I love and hate Vox. But this is just criminal abuse of language. The word "ideology" does not mean what "Timothy B. Lee" thinks it means!
Patent Reform: Grocery Stores v Big Pharma
Here's the set-up:
Companies who feel the patent system hurts them more than it helps them are lobbying for reforms to raise patent quality and rein in frivolous litigation. Companies that make a lot of money from their patent portfolios are afraid that these reforms will hurt their bottom lines, so they're lobbying against them.
Here's your Vox data visualization:
And here's how Timothy B. Lee described it:
I've arranged them along an ideological spectrum.
That is just totally wrong in a way that threatens American Democracy!
Corporations don't have ideologies, they have interests! To have an ideology is to have a belief and to have a belief you have to have a mind.
And it's not even approximately true. Corporations behave like they are interested in profits. When a "free market" ideology would say "no" to subsidies a corporation always says "yes!"
PS Religion also requires a mind.