5 ms·

You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people wh

by smsm42 9y ago

You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people who do it would be called not "lobbyists" but "educators" and would be only allowed to say what agrees with some opinions, but not the others? Or allowing anybody explaining things to congressmen and just not calling it "lobbying" because it's a dirty word?

swebs 9y ago
>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? So the options are either 1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast 2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcast's lobbyist only. A person elected into one of the highest positions in the US is too incompetent to do their own research.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dhimes 9y ago
  3. Require all meetings with lobbyists to be public- with video and transcript documentation. Mandatory jail time for those who don't comply.
  - mac01021 9y ago
    What constitutes a lobbyist? Must a congressman record every discussion he has with every person he meets, just in case the topic of conversation turns to public policy?
    - tdb7893 9y ago
      We could broadcast the video on Bravo and call it "Real Senators of the US"! It would be like a better CSPAN. Edit: also we could call in votes like it's American Idol. I think we should try it, it couldn't be worse than what we have now
    - dhimes 9y ago
      Here's a start: https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165 https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165 Example: https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html There will certainly be attempts to end-run the disclosure, but in principle it's a regulated industry.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    There was something like this in California, public meetings law, called Brown Act. As I heard, it's not exactly working as intended http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-open-meetings-law-became-gag-rule/ideas/connecting-california/ http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-ope...
- smsm42 9y ago
  All human sources of information are biased. That's why we have democracy - to duke it out in a market of ideas and find some common denominator that somehow summarizes people's opinions. True, this system is not perfect. But removing inputs would not make it more perfect - unless by some magic you imagine that the only inputs left are optimal ones. But finding the optimal ones is the problem with started with! If we knew that, there would be no need for the rest - it's because there's no definite obvious way to know what is right is that we have democracy, otherwise we'd just have one law: "always do what's right" and that's it, no need for congress, elections, etc.
naasking 9y ago
> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider: 1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists with deep pockets? Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad (and this applies to any issue, not just NN). 2. To further the above point, the wisdom of the crowd is a robust phenomenon whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter, probably for exactly the reasons I explained above. However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent. Lobbying destroys this property. If you look up the "wisdom of the crowds", lobbying encourages homogeneity, centralization, imitation, and emotionality.
- dnadler 9y ago
  > Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).
  - naasking 9y ago
    > I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall. Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests. The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.

by smsm42 9y ago

swebs 9y ago

>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? So the options are either 1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast 2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcast's lobbyist only. A person elected into one of the highest positions in the US is too incompetent to do their own research.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dhimes 9y ago
3. Require all meetings with lobbyists to be public- with video and transcript documentation. Mandatory jail time for those who don't comply.
- mac01021 9y ago
  What constitutes a lobbyist? Must a congressman record every discussion he has with every person he meets, just in case the topic of conversation turns to public policy?
  - tdb7893 9y ago
    We could broadcast the video on Bravo and call it "Real Senators of the US"! It would be like a better CSPAN. Edit: also we could call in votes like it's American Idol. I think we should try it, it couldn't be worse than what we have now
  - dhimes 9y ago
    Here's a start: https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165 https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165 Example: https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html There will certainly be attempts to end-run the disclosure, but in principle it's a regulated industry.
- smsm42 9y ago
  There was something like this in California, public meetings law, called Brown Act. As I heard, it's not exactly working as intended http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-open-meetings-law-became-gag-rule/ideas/connecting-california/ http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-ope...
smsm42 9y ago
All human sources of information are biased. That's why we have democracy - to duke it out in a market of ideas and find some common denominator that somehow summarizes people's opinions. True, this system is not perfect. But removing inputs would not make it more perfect - unless by some magic you imagine that the only inputs left are optimal ones. But finding the optimal ones is the problem with started with! If we knew that, there would be no need for the rest - it's because there's no definite obvious way to know what is right is that we have democracy, otherwise we'd just have one law: "always do what's right" and that's it, no need for congress, elections, etc.

naasking 9y ago

> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider: 1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists with deep pockets? Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad (and this applies to any issue, not just NN). 2. To further the above point, the wisdom of the crowd is a robust phenomenon whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter, probably for exactly the reasons I explained above. However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent. Lobbying destroys this property. If you look up the "wisdom of the crowds", lobbying encourages homogeneity, centralization, imitation, and emotionality.

dnadler 9y ago
> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).
- naasking 9y ago
  > I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall. Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests. The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.