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It works in our countries too. Try to pass a terrible bill. Get rejected. Try again. Rejected. Again. Again. Again. They only have to get it through once, since

It works in our countries too. Try to pass a terrible bill. Get rejected. Try again. Rejected. Again. Again. Again. They only have to get it through once, since laws are very rarely removed, only added.

concerned_user 7y ago
I also notice trend of adding some ridiculous/controversial paragraphs to the bill that you can "give up" later. When people are tired after first couple of rejections and general public is annoyed by same bill being constantly mentioned, new one gets thrown into the spotlight and latter one passes without much attention.
otakucode 7y ago
It has bothered me for decades that this seems to be a 'bug' in the design of the US government system. ~500 people whose job is to create new laws. 9 people who can effectively remove them (SCOTUS), and who have a very limited schedule. Plus if they are ever too busy and pass on hearing a case because others are more pressing, that immediately cements the law into place and establishes it as having 'survived Supreme Court challenge' since refusing to hear is equivalent to accepting the lower court ruling and establishes it as precedent. I do not see how you can run a system with ~500 'inputs' and 9 low-flow 'outputs' for a long time without resulting in an overflow of oppressive tyranny.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Congress should generally be removing laws, SCOTUS based law invalidation is sort of the last chance removal and ideally wouldn't happen very often, it should be reserved for cases where laws are internally inconsistent (and thus inapplicable) or are trying to invalidly overrule laws that require a stronger majority to change (to prevent constitutional amendments from being passed as regular laws just 'cause). I think the intent of SCOTUS was originally to decipher laws into a workable framework - given that some laws could potentially interact weirdly with decade or century old laws... and to help highlight incongruities in laws that law makers may have overlooked during their original writing in an effort to spur congress to correct said law.
- ummonk 7y ago
  No different than tech debt at places where shipping code is more incentivized than cleaning up code.
- yourapostasy 7y ago
  This is a "bug" in human civilization (hopefully not human nature). We by and large as a species, tend to favor new shiny over maintenance activity. Whether it is tech debt, infrastructure debt, or legislative debt, the task of re-factoring, editing and cleaning up the existing is always given short shrift by overall human organizations, and the more political they are the more pronounced this behavior. This is especially challenging when cleaned-up platforms are immediately seized upon by parasitic short-term political animals to bodge on quick wins that they successfully trumpet as solely due to their leadership, and the claim works on the stakeholders. This is a problem as our civilization grows larger and more complex. Sustaining the ever-increasing complexity requires the biological equivalent of continuously performing the grunt work cleaning up the free radicals that are making the system inefficient, and re-asserting not just repaired core DNA, but an expressed DNA adapted to changed conditions.

concerned_user 7y ago

I also notice trend of adding some ridiculous/controversial paragraphs to the bill that you can "give up" later. When people are tired after first couple of rejections and general public is annoyed by same bill being constantly mentioned, new one gets thrown into the spotlight and latter one passes without much attention.

otakucode 7y ago

It has bothered me for decades that this seems to be a 'bug' in the design of the US government system. ~500 people whose job is to create new laws. 9 people who can effectively remove them (SCOTUS), and who have a very limited schedule. Plus if they are ever too busy and pass on hearing a case because others are more pressing, that immediately cements the law into place and establishes it as having 'survived Supreme Court challenge' since refusing to hear is equivalent to accepting the lower court ruling and establishes it as precedent. I do not see how you can run a system with ~500 'inputs' and 9 low-flow 'outputs' for a long time without resulting in an overflow of oppressive tyranny.

munk-a 7y ago
Congress should generally be removing laws, SCOTUS based law invalidation is sort of the last chance removal and ideally wouldn't happen very often, it should be reserved for cases where laws are internally inconsistent (and thus inapplicable) or are trying to invalidly overrule laws that require a stronger majority to change (to prevent constitutional amendments from being passed as regular laws just 'cause). I think the intent of SCOTUS was originally to decipher laws into a workable framework - given that some laws could potentially interact weirdly with decade or century old laws... and to help highlight incongruities in laws that law makers may have overlooked during their original writing in an effort to spur congress to correct said law.
ummonk 7y ago
No different than tech debt at places where shipping code is more incentivized than cleaning up code.
yourapostasy 7y ago
This is a "bug" in human civilization (hopefully not human nature). We by and large as a species, tend to favor new shiny over maintenance activity. Whether it is tech debt, infrastructure debt, or legislative debt, the task of re-factoring, editing and cleaning up the existing is always given short shrift by overall human organizations, and the more political they are the more pronounced this behavior. This is especially challenging when cleaned-up platforms are immediately seized upon by parasitic short-term political animals to bodge on quick wins that they successfully trumpet as solely due to their leadership, and the claim works on the stakeholders. This is a problem as our civilization grows larger and more complex. Sustaining the ever-increasing complexity requires the biological equivalent of continuously performing the grunt work cleaning up the free radicals that are making the system inefficient, and re-asserting not just repaired core DNA, but an expressed DNA adapted to changed conditions.