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Same for any legislation piece. A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M. Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 n
by afarah1 1y ago
Same for any legislation piece.
A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M.
Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time.
And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for.
It's just the power structure of any representative legislature.
"In vain do we fly to the many"...
- aleph_minus_one 1y agoA possible countermeasure could be to make the life of politicians (which we will of course all name individually) who voted for such laws a hell on earth ...
- afarah1 1y agoWhich is costly to do...
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoHow do you get to them to force them into submission? Did Americans get the child rapists off the Epstein list yet? And the unelected EU leader Ursula VDL has had private security since she was a child. They're untouchable by the plebs, they have zero accountability.
- fakedang 1y agoTbf, a Jan 6 situation is very possible in the EUC and EUP, because the security for them is just like these constituent bodies - a joke. I for one would like to see a bunch of French and Dutch farmers drive by and fling shit on them, at the very least.
- LtWorf 1y agoOther than shooting them? But they hire security… it's quite hard to hit them without hitting anyone else.
- squigz 1y agoWhat does that mean, precisely?
- Ray20 1y agoNo, this cannot be a countermeasure. Such laws are adopted precisely so that society cannot influence politicians and their decisions. That is, if society does not have the ability to do something about it now, then they will be even less able to do something about it later.
- XorNot 1y agoAssuming "the people" are on your side on this is first and foremost your biggest folly. I see this problem over and over again - people start from "the politicians" (the other) is not listening to us (and we obviously represent everyone). It leads to extremely unconstructive messaging ideas, where you assume no one can ever change their minds and if they do they are to be forever considered "lesser" for not being "right" the first time.
- hcfman 1y agoBut you don't know who voted for them. In Europe, laws are also formulated by a group called "The high level group" I believe, and the members of this group are anonymous.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoPlato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is. Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war. Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands of years. It's telling that my boy Smedly Butler (ask your US marine friends who he is and they will recite his story perfectly or else their bootcamp will have smoked them for it) advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war.
- maldonad0 1y agoThe average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.
- Arainach 1y agoIt's impossible for people to know about every topic. That was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now. People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and have no time to look into facts or primary sources. Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock where you can't get 50% to agree on anything. If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one, getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the scale of direct democracy.
- somenameforme 1y agoPeople don't bother looking into stuff because they know their opinion, and their vote, doesn't really matter. Treat people like children and they start acting like children. For some contrast Switzerland has a sort of defacto direct democracy in that citizens that obtain a relatively small number of votes can bring any issue they desire up for vote. And they have indeed brought issues like Basic Income with the suggested proposal of every single Swiss adult getting around $1700/month. That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it, but it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin in the current state of the United States. But in Switzerland where people actually do have real power, and responsibility, to determine the future of their country, it was rejected by 77%. Instead, back in the states we can look forward to our true political power of getting to choose between Dumbo and Dingbat for our completely unrepresentative representatives.
- cortesoft 1y agoThis is the case for so many things… it is why every attempt to make filling out your taxes in the United States fails completely.
- staunton 1y agoWhat does it mean "to make filling out your taxes"??
- datameta 1y agoThe omission was likely in that the failure is in trying to make filing taxes simple.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoIt’s pretty dang simple today. If you’re a usual W-2 employee, anyone who can read and follow simple instructions can file without paying any preparer a dime. For those of us trying to collect all the weird tax situations: https://freetaxusa.com https://freetaxusa.com.
- the-smug-one 1y agoIn Sweden and Denmark the tax service prepares a tax statement for you. In Sweden, if everything looks OK, you press a button. In Denmark, if everything looks OK, you don't even have to press a button.
- realusername 1y agoSame in France, I even get tax exempts from retirement plans and taxes from stock market holdings automatically.
- johnisgood 1y agoI assume it is the same in Hungary, it definitely was the case a few years back, so I assume the same system is in place. It might not be rolled out for everyone, however. Probably not for companies, or in complex cases.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- darkmighty 1y agoOn the other hand, a legislator is elected by a large number of people, so in theory he has incentives to act on their behalf. But I'm sure lobbying can tip the scales a lot. Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help. Also, I think campaign donations and monetary influence should be extremely limited (to not make someone have too much influence *cough cough Elon Musk cough*), maybe to $100 or so. If lobbying is to be allowed, probably something like that should hold as well: each individual could give at most something like $100/yr to a special interest group, and those should be closely watched. From wiki: > Lobbying takes place at every level of government: federal, state, county, municipal, and local governments. In Washington, D.C., lobbyists usually target members of Congress, although there have been efforts to influence executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court appointees. Lobbying can have a strong influence on the political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or no independent influence" Campaign donations, per this website: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/contribution-limits/ https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate... It seems individuals can total $132k "per account per year" (I assume there can be multiple accounts for different roles?). Even the $3500 per person per candidate per election seem a bit oversized to me. Of course, legislators also have an incentive to allow lobbying to make their lives easier and earn all sorts of benefits, further complicating things. It's really not clear to me lobby should exist at all. Like probably legislators could simply fund their own apparatus to understand the issues of their country/region in an equitable way.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help. Outlaw communicating with legislators to try to get them to adopt a position on legislation? Or do you mean outlawing paid lobbying on behalf of third parties? The first would obviously be deeply problematic even if it was possible to police, the latter would probably generally be ineffective however you managed to operationalize it.
- darkmighty 1y ago
- AlecSchueler 1y ago> It's just the power structure of any representative legislature... ... Under capitalism.
- chrischen 1y agoWhy not have one organization that collects $1 from everyone to fight on behalf?
- andyferris 1y agoShould we call the organization “government” and the fee “tax”? </s> It’s not a bad idea but it’s funny we need a funded people’s organisation to represent us to the democratic government! I wonder if we need direct voting rights (for legislation etc) - now that we live in the internet age it may be feasible. Not sure how else to have the many overwhelming the few.
- coderatlarge 1y agolike a peoples’ line item veto online?
- rekenaut 1y agoBecause whether the government gets it or this collective organization gets it, you’re still out a $1. Besides, very few people will actually care enough about $1 to partake in literally any amount of effort to regain it.
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoI'm pretty sure any law that costs you 1 dollar will cost you 1 dollar per year, or 1 dollar some other shorter amount of time. And anyway the actual law under discussion is bad not because it costs you 1 dollar per year, but because it costs you other things. Also this how people do fight against this kind of thing, they join non-profits or other organizations, give them 1 dollar per year and use the combined might of the organization. But yes at that point you are paying 1 dollar per year that way too, but then, as already noted this is not really a 1 dollar per year law. And then we see that in fact people often do care about 1 dollar per year, because they are not joining the organizations, even to protect things worth more than 1 dollar per year.
- 1y ago
- p1dda 1y agoThe European Commission (EC) is particularly sinister in so many ways and not like any previously known modern democratic entity. The EC has been constantly pushing for less democracy, less transparency, more censorship for decades. All the while the horrible president von der Leyen makes billion dollar deals with Big Pharma in complete secrecy without any repercussions or oversight. Europe is doomed if we don't destroy the EU in its current form, but how?
- anthk 1y agoThe EU it's good, little American/Russian spoiled kid. It's these kind of turds who want Chat Control whose give the EU a bad name.
- p1dda 1y agoLOL thanks for your great insight into this matter
- anthk 1y agoI'm from Spain; before joining the European Economic Community (pre UE entity) in 1986 our country except for the main cities sucked a lot, it was behind France in lots of terms. By 1992 the gap went almost to /dev/null. So, I you can be pro EU and denounce these STASI like mafias, you know.
- thephyber 1y ago“Concentrated benefits and diffuse costs”.