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>If you consider that laws tend to be passed to support populism first, business interests second [...] It's been a while since I looked into this, but my unde

by ABCLAW 5y ago

>If you consider that laws tend to be passed to support populism first, business interests second [...] It's been a while since I looked into this, but my understanding is that quantitatively this is almost the opposite of what actually occurs: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

emn13 5y ago
I meant populism in the pejorative political sense, not in the sense of popular with rational, self-interested and well-informed voters, say. As in populism: when various actors tout extremely simplistic (and generally bad faith) solutions to painful, complex, or even misdirected problems via emotional appeals. I was under the impression that's how people usually use the word nowadays, but that might have been my mistake ;-). Unfortunately, it's just very, very rare to have sufficient unity within the electorate for old-style populism (in the positive sense as in representing the will of the people) to have much active, helpful impact. Maybe it helps sustain well-regarded accomplishments, and thus acts in a harder to see fashion? In any case, when I ranked citizens everyday rights (not just emotional appeals to concepts) as pretty much dead last in the priorities of the elected leaders, that aligns with the text you quoted. But the GDPR is also a product of its time, and emotional appeals play a role here too. Peoples mistrust of big tech surely helped bring this to the forefront, even if the actual rules probably help avoid competition by being practically very burdensome for small competitors - and it wouldn't surprise me if corporate lobbying had a hand in ensuring that outcome. And perhaps stuff like NSA's spying on EU leaders helped stiffen their spine against US corporate interests; because the snowden stories would have been breaking around the same time, (IIRC?). In any case: the point is that I'm quite skeptical that the GDPR somehow managed what most legislation does not, which is to actually place citizens rights first. The emotional appeals combined with the fairly poor result (in practice - the idea is sound) sure seems to suggest that as usual, even here, normal political reality was quite present and that it was drafted and passed while protecting major corporate interests and firing up the emotional appeals of political leaders. It's a little ironic that part of that appeal was likely the fact that they were sticking it to those pesky foreign (american) firms... when in fact those very firms were among the best protected by the legislation.

by ABCLAW 5y ago

emn13 5y ago

I meant populism in the pejorative political sense, not in the sense of popular with rational, self-interested and well-informed voters, say. As in populism: when various actors tout extremely simplistic (and generally bad faith) solutions to painful, complex, or even misdirected problems via emotional appeals. I was under the impression that's how people usually use the word nowadays, but that might have been my mistake ;-). Unfortunately, it's just very, very rare to have sufficient unity within the electorate for old-style populism (in the positive sense as in representing the will of the people) to have much active, helpful impact. Maybe it helps sustain well-regarded accomplishments, and thus acts in a harder to see fashion? In any case, when I ranked citizens everyday rights (not just emotional appeals to concepts) as pretty much dead last in the priorities of the elected leaders, that aligns with the text you quoted. But the GDPR is also a product of its time, and emotional appeals play a role here too. Peoples mistrust of big tech surely helped bring this to the forefront, even if the actual rules probably help avoid competition by being practically very burdensome for small competitors - and it wouldn't surprise me if corporate lobbying had a hand in ensuring that outcome. And perhaps stuff like NSA's spying on EU leaders helped stiffen their spine against US corporate interests; because the snowden stories would have been breaking around the same time, (IIRC?). In any case: the point is that I'm quite skeptical that the GDPR somehow managed what most legislation does not, which is to actually place citizens rights first. The emotional appeals combined with the fairly poor result (in practice - the idea is sound) sure seems to suggest that as usual, even here, normal political reality was quite present and that it was drafted and passed while protecting major corporate interests and firing up the emotional appeals of political leaders. It's a little ironic that part of that appeal was likely the fact that they were sticking it to those pesky foreign (american) firms... when in fact those very firms were among the best protected by the legislation.