A possibly-legal way to officially be paid for advertising purposes while serving in a public office! Run it by a lawyer first, though.

Background:

Most countries have laws that discourage public officials from being financially compensated to use their official powers to benefit particular companies. (This is usually called “bribery.”)

For example, a state governor probably couldn’t declare July 5 to be “Official BestUsedAutoDeals.com Appreciation Day, Use Referral Code AUTO4U.”

However—maybe there’s a “one weird trick”-style loophole that would allow public officials to be paid to promote a business without officially promoting it!

Proposal:

Two elements of this are crucial:

  • In some countries (e.g. United States) it’s legal for a person to legally change their name to essentially any text, no matter how bizarre.
  • Public officials often sign documents that go out to thousands of people: for example, a governor’s signature might be found on a college diploma and a treasurer’s signature might be found on a piece of paper currency (Figure 1).
Fig. 1: The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury’s signature can be found in the highlighted area.

So here’s the question: could a government official—let’s say the Secretary of the Treasury—be paid to change their own name to, for example, “www-ultimate-snake-products-dot-com”?

Normally, this would just seem like a really strange marketing plan, but in this case, that text would also appear on millions of banknotes / diplomas / passports / etc., as shown in Figure 2.

(Essentially, this is a roundabout way of selling ad space on official documents.)


Fig. 2: If we suppose that the Secretary of the Treasury from Figure 1 (William E. Simon) had changed his name to “BestUsedAutosDotCom REFERRAL CODE USA#1,” could his official signature have looked like this? Perhaps!

Conclusion:

This situation is probably weird enough that there isn’t any law that explicitly prohibits it in a clear fashion. This provides a spectacular opportunity for any aspiring politician looking to make a mark on history!

PROS: Opens the possibility of a person receiving a presidential pardon signed by “Mega Value Soups & Noodles: Your Trusted Brand!”

CONS: Apparently the legal and political systems are not (yet) operated by a giant robot or Star Trek computer, so it’s possible that there’s some kind of catch-all anti-bribery law that could be applied to this situation.