3 ms·

I'm not sure you'll find them upsetting, but I have a few thoughts: 1. Imagine a scenario where we need <legislation> that recognizes the needs/desires/opinion

I'm not sure you'll find them upsetting, but I have a few thoughts: 1. Imagine a scenario where we need <legislation> that recognizes the needs/desires/opinions/opportunities/suffering of multiple constituencies and at least tries to weigh all of those against additional concerns like the constitutionality, budget (including potential public legal costs/liabilities of defending the legislation and rectifying any damage it may cause), broader public good, etc. Outside of scenarios where <legislation> will only impact the single constituency proposing the legislation, it's hard to imagine the broad public good or the interests of any other constituencies will often be well-served by any <legislation> written by any single constituency. 2. At least in the U.S., one theoretical benefit of our multi-layered system of competing legislative bodies is that different people will approach similar problems in different ways. In the short run, some of these will fail, and some people will suffer these failures. In the longer run, we at least have the opportunity of more quickly converging on battle-tested solutions that didn't fail elsewhere. When our first swings at real problems are monoculture, we're squandering that space for innovation. 3. When outside groups play a big role in writing legislation, it seems one of their few collective interests may be optimizing for legislators who will sponsor or vote for said legislation without asking too many questions or making too many changes. I imagine this skillset has little overlap with the skills needed to craft the sort of legislation mentioned near the end of #1 above. If so, there's a risk this practice will progressively optimize for legislators that aren't capable of writing that kind of legislation even when it's absolutely essential. Funding countervailing model legislation would only accelerate this.

tptacek 8y ago
Right, I'm a little concerned that I'm giving the impression that I think ALEC itself is a good thing, which I do not. Yes, of course, we should be suspicious of bills with ALEC origins! But at the same time, progressive (or centrist or reasonable conservatives or libertarians or bicyclists or home distillers or what-have-you) should be drafting their own model bills, not alarming themselves that other model bills exist. I'm not really criticizing the story here, and if you look downthread you'll see a participant in it talking up some really interesting work they're doing to surface and trace model bills, which is great and valuable.
- abathur 8y ago
  Sure. I'm just saying something like: it's good to be conscientious of the habits and convenience paths (i.e., feedback loops) we develop, and of those our actions incentivize others to develop. Some people who get fired at the behest of the Tweet-mob certainly deserve their fate. But I think habituating organizations to firing people in response to Tweet-mobs could create a real hellscape. If my response is to try to bend the ratio of people sacked to sate the Tweet-mob towards my personal beliefs about who deserves a good firing, I'm only helping habituate organizations to appeasing Tweet-mobs.

tptacek 8y ago

Right, I'm a little concerned that I'm giving the impression that I think ALEC itself is a good thing, which I do not. Yes, of course, we should be suspicious of bills with ALEC origins! But at the same time, progressive (or centrist or reasonable conservatives or libertarians or bicyclists or home distillers or what-have-you) should be drafting their own model bills, not alarming themselves that other model bills exist. I'm not really criticizing the story here, and if you look downthread you'll see a participant in it talking up some really interesting work they're doing to surface and trace model bills, which is great and valuable.

abathur 8y ago
Sure. I'm just saying something like: it's good to be conscientious of the habits and convenience paths (i.e., feedback loops) we develop, and of those our actions incentivize others to develop. Some people who get fired at the behest of the Tweet-mob certainly deserve their fate. But I think habituating organizations to firing people in response to Tweet-mobs could create a real hellscape. If my response is to try to bend the ratio of people sacked to sate the Tweet-mob towards my personal beliefs about who deserves a good firing, I'm only helping habituate organizations to appeasing Tweet-mobs.