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Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jimmybot 15y agoIsn't this some kind of explicit, well-organized, distributed bribery? Legislation for dollars? Not saying it doesn't happen anyways. But not sure how this helps. Edit: Ha. Okay, completely missed the parody disclaimer.
- scott_w 15y agoThe disclaimer at the bottom states that it's a parody.
- kitsune_ 15y agoI know this is a parody, but a model like this could actually work. A frightening thought.
- wladimir 15y agoIt's no longer a democracy, but at least it'd be transparent and honest.
- JanezStupar 15y agoDemocracy in classical sense means participation of the aristocracy, not wide populist participation as practiced in 20th century. I along with many of people I discuss politics agree that for wellbeing of democracy the civic duties and privileges should be limited and not available to everybody as a universal right. Ignorance is the worst enemy of democracy. Letting the ignorant majority participate in democratic process on principle alone does nothing for democracy.
- toyg 15y agoBollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the right veneral disease, whatever). The real problem is that the Greek concept of Democracy was implemented at the town level (their "cities" were really villages in the modern sense), and it has struggled to scale ever since. It's not surprising that the best "democracies" tend to be the smallest in terms of population. A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical; unfortunately, once you introduce human intermediaries / aggregators (i.e. your "representatives"), the dynamics change massively, so you introduce corrections, which further sway the dynamics, and on and on...
- wladimir 15y agoA literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still? And I'm not sure that there always needs to be an "ignorant majority". If people are closely involved with any aspect of lawmaking, they'll feel more responsible for being educated about political issues. Most "politically ignorant" people I know are that because they feel voting is hardly worth the time, because it only contributes indirectly and abstractly to decision processes (and politicians say one thing and do another...). I think an important responsibility of a democracy is to educate people in critical thinking and make sure they are not "ignorant".
- hermannj314 15y agoIt sounds like Congress needs an ignorance quorum before passing any law: "Congress shall pass no law, unless 51% of the electorate can pass a quiz on the content of said law. Also, individual legislators must abstain from voting until they receive passing marks."
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- toyg 15y agoFrom one-head-one-vote to one-dollar-one-vote. We should call it "pecuniacy". (Note: "pecunia" is Latin for "money"; I know, the right way to do this would be to use the ancient greek equivalent for "money" and replace it for "demo", but I couldn't find it.)
- rrhm 15y agoPerhaps "plutocracy" would work. The root "ploutus" is the ancient greek word for "wealth".
- toyg 15y agoYeah, but that has already assumed negative connotations; you cannot use it for tongue-in-cheek jokes.
- georgecmu 15y agoleptocracy: lepton[] + cracy is exactly what you want and is an easy allusion to kleptocracy. [] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton
- biot 15y agoActually, it's a satire since it mocks real life. If it mocked an existing creative work, it would be a parody.
- Ryan_Shmotkin 15y agoWhat we need is KickStarter for Bills ! Let the people fund the bills they want. Its time to stop poor people having soo much say..
- edandersen 15y agoBootstrap Hint: Check out the bootstrap-scrollspy.js code to make the navigation at the top change when you scroll down to the matching anchor tag.
- pmarket 15y agoThank you.
- hobin 15y agoThis is absolutely brilliant.
- jcslzr 15y agowhere are the social media buttons?
- bad_user 15y agoThis is a parody, but something like this could work: (1) show a list of bills that are passing Congress / the Senate (2) for each proposal, show a list of politicians that supports or opposes it (3) have a way for the user to flag politicians he wants to reward (4) plus a way for the user to setup a recurring monthly donation, distributed towards the politicians he supports, with a note pointing to your online profile that exposes your interests
- wwwtyro 15y agoI like something similar: (1) show a list of bills currently under consideration (2) allow the user to 'vote' on each bill with some monetary amount, along with a preferred direction for the legislation ('aye' or 'nay') (3) after voting occurs, the cash is distributed evenly to the legislators that voted in the direction the user desired.
- bad_user 15y agoI'm not sure it would be legal.
- bjnortier_hn 15y agoWhat happened to "No taxation without representation"? This would skew the government even more towards rewarding the rich - increasing the size of the government-as-a-service market is a step in the wrong direction.
- jedbrown 15y agoWhat if the total contribution was capped? You could even add that he first $50 of everyone's taxes would be appropriated as that person chooses (Lessig's proposal).
- waqf 15y agoAs a Permanent Resident of the United States, I can assure you that "no taxation without representation" has been dead a looong while.
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- the_tubes 15y agowhy hasn't this been thought of before!?
- pmarket 15y agoJesus! I'm using JotForms for the email signup and the traffic just took them down.
- vladd 15y agoAt large scale, there's something even better than money: votes. Make a website where I can express my point of view about some legislation (SOPA, PIPA, etc) and then, given a list of candidates for the elections in my district, show who should I vote for based on their voting history.
- scottdw2 15y agoI don't think that public funding of elections or free advertising (see the bottom of the page) are the solutions to government corruption. That would just force bribers to be more covert. It's analogous to the fact that SOPA wouldn't stop piracy. It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to make the purchase.
- Blarat 15y agoWouldn't the reduced size only mean that there would be fewer politicians to pay off? If you mean that a smaller government equals a government with no power, then why have a government at all?
- scottdw2 15y ago"Reducing the size of government" means to reduce the power of government, not the proportion of representation.
- Angostura 15y agoHurrah, so the people who would be bribed wouldn't be publicly accountable officials - they would be whoever we handed the power to.
- scottdw2 15y agoI don't think you understand. The point is to either eliminate the power, or make it extremely diffuse. That way, there is nothing to purchase.
- david927 15y agoBut that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The wealthiest countries in the world have large governments and don't have these problems. Just outlaw lobbying(bribing) of officials. Outlaw political campaign advertising. Better yet, as I mention above, allow the people to better represent themselves using technology. There are a thousand ways to apply the brakes -- killing the engine is maybe not the best.
- james-fend 15y agoOh no.. Site's down!
- pmarket 15y agoEdit: Never mind. The site is back up.
- molmalo 15y agoHN-Effect: -------------------- Error Over Quota This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.
- pdelgallego 15y agoToo late, Bloomberg government[1] its already doing it. [1] http://about.bgov.com/ http://about.bgov.com/
- pmarket 15y agoEdit: The main domain is back up.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- un1xl0ser 15y agoI was hoping for assassination politics, but this was amusing. Maybe I'm a bit thick, but this couldn't be legal, could it?
- cipherpunk 15y agoHaha, I came here to post the exact same thing. For those that don't know: http://technoanimal.net./ap.html http://technoanimal.net./ap.html
- georgecmu 15y agoExcellent idea! Consider adding a separate sign-on for politicians promising them a campaign funds dashboard, real-time tracking of most profitable causes, political profile tuner, etc Limit sign-ons to .gov email addresses, restricting early stage use to elected officials and representatives only.
- kmfrk 15y agoJust let the analytics be public to everyone in the name of transparency.
- daintynews 15y agoWow. Bribery at its most sickening.
- jrabone 15y agoHate to be "that guy", but there's a typo: "Note: Your opinion is important for us to ignore. If you must recieve a reply, donate $500 and try again."
- pmarket 15y agoFixed.
- funkdobiest 15y agoIsn't this essentially a PAC or Super PAC. Give money to a middle man, who then "gives" it to the politicians in exchange for a vote.
- mw63214 15y agowhat about a political triple bottom line? Cost, Constitutionality, Efficiency.
- noonespecial 15y agoThe people we really need to be able to get our bribes to are the un-elected, appointed positions like the "czar of this and that". Feature request: Bribes to those in appointed positions for special favors. Thanks.
- llambda 15y ago> Feature request: Bribes to those in appointed positions for special favors. Thanks. That would constitute a felony.
- RockyMcNuts 15y agoIANAL, and possibly a blinding glimpse of the obvious (BGO), but without some kind of parody get-out-of-jail card, the site already meets the test of bribery, paying an official to do something. More serious comment... not sure what people have against so-called czars. The president (or congress-critters) have staffers who focus on specific issues, talk to affected constituents, recommend policy. Ultimately, the elected official makes decision based on recommendations. Is that a bad thing, is he supposed to make all decisions on his own in a vacuum?
- noonespecial 15y agoIts actually not the "czars" per se, that I have a problem with. Its more the persistent, appointed, un-elected positions that span administrations but still have the full force of the executive branch.
- noonespecial 15y agoYou do know that the site is a joke, right? Its parody. The argument is made through absurdity. Some bribery is legal, others not. Its funny because its absurd.
- mrkmcknz 15y agoI think the US election system is fundamentally flawed. Why wouldn't a UK like approach work of limiting campaign budgets? Focus more on politics and not lobbying/fundraising.
- waterside81 15y agoBecause there's too much money to be made from campaigning. TV networks alone are rolling in the cash during these prolonged primaries & campaigns.
- nickik 15y agoCountrys are to big, there is too much power in few places. I think a more federalistic system helps and even within one governing entity you can distribute the power more. One thing I really like that we have in Switzerland, we have 7 instead of one president and they are all elected from parlament (the president cant just get people who are his drones).
- kermitthehermit 15y agoI don't normally wish people any kind of death other than a good natural one when they're extremely old, but I can certainly wish the corrupt politicians slow excruciatingly painful deaths.
- ttt_ 15y agoI think that we should be trying to limit what incentives there are today for politicians to become corrupt. The biggest one IMO is the campaign as it exists today. They are long lasting and very expensive, hence a politician has no chance other than to find ways to fund their campaign. The resulting factor is that this attracts the attention of parties that do have large sums of money and that comes with an implied exchange of favors. An option would be for campaigning to be restricted to low cost media such as the internet and maybe government provided TV time. Another alternative to be considered. Every cent spent on campaign should be divided equally between parties, where if you buy a 20 second ad on TV than that time will be equally divided between your campaign and all other oponents.
- joering2 15y agoI think wise politics is about wise decisions that are based on todays situation but reach out in the future. The worst case scenario are politicians who make up their mind today and change it 180deg later on. While some may say they may be uneducated, lack experience, etc, corruption is also a big deal. what I would love to have is a website like politicopedia where i could see all politicians enlisted and each vote on each bill with date they voted and why they voted this way. this would be a great tool to run statistics down the line: see who voted right/wrong way on certain issues, etc.
- epynonymous 15y agowhat the world needs are more robin hoods. anonymous is a partial example of this, an elite group that fears no organization (big or small) and the means to exact change. checked out the site, personally i think the money angle defeats the purpose of politics, politicians should be bred to enable positive changes in society based on their core beliefs and principles, dangling a carrot in front of them is not going to foster this behavior, imho. a better idea would be some site that promotes discussion amongst the people for certain topics and would have some angle to bring politicians into those conversations. that would really help connect the two.
- kaffeinecoma 15y agoIt was meant to be a parody.
- scott_s 15y agoI'm going to crib from my own post from two days ago: Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about. This episode of Planet Money clearly demonstrates this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues... Edit: I remove the SOPA specific stuff, and didn't realize that in doing so, I removed the punchline. The implication of the above is that politicians' agenda becomes set by those who have the money to pay lobbyists. When you spend a lot of time talking to a bunch of people with an agenda, you will start to think about that agenda a lot. It's a natural consequence of the circumstances and the incentives. I've harped on this point several times in the last few days. My reason is simple: we must understand the real problem before we can fix it. And the real problem is not "Vote for x and I'll give you money." That is illegal. What I described above is legal, and while it is not illegal corruption, it is a corruption of how we want the system to work. And I stole that last sentiment from Lawrence Lessig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc Someone else here linked to that a few days ago, and it's worth watching.
- rgarcia 15y agoI don't understand your point--wouldn't public financing of elections remove the need to hold fundraisers? The problem as I see it is that representatives are forced (due to the exorbitant cost of campaigning) to win over wealthy interests. This manifests itself as what we've seen with the whole SOPA debacle: representatives who are completely out of touch with their constituents.
- scott_s 15y agoPublic financing is one way, yes. My point is that the site itself, and many people here, present a caricature of the problem. If you talk too much abou the caricature, someone may say "Oh, yes, I see, so let's do a better job of investigating and prosecuting people who buy and sell votes." The real problem is more sublte, and it is inherent in how the system works.
- brador 15y agoWhy not skip the middle and just field our own candidates? Viral marketing > any other marketing known to man.
- danso 15y agoWhy not go the SUPERPAC route to make this viable? http://www.propublica.org/article/in-the-gusher-of-super-pacs-even-one-named-the-internet http://www.propublica.org/article/in-the-gusher-of-super-pac...
- aleksandrm 15y agoIsn't this what http://www.wethelobby.com/ http://www.wethelobby.com/ is trying to do?
- gcb 15y agoYou can't say "give the money" Say "attend his next fundraising"
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- jebblue 15y agoIs the site serious? If it is then shouldn't it be reported for the conception of a political corruption scheme?
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