7 ms·

You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead

170 points by aaronbrethorst 8y ago

msluyter 8y ago
Related: Mancur Olson "In his first book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965), he theorized that what stimulates people to act in groups is incentive; members of large groups do not act in accordance with a common interest unless motivated by personal gain (economic, social, etc.). While small groups can act on shared objectives, large groups will not work towards shared objectives unless their individual members are sufficiently motivated.[3] In 1982, he expanded the scope of his earlier work in an attempt to explain The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982). He argues that groups such as cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions have an incentive to form lobby groups and influence policies in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist, which will hurt economic growth; but because the benefits of such policies are concentrated, and their costs are diffused throughout the whole population, there will be little public resistance to them. As distributional coalitions accumulate, nations burdened by them will fall into economic decline. His work influenced the formulation of the Calmfors–Driffill hypothesis of collective bargaining.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson
- jessaustin 8y ago
  We've had a small resurgence in support for protectionism in general recently, but outside the sugar industry, Olson didn't really predict the decades following 1982 very well, did he?
tptacek 8y ago
I'm never clear on why I'm supposed to be upset about model legislation. It seems like that's how the process should work: interest groups should, in addition to making valence appeals for their particular interests, also take the time to draft specific proposals. Moreover, especially on technical matters, it seems likely that private-sourced model legislation would be a superior starting point than whatever leg' staff would come up with themselves. Rather than getting all swoony about ALEC, wouldn't it make more sense just to fund more countervailing model legislation? Wouldn't that move the policy debate out of the arena of subjective feels and further into the realm of nuts-and-bolts decisions? Isn't that strictly more transparent than what happens now in bills that aren't based in any way on models? Or, put it this way: in my lifetime I'm almost certainly going to have no chance of having a hand in any legislation drafted by the staff of any legislator. But I could reasonably hope to spend time getting involved with an organization that drafted and then promoted (cough lobbied for gasp) those bills. Doesn't model legislation ultimately democratize the process? And, sure, it sucks that the "Asbestos Transparency Act" protects companies that might have asbestos liabilities. But it's not as if legislators can reasonably sign bills based solely on their titles, or that we as citizens don't have an obligation to read proposals when they're published. Or, for that matter, as if the laws that legislators themselves draft don't have egregiously misleading titles. (Just for what it's worth, there's a progressive alternative to ALEC, SIX: https://stateinnovation.org/ https://stateinnovation.org/).
- mikeyouse 8y ago
  I think that what you describe would be great if it was all done out in the open. What ALEC (and similar organizations on both sides of the aisle) have done is basically "White Label" legislation favorable to their backers and then distribute it across the country. I suspect that the people of the dozens of states taking up these laws that are extremely favorable to some bad actors would like to know where the laws came from. States and Federal bodies are fighting FOIAs all over the country to hide the origins of some questionable laws which gives the premise a very unseemly feel.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Yes, that is the idea. But you can "white label" legislation too. What's stopping "you" (in the broader sense) from simply competing with ALEC? Politicians are good at getting elected, and OK at being, at least for some limited tenure, broadly receptive to some set of identifiable principles or goals that people vote for. But that doesn't mean they're good at drafting the actual laws, or, for that matter, recruiting and managing the people who are. And as regards the malign influence of corrupt special interests --- at least model legislation is potentially traceable. How is it better for a chemical company and a legislative staff to strike a deal in a smoke-filled back room and then have the staff write a bill de novo?
    - magpi3 8y ago
      > Yes, that is the idea. But you can "white label" legislation too. What's stopping "you" (in the broader sense) from simply competing with ALEC? I lack the resources to compete with large corporations. Are you arguing that we must all join large well funded organizations in order to have a voice in our laws?
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Lobbying in general is problematic (though I think it's less clear-cut than I think people assume it is). But I'm clearly meant to be especially aghast at model legislation, which, to my eyes, seems strictly superior to the mode of lobbying where the lobbyists pay to have legislators write their bills for them.
foobarbazetc 8y ago
Ah... the royal “they”. Both sides, etc.
Dowwie 8y ago
Does everyone remember the study from 2014 about American oligarchy? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/... Cycling the same story every 5 years isn't going to change things..
Jerry2 8y ago
It goes something like this: corporations hire lobbyists, lobbyists write bills and hire former gov officials and judges to go over the proposed bills and catch any flaws in them. Then they lobby the current, elected officials and bribe them to sponsor the bills and put their names on them. Finally, they lobby the rest of the Congress to vote for the bill. And if they fail, they wait for a while, modify few things, get new politicians to sponsor them and the cycle repeats until they get what they want. Corporate lobbying is nothing more than legalized corruption. Even Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Chairman had this to say on the topic: >"The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists" to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. "It's shocking how the system actually works." https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googl...
pratheekrebala 8y ago
Hi everyone! I'm a news developer at the Center for Public Integrity. I worked on this project. Happy to answer any questions. This project was basically an all-pairs text similarity problem. We were able to identify a lot of copycat legislation addressing a wide range of issues from e-cigarettes and prescription opiods to online sports betting, "religious freedom" and undocumented immigration. Some from previously known groups like ALEC and others from previously unknown interest groups. We also have a public facing tool in the works that would allow anyone to track such measures in near real-time. We will be launching the tool and open sourcing the code in the coming weeks! Also, do check out our launch story in this series about one such model bill that would allow car dealers to resell cars with active recalls. And keep an eye out for more stories about model legislation! https://publicintegrity.org/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/the-multistate-push-to-let-dealers-get-away-with-selling-you-a-defective-car/ https://publicintegrity.org/state-politics/copy-paste-legisl...
- tptacek 8y ago
  This is awesome work and should be the top comment on the thread.
- webninja 8y ago
  What can we, as citizens, do to stop this from happening? I’m tired of being outraged from all of the corruption or simply the ineptitude.
milesvp 8y ago
FYI, the title is wrong, or at best misleading. Politicians are elected to be politicians. They outsource everything else. Fun story, my wife almost took a job in our state capital to help edit laws. The team was employed by the state and was, to my knowledge, non partisan. They recieved drafts of bills, and their job, as lawyers, was basically to make sure that the punctuation was correct. What was interesting about the job, is that a well placed comma can have pretty major effects in how courts will interpret the law, and my wife was really looking forward to being able to shape law in these subtle ways.

Related: Mancur Olson "In his first book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965), he theorized that what stimulates people to act in groups is incentive; members of large groups do not act in accordance with a common interest unless motivated by personal gain (economic, social, etc.). While small groups can act on shared objectives, large groups will not work towards shared objectives unless their individual members are sufficiently motivated.[3] In 1982, he expanded the scope of his earlier work in an attempt to explain The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982). He argues that groups such as cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions have an incentive to form lobby groups and influence policies in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist, which will hurt economic growth; but because the benefits of such policies are concentrated, and their costs are diffused throughout the whole population, there will be little public resistance to them. As distributional coalitions accumulate, nations burdened by them will fall into economic decline. His work influenced the formulation of the Calmfors–Driffill hypothesis of collective bargaining.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson

jessaustin 8y ago
We've had a small resurgence in support for protectionism in general recently, but outside the sugar industry, Olson didn't really predict the decades following 1982 very well, did he?

tptacek 8y ago

I'm never clear on why I'm supposed to be upset about model legislation. It seems like that's how the process should work: interest groups should, in addition to making valence appeals for their particular interests, also take the time to draft specific proposals. Moreover, especially on technical matters, it seems likely that private-sourced model legislation would be a superior starting point than whatever leg' staff would come up with themselves. Rather than getting all swoony about ALEC, wouldn't it make more sense just to fund more countervailing model legislation? Wouldn't that move the policy debate out of the arena of subjective feels and further into the realm of nuts-and-bolts decisions? Isn't that strictly more transparent than what happens now in bills that aren't based in any way on models? Or, put it this way: in my lifetime I'm almost certainly going to have no chance of having a hand in any legislation drafted by the staff of any legislator. But I could reasonably hope to spend time getting involved with an organization that drafted and then promoted (cough lobbied for gasp) those bills. Doesn't model legislation ultimately democratize the process? And, sure, it sucks that the "Asbestos Transparency Act" protects companies that might have asbestos liabilities. But it's not as if legislators can reasonably sign bills based solely on their titles, or that we as citizens don't have an obligation to read proposals when they're published. Or, for that matter, as if the laws that legislators themselves draft don't have egregiously misleading titles. (Just for what it's worth, there's a progressive alternative to ALEC, SIX: https://stateinnovation.org/ https://stateinnovation.org/).

mikeyouse 8y ago
I think that what you describe would be great if it was all done out in the open. What ALEC (and similar organizations on both sides of the aisle) have done is basically "White Label" legislation favorable to their backers and then distribute it across the country. I suspect that the people of the dozens of states taking up these laws that are extremely favorable to some bad actors would like to know where the laws came from. States and Federal bodies are fighting FOIAs all over the country to hide the origins of some questionable laws which gives the premise a very unseemly feel.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Yes, that is the idea. But you can "white label" legislation too. What's stopping "you" (in the broader sense) from simply competing with ALEC? Politicians are good at getting elected, and OK at being, at least for some limited tenure, broadly receptive to some set of identifiable principles or goals that people vote for. But that doesn't mean they're good at drafting the actual laws, or, for that matter, recruiting and managing the people who are. And as regards the malign influence of corrupt special interests --- at least model legislation is potentially traceable. How is it better for a chemical company and a legislative staff to strike a deal in a smoke-filled back room and then have the staff write a bill de novo?
  - magpi3 8y ago
    > Yes, that is the idea. But you can "white label" legislation too. What's stopping "you" (in the broader sense) from simply competing with ALEC? I lack the resources to compete with large corporations. Are you arguing that we must all join large well funded organizations in order to have a voice in our laws?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Lobbying in general is problematic (though I think it's less clear-cut than I think people assume it is). But I'm clearly meant to be especially aghast at model legislation, which, to my eyes, seems strictly superior to the mode of lobbying where the lobbyists pay to have legislators write their bills for them.

foobarbazetc 8y ago

Ah... the royal “they”. Both sides, etc.

Dowwie 8y ago

Does everyone remember the study from 2014 about American oligarchy? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/... Cycling the same story every 5 years isn't going to change things..

Jerry2 8y ago

It goes something like this: corporations hire lobbyists, lobbyists write bills and hire former gov officials and judges to go over the proposed bills and catch any flaws in them. Then they lobby the current, elected officials and bribe them to sponsor the bills and put their names on them. Finally, they lobby the rest of the Congress to vote for the bill. And if they fail, they wait for a while, modify few things, get new politicians to sponsor them and the cycle repeats until they get what they want. Corporate lobbying is nothing more than legalized corruption. Even Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Chairman had this to say on the topic: >"The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists" to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. "It's shocking how the system actually works." https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googl...

pratheekrebala 8y ago

Hi everyone! I'm a news developer at the Center for Public Integrity. I worked on this project. Happy to answer any questions. This project was basically an all-pairs text similarity problem. We were able to identify a lot of copycat legislation addressing a wide range of issues from e-cigarettes and prescription opiods to online sports betting, "religious freedom" and undocumented immigration. Some from previously known groups like ALEC and others from previously unknown interest groups. We also have a public facing tool in the works that would allow anyone to track such measures in near real-time. We will be launching the tool and open sourcing the code in the coming weeks! Also, do check out our launch story in this series about one such model bill that would allow car dealers to resell cars with active recalls. And keep an eye out for more stories about model legislation! https://publicintegrity.org/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/the-multistate-push-to-let-dealers-get-away-with-selling-you-a-defective-car/ https://publicintegrity.org/state-politics/copy-paste-legisl...

tptacek 8y ago
This is awesome work and should be the top comment on the thread.
webninja 8y ago
What can we, as citizens, do to stop this from happening? I’m tired of being outraged from all of the corruption or simply the ineptitude.

milesvp 8y ago

FYI, the title is wrong, or at best misleading. Politicians are elected to be politicians. They outsource everything else. Fun story, my wife almost took a job in our state capital to help edit laws. The team was employed by the state and was, to my knowledge, non partisan. They recieved drafts of bills, and their job, as lawyers, was basically to make sure that the punctuation was correct. What was interesting about the job, is that a well placed comma can have pretty major effects in how courts will interpret the law, and my wife was really looking forward to being able to shape law in these subtle ways.