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{quote} Also it is important to keep in mind the old tricks used to pass bad laws: they push initially for worse laws then after public protest they slowly ste
by smolsky 8y ago
{quote}
Also it is important to keep in mind the old tricks used to pass bad laws: they push initially for worse laws then after public protest they slowly step back to the initial goal to pretend people were listened to, so that not only they get what they wanted, but the public is also being fooled into believing their protest were successful and they have politicians who actually listen to them.
{end quote}
That's called haggling or bargaining and is old as the notion of trade.
- ryanmonroe 8y agoYes, GP even specifically referred to them as "old tricks". But even though the strategy is old, many people do not perceive the process that way so it's worth pointing out.
- Semiapies 8y agoSounds more like a paranoid description of how almost all political change, positive or negative, happens. You push for what you want, but if that gets too much opposition, you moderate your proposal the next go-round. The other approach, of course, is to pursue incremental change. In the same "ZOMG tricks" lens, that's boiling-the-frog-slowly.
- inimino 8y agoThese two are both as old as the hills and well known to people who read sales manuals as the "door in the face" and "foot in the door" techniques respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoYou push for what you want No, you push for massive overreach. You never start negotiations asking for what you want. Then it goes to an "election", the "opposition" party (come on, they all drink at the same bars, do lines of coke in the same toilets) wins, and the "watered down" bill basses with bipartisan support. We don't live in democracies. Two reasons: 1. regular employees don't get a "winter break" and 2. Until we have real time visibility of political donations, filtered through an anti-corruption body, we can't know whether the people in government deserve, or are eligible, to be there.
- Semiapies 8y agoNo, you push for massive overreach. You never start negotiations asking for what you want. Sure you do. Political compromise is fundamentally different from haggling over vegetable at the farmer's market. You will almost never get everything you want in the first place, but openly shooting for something more extreme than what your supporters want can alienate them (much as the hard-core would wish otherwise). We don't live in democracies... And I don't have time for anarchist wank.
- lovich 8y agoThe US at least is barely a democracy. We are much closer to an oligopoly than anything else. If you really think we are a democracy, then do you think someone in the US could win the presidency with a good platform and no money, versus someone with a bad platform and a lot of money?
- slededit 8y agoIts much more interesting to see somebody neither party wanted win the presidency.
- tiles 8y agoBut it makes for horrible, horrible governance.
- ggg9990 8y agoTrump’s election was the most democratic thing in perhaps the history of US politics. Maybe 1% of oligopolists supported him before the primaries and many prominent Republicans didn’t even support him when he had the nomination. In the wake of 2016 one could easily argue that US politics has become far more democratic (the founding fathers intended it to be much less democratic than it has become). This shows that “democracy” is not a synonym for “good governance.”
- 8y ago
- coretx 8y agoIf you can't convince HN, confuse them? On topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window Now please allow me to smear you with terrorism or tin foil hats in case i can't find any further arguments. It's only fair since you dropped the paranoid smear already. ;-)