8 ms·

Can anyone familiar with the process, explain exactly how these industry lobbyists win these cases? With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and wi

Can anyone familiar with the process, explain exactly how these industry lobbyists win these cases? With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and with bipartisan support - you'd think this would be an easy case to argue. Do the lobbyists have some incredibly legitimate insider information they share with the senators? Do they just throw cash/donations at them?

lolinder 4y ago
75% of Californians are pro-right to repair when asked, but that doesn't mean that 75% really know what it means much less care about it. The legislature is probably assuming that the campaign money from the lobbyists will more than make up for the lost votes from the tiny minority that truly cares.
- whoopdedo 4y ago
  It also depends on who is asking the question. A right-to-repair advocate would ask "Do you support this law that will lower the cost of repairing old phones?" and most people will agree. Then an industry group asks the same people "Do you support this law that will raise the cost of making new phones?" and get a different answer.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I realize you’re making a hypothetical point about the importance of question phrasing, but I really don’t see how this law would raise the cost of making new phones.
    - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
      I think it is reasonable to imagine some manufacturing processes that are single shot construction. Gluing pieces together rather than screws/fasteners comes to mind.
      - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
        Yes, but this bill wouldn't have affected any of that. Manufacturers could have continued making their devices difficult or even impossible to repair, they just would have had to make their own parts and repair manuals available to third parties.
    - hurflmurfl 4y ago
      Doesn't making "repairable" things imply having to add design constraints, which would translate to increased costs of research/development/production?
      - indymike 4y ago
        No, it just means making it possible to buy parts, repair manuals/schematics for products and preventing manufacturers for refusing warranty coverage when a repair is done correctly by a third party or product owner. We have right to repair for cars, and have since the 1970s, and without it... the car economy would be more frightening than it already is.
      - ziml77 4y ago
        Anyone who thinks that’s what this is about has not been following Right to Repair. While it would be great if things were designed with repairability in mind, the ask from Right to Repair is that no one be impeded from accessing manuals, components, and software needed for repair.
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        This specific bill was just about access to repair information and the ability to use third-party repair facilities. However, the Right to Repair organization specifically lists on their policy goals (https://www.repair.org/policy https://www.repair.org/policy): > Products should be designed to have their lifespan extended by regular maintenance and repair. > Design: Integrate Design for Repair principles into eco-design product design practices. And I have seen Right to Repair efforts that demanded repairable devices, even if that meant more bulk or more cost, or other tradeoffs. Framework and similar efforts have demonstrated that it's possible to build a repairable device that people actually like, without compromising too much on other factors. But until those substantial engineering efforts had been put in, this seemed like a fundamental tradeoff between two sets of somewhat-incompatible properties consumers may want, and should be able to choose between. (It's still a tradeoff insofar as devices providing repairability don't provide all the features available from other devices.)
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      When you can't repair your device you buy more. More phones sold = more amortization over fixed costs, so the device gets cheaper.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Anti-right-to-repair lobby out in full force to stop it—and they’re winning. And yet you’re still blaming the average Joe based on hypothetical questionairre framing.
tomohawk 4y ago
The Democrat party completely controls the state government. Thee party controls 31 of the 40 seats in the senate, and 60 of the 80 seats in the lower house. They have had a majority since 1996.
- api 4y ago
  They're also tenured. Even if they disappoint, what are people going to do vote Republican? Same one party rule situation exists in some very "red" states of course.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    I'm reminded of this quote: > The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      That is a lazy quip. A simply review of legislation passed in the few previous decades shows quite a bit of difference in goals. Even more of a stark difference once you look at differences in state laws.
    - maratc 4y ago
      > There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
  - indymike 4y ago
    Occasionally a politician does so poorly that the voters vote across the aisle. Right to repair can become one of the issues that causes people to vote for the other party. It really sucks to have to throw expensive products away because you simple can't fix them. Not being able to repair products is bad for everything but short term profits.
    - pgodzin 4y ago
guerrilla 4y ago
I imagine it's very complicated. Sometimes they just need cooperation on other things, then they own stock, their friends own stock, they run in the same social circles, you can bet many are just corrupt and if not their friends are, then there's the actual power the companies have (like the ability to build or layoff in their district, strategically hike prices, minor capital strikes, blackmail (remember who has all the data), all kinds of stuff.) Also, there aren't really any consequences to ignoring you anyway. On average, they'll either get re-elected because nobody notices/understands or they'll just be replaced by a new sock puppet. This is why you'd want liquid democracy, arbitrary right of recall or something along those lines.
bombcar 4y ago
The devil is often in the details, and working out the details can easily be engineered to kill a bill.
jimmygrapes 4y ago
In my experience, lobbyists are essentially individual people hired by an organization to do extensive, cited research on the topic, and develop "well written and formatted" proposals for/against, as well as dedicate time to delivering the proposals and arguments in person. They call the legislators, they schedule meetings with them, they go through whatever bureaucracy of a given office to get in contact with the legislator, and present their information directly in ways that make the legislator "understand" the position better. There might be financial contributions and vague promises of future opportunities, but those tend to come from a different angle via the same organization. On the other hand, the regular people complain about the topic in pubs and coffee shops and online and at the dinner table, and might fill out a petition or a pre-made letter. They might even send a personalized email or physical letter (too often poorly worded and badly formatted with no evidentiary backing), or leave voice mails with a staffer. They won't do this very often, but feel that they have strength in numbers. Spoiler: receiving the same misspelled email from 5000 people doesn't make the legislator (or their staff) think "oh wow a lot of people are really upset by this", it just to spam/trash cans. Financial contribution ("bribes") and fancy dinners or gifts are usually the boogeyman when it comes to blaming lobbyists, but those are tangential and not as common as most people think. The biggest factor for a successful lobbyist is the research, presentation, and persistence.
- indymike 4y ago
  > In my experience, lobbyists are essentially individual people hired by an organization to do extensive, cited research on the topic, and develop "well written and formatted" proposals for/against, as well as dedicate time to delivering the proposals and arguments in person. My experience is quite different and comes from doing grass roots lobbying at the state and Federal level. Grass-roots lobbying is just where regular citizens go do the lobbying instead of paid professionals. If you ever get a chance to get involved in this kind of lobbying, it will change how you think about government, and you'll be pleasantly surprised to see you can actually make a difference. You'll also find out that being a legislator at any level is an almost impossible job. Lobbyists (yes, they are individuals, but usually have an organization and staff behind them) are paid to show up and "help" legislators. This ranges from providing information all the way up to writing bills. Often bills are initially written by lobbyists (the joke is that most laws are written by staff interns and lobbyists). The reason lobbyists are effective is simple: legislators all the way up to the US Senate don't have time to do the work needed to write laws, debate them, pass them, campaign, go to parades and graduations and communicate with constituents... so they work with lobbyists, who are well paid to have time. Yes, professional lobbyists always have an ulterior motive, and always have time, because their paycheck depends on it.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and with bipartisan support - you'd think this would be an easy case to argue “Bipartisan support“ is, since we are well out of the pre-1990s realignment period, mostly a sign of low political salience, an issue that doesn't have much relevance to voting behavior to most of the public. Breadth (%) of support or opposition is far less important than depth (impact on voting, volunteering, and donating behavior), and this is an issue where the depth of support in the general public is near 0, where the depth of opposition from entrenched industry interests is high.
- drc500free 4y ago
  You explained very well something that I have struggled to put into words about all these tech bills. Thank you.
- pj_mukh 4y ago
  This. I wish more polls had an importance/salience correction factor applied. It would significantly tilt most polls.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    What would be the best way to gauge that? My naive take on this would be to have poll questions like: > Are you in favor of consumers' right to repair? ...How strong is your position? (1–5) Of course this is vulnerable to strategic answering, where people just slam on ‘5’ for each question. Like how star ratings are inflated on Amazon. My next strategy would be pairwise contests. So: > Alice supports right-to-repair (RTR) and raising property taxes. Bob is opposed to RTR and wants to lower property taxes. Who would you vote for? > Carol supports RTR and applying the death penalty to a wider range of felonies. David opposes RTR and wants to eliminate capital punishment altogether. Who would you vote for? But too much of that and you'd start to lose people. How many questions can you pose before you're only getting answers from serial poll-takers?
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Salience is pretty hard to measure by means other than substantive political behavior.
pmoriarty 4y ago
It's an open secret in politics that government jobs are a revolving door to/from industry. Corporate executives frequently go in to politics, and when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs at the very corporations they benefited while in office. They don't have to be outright bribed while in office (though it's not unknown for that to happen), but they know they'll be handsomely rewarded once they leave. That's not to mention them or their family members investing in companies they know will benefit from their actions while in office.
- shawnz 4y ago
  This is a tired argument. Of course people who have industry experience will continue to work in that industry. And if the chance of being rewarded with a "cushy" job after leaving office is so compelling then why are so few people interested in becoming politicians?
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    It's less of an argument and more a list of facts, isn't it? > then why are so few people interested in becoming politicians? Obviously because they can't afford to because they actually have to work.
    - shawnz 4y ago
      It's not clear to me that the overlap between corporate and political career paths really has any meaningful impact on the way politicians vote on individual bills, so I wouldn't call that a fact
  - antris 4y ago
    >why are so few people interested in becoming politicians? Uh... what? There's a shortage of politicians nowhere, lol.
    - jwagenet 4y ago
      There might technically be enough politicians to fill all available positions, but there clearly aren’t enough for a competitive and diverse ideological landscape.
draw_down 4y ago
Here’s a thread about the pitfalls of issue polling. https://mobile.twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355186871354200066 https://mobile.twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355186871354200...
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
It is all about money. Always was and always will be. Politicians of both colors love the cash, they are addicted to the cash. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ftc-report-shows-growing-influence-of-8569606/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ftc-report-shows-growing-i... Politician support corporations, not the people. Wake the F up.
dahdum 4y ago
75% of people like the idea of “right to repair” but that doesn’t mean they would support this particular implementation if they knew the details and side effects. Committees in the ideal allow a more nuanced examination and development of law. Sponsors have lobbyist support and the bills themselves may be written by them, for them, with any public benefit a side effect. As long as it “sounds good” other lawmakers feel forced to go along with.
indymike 4y ago
> Do the lobbyists have some incredibly legitimate insider information they share with the senators? Do they just throw cash/donations at them? I do some grass roots lobbying in Indiana. When we can't get a bill to the floor, it usually comes down to this: 1. The public might support the bill, but voters aren't willing to vote across the aisle over the issue behind the bill. So, the politician can kill the bill without fear. 2. There's a technical problem with the bill that would make it a bad law. Sometimes, this is sabotage, but most often, it is discovered late in the process and the bill dies in committee until next session. 3. The law would change the staus quo in some way that is harmful to the close supporters of legislators. This is less about money, and more about relationships. The answer to all of the above is simple: get more public support, and even work to unseat legislators that are opposed to your issue. State legislators usually don't have a strong grip on their seats (some do), so they can be unseated, often in primary elections.
jedberg 4y ago
California instituted term limits for its state representatives in 1990. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but what you end up with is that the most senior politicians in Sacramento are the lobbyists. The outcome of that is that most bills are written by lobbyists and most state reps vote how the lobbyists tell them to, because they lobbyists are the ones making the deals with the other lobbyists, instead of the long time representatives being in leadership. Each system has its pros and cons, but one of the main cons of term limits is that lobbyists are in control.
jeffbee 4y ago
Let's don't be too credulous about the polling performed by the bill's supporters. What would be the "pro right to repair" fraction if it were posed as a tradeoff between repairability and a slightly higher retail price? In my personal opinion the "security lock" language of this bill is dangerously vague, and the benefits it offers in terms of third-party repair are worth almost nothing to me, so I opposed the bill.
willcipriano 4y ago
Peoples politics are closer to sports team fandom than anything pragmatic. As long as you keep pulling the red or blue lever no matter what they don't have much incentive to do much of anything.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > Peoples politics are closer to sports team fandom than anything pragmatic. This is the result of the deliberate way in which clever malicious spindoctors manipulated political debate over the years in such a way so that what once was a pondered opinion became later akin to a religious affiliation. The bottom line is that an opinion can be changed while a religious belief cannot; it's the system's way to ensure that once a voter is captured it stays loyal forever.
avgcorrection 4y ago
> Can anyone familiar with the process, explain exactly how these industry lobbyists win these cases? With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and with bipartisan support - you'd think this would be an easy case to argue. Well, what does that tell you? Majority public opinion does not matter. Money does.
cjsplat 4y ago
It was killed in the Appropriations committee on a 7-0 vote, after passing in the Judiciary committee on a 8-1 vote. The Appropriations committee (AKA Ways and Means in the US House) is where lobbyists spend their money. Anything that costs money has to go through this, and everything costs money. The argument that this bill cost money was based on the potential impact on the courts as legal actions would be files to enforce the new warranty rights. Rather than trying to influence every potentially concerned member of legislature, better to spend 100x on the people who control the purse.

lolinder 4y ago

75% of Californians are pro-right to repair when asked, but that doesn't mean that 75% really know what it means much less care about it. The legislature is probably assuming that the campaign money from the lobbyists will more than make up for the lost votes from the tiny minority that truly cares.

whoopdedo 4y ago
It also depends on who is asking the question. A right-to-repair advocate would ask "Do you support this law that will lower the cost of repairing old phones?" and most people will agree. Then an industry group asks the same people "Do you support this law that will raise the cost of making new phones?" and get a different answer.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I realize you’re making a hypothetical point about the importance of question phrasing, but I really don’t see how this law would raise the cost of making new phones.
  - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
    I think it is reasonable to imagine some manufacturing processes that are single shot construction. Gluing pieces together rather than screws/fasteners comes to mind.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      Yes, but this bill wouldn't have affected any of that. Manufacturers could have continued making their devices difficult or even impossible to repair, they just would have had to make their own parts and repair manuals available to third parties.
  - hurflmurfl 4y ago
    Doesn't making "repairable" things imply having to add design constraints, which would translate to increased costs of research/development/production?
    - indymike 4y ago
      No, it just means making it possible to buy parts, repair manuals/schematics for products and preventing manufacturers for refusing warranty coverage when a repair is done correctly by a third party or product owner. We have right to repair for cars, and have since the 1970s, and without it... the car economy would be more frightening than it already is.
    - ziml77 4y ago
      Anyone who thinks that’s what this is about has not been following Right to Repair. While it would be great if things were designed with repairability in mind, the ask from Right to Repair is that no one be impeded from accessing manuals, components, and software needed for repair.
      - JoshTriplett 4y ago
        This specific bill was just about access to repair information and the ability to use third-party repair facilities. However, the Right to Repair organization specifically lists on their policy goals (https://www.repair.org/policy https://www.repair.org/policy): > Products should be designed to have their lifespan extended by regular maintenance and repair. > Design: Integrate Design for Repair principles into eco-design product design practices. And I have seen Right to Repair efforts that demanded repairable devices, even if that meant more bulk or more cost, or other tradeoffs. Framework and similar efforts have demonstrated that it's possible to build a repairable device that people actually like, without compromising too much on other factors. But until those substantial engineering efforts had been put in, this seemed like a fundamental tradeoff between two sets of somewhat-incompatible properties consumers may want, and should be able to choose between. (It's still a tradeoff insofar as devices providing repairability don't provide all the features available from other devices.)
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    When you can't repair your device you buy more. More phones sold = more amortization over fixed costs, so the device gets cheaper.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Anti-right-to-repair lobby out in full force to stop it—and they’re winning. And yet you’re still blaming the average Joe based on hypothetical questionairre framing.

tomohawk 4y ago

The Democrat party completely controls the state government. Thee party controls 31 of the 40 seats in the senate, and 60 of the 80 seats in the lower house. They have had a majority since 1996.

api 4y ago
They're also tenured. Even if they disappoint, what are people going to do vote Republican? Same one party rule situation exists in some very "red" states of course.
- sofixa 4y ago
  I'm reminded of this quote: > The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    That is a lazy quip. A simply review of legislation passed in the few previous decades shows quite a bit of difference in goals. Even more of a stark difference once you look at differences in state laws.
  - maratc 4y ago
    > There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
- indymike 4y ago
  Occasionally a politician does so poorly that the voters vote across the aisle. Right to repair can become one of the issues that causes people to vote for the other party. It really sucks to have to throw expensive products away because you simple can't fix them. Not being able to repair products is bad for everything but short term profits.
  - pgodzin 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago

I imagine it's very complicated. Sometimes they just need cooperation on other things, then they own stock, their friends own stock, they run in the same social circles, you can bet many are just corrupt and if not their friends are, then there's the actual power the companies have (like the ability to build or layoff in their district, strategically hike prices, minor capital strikes, blackmail (remember who has all the data), all kinds of stuff.) Also, there aren't really any consequences to ignoring you anyway. On average, they'll either get re-elected because nobody notices/understands or they'll just be replaced by a new sock puppet. This is why you'd want liquid democracy, arbitrary right of recall or something along those lines.

bombcar 4y ago

The devil is often in the details, and working out the details can easily be engineered to kill a bill.

jimmygrapes 4y ago

In my experience, lobbyists are essentially individual people hired by an organization to do extensive, cited research on the topic, and develop "well written and formatted" proposals for/against, as well as dedicate time to delivering the proposals and arguments in person. They call the legislators, they schedule meetings with them, they go through whatever bureaucracy of a given office to get in contact with the legislator, and present their information directly in ways that make the legislator "understand" the position better. There might be financial contributions and vague promises of future opportunities, but those tend to come from a different angle via the same organization. On the other hand, the regular people complain about the topic in pubs and coffee shops and online and at the dinner table, and might fill out a petition or a pre-made letter. They might even send a personalized email or physical letter (too often poorly worded and badly formatted with no evidentiary backing), or leave voice mails with a staffer. They won't do this very often, but feel that they have strength in numbers. Spoiler: receiving the same misspelled email from 5000 people doesn't make the legislator (or their staff) think "oh wow a lot of people are really upset by this", it just to spam/trash cans. Financial contribution ("bribes") and fancy dinners or gifts are usually the boogeyman when it comes to blaming lobbyists, but those are tangential and not as common as most people think. The biggest factor for a successful lobbyist is the research, presentation, and persistence.

indymike 4y ago
> In my experience, lobbyists are essentially individual people hired by an organization to do extensive, cited research on the topic, and develop "well written and formatted" proposals for/against, as well as dedicate time to delivering the proposals and arguments in person. My experience is quite different and comes from doing grass roots lobbying at the state and Federal level. Grass-roots lobbying is just where regular citizens go do the lobbying instead of paid professionals. If you ever get a chance to get involved in this kind of lobbying, it will change how you think about government, and you'll be pleasantly surprised to see you can actually make a difference. You'll also find out that being a legislator at any level is an almost impossible job. Lobbyists (yes, they are individuals, but usually have an organization and staff behind them) are paid to show up and "help" legislators. This ranges from providing information all the way up to writing bills. Often bills are initially written by lobbyists (the joke is that most laws are written by staff interns and lobbyists). The reason lobbyists are effective is simple: legislators all the way up to the US Senate don't have time to do the work needed to write laws, debate them, pass them, campaign, go to parades and graduations and communicate with constituents... so they work with lobbyists, who are well paid to have time. Yes, professional lobbyists always have an ulterior motive, and always have time, because their paycheck depends on it.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and with bipartisan support - you'd think this would be an easy case to argue “Bipartisan support“ is, since we are well out of the pre-1990s realignment period, mostly a sign of low political salience, an issue that doesn't have much relevance to voting behavior to most of the public. Breadth (%) of support or opposition is far less important than depth (impact on voting, volunteering, and donating behavior), and this is an issue where the depth of support in the general public is near 0, where the depth of opposition from entrenched industry interests is high.

drc500free 4y ago
You explained very well something that I have struggled to put into words about all these tech bills. Thank you.
pj_mukh 4y ago
This. I wish more polls had an importance/salience correction factor applied. It would significantly tilt most polls.
- function_seven 4y ago
  What would be the best way to gauge that? My naive take on this would be to have poll questions like: > Are you in favor of consumers' right to repair? ...How strong is your position? (1–5) Of course this is vulnerable to strategic answering, where people just slam on ‘5’ for each question. Like how star ratings are inflated on Amazon. My next strategy would be pairwise contests. So: > Alice supports right-to-repair (RTR) and raising property taxes. Bob is opposed to RTR and wants to lower property taxes. Who would you vote for? > Carol supports RTR and applying the death penalty to a wider range of felonies. David opposes RTR and wants to eliminate capital punishment altogether. Who would you vote for? But too much of that and you'd start to lose people. How many questions can you pose before you're only getting answers from serial poll-takers?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  Salience is pretty hard to measure by means other than substantive political behavior.

pmoriarty 4y ago

It's an open secret in politics that government jobs are a revolving door to/from industry. Corporate executives frequently go in to politics, and when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs at the very corporations they benefited while in office. They don't have to be outright bribed while in office (though it's not unknown for that to happen), but they know they'll be handsomely rewarded once they leave. That's not to mention them or their family members investing in companies they know will benefit from their actions while in office.

shawnz 4y ago
This is a tired argument. Of course people who have industry experience will continue to work in that industry. And if the chance of being rewarded with a "cushy" job after leaving office is so compelling then why are so few people interested in becoming politicians?
- guerrilla 4y ago
  It's less of an argument and more a list of facts, isn't it? > then why are so few people interested in becoming politicians? Obviously because they can't afford to because they actually have to work.
  - shawnz 4y ago
    It's not clear to me that the overlap between corporate and political career paths really has any meaningful impact on the way politicians vote on individual bills, so I wouldn't call that a fact
- antris 4y ago
  >why are so few people interested in becoming politicians? Uh... what? There's a shortage of politicians nowhere, lol.
  - jwagenet 4y ago
    There might technically be enough politicians to fill all available positions, but there clearly aren’t enough for a competitive and diverse ideological landscape.

draw_down 4y ago

Here’s a thread about the pitfalls of issue polling. https://mobile.twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355186871354200066 https://mobile.twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355186871354200...

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

It is all about money. Always was and always will be. Politicians of both colors love the cash, they are addicted to the cash. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ftc-report-shows-growing-influence-of-8569606/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ftc-report-shows-growing-i... Politician support corporations, not the people. Wake the F up.

dahdum 4y ago

75% of people like the idea of “right to repair” but that doesn’t mean they would support this particular implementation if they knew the details and side effects. Committees in the ideal allow a more nuanced examination and development of law. Sponsors have lobbyist support and the bills themselves may be written by them, for them, with any public benefit a side effect. As long as it “sounds good” other lawmakers feel forced to go along with.

indymike 4y ago

> Do the lobbyists have some incredibly legitimate insider information they share with the senators? Do they just throw cash/donations at them? I do some grass roots lobbying in Indiana. When we can't get a bill to the floor, it usually comes down to this: 1. The public might support the bill, but voters aren't willing to vote across the aisle over the issue behind the bill. So, the politician can kill the bill without fear. 2. There's a technical problem with the bill that would make it a bad law. Sometimes, this is sabotage, but most often, it is discovered late in the process and the bill dies in committee until next session. 3. The law would change the staus quo in some way that is harmful to the close supporters of legislators. This is less about money, and more about relationships. The answer to all of the above is simple: get more public support, and even work to unseat legislators that are opposed to your issue. State legislators usually don't have a strong grip on their seats (some do), so they can be unseated, often in primary elections.

jedberg 4y ago

California instituted term limits for its state representatives in 1990. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but what you end up with is that the most senior politicians in Sacramento are the lobbyists. The outcome of that is that most bills are written by lobbyists and most state reps vote how the lobbyists tell them to, because they lobbyists are the ones making the deals with the other lobbyists, instead of the long time representatives being in leadership. Each system has its pros and cons, but one of the main cons of term limits is that lobbyists are in control.

jeffbee 4y ago

Let's don't be too credulous about the polling performed by the bill's supporters. What would be the "pro right to repair" fraction if it were posed as a tradeoff between repairability and a slightly higher retail price? In my personal opinion the "security lock" language of this bill is dangerously vague, and the benefits it offers in terms of third-party repair are worth almost nothing to me, so I opposed the bill.

willcipriano 4y ago

Peoples politics are closer to sports team fandom than anything pragmatic. As long as you keep pulling the red or blue lever no matter what they don't have much incentive to do much of anything.

squarefoot 4y ago
> Peoples politics are closer to sports team fandom than anything pragmatic. This is the result of the deliberate way in which clever malicious spindoctors manipulated political debate over the years in such a way so that what once was a pondered opinion became later akin to a religious affiliation. The bottom line is that an opinion can be changed while a religious belief cannot; it's the system's way to ensure that once a voter is captured it stays loyal forever.

avgcorrection 4y ago

> Can anyone familiar with the process, explain exactly how these industry lobbyists win these cases? With a 75% of Californians being pro-right to repair, and with bipartisan support - you'd think this would be an easy case to argue. Well, what does that tell you? Majority public opinion does not matter. Money does.

cjsplat 4y ago

It was killed in the Appropriations committee on a 7-0 vote, after passing in the Judiciary committee on a 8-1 vote. The Appropriations committee (AKA Ways and Means in the US House) is where lobbyists spend their money. Anything that costs money has to go through this, and everything costs money. The argument that this bill cost money was based on the potential impact on the courts as legal actions would be files to enforce the new warranty rights. Rather than trying to influence every potentially concerned member of legislature, better to spend 100x on the people who control the purse.