000 or so pages of addendums, codicils and explanatory case law attached, that’s a minefield of potential danger. But its also a great place to hide a favor that some savvy pol might be able to slip in that might benefit your business. In other countries, this is referred to as a bribe. In America its called working the system by the cynical and civic engagement by the clever. Either way, it would all be eliminated or at least greatly reduced by The Flat Tax.

Until then we will have to put up with the corruption that naturally flows from a system that encourages vacation rental websites, hotel chains, and cable providers to have to make grand virtue signaling proclamations divesting themselves from disobedient politicians.