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Notes -
I was having a conversation with someone about how rich people or large corporations being able to afford the best lawyers gives them a massive advantage in leveraging the legal system as a weapon against smaller actors. My instinctive naive solution was to enact a rule that any legal expenses must be matched by an equal donation to the opponent’s legal fund. The idea being that if you genuinely believe the law is on your side, you shouldn’t have to outspent the opposing side by X million dollars to prove it. Supposing this rule magically came to be, would this actually solve the issue and are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?
Alternatively, suppose the US had a true two-party state (instead of just a de facto one, since it gets more complicated with more than two opposing factions). Would an analogous rule for campaign contributions (any contribution to Democrats must be matched by an equal donation to Republicans and vice versa) work to reduce big-money influence in politics?
It's a much bigger problem than this: Most laws favor the entrenched & powerful by default unless very carefully designed not to. This is one reason why large companies often are neutral or even actively lobby for extra regulation. THEY can afford a large legal department for compliance. Smaller competitors, not so much. This is completely independent of whether a law is also deliberately designed to boost specific actors.
And it gets worse once you consider politically entrenched powers. A new law to limit political donations to specific parties in the vein you are considering? Well, WE are only unaffiliated NGOs defending democracy, YOU are obviously a thinly veiled campaign contribution, so all money spent on you needs to be added to the fund of
ourthe other side!Turns out, helping the genuinely weak compete is pretty hard. Usually you just end up helping a different faction of elite. And even if you design a law that helps bring down a powerful actor, the same law can often be used to bring down anyone, which means it destabilises the entire system.
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