9 ms·
Policy laundering
- zerostar07 9y agoThis came from a comment in another thread. I wonder if someone has modeled these kinds of intra-HN graphs.
- nerdponx 9y agoI thought about it (prompted by another comment allng these lines) but abandoned the idea assuming I'd only find a few hits. Maybe I should rethink my assumption and give it a serious shot!
- petercooper 9y agoI had a successful front page post last week where I posted a link someone else had posted in a thread the day before. I see it perhaps handful of times per year, but I'm not really looking for them.. so it's worth trying IMHO.
- ggambetta 9y agoHeh, I was observing this same effect a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469184
- thriftwy 9y agoThat's why we need direct democracy more than ever. One that will include unratify voting.
- sandstrom 9y agoBot sure if direct democracy is ideal. Might result in zero trade agreements (some trade agreements are good). But more/full transparency around trade agreements would be nice. And mechanisms to keep lobbying out of them.
- thriftwy 9y agoIf there's clear benefit in trade agreements, they will be reformulated and stripped of earmarks until they are ready to pass. Note that excessive tariffs are just as easy to unvote directly. "You would want me to over-pay $200 for my iPhone and $2000 for my car, but as of tomorrow you no longer can. Do not ask again."
- marcosdumay 9y agoI'd go further along than thriftwy and say that I can't imagine a direct democracy keeping high international commerce tariffs. There's mostly nothing on them for the people, and the only case politicians know how to make trades some certain short term loses for some dubious long term gains that go primary to rich people.
- singularity2001 9y agowhat is the status of the idea of Direct democracy, after the promising pirate party got sabotaged (by itself)?
- some_random 9y agoI'm out of the loop on this one, the only Pirate Party I'm familiar with is that Icelandic one that (last I checked) did pretty well. What happened?
- koolba 9y agoDirect democracy is no picnic either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority Nothing is perfect but I rather like the tempering effect of an electoral based system. I think we'd have better outcomes if the elections of the electorals themselves (with a given State) were improved.
- RobertoG 9y agoIt seems to me that the dangers of direct democracy have been exaggerated (and maybe the dangers of the representative democracy downplayed). I don't see how, at the end of the day, representative democracy save us of the dangers of direct democracy. The people in power always will be worried about what the dirty masses would do.
- crdoconnor 9y agoThis seems like an entirely hypothetical flaw in direct democracy whereas you only have to glance at the news to see that it's very non-hypothetical for our current system of representative democracy. I suspect the magnitude of the "tyranny of the majority effect" in a directly democratic system would be determined by the structure of the system and any checks and balances that were put in place. You could configure it correctly or you could configure it badly. It's not exactly like representative democracy came about because reasonable people got together and agreed collectively that it was the best system for all. It evolved as a result of elites who used to rule non-democratically giving a series of small concessions over a period of centuries, often after a lot of blood has been spilled or a mass protest movement starts to grow to revolution-y size ("ok, some of you can kick us out of office but this time it's only the ones with penises who own land").
- rayiner 9y ago> This seems like an entirely hypothetical flaw in direct democracy whereas you only have to glance at the news to see that it's very non-hypothetical for our current system of representative democracy. Not a very “hypothetical” flaw. If it was up to the majority to decide, interracial marriage likely would’ve been illegal into the 1990s: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/bb8ic2qate-wa_cbgc2ifg.png http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...
- notahacker 9y agoEven easier to policy launder with direct democracy, since most people voting will vote for the headline purpose of the law or treaty without reading the text. Or worse still, you get Brexit-style direct democracy where the referendum settles only a broad objective and yet all criticisms of details of policy implementation are dismissed as defying the "will of the people".
- mrec 9y ago> all criticisms of details of policy implementation are dismissed as defying the "will of the people" To be fair, quite a lot of them are.
- notahacker 9y agoPolicy detail was not put to the vote, and not agreed in advance of the vote, and to pretend otherwise for the sake of advocating a particular approach to withdrawal and post-EU settlement is simply dishonest.
- mrec 9y agoAgreed, but things like that attempted Lords amendment to legally require the govt to guarantee the rights of UK expats living in Europe - something not within the govt's power, and therefore sending them to a gunfight with a wooden spoon at the negotiating table - was equally dishonest. I hope you won't dispute that some attempts genuinely are trying to overturn the vote, and often say so quite openly.
- notahacker 9y agoOh sure, there are plenty of people that are openly genuinely trying to overturn the vote. But arguments that the referendum vote for the five words "Leave the European Union" obliges the Lords to reject a policy of prioritising British citizens' rights in the EU post-withdrawal as a negotiation objective could be used as a defining example of laundering policies omitted from the actually voted upon text. Parliamentary bodies imposing conditions on the negotiation process is entirely compatible with the referendum vote and the standard democratic decision making process in the UK, and representatives' votes on them should be determined by whether they think the conditions are reasonable, not by any attempt to infer additional meaning from the five words of the prevailing referendum option.
- username223 9y agoLike the CA ballot initiative process? No, thanks. I lived through a couple of election cycles in CA, and realized the whole thing was a farce. At the time, you could pay signature gatherers $1 or so per signature, so anyone with about $1 million to throw around could get their pet initiative on the ballot. Ordinary people don't have the time or expertise to tease out the implications of legislation, because they have other things to do with their lives. Direct democracy is fine for school boards and homeowners' associations, but societies of millions of people are complicated.
- joncrane 9y agoInteresting that the "California effect" is mentioned and California is supposedly about to pass a very strict version of Net Neutrality.
- eadmund 9y ago> At that time, Congress attempted to protect migratory birds by statutory law. However, both state and federal courts declared that law unconstitutional. Not to be denied, authorized parties subsequently negotiated and ratified a treaty with Canada to achieve the same purpose. Once the treaty was in place, Congress then passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 to enforce the treaty.[10] In Missouri v. Holland, the United States Supreme Court upheld that the new law was constitutional in order to support the treaty. That doesn't make sense: how can the federal government (whose power is only that granted by the Constitution) agree to & be bound by a treaty which is unconstitutional?
- openasocket 9y agoGood question! It's a State's Rights thing: the federal government doesn't have arbitrary control over the states. The federal government can only force the states to adopt regulation if it's for a constitutionally-defined reason. In this case, using the Treaty Clause
- kevin_b_er 9y agoThere are thus no States's Rights. The states rights are subject to federal government conspiring with foreign powers to remove them.
- openasocket 9y agoI mean it's a pretty difficult path to take. You have to find a foreign government willing to make this treaty and take the same steps, you have to have control of the State department to negotiate, have to have the President sign off on the treaty, and get a 2/3rds super majority vote from the Senate. And the treaty has to be self-executing, meaning it doesn't require the nation to create additional legislation. The state's local laws would also have to directly contradict the treaty. Also, the next President could pull us out of the treaty unilaterally at any time. Sources: Introduction in https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/01/limits-on-the-treaty-power/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/01/limits-on-the-treaty-po... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Edison_Co._v._Montana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Edison_Co._v._Mon... Honestly, if the federal government wanted to usurp state's rights, there are much easier ways than this. The commerce clause gives a lot of power to Congress, and the federal government can often encourage the states to adopt legislation by making some federal funding to the states conditional on the exaction of certain regulations, though there are limits to that.