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If the United States’ populace elects its officials, why do the representatives act against the populace’s wishes? Is this typical of all governments with elec
by fumar 6y ago
If the United States’ populace elects its officials, why do the representatives act against the populace’s wishes?
Is this typical of all governments with elected representation? Are they solving different organizational problems that most people are not aware of? I am curious how such a system arises, maintains itself, and is resilient to change.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jonkho 6y agoThe agents in a system tends to work in the way the system incentivizes them. Understand the forces of these incentives to predict behavior.
- breck 6y agoI think a big part is the growth in complexity of the "source code" has allowed special interests to thrive in a discrete way. But I think the biggest problem is centralization of media control. Copyright allows the media to be controlled by tiny fraction <1% of the population. Control the media and it becomes a lot easier to get away with lying. We need to #AbolishCopyright
- fumar 6y agoAnyone can start a news or media organization in the US. Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? HN likes to talk about industries ripe for disruption. I would argue then that the media or news sectors are primed for a new breed of journalism. Can media ownership be decentralized when the gateway to media consumption is owned by Google and Facebook?
- breck 6y agoYes, anyone can start one. > Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? No. Entering isn't hard, it's surviving, particularly if you are good. It's the near impossibility to compete against the big players because of copyright and patent laws. Without abolishing these unfair laws, you cannot disrupt them. You cannot displace them. When I was at Microsoft I saw the advantages first hand. If I had the blessing of the C-Suite, I could go and squash any business I wanted to as long as they weren't Apple, Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Look at Slack, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc. Huge successes, and yet at the end of the day realized they couldn't be viable without joining one of the big dogs. The problem is those big dogs are black holes sucking up an enormous amount of information, that you cannot take with you if you leave because of #imaginaryproperty laws, and hence you are always at a huge information disadvantage if you try and compete against them and will get squashed. Come up with a great new Saas app? At some point if you're successful you will have to sell to one of them, or some exec will decide they'd like to take over your market and leverage their information advantage against you—good luck hanging on to your top talent when the big players offer them 3x the salary and job security; good luck building your sales pipelines when the big dogs have access to your customer list and purchasing decision makers with a snap of their fingers; good luck hanging on to your suppliers when the big dogs offer better terms; good luck acquiring customers when the big dogs have 1/10th the CAC. I loved and was in awe of the talent of the people at Microsoft. But they don't need the #ImaginaryProperty protections. It makes them do shittier work and makes us all worse off (and the only affect is a redistribution of wealth to the top 1%).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fumar 6y agoIf information and copyright laws create an unfair advantage to the established large players, then removing them should create a more level playing field. Is that right? Wouldn't we still have a winner takes all outcome due to network effects, and users would eventually prefer one search engine or one internet portal? Even if new players could compete, they would still encounter existing large protected companies. Protected by a data and high monthly active user moat. I suppose without copyright laws, the small players could coexist but remain small...
- breck 6y agoImagine if a search engine couldn’t sue a competitor for crawling it’s results.
- madamelic 6y ago>If the USA populace elects its officials, why do the representatives act against the populace’s wishes? Here is the basic flow: - Get elected by lying to voters and/or suppressing the vote - Use power to choose your own voters / write laws to suppress voters who are against you - Repeat So in effect, many elected officials can safely ignore constiuent's wishes because either: not enough can / will vote against you or you can use your power to make sure they can't vote against you. Then you have the issue of politicians being given bribes... I mean... lobbying money to do what corporations want.
- rusk 6y agoSee Brexit
- nyxtom 6y agoWe do elect our officials, but the way legislation gets pushed through is typically lobbied by special interests. In some cases the laws themselves are written by those same special interests rather than written by the legislative bodies. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/ https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-pas...
- eternalban 6y agoStart with the glorious revolution in UK, and the rise of mercantile corporations (East-India et al.) and licensed /sanctioned cooperatives (such as the original colonies), throw in a pinch of Puritan economic ethics and morality, and finally let it simmer in a pot stamped with “corporations are legal persons”.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Futurebot 6y agoWe're an oligarchy, that's why: 'that rich people and organizations representing business interests have a powerful grip on U.S. government policy. After examining differences in public opinion across income groups on a wide variety of issues, the political scientists Martin Gilens, of Princeton, and Benjamin Page, of Northwestern, found that the preferences of rich people had a much bigger impact on subsequent policy decisions than the views of middle-income and poor Americans. Indeed, the opinions of lower-income groups, and the interest groups that represent them, appear to have little or no independent impact on policy. “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” Gilens and Page write: Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. In their conclusion, Gilens and Page go even further, asserting that “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover … even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”'
- Kaveren 6y agothat's because many people don't vote or take part in political advocacy. it doesn't make society in "oligarchy". our democracy actually works really well, even with gerrymandering and some voter disenfranchisement. if all those people actually voted frequently, the policy outcomes would be a lot different. compare this to actual oligarchies where opposition parties actually can't accomplish anything because they're denied access to elections, or there's legitimate election fraud, or serious voter intimidation, et cetera. and policy outcomes being determines by random people is actually awful, the average person has absolutely no understanding of basic economics. it's not even desirable.
- ddevault 6y agoIt's not because people aren't voting - it's because our votes are not equal. We don't have "one person, one vote" here - we have "one dollar, one vote", and those with more dollars get more votes. Citizen's United infamously set that in stone. Meanwhile, rampant gerrymandering, court packing, and other anti-democratic tactics have been heavily abused over the past few decades of Republican control to further erode and cement that. Though Republicans are not the only ones accountable - Democrats are just as responsible for accepting PAC money, for instance - and the two party system is mathematically guaranteed to be intractible as a consequence of our voting system. Even if every eligible voter voted in every election, the two party system is an inevitable conseqeunce of any election outcome, and both parties are dogs of the rich. That the average American has approximately zero influence in politics is a mathematical, deliberately orchestrated truth.
- ojbyrne 6y agoPoliticians follow the wishes of donors, not voters. Pretty simple.
- deelowe 6y agoMost people tend to vote along party lines. Some of those that don't will be influenced by successful campaigns. The US is a two party, first pass the post system. Getting on the party ticket is generally dictated again by campaign funding and other forms of political influence. All and all, donors have a huge role to play in determining the outcome of an election as securing funding and political connections with a major party is essential to a successful election. As such, US representatives tend to focus heavily on big donor wishes. Also, insider trading appears to be somewhat of a problem in Washington these days. There is likely a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on. Why else would an already wealthy individual take a 174k/yr job?
- joseph_grobbles 6y agoLyndon B. Johnson - “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” Play on a particular grievance or issue of a voter and they'll let you do almost anything else. Be anti-immigrant and you can destroy social wellness programs, stomp on unions, etc.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoIt's sad how true that quote is. The average person votes on rhetoric not actions, like voting record. All you got to do is give them a reason to vote for you, and it helps to have an excuse for your actions to prevent political attacks (like the quote above) and your voters will turn a blind eye to everything else.
- joseph_grobbles 6y agoI used the racism quote above because that is the foundation of how completely broken the political system in the US is. Where every progressive policy can be short circuited -- reviled by the very people it would benefit the most -- through some simple racist gyrations. Universal healthcare -- illegal immigrants! Robust social safety nets -- the classic "black welfare mother with a Cadillac" canard that comes up every time, where trillions in corporate welfare get a pass by angering people about some hypothetical minority "taking advantage" Universal income -- black mothers with lots of babies taking advantage It's incredible, but the modern GOP plays it like a fiddle. It is extraordinary, and the public is willingly complicit.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blackearl 6y agoIt's not even possible to have our good representatives help. They had a 5500+ page bill thrown together then said, if you don't vote on this tomorrow, people won't get a measly $600. How are we even supposed to know what got crammed in there? You'd need a 100 person team, fluent in legalese, reading through 50+ pages to simply learn what comprises this monster in the 1 day they gave them to vote on it.
- FireBeyond 6y agoA day? Closer to 90 minutes. The bill was delivered at 2pm, and the vote, on the floor, was at 4pm.
- SyzygistSix 6y agoWe kind of don't. Only a very small percentage vote in primary elections, which is the election that determines who will be on the ballot in the general election.
- tsjq 6y agoPopulace gives them votes. Corporates give money. Loads of money. And influence. And power.
- jorblumesea 6y agoIdentity politics, for the most part. Talk about how you're going to "own the libs" or "every trump support is a racist" and you can loot the country. The political divisions are advantageous for getting citizens to vote against their own interests. The "us vs them" mentality is by design, something that is fomented to achieve political goals. People complain about do nothing congress and stagnation, then vote in hardcore right wing conspiracy theorist QAnon candidates who are unlikely to pass real legislation.
- hhjinks 6y agoWhat systems can be put in place so that unpopular legislation like this isn't snuck into unrelated bills? You'd need something like a rolling referendum on all suggested law changes that were up for a direct democratic vote, but direct democracy would probably just lead to a lot more politics fatigue.
- stephen 6y agoDefer to the other replies pointing out this is against services and not individuals, but I think "the populace wishes for free content, government please make it so" is fairly naive. It requires money to produce good content, and the government protecting property rights (yes for corporations, but who pay salaries and yes stockholders) is actually doing what the majority of the populace effectively wants.
- tootie 6y agoYou'll need a huge citation that this against the populace's wishes. I'd wager 99% of Americans still want theft to be illegal.
- Imnimo 6y agoIt would be an interesting experiment for a polling company to pick a sampling of legislation and see how much of a disconnect there is. I feel like in this instance, the number of people who would say "congress should make cracking down on streaming a priority" is near zero, but maybe the number of people who would say "it should be illegal to intentionally host copyrighted material" might be pretty high.
- proc0 6y agoCorruption and low information voters.