8 ms·

I think a good thing that laws can't pass without sufficient consensus. If you can bypass consensus for the greater good then so can the other side.

xpe 4y ago
This statement is an obvious assumption of democracy. Am I missing something more?
- cogman10 4y ago
  The issue is one of "arms racing". Consider, for example, how the FDA operates. They have a broad mandate to keep food clean and drugs safe. They don't have an explicit mandate of "you must only regulate tylenol and aspirin, we need to pass a law for new drugs each time they come up." This ruling finds the EPA, who has the mandate to keep pollutants out of the air, can't determine that CO2 is a pollutant. Why is that? The 2016 clean air act specifically gave them the power to regulate air pollutants. The only answer is political activism. There is no difference between the FDA's broad mandate and the EPA's broad mandate. I recommend reading the dissent on this case. It makes it absolutely clear that this is an EPA power. The conservatives couldn't get new laws passed repealing the EPA, so instead they packed the court with political activists so they could make law from the bench.
  - iostream24 4y ago
    Yet another reasonable comment that some shadow bully has downvoted gray. HN is broken
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      HN is very ill-suited to discussing politics in general. That's a known feature.
- gruez 4y ago
  It might be obvious, but I feel like it's lost due to partisan motivated reasoning. eg. when your preferred party doesn't control the senate, then the filibusterer is an important part part of democracy that forces widespread consensus, but when your party does control the senate the filibusterer is a undemocratic tactic used by the minority to obstruct the majority.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  The key word here is "sufficient consensus." Your judgement of sufficiency is a personal opinion. I could, for example, define "sufficient consensus" as requiring that all laws require a 90% supermajority in the Senate. Or I could reduce this to 50% of the Senate. Alternatively I could reform Congress so that lawmaking requires voting totals representing 50% of the population. Each of these is one possible version of "sufficient consensus", and still none of them actually matches the version we actually have. What is clear is that the sclerotic nature of today's Congress is problematic, and it's doing a great deal to undermine faith in our democratic system.
Victerius 4y ago
The rise of China is testing and will continue to test this assumption. The Chinese government does not require consensus. It can build 40,000 kilometers of high speed rail in just a few years. It can pull hundreds of millions from poverty. It can shut down entire companies and industries overnight (e.g. private school tutoring), jail corrupt corporate executives, and in general coerce compliance to any law. Do you know how many school teachers in China must buy supplies for their students with their own money? Zero. Do you know how many Chinese ambassadorships are left vacant because of political bickering? Zero. I am not a shill for the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, or the ideology of the Chinese political system, but I increasingly am a shill for the ruthless efficiency of the Chinese government.
- Aarostotle 4y ago
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    I mean there are a lot of people who are looking into moving to China. I suspect this line is going to age like milk in the next few years.
    - Aarostotle 4y ago
      I’ll set a reminder to come back to this in 3, 10, and 20 years. We’ll see.
- nixgeek 4y ago
  They’re ruthlessly efficient at persecuting the Uyghurs as well. I’m not sure “ruthless efficiency” is actually that desirable in a government.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    China does not have a monopoly on persecuting minorities, especially in comparison to the United States. The US's genocidal oppression has been ongoing far, far longer than the oppression of the Uyghur people. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narrows-native-americans-oklahoma https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narr...
andy_ppp 4y ago
One man’s consensus is another man’s deliberately bought off by an unholy alliance of special interests and stupid people.
teucris 4y ago
I agree, but the current political climate has made consensus appear as weakness.
camgunz 4y ago
The problem is that our federal legislative system is heavily tilted in favor of Republicans despite them being firmly a minority party. This is most apparent in the Senate, but gerrymandering gives them an edge in the House too. So when you're talking about consensus, the country has it. There's consensus on immigration, gun control, and abortion. It's just that Republicans prevent us from acting on it.
- extheat 4y ago
  Consensus doesn’t just mean 51%. It means general agreement. If you have 100 people in a room, 51 people are in favor of something and the other 49 are not, is that your “consensus”? Prior to the US each of the states were their own sovereign entities. Why enter the US (or stay in it) if you are going to be ruled against your will? The states agreed to give up some of their power and joined under the explicit conditions of the senate that they would have an equal say.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    These are a little dated but: A majority of Americans support the right to choose [1] (61%), a path to amnesty for undocumented persons [2] (60%), restrictions on firearm purchase and ownership [3] (> 64%), moving off of fossil fuels and treating climate change like the threat it is [4] (76%), a wealth tax on people with a net worth of over $50m [5] (56%), the expanded voting rights in HR 1 [6] (>61%), etc. etc. etc. These are big majorities, and I'd wager most Americans don't think this stuff is broadly popular. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i... [2]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-d4f4-dd7d-ab77-fcfd44140001 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-d4f4-dd7d-ab77-fcfd4... [3]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-cfbd-d112-a97e-ffbde6ef0000&nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f115-dd93-ad7f-f91513e50001&nlid=630318 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-cfbd-d112-a97e-ffbde... [4]: https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/27/paris-agreement-climate-change-threat-poll/ https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/27/paris-agreement-climat... [5]: https://www.businessinsider.com/over-half-americans-see-wealth-tax-as-way-solve-inequality-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/over-half-americans-see-weal... [6]: https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2021/4/dfp-vox-hr-1.pdf https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2021/4/dfp-vox-hr-...

xpe 4y ago

This statement is an obvious assumption of democracy. Am I missing something more?

cogman10 4y ago
The issue is one of "arms racing". Consider, for example, how the FDA operates. They have a broad mandate to keep food clean and drugs safe. They don't have an explicit mandate of "you must only regulate tylenol and aspirin, we need to pass a law for new drugs each time they come up." This ruling finds the EPA, who has the mandate to keep pollutants out of the air, can't determine that CO2 is a pollutant. Why is that? The 2016 clean air act specifically gave them the power to regulate air pollutants. The only answer is political activism. There is no difference between the FDA's broad mandate and the EPA's broad mandate. I recommend reading the dissent on this case. It makes it absolutely clear that this is an EPA power. The conservatives couldn't get new laws passed repealing the EPA, so instead they packed the court with political activists so they could make law from the bench.
- iostream24 4y ago
  Yet another reasonable comment that some shadow bully has downvoted gray. HN is broken
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    HN is very ill-suited to discussing politics in general. That's a known feature.
gruez 4y ago
It might be obvious, but I feel like it's lost due to partisan motivated reasoning. eg. when your preferred party doesn't control the senate, then the filibusterer is an important part part of democracy that forces widespread consensus, but when your party does control the senate the filibusterer is a undemocratic tactic used by the minority to obstruct the majority.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
The key word here is "sufficient consensus." Your judgement of sufficiency is a personal opinion. I could, for example, define "sufficient consensus" as requiring that all laws require a 90% supermajority in the Senate. Or I could reduce this to 50% of the Senate. Alternatively I could reform Congress so that lawmaking requires voting totals representing 50% of the population. Each of these is one possible version of "sufficient consensus", and still none of them actually matches the version we actually have. What is clear is that the sclerotic nature of today's Congress is problematic, and it's doing a great deal to undermine faith in our democratic system.

Victerius 4y ago

The rise of China is testing and will continue to test this assumption. The Chinese government does not require consensus. It can build 40,000 kilometers of high speed rail in just a few years. It can pull hundreds of millions from poverty. It can shut down entire companies and industries overnight (e.g. private school tutoring), jail corrupt corporate executives, and in general coerce compliance to any law. Do you know how many school teachers in China must buy supplies for their students with their own money? Zero. Do you know how many Chinese ambassadorships are left vacant because of political bickering? Zero. I am not a shill for the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, or the ideology of the Chinese political system, but I increasingly am a shill for the ruthless efficiency of the Chinese government.

Aarostotle 4y ago
- aaomidi 4y ago
  I mean there are a lot of people who are looking into moving to China. I suspect this line is going to age like milk in the next few years.
  - Aarostotle 4y ago
    I’ll set a reminder to come back to this in 3, 10, and 20 years. We’ll see.
nixgeek 4y ago
They’re ruthlessly efficient at persecuting the Uyghurs as well. I’m not sure “ruthless efficiency” is actually that desirable in a government.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  China does not have a monopoly on persecuting minorities, especially in comparison to the United States. The US's genocidal oppression has been ongoing far, far longer than the oppression of the Uyghur people. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narrows-native-americans-oklahoma https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narr...

andy_ppp 4y ago

One man’s consensus is another man’s deliberately bought off by an unholy alliance of special interests and stupid people.

teucris 4y ago

I agree, but the current political climate has made consensus appear as weakness.

camgunz 4y ago

The problem is that our federal legislative system is heavily tilted in favor of Republicans despite them being firmly a minority party. This is most apparent in the Senate, but gerrymandering gives them an edge in the House too. So when you're talking about consensus, the country has it. There's consensus on immigration, gun control, and abortion. It's just that Republicans prevent us from acting on it.

extheat 4y ago
Consensus doesn’t just mean 51%. It means general agreement. If you have 100 people in a room, 51 people are in favor of something and the other 49 are not, is that your “consensus”? Prior to the US each of the states were their own sovereign entities. Why enter the US (or stay in it) if you are going to be ruled against your will? The states agreed to give up some of their power and joined under the explicit conditions of the senate that they would have an equal say.
- camgunz 4y ago
  These are a little dated but: A majority of Americans support the right to choose [1] (61%), a path to amnesty for undocumented persons [2] (60%), restrictions on firearm purchase and ownership [3] (> 64%), moving off of fossil fuels and treating climate change like the threat it is [4] (76%), a wealth tax on people with a net worth of over $50m [5] (56%), the expanded voting rights in HR 1 [6] (>61%), etc. etc. etc. These are big majorities, and I'd wager most Americans don't think this stuff is broadly popular. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i... [2]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-d4f4-dd7d-ab77-fcfd44140001 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-d4f4-dd7d-ab77-fcfd4... [3]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-cfbd-d112-a97e-ffbde6ef0000&nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f115-dd93-ad7f-f91513e50001&nlid=630318 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-cfbd-d112-a97e-ffbde... [4]: https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/27/paris-agreement-climate-change-threat-poll/ https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/27/paris-agreement-climat... [5]: https://www.businessinsider.com/over-half-americans-see-wealth-tax-as-way-solve-inequality-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/over-half-americans-see-weal... [6]: https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2021/4/dfp-vox-hr-1.pdf https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2021/4/dfp-vox-hr-...