[HN Gopher] Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY'...
___________________________________________________________________
Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY's hedged repair
bill
Author : CharlesW
Score : 293 points
Date : 2023-02-17 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Look up your state's legislature and see how many people are
| employed as staff and analysts and then look at how many bills
| are proposed every session. Most bills are not written by the
| legislators or even their staffs, whether or not it's big
| business, activists groups, or whatever.
|
| As for some of the over the top bloviating in this thread, that
| kind of nonsense just makes opposition useless because it's just
| not persuasive. "Democracy is a sham" whether or not you believe
| it in whole or in part or not at all won't help you get anything
| done and I'm willing to bet that the person saying that doesn't
| even know how to find what bills are pending in their state, let
| alone care except when a news headline makes them outraged. If
| you care that much do something, don't write revolutionary fan
| fiction.
|
| Most laws don't affect you. If they do, support the people who
| vote how you want. It's not that hard and I'd be willing to bet
| that for the majority of people here the system is working out
| just fine for you.
| rom-antics wrote:
| So last time this story made the rounds, the legislature had
| passed the bill. Then the mayor signed it into law - but not
| before adding some legalese that roughly amounted to "just
| kidding lol". Afaik nobody could explain why it was legal for the
| mayor to add arbitrary language without legislative oversight.
| Has anyone dove in to figure out how that happened?
| rdedev wrote:
| https://youtu.be/pEZcRR61Bqg
|
| Louis Rossmanns video on what happened. Basically amounts to
| adding a provision at the last minute when almost everyone in
| the house is on vacation
| lando2319 wrote:
| My understanding is the governor's signed it with an
| understanding that the legislator would immediately water it
| down.
|
| Which is what happened
| delecti wrote:
| How can they make changes after he signed it though?
| paulette449 wrote:
| She [1]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul
| peyton wrote:
| I downvoted this comment. The person you're replying to
| seems to be using gender-neutral pronouns in good faith,
| and I don't think this comment contributes to the
| discussion.
| delecti wrote:
| No, it was fair. I used "they" to refer to the plural
| legislative body, and incorrectly used "he" to refer to
| the governor.
| QuillPen wrote:
| By passing a new law, termed a "chapter amendment". These
| are agreed upon by the governor and the legislature in
| advance of the governor's signature and passed and signed
| rapidly thereafter.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Do you have a link to the text of this 'chapter
| amendment'?
| LookReally wrote:
| https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/a1285 I
| believe it's actually already passed both the assembly +
| senate.
| klyrs wrote:
| According to the article, the state Senate has not approved the
| changes yet, so it is not yet law.
| LookReally wrote:
| I think the article is incorrect on this point. The NY
| assembly and senate have both passed the bill that contains
| the changes:
| https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/a1285 It
| hasn't yet been signed by the governor though.
|
| I live in NY and actually reached out to both my state
| senator and assemblyperson multiple times in opposition to
| this follow up bill. I never received a substantive reply.
| calibas wrote:
| What the word for a government system where large businesses
| write the laws?
| properGander wrote:
| It's still a person. Stop buying into euphemisms for person
| like "employee" and groups of people like "company".
|
| Very militaristic, simplistic fake world with hierarchy. Not a
| shock many winners in the post-world war economy were also
| fighters in world wars and our job memes echo the structure
| they had foisted upon them. How were they to make sense of
| their business if they weren't at the top of the hierarchy with
| a rigid chain of command?
|
| Society still has plenty of embedded post-war shell shock and
| Cold War paranoia in its collective limbic system given all the
| folks running the world the last few decades were kids in those
| eras.
|
| Just like with religion before, a lot of effort is put to
| validation and preservation memory of the elders.
|
| Prior to world wars 90% of workers were self employed. Many
| economic truisms are driven by contemporary nostalgia. Whole
| lot of sunk cost fallacy backing why we organize as we do.
| indymike wrote:
| Laws are written in the US by the people who have time to write
| them: interns or lobbyists. Being a legislator is a crappy job
| where you have little time between fundraising and voting to read
| the laws you vote on, let alone write them.
|
| If you want to make a change, show up and meet in person with
| state and federal legislators. And if you think, "there outght to
| be a law" get one written with the help of a few lawyers (who
| will do this usually for fun and for free) and give it to the the
| legislator's legislative director.
| jmugan wrote:
| My understanding is that you can't "show and meet with" them
| unless you are already a significant donor.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| That's not entirely true. It's more like if you are a
| significant donor your name is always going first on the
| schedule of meetings for that day. Local constituents will
| usually get scheduled over and over again until some random
| 15-min block that the politician usually just glazes over
| for. They will meet with you if whatever your issues is
| directly affects their ability to fundraise though.
| archi42 wrote:
| At least we know it. In the future, it will be "AI, rephrase that
| bill to resonate better with my voters" and no proofreading.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's pretty normal. My ex worked at congress and she said that
| most bills are reviewed and changed by lobbyists before they are
| submitted. And a lot of their changes get adopted almost
| verbatim. Same happens with regulations.
| croes wrote:
| But this time it was changed after the bill was signed
| stcroixx wrote:
| It was my impression lobbyists usually write the bills
| themselves. I don't know if this is how it's always done, but
| my company recently worked with lobbyists and a senators
| assistant and the lobbyists wrote a paragraph that, once
| approved by this assistant, went straight into the
| appropriations bill. Perfect example of pay to play.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > It was my impression lobbyists usually write the bills
| themselves
|
| Here's a fairly recent example:
|
| > When the legislation that became known as "Obamacare" was
| first drafted, the key legislator was the Democratic Chairman
| of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, whose committee
| took the lead in drafting the legislation. As Baucus himself
| repeatedly boasted, the architect of that legislation was
| Elizabeth Folwer, his chief health policy counsel; indeed, as
| Marcy Wheeler discovered, it was Fowler who actually drafted
| it.
|
| What was most amazing about all of that was that, before
| joining Baucus' office as the point person for the health
| care bill, Fowler was the Vice President for Public Policy
| and External Affairs (i.e. informal lobbying) at WellPoint,
| the nation's largest health insurance provider
|
| ...as Wheeler wrote at the time: "to the extent that Liz
| Fowler is the author of this document, we might as well
| consider WellPoint its author as well."
|
| To add insult to injury, the same lobbyist was later put in
| charge of drawing up the rules to implement the law.
|
| >More amazingly still, when the Obama White House needed
| someone to oversee implementation of Obamacare after the bill
| passed, it chose . . . Liz Fowler.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/05/obamac.
| ..
|
| Once the implementation rules were set, she returned to
| lobbying for the health care industry, this time at Johnson
| and Johnson.
|
| Liberal icon Bill Moyers did a segment on this for his PBS
| show and it was as close to being openly pissed off on air as
| I'd ever seen him.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ5tj4cN9Jk
| stcroixx wrote:
| Seems business as usual.
|
| Senators wouldn't even return our phone calls. So we had to
| resort to hiring a lobbyist who they would answer the phone
| for.
|
| Anytime we'd have a call with the senators assistant, we'd
| have a call with the lobbyist first. He'd coach us on how
| to behave, dress, and what to say. We'd then call the
| assistant and perform our rehearsed parts just like any
| other theater production.
|
| Access to our representative is gate-kept financially.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Even more recently, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, West Virginia
| all passed laws within the last year or two that deny state
| contracts to any company who divests from oil/gas. Just
| insanely unconstitutional and vague, and a good reminder of
| why there's so much astroturfing around ESG, but those laws
| were adopted largely verbatim from "sample" text written by
| oil & gas lobbyists and energy companies;
|
| https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/how-the-american-
| legis...
|
| Center for Public Integrity did a whole series on the
| phenomenon they called "Copy, Paste, Legislate":
| https://publicintegrity.org/topics/federal-politics/state-
| po...
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I can't think of any punishment harsh for what Baucus did
| to the country during Obamacare. He basically
| singlehandedly f..ked it up. The damage he did will be felt
| for decades in the form of bankruptcies and people dying
| because they can't afford care.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Lawmakers have started saying it pretty plainly:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/1850096865
|
| > "We had every environmental group walking supporting this
| bill," Fahy told Grist. "What hurt this bill is Big Tech was
| opposed to it."
|
| > A broad coalition of manufacturers opposed the bill in the
| spring, and its sponsors had to make significant compromises in
| order to pass it. "We made a lot of changes to get it over the
| finish line in the first day or two of June," Fahy said.
|
| Corporations don't vote on legislation! But the legislators are
| speaking as though they do!
|
| This is where all the that money in politics has led us: the
| lobbyists are a proxy or litmus test for what is going to
| happen to legislator's campaign funding. Therefore, the
| lobbyists have to be pleased for legislation to go through.
| Effectively - corporations get to write legislation.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| The whole process would be fine if the legislators listened
| to all lobbyists. But realistically they only listen to the
| lobbyists who bring in the most money.
| nmeagent wrote:
| I don't think the process will ever be fine until lobbyists
| have nothing to offer legislators besides the merits of
| their arguments. As long as corporations can make financial
| contributions to legislators' campaigns, the system is
| cursed.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| In the scope of the changes made, it seems fairly innocuous, but
| does anyone have an idea why they may have cut the $10 minimum?
|
| It seems bizarre for the lobbyists to have removed it for no
| reason, but I can't think of one except something like making
| cheap watches more expensive could make an Apple watch more
| appealing. Things that don't seem like realistic goals of the
| lobbyists.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is neither unsurprising nor uncommon.
|
| Here's how this works: billionaires and large companies pour
| billions into "think tanks", either directly or indirectly. Those
| think tanks represent a particular set of interests that align
| with the donors. Part of the job of those think tanks is quite
| literally to write legislation.
|
| There have been cases of certainly state legislation where the
| legislator introducing the bill has forgotten to take off the
| think tank's logos.
|
| We are in the era of money = political speech thanks almost
| entirely to 5 justices who voted for the opinion in Citizens
| United v. FEC [1]. The damage this has done and will continue to
| do is almost incalculable.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
| nimbius wrote:
| so i see a lot of posts about the nomenclature of democracy and
| its machinations of change in favour of elites but i think theres
| something people are missing here.
|
| the amended text is blind and harmful not to the end user in the
| near term, but to the corporate entity itself in the longterm. as
| technologies like 3d printing and machining advance, and as the
| end users equipment becomes evermore cumbersome to engage and
| repair, it is a foregone conclusion that hackers can _and will_
| circumvent, override, and make obsolete the arbitrary controls
| and restrictions that forbid reasonable owners from performing
| repair and maintenance outside the confines of a rent-seeker. The
| sheer volume of people and groups this inconveniences makes this
| inevitable.
|
| manufacturers had their chance to meet on common ground, to re-
| evaluate their profit strategies and predatory practices, and in
| the end they fell back on the simplest laurels and chose to
| poison the legislative assuming this was an absolute control. You
| cannot stop hackers by doubling down on the very policies they
| seek to amend, you can only slow them for a time and in the
| process discourage and infuriate your paying customers. Sony,
| Microsoft, and Nintendo could give a doctoral lecture on this, if
| agricultural farm equipment manufacturers cared to listen.
| spaced-out wrote:
| > You cannot stop hackers by doubling down on the very policies
| they seek to amend,
|
| You're assuming their goal is to "stop" every hacker, it's not.
| It's to secure this revenue stream for ag tech farm
| manufacturers, which they've done. They don't care if a handful
| of hackers fix a few tractors; if any get too big the boot
| comes down hard and they're ruined by fines and jail time.
| These changes are meant to block serious competition, by
| ensuring the vast majority of farmers will need to get their
| stuff repaired in official shops, which they still will.
|
| >Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo could give a doctoral lecture on
| this
|
| On what? How to make tons of money all over the world for
| decades? Those are some of the most powerful and successful
| companies in history.
| shmerl wrote:
| When government corruption is legalized in the form of "campaign
| contribution", such kind of issues are inevitable.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this happened exactly in California under the personal signature
| of Senator Byron Sher from Palo Alto
| colinrand wrote:
| Couldn't even be bothered to run it through ChatGPT first?
| college_physics wrote:
| We can blame big tech (or economic elites more generally) for
| prioritising their financial gain (hence what they can claim from
| the rest of society) over e.g., ther sustainability and welfare
| of the very same society on which they lay these claims.
|
| We can blame captured politicians for listening to powerful yet
| minority interests over the interests of the very people who
| appointed them to these roles.
|
| We can blame citizens for making politics (literally) somebody
| else's business by either abstaining or re-electing people who
| are unfit for office. We can also blame (some of) them for
| eagerly contracting with said "big tech" and thus enabling it to
| have that oversized influence on society in the first place.
|
| We can blame soft culture, formal educational systems and
| journalism for not educating, informing and enabling citizens to
| play the role that they need to play if the system is to function
| as it is supposed to.
|
| There is plenty of blame to pass around. But there are also some
| people who cared enough to track and surface this [0],[1] and
| many other people in other walks of life that care enough to
| raise a voice, take a stance, or otherwise inconvenience
| themselves when facing similar malignancy elsewhere. Its a state
| of mind and it can be flipped.
|
| [0] https://themarkup.org/news/2023/02/08/how-big-tech-
| rewrote-t...
|
| [1] https://grist.org/technology/right-to-repair-new-york-
| hochul...
| rr808 wrote:
| Most of the readers on HN are big tech.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| We can blame HN for providing social engineering tools to make
| this status permanent, even in a society in decline?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| We can, but it does not seem like a useful thing to do. Do we
| blame hammer makers for making better hammers?
| ajago wrote:
| I think a better analogy would be do we blame weapons
| manufacturers for making better weapons? Or, do we blame
| black hats for making better viruses?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Sure, but the point remains the same and it does not
| really change the validity of the argument itself.
| Weapons manufacturers have one goal and that one goal is
| satisfied by creating a better weapon. Even viruses have
| found somewhat unexpected uses ( stuxnet comes to mind ).
| no_wizard wrote:
| This sort of thing accelerated in the 80s[0] as businesses in the
| 70s saught to make lobbying gains as they have seen public
| interest groups achieve in the 60s an 70s.
|
| Another shift, is that it was culturally considered bad practice
| to become a lobbyist[1] quote:
|
| >In 1975 the rare hiring of a former member of Congress as a
| lobbyist made eyebrows rise
|
| When you combine the two, along with the ever decreasing capacity
| of being a congress member, lobbying effectively supplants the
| duty of "law making" to a large degree, and thats how we end up
| with bills that are almost entirely written by lobbyists in the
| first place. Of course, this opens up the revolving door practice
| by lobbyist firms to retain their advantage by hiring former
| congress people, which deepens the entrenched nature of the power
| of lobbying.
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150805124750/https://www.theat...
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120524031659/http://blog.washi...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Is anyone surprised?
| jessaustin wrote:
| One doubts anyone can muster the energy even to _pretend_ to
| surprise in this case. It 's worth keeping details like this in
| mind, however, when discussing society-destroying disasters
| like stupid wars in other hemispheres or insurance-firm-
| directed health care. We hear lots of arguments that boil down
| to: "don't criticize democracy; if the'merican people wanted
| something else they would vote differently!" As we see more
| clearly in simpler cases like this, in USA we don't have
| representative government; rather we have an increasingly less
| convincing _simulation_ of representative government.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| And if the elites only pretend to be democratic, why should
| the populous accept that quietly and not just rise up?
| [deleted]
| voakbasda wrote:
| Bread and circuses[0] keep the population fed and
| entertained, and people will put up with a lot of bullshit
| from their government when those basic needs are met.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
| [deleted]
| GeekyBear wrote:
| We're living in the second Gilded Age.
|
| >Political corruption was rampant, as business leaders spent
| significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not
| regulate the activities of big business--and they more often
| than not got what they wanted. Such corruption was so
| commonplace that in 1868 the New York state legislature
| legalized such bribery.
|
| Historian Howard Zinn argues that the U.S. government was
| acting exactly as Karl Marx described capitalist states:
| "pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the
| interests of the rich". Historian Mark Wahlgren Summers calls
| it, "The Era of Good Stealings," noting how machine
| politicians used "padded expenses, lucrative contracts,
| outright embezzlements, and illegal bond issues.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ok - but you could see these things as persistent illness
| in any civilization of this size.. So, outrage at the
| existence alone is not constructive; instead treat the
| illness knowing that it will never completely go away.
| "checks and balances" you know?
|
| there is a tendency to boil over and demand immediate
| change.. temper that, make longer commitments?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Outrage is absolutely constructive.
|
| The first Gilded Age only gave way to the Progressive
| Era's reforms after an expose that got the general public
| completely pissed off.
|
| >The Treason of the Senate was a series of articles in
| Cosmopolitan magazine by David Graham Phillips, published
| in 1906. The articles were each published a month apart,
| beginning with the forward in February and the last
| article, in July. The series is a caustic expose of the
| corruption of the United States Senate
|
| Phillips published this series of articles at the close
| of what is to be considered the Gilded Age, which is the
| period when money and politics became very
| interconnected. The expansion of the railroad industry
| combined with increased production of steel, iron, and
| oil contributed to a group of immensely wealthy
| businessmen that came to be known by the term tycoon.
| These wealthy tycoons used their wealth to influence the
| already contentious politics of the time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treason_of_the_Senate
| jessaustin wrote:
| _Outrage is absolutely constructive._
|
| I hope you're right. Please join us at the anti-war rally
| at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday at 12:30. [0] If you
| can't make it to Washington, there are affiliated rallies
| happening in various locations around the world this
| weekend.
|
| [0] https://rageagainstwar.com/
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our
| democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the
| product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People.
| If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it's a coincidence
| that some big power's agenda accidentally aligned with your own.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Law and Enforcement of it requires the mandate of the people.
| The mandate of the people seems breaking apart from the left
| and right in America.
|
| At some point I suspect "jury nullification" or worse will go
| mainstream.
| Aunche wrote:
| Democracy is working as intended. Voters prioritize how well
| politicians virtue signal about wedge issues, then short-term
| economic stimulus (e.g. bragging about jobs created by
| unnecessary tax incentives), then meaningful policy, and only
| then, do they care about technical details of this meaningful
| policy. It's no surprise that they outsource the last part of
| lobbyists.
| carabiner wrote:
| But at least we can talk about it! /s
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Nor there is a true rule by law.
| fear_and_coffee wrote:
| [dead]
| twblalock wrote:
| If you're casting a populist distinction between "economic
| elites" and "the People" you've already fallen for an
| oversimplified, cynical, inflammatory framing of the issue that
| has always been used by demagogues throughout history.
| vivekd wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by that? Isn't there a pretty
| obvious distinction between the interest and desires of the
| mass of people vs the interests of powerful special interest
| groups like corporations and the very wealthy.
|
| I mean we have no problem looking at historical society and
| drawing a distinction between nobility and the masses. Why
| does that logic fall apart in modern day societies
| twblalock wrote:
| Populists would love to convince you that "the elites" and
| "the people" are distinct groups that are pitted against
| each other in an eternal struggle. They do this in many
| cases to convince "the people" to adopt radical fringe
| views.
|
| In the past (and present!) this false narrative has been
| used to push mostly bad things: nativism, xenophobia, and
| really dumb economic policy. By falling for this false
| distinction you are priming yourself to be susceptible to
| demagoguery and similar bad ideas.
|
| If you look at reality you'll find that most distinctions
| between "the elites" and "the people" collapse and there is
| substantial overlap between both groups, both in membership
| and in their political self-interest.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| this is a non-answer unfortunately
| twblalock wrote:
| No, it's a very clear answer: the elite-people
| distinction is mostly false, therefore populism operates
| on a false premise.
| andrekandre wrote:
| ok, so whats the alternative interpretation, and what
| better future does that enable?
| christkv wrote:
| I'm more and more convinced that parliament or congress by
| lottery would be more representative and functional as well as
| the death of all political parties as they exist today.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I think a bicameral system with a House of Representatives
| (with a much larger body, with the number of constituents per
| representative fixed) and the a other body (we could even
| still call it the Senate for continuity and familiarity)
| being selected by sortition the way you describe would work
| well, and be a good transition step
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I don't think there is a benefit to any kind of bicameral
| system, regardless of how it is setup. A large unicameral
| system allows for more direct representation and should
| limit the influence of money when combined with term
| limits.
|
| "Tyranny of the majority" seems like more of a problem for
| the rich and powerful, in my experience.
| ncallaway wrote:
| "Tyranny of the majority"
|
| I dunno, I can definitely think of some times in our
| history when it impacted the poorest people.
|
| I think there's something very useful in the elections
| for representatives, in terms of it being an official
| poll of the people.
|
| I think sortition is a really interesting concept and
| could work well, but I think it won't work if it's the
| only legislative body. I would be pretty starkly against
| that, but I would support reforms that made it the second
| legislative body.
|
| If you really want a unicameral system as your top
| priority, I'd support a proportional representation House
| of Representatives.
| christkv wrote:
| Proportional does not work. Most European parliaments are
| proportional and has the same dysfunctions as the us
| system. The root is always the parties. They have to go.
| gruez wrote:
| How do you prevent the representatives, who are laymen with
| no political experience from being captured by career
| bureaucrats and/or lobbyists?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Replace them frequently and have them assemble in a place
| without outside influence for the duration of decision
| making, essentially like a jury.
|
| I mean if you really wanted to get futuristic about it you
| could even have a sort of crypto sortition where everyone
| is completely anonymous and representatives don't even know
| each others identity.
| gruez wrote:
| > Replace them frequently and have them assemble in a
| place without outside influence for the duration of
| decision making, essentially like a jury.
|
| A jury also gets to hear arguments from both the
| prosecution and the defense. For complex trials this can
| last weeks/months. Presumably for the "jury" legislature
| that you propose, you'd want lobbyists/bureaucrats to
| plead their case. How do you prevent them from being
| hoodwinked by the lobbyists/bureaucrats? If you think
| that they shouldn't be able to hear arguments from
| lobbyists/bureaucrats, how do you prevent them from
| coming up with absolutely braindead policies like "haha
| tax cuts/spending go brrr"?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I should have been more precise. I don't have an issue
| with public information being accessible, in fact that's
| kind of necessary for any democratic deliberation. What I
| think is relevant is _nothing going out_. A lobbyist
| making their case openly to the public is fine, that 's
| just speech essentially, although you can have a
| different discussion about the media around it.
|
| But the important benefit of an anonymous sortition in
| particular to me is that there is no connection between
| individuals and lobbyists. You cannot trade personal
| favours down the line. The pernicious part to me is when
| the guy who regulates the arms industry gets a board seat
| ten years later.
|
| Essentially what I think of as ideal is a sort of black
| box. Uncorrelated, impersonal, representative and random
| snapshot of the public opinion on an issue. Transparency
| is I think the worst celebrated value because it opens
| decision makers up for capture. If the policies are still
| braindead afterwards, well I think then we're
| democratically at our wits' end.
| andrekandre wrote:
| thats a good point
|
| probably there would have to many kinds of concurrent
| reforms and adjustments to make something like that
| work...
|
| some type of lobbying reform would have to take place, as
| well as some kind of basic reasoning/education tests for
| sortition... also perhaps candidates could be picked by
| sortition but you'd have to get a winning vote by a
| majority of people etc... i wonder if there are any
| studies/books about this kind of thing
| flangola7 wrote:
| You could get a few people who are immune to power seeking
| and thus would never end up holding office otherwise.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I used to joke that, but each day makes me think it may
| actually do some good even if it will introduce some chaos to
| the process.
| tkanarsky wrote:
| Stochastic democracy!
| zmgsabst wrote:
| That's why you need to get organized, not "vote alone".
|
| > Our findings of substantial influence by interest groups is
| particularly striking because little or no previous research
| has been able to estimate the extent of group influence while
| controlling for the preferences of other key non- governmental
| actors. Our evidence clearly indicates that--controlling for
| the influence of both the average citizen and economic elites--
| organized interest groups have a very substantial independent
| impact upon public policy. Theories of interest-group pluralism
| gain a strong measure of empirical support.
|
| (Quote from your citation below.)
| bitsnbytes wrote:
| Unfortunately the majority are to easily distracted and
| manipulated to concentrate on all the WRONG issues.That goes
| for both parties.
|
| The CORRECT ISSUE and primary issue we need to be focused on is
| conflict of interest.
|
| It makes no sense to try to get a group of people such as
| congress that have conflict of interest to fix the problems
| they created and are benefiting from , hence the result of the
| Princeton study.
|
| The sad part is that BOTH individual republicans and democrats
| should want to reduce conflict of interest as it benefits both
| sides and everyone in general. However BOTH party are too
| successful in keeping them fighting with each other , blaming
| each other, and chasing their tails trying to fix the issues
| with the people that created them.
| [deleted]
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Study:
| https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
| 0110101001 wrote:
| The authors of that study started by filtering down a giant
| list of survey responses to those where there's a significant
| difference in responses between the "donor class" and everyone
| else. I forget exactly how often that happened, but it's a
| small number.
|
| So, just in the premise the study, by needing to throw away
| almost all the survey responses where everyone agrees and get
| the policies what they want, actually goes a far way to
| debunking the populist premise that "economic elites" and "the
| People" are opposing factions with inherently different
| political opinions.
|
| Further, the study considered the group as "disagreeing" if the
| margin in survey answers was at least 10%. So if 90% of one
| group wanted something and 80% of the other, that was
| considered as them disagreeing.
|
| When a follow-up study further filtered responses to questions
| where more that margin spans the 5% mark, i.e. _most_ people in
| each group disagree, then the effect completely disappears and
| it 's more or less a coin toss which way policy goes.
| tines wrote:
| > The authors of that study started by filtering down a giant
| list of survey responses to those where there's a significant
| difference in responses between the "donor class" and
| everyone else. I forget exactly how often that happened, but
| it's a small number.
|
| > So, just in the premise the study, by needing to throw away
| almost all the survey responses where everyone agrees and get
| the policies what they want, actually goes a far way to
| debunking the populist premise that "economic elites" and
| "the People" are opposing factions with inherently different
| political opinions.
|
| Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that "when
| the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone gets
| what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy,
| nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what
| they want anyway."
|
| > When a follow-up study further filtered responses to
| questions where more that margin spans the 5% mark, i.e. most
| people in each group disagree, then the effect completely
| disappears and it's more or less a coin toss which way policy
| goes.
|
| So you're saying that when like, 90% of the rich people
| wanted A and 90% of the poor people wanted B, then it was a
| coin toss? That would make a good argument if so. Can you
| link to the study?
|
| EDIT: Actually now that I think about it, it doesn't really
| make a good argument, because the donor class is so much
| smaller than the non- that if 90% of donors want A and 90% of
| the poor want B, B should prevail easily. So if it's a coin
| toss, that's extremely biased, no?
| Aunche wrote:
| >Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that
| "when the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone
| gets what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy,
| nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what
| they want anyway."
|
| Not the GP, but I think that the interests of the general
| public are actually much more closely aligned with those of
| "the elite" far more than people would like to believe. If
| for 90% of the issues the elite are just as likely to
| disagree amongst themselves than with the general public,
| it would be absurd to conclude that "democracy is a sham."
|
| When Roe v. Wade got overturned, a lot of people on the
| internet were proclaiming this was an act by "the elite"
| who want cheap workers. In reality, virtually every
| billionaire who has a vocal opinion on abortion is pro-
| choice, and several have donated hundreds of millions
| towards the cause.
| tines wrote:
| > Not the GP, but I think that the interests of the
| general public are actually much more closely aligned
| with those of "the elite" far more than people would like
| to believe. If for 90% of the issues the elite are just
| as likely to disagree amongst themselves than with the
| general public, it would be absurd to conclude that
| "democracy is a sham."
|
| Sure, that may or may not be true, but we're discussing a
| study that claims that when the two groups disagree, the
| smaller one wins.
|
| > When Roe v. Wade got overturned, a lot of people on the
| internet were proclaiming this was an act by "the elite"
| who want cheap workers. In reality, virtually every
| billionaire who has a vocal opinion on abortion is pro-
| choice, and several have donated hundreds of millions
| towards the cause.
|
| RvW was overturned by the supreme court, but I think the
| effect we're discussing applies to laws enacted by the
| legislature. This article references the paper:
| https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-
| ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...
| cabalamat wrote:
| > Help me understand, it sounds like you're saying that
| "when the poor people agree with the rich people, everyone
| gets what they want and democracy is proved to be healthy,
| nevermind that when they disagree, the rich people get what
| they want anyway."
|
| That's how I read it too.
| comte7092 wrote:
| The Princeton study actually showed that when it comes to
| _advancing_ policies, it was pretty much a wash.
|
| Their difference came in when looking at getting policies
| _blocked_. If a policy was unpopular with economic elites, they
| were effective at getting it shut down.
|
| It's an important distinction, because there's a clear way to
| see what causes this behavior. There are a myriad of ways that
| our systems make it easy to block things rather than get things
| done. And if people realized that, there's a pretty clear path
| for reform.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I was totally with you until the last sentence. please go on.
| theptip wrote:
| I think they are getting at "vetocracy". I like Vitalik on
| this subject:
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/19/bullveto.html
| comte7092 wrote:
| I mean it's really about identifying rules that are anti
| majoritarian.
|
| On the federal level, the filibuster is an obvious example
| of a an anti majoritarian rule that creates perverse
| incentives.
|
| Going deeper, the way that the individual houses are
| structured gives significant power to committee chairs who
| gain power through seniority and fundraising for their
| parties, which creates centralized points of leverage for
| lobbyists.
|
| What we've seen over time is that fewer and fewer bills get
| passed, and individual bills themselves get larger. This is
| a result of rules and customs changing within the house and
| senate themselves that have made it harder and harder to
| pass small bills, so everything gets rolled into monster
| packages and the process get more obscured to people who
| are on the outside.
|
| The thing is that all of these rules get set by majority
| vote. Leadership elections happen by majority vote.
| Changing rules can happen without consent of the other
| house. The issue is that there's very little understanding
| or focus on why they are important.
| tromp wrote:
| There should be incentives to keep bills simple.
|
| Perhaps the threshold for passing a bill should increase
| with the bill's length.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The structure of the U.S. government was explicitly
| designed to be anti majoritarian. For many people, in
| fact probably the majority of the population this is a
| feature.
| comte7092 wrote:
| The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the
| constitution, and they aren't really a part of any
| explicitly planned design.
|
| Now, do people claim that anti majoritarianism is good?
| Sure. Clearly there are people who benefit from this
| system. In addition, a lot of people do justify it who
| seemly don't directly benefit economically, simply due to
| an ideological affinity.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the
| constitution, and they aren't really a part of any
| explicitly planned design.
|
| Huh?
|
| Congress derives its authority from the constitution, at
| least in the U.S.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Nothing about what I wrote had anything to do with what
| congress is authorized to do. It was about the internal
| rules of the house and senate, and the process by which
| they are made.
|
| None of that is prescribed by the constitution.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > None of that is prescribed by the constitution.
|
| It would help to be a bit clearer.
|
| The Constitution specifies that the House and Senate make
| their own rules via a simple majority vote.
|
| The Senate set a rule that they would require a vote to
| end (previously unlimited) debate and hold a vote on an
| issue. Originally, this required a two thirds majority,
| which was lowered to 60 votes later.
|
| More recently, the Senate changed the rules again to only
| require a simple majority vote on some matters.
|
| Nothing about the Filibuster rule was ever specified in
| the Constitution.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Thank you for writing that out, having a tangible example
| definitely provides more clarity to other readers.
|
| I do want to push back though a bit. The filibuster isn't
| the only rule I was referring to, and the entirety of the
| constitutions specification of the rule making process is
| literally "Each House may determine the rules of its
| proceedings". So when I say rule making broadly has
| nothing to do with the constitution, it's because it
| quite literally doesn't.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > Nothing about what I wrote had anything to do with what
| congress is authorized to do. It was about the internal
| rules of the house and senate, and the process by which
| they are made.
|
| If you genuinely don't understand how congress came about
| and why their actions are accepted by the other branches
| of government, I would recommend doing some reading of
| history.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic condescending response.
|
| It must be the case that I simply haven't read enough,
| simply because my understanding differs from yours. It
| can't be possible that my points are a result of careful
| study over several years.
|
| Speaking of careful study. I suggest that _you_ go back
| and actually read what I wrote and address what I said.
| Please inform me where in the constitution there is a
| prescription for what the house and senate rules must be.
|
| You keep talking about congressional authority. I will
| reiterate, that is completely tangential to my points.
| Mechanical9 wrote:
| It sounds like you are trying to justify an anti-
| majoritarian stance with majoritarian consensus. If you
| are against majoritarianism, you should probably find
| another way to make your case. Here, let me help you out:
|
| It's better for a small minority of people to make the
| rules. A small minority of people agree with this, thus
| it is correct.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| ^ this. It turns out a government will more effectively
| avoid flagrant injustice if its structure makes it
| difficult to accomplish anything quickly without
| supermajoritarian agreement.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Example?
| andromeduck wrote:
| War on drugs.
| comte7092 wrote:
| I'm not sure how higher supermajority requirement would
| have prevented the war on drugs from happening.
|
| There was alignment both at the elite level and the
| popular level in support of those policies for a long
| time. It functioned _because_ the minorities it target
| were politically weak.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| The ability for a small number of extremely wealthy
| people to dictate what laws should not be passed is not
| protection of the minority, and if it was intended by the
| founders (which in some ways it was, though not in the
| form it takes today) then it should be opposed.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| I think where the founders got it wrong is not expecting
| the population to be so ignorant and easily swayable. For
| instance, school voucher measures, which would benefit so
| many people, tend to get shut down due to lobbying
| efforts from rich and powerful teacher's unions: https://
| www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2016/11/13/teach...
|
| If people were wiser and did their research better, these
| kinds of campaigns would be ineffective and the rich
| would lose their sway.
|
| The founders also probably didn't expect our government
| to grow so large and so corrupt. The richest and most
| corrupt entity in the United States is the government
| itself. The vast majority of the government is not even
| beholden to people at all in any way, shape, or form.
| This includes the tens of thousands of employees in the
| federal bureaucracies, as well as organizations like
| teacher's unions who are funded indirectly by tax
| dollars. Many, if not all, monopolies today are also
| artificially created by government policy, allowing for
| an unholy union of corporations and the government.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The problem is, when the majority rules, the result is
| inevitably a shitshow.
|
| The founders understood that, which is why they set
| things up the way they did. Nothing has changed since
| then. If anything it's even more true, given the new and
| extensive ways the elites have to manipulate majority
| opinion.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The founders never even intended that the majority be
| able to vote.
|
| Really, their core quibble with the Crown, and the
| sticking point that prevented any peaceful solution
| (because compromise would have seriously threatened the
| political power of the nobility in Great Britain), was
| that they wanted rich people to have the franchise and to
| be able to hold high-level offices, not _just_
| aristocrats.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it's really about identifying rules that are anti
| majoritarian._
|
| You say this as if anti majoritarian is a bug. It's not.
| It's a feature. The US system is _supposed_ to prevent
| tyranny of the majority. That 's why there are checks and
| balances in it. That's why the Constitution limits the
| powers of the branches of government, and why further
| limits were put in place in the Bill of Rights. The US
| system is _not_ supposed to be a tool for the majority to
| enforce its will on everyone. It 's supposed to be a tool
| for protecting everyone's basic rights and limiting
| government to certain particular functions, not to allow
| it to do whatever a 51% majority wants. That was the
| original idea of the founders of the US system.
|
| I would say that, if anything, we have _too much_
| majoritarian thinking in the US today, and I would
| support amending the Constitution to put _more_
| roadblocks in the way of a 51% majority being able to
| simply run roughshod over everybody else.
|
| _> all of these rules get set by majority vote_
|
| Yes, and this is an example of too much majoritarian
| thinking; whoever has the majority in either house of
| Congress takes that as permission to gerrymander the
| rules however they like to favor their preferences.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| But these rules are only 10-20 years old. They're not
| part of the original intent you talk about.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| There were a whole lot of things in the US system of
| government that were put there on purpose but have turned
| out to definitely be bad. The fact that an element is a
| "feature" doesn't mean it didn't turn out to be a bad
| idea, in practice. If a tiny minority of rich people &
| companies can leverage our "anti-tyranny-of-the-majority"
| features so well that their use of it is practically the
| only use... that's broken. "It's that way on purpose"
| isn't a rebuttal to "it's broken".
|
| There's a reason we don't push our system on other
| countries even when _we 're_ the ones setting up a new
| government--it's basically a ho-hum fact among people who
| are into that kind of thing (so, the ones who tend to end
| up in charge of directing the creation new governments--
| at least in charge of the boring details) that the US
| system blows goats, but some of the ways that it's broken
| also mean that it's nearly impossible to fix without a
| revolution. This has been essentially regarded as a fact
| in poli-sci circles since... I dunno, probably the early
| 20th century I'd say (Germany and Japan didn't get our
| system after WWII, notably, and that wasn't by accident)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> There were a whole lot of things in the US system of
| government that were put there on purpose but have turned
| out to definitely be bad._
|
| I don't agree that there were "a whole lot", but yes,
| _some_ of the original features were bad. The founders
| knew they couldn 't avoid that, which is why they
| included an amendment process. Which has been used to fix
| a number of the original features that turned out to be
| bad.
|
| I also don't agree that the brokenness in the current US
| system is due to too much use of anti-majoritarian
| features. I think it's due to too _little_ use of such
| features. (Well, that and simply ignoring the
| Constitution altogether when it is politically
| expedient.)
| candiddevmike wrote:
| The alternative to majority rule is tyranny of the
| minority, specifically the minority with the most
| power/voice/money. I think what you're arguing for isn't
| against tyranny of the majority, but a limit to the power
| of the federal government/more local government.
|
| For instance, the majority of the country wants universal
| healthcare and legalized cannabis, yet the tyranny of the
| minority keeps blocking these efforts for their benefit.
| Without majority rule, we have a ridiculously
| dysfunctional government that doesn't represent the
| people.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The alternative to majority rule is tyranny of the
| minority_
|
| That's one alternative, but not the only one. Another
| alternative is for the government to not have the power
| to tyrannize in the first place. As the saying goes, the
| problem is not that politicians can be bought but that
| they have something valuable to sell.
|
| _> the majority of the country wants universal
| healthcare and legalized cannabis_
|
| I don't think this is true. I think vocal minorities want
| these things.
| dantheman wrote:
| If the government followed the constituion this wouldn't
| be problems: 1. Marijuana would never have been illegal
| at the federal level because an amendment wasn't passed.
| 2. Healthcare and any other federal welfare policies
| could be ennacted by passing an amendment.
|
| If there isn't broad consensus across the country to pass
| an amendment then states can do it independently. There
| is no reason a state can't have single payer healthcare,
| except that they don't want to pay for it and want to
| just add the cost to the national debt.
| comte7092 wrote:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-
| marijuana-...
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Trusting what you read in a poll is how you wake up the
| next morning and Trump has won the election.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Name a state that trump won where the polls showed him
| down over 36 points on the eve on the election.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| The election of Trump is a great example of the tyranny
| of the minority.
| acituan wrote:
| > The alternative to majority rule is tyranny of the
| minority
|
| Being anti-majority doesn't mean pro-minority.
|
| It is about decreasing the weight of merely being in the
| majority as an input feature to optimal decision making.
| It is protecting against pseudo-relevance majority can
| pose as an overemphasized decision making strategy. This
| doesn't mean all ideas that manifest as majority is
| irrelevant, not at all, it is protecting against the
| false positives.
|
| Mind you a lack of steamrolling with majority alone
| _forces_ a downstream integration of opponent thoughts.
|
| Think it like a collective intelligence architecture that
| is trying to make sure we don't get stuck in local
| optima.
| comte7092 wrote:
| That's all well and good, but when these issues come up,
| people seemingly turn their brains off and repeat
| "tyranny of the majority" without evaluating the
| empirical reality of how these systems function in
| practice.
|
| I'm amenable tot he notion that there should be some
| guardrails on simple majoritarianism, but it shouldn't
| follow that all anti majoritarian rules are good.
| comte7092 wrote:
| The original founders didn't design the current iteration
| of senate and house rules. You didn't need 60 votes in
| the senate to pass anything in 1795.
|
| But in a way you're right. "The founders" created a
| government that protected aristocratic interests
| explicitly. Most states had property requirements to vote
| when the constitution was ratified, and even higher
| property requirements to hold office. So you can
| definitely say that they would have been fine with a
| system that allowed moneyed interests to block
| legislation they didn't like.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Yeah one of the ways 17th amendment really broke things
| was the Senate went from an elitist organization
| representing the intrests of states and statesman like
| the UN in order to balance the ills of populist House but
| now it's got all the populist ills of the House but non
| of the bennifits of geographic or population
| representation.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > It's supposed to be a tool for protecting everyone's
| basic rights and limiting government to certain
| particular functions, not to allow it to do whatever a
| 51% majority wants. That was the original idea of the
| founders of the US system.
|
| The US Senate process to force an end to (previously
| unlimited) debate on an issue and hold a vote on the
| matter is not a feature put in place by the Constitution.
|
| It's a rule put in place by the Senate in the 1900's.
|
| > this is an example of too much majoritarian thinking;
| whoever has the majority in either house of Congress
| takes that as permission to gerrymander the rules however
| they like to favor their preferences.
|
| This is literally how the Constitution specifies that the
| legislature will operate. The Senate sets it's own rules,
| by majority vote. This is how the "nuclear option" to
| change the Filibuster rule was recently implemented.
|
| >Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used the
| nuclear option Thursday morning, meaning he called for a
| vote to change the Senate rules by a simple majority
| vote. It passed, 52 to 48.
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/harry-reid-
| nuclear-op...
| pdonis wrote:
| _> This is literally how the Constitution specifies that
| the legislature will operate._
|
| Yes, it is: each house of Congress is explicitly
| permitted to set its own rules of procedure. That is
| obviously _not_ an anti-majoritarian feature of the
| Constitution. I didn 't say every single provision in the
| Constitution was anti-majoritarian, or that the founders
| did a perfect job of implementing their ideas.
|
| _> The Senate sets it 's own rules, by majority vote.
| This is how the "nuclear option" to change the Filibuster
| rule was recently implemented._
|
| And also, of course, how the filibuster rule was put in
| place in the first place.
| properGander wrote:
| Appeals to authority of dead people's political documents
| is propaganda.
|
| Just because we can invoke historical story does not mean
| we abide it today.
|
| The majority inherently rules whether it's US
| Constitution or the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Not
| really sure how you get to a system of material comfort
| and logistics we have without majority buy in to not
| fight and kill.
|
| I wish people would realize how silly they sound reciting
| the dead peoples chants when the literal world clearly
| shows majority rule is not so bad literally. For whatever
| reason quite a few folks prefer to fight over which vain
| elders hallucinations and diatribes are the one true
| social system when the reality is providing real stuff to
| survive is all society really is about.
| acituan wrote:
| > dead people's political documents is propaganda.
|
| Yours is no less propaganda.
|
| People do cultural learning, pretty much everything you
| use from technology to medicine and yes politics is
| overwhelmingly based on dead people's ideas. That is the
| basis of us as cultural beings.
|
| You're right with cultural learning we might inherit
| noise too, but you'll have to fight against the content
| of those ideas, not dismiss from mere historicity. If an
| idea has merit, it will be timeless.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the
| majority.
|
| So instead, we get old-fashioned tyranny of the of the
| rich and powerful minority.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _If a policy was unpopular with economic elites, they were
| effective at getting it shut down._
|
| The push for Federalism is a good example of this. If you
| hear a politician claiming "states' rights", this might just
| be why. One material example of this is the NRA funding
| lawsuits against the Brady Bill, despite the gun control
| measures being popular with non elites.
| tootie wrote:
| If you click through to the (much better) article on The
| Markup, you can see that the lobbying group strongly
| advocating killing the bill entirely and apparently thought
| they had succeeded until was voted through and signed. Their
| request for revisions to be based on some genuine concerns
| that being obligated to sell every component off-the-shelf
| means they are telling competitors (and counterfeiters)
| exactly how to build their devices. It seems like it was just
| laziness on Hochul's part to just accept their terms verbatim
| instead of meeting in the middle. But the bill is still a
| first of it's kind and huge win for Right to Repair.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Meeting in the middle is an illusion when the window keeps
| shifting
| tootie wrote:
| Idk what this means in this context. There are basically
| zero right to repair laws in America except this one.
| Prior to December, no company had any obligation at all.
| NY just created the window. Once this goes into effect,
| tech companies are going to essentially forced to comply
| in order to operate in NY. The other 49 states or the
| federal government can basically only make the rule
| broader.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Nope, thats what they want you to believe. It was always
| only about making the dame parts and schematics available
| that their own repair people habe access to
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Pls link
| dmw_ng wrote:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...
| user3939382 wrote:
| Here's the highlight https://i.imgur.com/NNpD9AR.jpg
|
| https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi.
| ..
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The linked article is a report on the original Grist article,
| https://grist.org/technology/right-to-repair-new-york-hochul...
| [deleted]
| none_to_remain wrote:
| I guess the repair chains should have hired better lobbyists
| karaterobot wrote:
| You get the politicians you vote for. If you hate this, vote for
| the other candidate next time you get a chance. People voting in
| corrupt, captured incumbents because they don't want to 'waste
| their vote', or because they only vote along party lines, is the
| reason this stuff keeps happening. You could count on the courts,
| but ultimately you have a responsibility as a voter and can only
| pass the buck for so long.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >If you hate this, vote for the other candidate next time you
| get a chance.
|
| More like if you hate this, run for office yourself or get
| heavily involved in local politics and make sure someone
| worthwhile is running in the primaries for your chosen
| political party. Unfortunately without heavy local involvement
| by citizens who understand and care about the issues the
| process gets taken over by political machines and corporate
| money, just like Congress. Then you end up with a choice
| between (aside from mostly inconsequential culture war issues)
| two mostly indistinguishable establishment stooges to choose
| between in the general election.
| euroderf wrote:
| Any American business knows that the best ROI comes from
| political donations. No contest.
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