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It's telling that 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking our shoes off at airports yet we still don't have federally mandated sick leave despite being two years

It's telling that 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking our shoes off at airports yet we still don't have federally mandated sick leave despite being two years into a pandemic that has been more fatal than 9/11 by several orders of magnitude.

beamatronic 5y ago
It's the will of the voters.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  That only works if you think we're truly represented by our representatives.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    "Truly" is doing a lot of work here, and creating an is/ought problem. Representatives do reflect the will of the people who elected them. The real problem is, on an individual level, your vote is statistically irrelevant, so it's easy to disassociate, and to blame "the others" who, collectively, have a vastly more powerful say over who represents you than you do. "They ought to vote more like how I want them to." you can say, "They don't vote correctly and I can't stop them, so it's the system's fault for giving them power over me!" This, of course, completely undermines the entire point of democracy, that it represents the collective will of the people, not any individual's arbitrary will. A representative democracy works even if you don't believe it does. It stops working if everyone doesn't believe it does, which is certainly not even close to the case in the US.
    - andrew_ 5y ago
      And if people believe that politicians are more about self-interest than representative interest and that it doesn't generally matter who is elected?
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        Some people do believe that, but most don’t in any actionable sense, otherwise they’d do something about it. It’s easy to pretend we’re collectively helpless just because we individually are, but being individually helpless is by design. You were never meant to have more of a say than your neighbor, even if practically you may have at one point.
    - thomascgalvin 5y ago
      > Representatives do reflect the will of the people who elected them. First, this is false. Policy in the US is dictated by campaign contributions, not voter sentiment. Take a wildly popular idea, like universal background checks for firearm purchases. This enjoys something like 80-90% support among both Republican and Democratic voters, but it will never get through Congress, because of the NRA. Second, "the people who elected them" is not itself representative of society as a whole. The US Senate and the US Presidency are decided by mechanisms that intentionally award oversized representation to certain geographical areas. There are only ten states with a population higher than Los Angeles County, but those states still get two Senators. So American democracy is built to reflect the will of the monied, and the will of small population centers. Most of us are not rich, and most of us live in dense population centers. This means our system of government is giving us the exact opposite outcome we should be looking for.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        It's not "false" in the sense that 1+1=3 is false, though you may disagree with it. American democracy does not reflect the will of the monied, it reflects the will of the people, you just don't like what that aggregate will represents because it's not your will. No matter how much money gets dumped into elections, people actually have to vote in them, and you cannot serve in any elected capacity without first being elected. Maybe the will of the people can be changed with money, and maybe it can be changed to reflect views that are ultimately harmful to the very people who hold those views, but it is the will of the people. Wealth doesn't actually, literally, buy votes, and it is "1+1=3" kind of false to claim it does. You may not like what your system of government produces as its outcomes, but it's exactly what it should be producing; a reflection of what its people want. I'm sorry it's not what you want, and I'm sorry that individual issue polling doesn't reflect reality, but when the polling actually matters, people vote differently than when a single issue is up for a non-binding, theoretical discussion.
        thomascgalvin 5y ago
        > You may not like what your system of government produces as its outcomes, but it's exactly what it should be producing; a reflection of what its people want. This is absolutely untrue, because representation is intentionally not proportional to population. Our electoral system produces a reflection of what some people want, and those people are typically from smaller, more conservative, less populated, less economically viable areas. Because of this, US policy does not reflect the will of the majority on most major issues. Most people support taxing the ultra-wealthy at a higher percentage of their income, but this is not US policy. Most people support background checks on all firearms sales, but this is not US policy. Most voters support campaign finance reform, but this is not US policy. Most voters support a ban on Representatives actively trading stocks, but this is not US policy. More than half of voters support at least some form of student loan forgiveness, but this is not US policy. You can basically walk the link of current important issues, and find that the will of the people is not represented at the Federal level. I don't like what our system of government produces, not because it goes against what I want, but because it goes against what most people want. It is a majority held hostage by the tyranny of a minority, and that is becoming less and less tenable as time goes on.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      This is trivially refutable by anybody who has voted for a compromise candidate, which is effectively everyone. 60% of Americans think that marijuana should be legal for recreational use [0], yet it remains illegal at the federal level. You cannot claim plausibly claim this situation reflects the will of the voters. Rather, the voters' will is herded into a few bundled choices, who differentiate themselves on hot button topics while safely ignoring consensus on less divisive ones. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-overwhelmingly-say-marijuana-should-be-legal-for-recreational-or-medical-use/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o...
      - nradov 5y ago
        Several serious candidates in the 2020 presidential election explicitly supported federal marijuana legalization (or at least decriminalization). They didn't get many votes in the primaries, so apparently voters don't consider that an important issue.
        mindslight 5y ago
        You demonstrated my exact critique - voters were made to express their preferences in an extremely limiting fashion. Having to prioritize issues directly implies not being able to express your will on some issues.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        "America" is not the jurisdiction, it's the 435 districts and the 50 states. It's the will of each of those constituencies that decide who is sent to congress, rather than a straight popular vote. National issues do not impact the nation equally, and the US's legislative body represents that fact. Deciding how we, as a group of people, live together is much more complex than, "Let's just vote on each thing!" A system like that is rife with all kinds of "wolves vote to eat the sheep" problems, to a degree much worse than any system we might have right now in the US.
        mindslight 5y ago
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Most of them have been in power for decades, at certain point you have to start blaming the voters who pull the lever for more of the same.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Revolution and the lack thereof is also a kind of voting.
- vmception 5y ago
  This isn't a direct democracy at the federal level. there is no mechanism for it so we should stop pretending that there is.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    You don't need a direct democracy to reflect the will of the voters.
    - Sargos 5y ago
      It would be disingenuous to claim that taking off shoes at the airport is the will of the people. Nobody voted for that. The public was never consulted.
      - akvadrako 5y ago
        But there are polls and the TSA has public support.
    - sslayer 5y ago
      At the Local and State level - I don't understand why people don't get this - at the Federal level you have representation. The United States intent was to Unite the States on Federal/National issues - not local ones - the intent was to leave the states to rules at the state level, not make sure "everyone in the United States" is "doing the same thing".
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        And it's not even really a conservative view to say that. Even the most liberal of politicians would acknowledge that laws governing certain areas don't make sense everywhere, and there's a reason for keeping states, given the gigantic size of our country. This comes up all the time in redistricting conversations; very often the goal for some of the strangers gerrymandered districts is to keep populations together. People should have a say in how their day-to-day lives are governed, and not just be ruled by a huge cluster of people on a completely different part of the planet.
- d0mine 5y ago
  Research shows ordinary voters have zero influence.
- brimble 5y ago
  There's a significant and well-documented gap between voter preferences and our laws. Last I checked it's even larger in the US than in most democracies (our electoral system is designed to be that way, and also has failed in ways not originally expected, magnifying the effect)
- rdtwo 5y ago
  People voted in a democratic senator and got a Republican traitor instead. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s will just bad luck
webmaven 5y ago
> It's telling that 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking our shoes off at airports Obligatory Nitpick: the shoe bombing attempt happened in December 2001: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_American_Airlines_Flight_63_bombing_attempt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_American_Airlines_Fligh...

beamatronic 5y ago

It's the will of the voters.

andrew_ 5y ago
That only works if you think we're truly represented by our representatives.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  "Truly" is doing a lot of work here, and creating an is/ought problem. Representatives do reflect the will of the people who elected them. The real problem is, on an individual level, your vote is statistically irrelevant, so it's easy to disassociate, and to blame "the others" who, collectively, have a vastly more powerful say over who represents you than you do. "They ought to vote more like how I want them to." you can say, "They don't vote correctly and I can't stop them, so it's the system's fault for giving them power over me!" This, of course, completely undermines the entire point of democracy, that it represents the collective will of the people, not any individual's arbitrary will. A representative democracy works even if you don't believe it does. It stops working if everyone doesn't believe it does, which is certainly not even close to the case in the US.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    And if people believe that politicians are more about self-interest than representative interest and that it doesn't generally matter who is elected?
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      Some people do believe that, but most don’t in any actionable sense, otherwise they’d do something about it. It’s easy to pretend we’re collectively helpless just because we individually are, but being individually helpless is by design. You were never meant to have more of a say than your neighbor, even if practically you may have at one point.
  - thomascgalvin 5y ago
    > Representatives do reflect the will of the people who elected them. First, this is false. Policy in the US is dictated by campaign contributions, not voter sentiment. Take a wildly popular idea, like universal background checks for firearm purchases. This enjoys something like 80-90% support among both Republican and Democratic voters, but it will never get through Congress, because of the NRA. Second, "the people who elected them" is not itself representative of society as a whole. The US Senate and the US Presidency are decided by mechanisms that intentionally award oversized representation to certain geographical areas. There are only ten states with a population higher than Los Angeles County, but those states still get two Senators. So American democracy is built to reflect the will of the monied, and the will of small population centers. Most of us are not rich, and most of us live in dense population centers. This means our system of government is giving us the exact opposite outcome we should be looking for.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      It's not "false" in the sense that 1+1=3 is false, though you may disagree with it. American democracy does not reflect the will of the monied, it reflects the will of the people, you just don't like what that aggregate will represents because it's not your will. No matter how much money gets dumped into elections, people actually have to vote in them, and you cannot serve in any elected capacity without first being elected. Maybe the will of the people can be changed with money, and maybe it can be changed to reflect views that are ultimately harmful to the very people who hold those views, but it is the will of the people. Wealth doesn't actually, literally, buy votes, and it is "1+1=3" kind of false to claim it does. You may not like what your system of government produces as its outcomes, but it's exactly what it should be producing; a reflection of what its people want. I'm sorry it's not what you want, and I'm sorry that individual issue polling doesn't reflect reality, but when the polling actually matters, people vote differently than when a single issue is up for a non-binding, theoretical discussion.
      - thomascgalvin 5y ago
        > You may not like what your system of government produces as its outcomes, but it's exactly what it should be producing; a reflection of what its people want. This is absolutely untrue, because representation is intentionally not proportional to population. Our electoral system produces a reflection of what some people want, and those people are typically from smaller, more conservative, less populated, less economically viable areas. Because of this, US policy does not reflect the will of the majority on most major issues. Most people support taxing the ultra-wealthy at a higher percentage of their income, but this is not US policy. Most people support background checks on all firearms sales, but this is not US policy. Most voters support campaign finance reform, but this is not US policy. Most voters support a ban on Representatives actively trading stocks, but this is not US policy. More than half of voters support at least some form of student loan forgiveness, but this is not US policy. You can basically walk the link of current important issues, and find that the will of the people is not represented at the Federal level. I don't like what our system of government produces, not because it goes against what I want, but because it goes against what most people want. It is a majority held hostage by the tyranny of a minority, and that is becoming less and less tenable as time goes on.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    This is trivially refutable by anybody who has voted for a compromise candidate, which is effectively everyone. 60% of Americans think that marijuana should be legal for recreational use [0], yet it remains illegal at the federal level. You cannot claim plausibly claim this situation reflects the will of the voters. Rather, the voters' will is herded into a few bundled choices, who differentiate themselves on hot button topics while safely ignoring consensus on less divisive ones. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-overwhelmingly-say-marijuana-should-be-legal-for-recreational-or-medical-use/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o...
    - nradov 5y ago
      Several serious candidates in the 2020 presidential election explicitly supported federal marijuana legalization (or at least decriminalization). They didn't get many votes in the primaries, so apparently voters don't consider that an important issue.
      - mindslight 5y ago
        You demonstrated my exact critique - voters were made to express their preferences in an extremely limiting fashion. Having to prioritize issues directly implies not being able to express your will on some issues.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      "America" is not the jurisdiction, it's the 435 districts and the 50 states. It's the will of each of those constituencies that decide who is sent to congress, rather than a straight popular vote. National issues do not impact the nation equally, and the US's legislative body represents that fact. Deciding how we, as a group of people, live together is much more complex than, "Let's just vote on each thing!" A system like that is rife with all kinds of "wolves vote to eat the sheep" problems, to a degree much worse than any system we might have right now in the US.
      - mindslight 5y ago
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Most of them have been in power for decades, at certain point you have to start blaming the voters who pull the lever for more of the same.
- busterarm 5y ago
  Revolution and the lack thereof is also a kind of voting.
vmception 5y ago
This isn't a direct democracy at the federal level. there is no mechanism for it so we should stop pretending that there is.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  You don't need a direct democracy to reflect the will of the voters.
  - Sargos 5y ago
    It would be disingenuous to claim that taking off shoes at the airport is the will of the people. Nobody voted for that. The public was never consulted.
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      But there are polls and the TSA has public support.
  - sslayer 5y ago
    At the Local and State level - I don't understand why people don't get this - at the Federal level you have representation. The United States intent was to Unite the States on Federal/National issues - not local ones - the intent was to leave the states to rules at the state level, not make sure "everyone in the United States" is "doing the same thing".
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      And it's not even really a conservative view to say that. Even the most liberal of politicians would acknowledge that laws governing certain areas don't make sense everywhere, and there's a reason for keeping states, given the gigantic size of our country. This comes up all the time in redistricting conversations; very often the goal for some of the strangers gerrymandered districts is to keep populations together. People should have a say in how their day-to-day lives are governed, and not just be ruled by a huge cluster of people on a completely different part of the planet.
d0mine 5y ago
Research shows ordinary voters have zero influence.
brimble 5y ago
There's a significant and well-documented gap between voter preferences and our laws. Last I checked it's even larger in the US than in most democracies (our electoral system is designed to be that way, and also has failed in ways not originally expected, magnifying the effect)
rdtwo 5y ago
People voted in a democratic senator and got a Republican traitor instead. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s will just bad luck

webmaven 5y ago

> It's telling that 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking our shoes off at airports Obligatory Nitpick: the shoe bombing attempt happened in December 2001: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_American_Airlines_Flight_63_bombing_attempt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_American_Airlines_Fligh...