6 ms·

There should be sorts of an exponential backoff mandated for the contents of bills. Now, every lobby group keeps pushing their sketchy agenda, knowing well tha

by m000 1y ago

There should be sorts of an exponential backoff mandated for the contents of bills. Now, every lobby group keeps pushing their sketchy agenda, knowing well that they will eventually pass it. Worst case, it will be passed bit by bit.

zenmac 1y ago
Good idea. yeah at this point, law making every were just seems like brute force attack at this point. We need some kind of security assure to keep out these 'law making crackers'
mariusor 1y ago
I doubt that this can be actually done as intended because the wording of a bill can be changed enough to pretend it's not the same as the previous versions. I can't really think of a way to make this work, but indeed it would be a great addition to law passing.
nickslaughter02 1y ago
It exists but the proposal must be voted on. These people will not put the proposal to vote if they know it will not pass. That's why they ask countries' positions up front.
arlcode 1y ago
That's also problematic. Currently the same proposal is being discussed over and over again but if that wouldn't be possible it's easy introduce "similar" ideas. Ultimately law makers need to be able to pass new laws, even controversial ones, or the power to so slowly shifts to someone else (e.g. the executive in the USA) Not having a majority is the only way to stop the process and if the population is in favor, doesn't care or can't be bothered any law will pass.
- mariusor 1y ago
  I disagree on this one. In the same way you can't be prosecuted twice for the same crime in the US system under the "double jeopardy" clause, there should be an equivalent system where the same law can't be pushed over and over until it passes.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    It would be nice, but they change it a little bit so it's technically a different law.
  - digitalPhonix 1y ago
    In many countries, it took multiple attempts to get gay marriage legalised. Having a double jeopardy type block for repeated attempts at passing laws would prevent social changes being captured in law. Also it would be easy to weaponised by proposing something that doesn’t have enough support now so that it can never be passed in the future.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      You're fighting a strawman there I think. He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years.
      - mschild 1y ago
        He did make a reference to the double jeopardy law in the US though which, if I'm not mistaken, explicitly prohibits exactly that type of behaviour.
      - digitalPhonix 1y ago
        That's not double jeopardy then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy The clause in the US constitution specifically has no time limits and it looks like it's the same for all the countries listed on wiki.
      - gruez 1y ago
        >He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years. So if gay marriage or weed legalization was defeated in 2015 you shouldn't be able to have a go at it until 2025? Or if YIMBY zoning reforms or AI regulation were defeated in 2025 you shouldn't be able try again until 2035?
- somenameforme 1y ago
  The whole point of governance in a democracy is consent of the governed. When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large, then they've entered into the realm of authoritarianism with an occasional election - which is exactly what we accuse the 'bad guys' of doing.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large[...] But how does banning subsequent attempts at passing bills prevent this? Moreover what's preventing this mechanism from being abused to block legislation that society actually want?
    - the_duke 1y ago
      The tactic here is sneaking legislation through the system by bringing it up again and again, hoping for the public to eventually lose interest, or to catch a time with a lot of other drama going on so they can avoid the public attention/backlash. I do think there are procedural ways to support this, like: proposed bills that are very similar to previous rejected ones need a preemptive vote with 60%+ support to be considered - if brought again with a certain time frame. I do see your point though, there can be unforeseen consequences.
      - Yeul 1y ago
        Good thing we have paid professionals whose job it is to vote on these things.
        gruez 1y ago
        But the whole premise is that those paid professionals have gone rogue?
        idle_zealot 1y ago
        There's really no fixing that kind of failure state with a bandage solution. The whole idea of a representative democracy is premised on citizens being able to elect representatives who represent their interests. If that's not holding then that's the part that needs to be fixed.
- adastra22 1y ago
  It is not at all obvious to me that a government, acting from the authority of a public mandate, has to be able to pass controversial laws—which by definition lack that same consent.
- KoolKat23 1y ago
  I guess the main thing should be, there should be a lot more transparency with this whole thing. We should know who is behind it and vote them out. This whole Commission Grouping thing is smoke and mirrors, there are representatives of our governments facilitating this, we should know who they are, they should not be able to just stay anonymous. It should all be public when a vote is taken. It's ripe for abuse such as corruption, they've been forced them to open up a bit but it's clearly not enough. Usually it's the representatives themselves that propose laws (the ones we directly vote for). The commission could be viewed as a sort of potential trojan horse, in that it can make these proposals and yet it's inner workings are not fully transparent. With it's usual "government" work secrecy can be a good thing (trade negotiations etc.), when it comes to it drafting laws that should be transparent. Perhaps they should even look at splitting these things out but that also has a host of issues.
  - account42 1y ago
    I disagree that trade negotiations should be done in secrecy - that's one of the most abused backdoor for antidemocratic laws.
    - KoolKat23 1y ago
      Fair enough, you're probably right, but it's perhaps one of the only plausible use cases. Otherwise it should not exist in in this sphere.
achenet 1y ago
As other comments on this post have mentioned, exponential backoff would still have some issues. However, we could envision a rule where controversial bills have to be validated by a strict majority, or even a supermajority (75% minimum) of the voting population via referendum. I feel like in 2025 it should be doable for a state to ask its citizens to vote online to show that they support a bill, and if a given bill lacks support amongst the citizen body of that state, it's probably not worth passing.
kstrauser 1y ago
I wish there were a “No, And Stop Asking” law where you couldn’t propose a law again within X years after it fails to pass. I know a million reasons why that’s probably impossible, starting with “what makes it the same law?”, but I can still wish we had one.
- pqtyw 1y ago
  So if a party which rejects some policy loses the election (possible even directly because of that) their opponents who always supported that law wouldn't be allowed to vote on it again? Seems extremely easy to abuse...
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    I did mention that it had a million problems.
- monomers 1y ago
  It would be possible to proactively pass a law that is incompatible with future attempts, right? E.g. in this case something like a "right to chat secrecy" law.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Yes, but whatever law you pass that is incompatible with future attempts can just have its repeal included as part of future attempts.
    - godelski 1y ago
      Yes but so would a "stop asking" option. I don't find this as a flaw, instead it's a pretty good feature. Everything should be able to be revisited, if only because times change and there's unintended consequences. Just because you can still drive over speed bumps and knock over road blocks doesn't mean that they aren't effective tools.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
worldsayshi 1y ago
Wouldn't that potentially be exploited by the opposition where they could push a similar bill but with unpopular additions?
NotPractical 1y ago
It is the courts' job to block unconstitutional or otherwise illegal laws. I believe someone said in a previous thread that a court in an EU member state had already found this mass surveillance on citizens who are not criminal suspects to be illegal under either their constitution or the Charter of Fundamental Rights, but I can't find it anymore. I am wondering why that is not sufficient to permanently block this. Edit: This is not to say that you shouldn't resist the laws at every other level, too, because you definitely should.
- Belopolye 1y ago
  I believe it was Germany's constitutional court, which given the experience of East Germany is understandable.
- account42 1y ago
  It's the circuit breakers job to prevent a faulty appliance from burning the house down yet I'm glad that appliances include their own fault protection.
mytailorisrich 1y ago
But that's exactly how the EU works. If you give the "wrong" answer they'll keep going until you give the "right" answer. France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed EU constitution... nevermind, the same was in the later Lisbon treaty. Ireland rejected the Nice and Lisbon treaties... nevermind they still passed when asked again after cosmetic changes and "information campaigns". Poland voted for the wrong government... EU suspended funds until they voted for the right government at the next election.
- darkwater 1y ago
  > Poland voted for the wrong government... EU suspended funds until they voted for the right government at the next election. On the other end there is the "don't interfere with anything" and you get totalitarianism as a side effect, eventually. If a democratically elected government passes a law that makes killing some category of people lawful, should they be allowed to do it?
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    That escalated quickly from my comment to "but Nazis"...
    - immibis 1y ago
      I don't know if you noticed, but some things awfully similar to Nazism are currently popular again, worldwide. Mostly not popular enough to actually win elections in most cases, but enough that many people are thinking about how to stop almost-Nazis from winning elections, which of course gets the latter group labelled as almost-Nazis for trying to interfere with elections. There are many groups with agendas to kill or expel gay people, trans people, Muslims, atheists, etc. It's sadly normal for those groups to exist; it's not normal for them to be anywhere close to power and we need to stop them getting power because we already know what happens if they get power. "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" and all that.
    - kiicia 1y ago
      Because nazis were peak of totalitarianism disguised as democracy and stemmed directly from seemingly (that is while looking at smaller parts of it) democratic process
elevatortrim 1y ago
Trying to prevent stupidity by regulations and rules is proving to be problematic: Because we have very successfully prevented stupid from destroying themselves, and let them thrive on the successes of others built (e.g. anti-vaxers are relatively safe thanks to everyone else vaccinating their children, or you can thrive on benefits in the UK which is great when you genuinely tried your best but fail, but terrible when it is motivating you to stop trying). This fundemantally conflicts with a lesson startup scene learned very early: Fail fast, fail often. Our societies do not fail fast when they make mistakes, thanks to the incredible safety and stability intelligent and sensible people created. This is preventing people from learning from their idiocies, which in turn allows them to reach to critical mass and forcing their idiocy on the whole society in the form of bullshit or hurtful laws and orders. We should change this and let idiots fail fast before they become a danger to everyone.
thaawyy33432434 1y ago
Also an expiry date for every bill. All things should have a timeout. We should fund another lobby that pull in the other direction.
torben-friis 1y ago
Not sure how true that is, but I heard people mention that the law would be unconstitutional in Denmark, where this iteration was born. If so, I think that should be a limitation as well.
ManBeardPc 1y ago
Maybe on the condition that the law was struck down by courts. Otherwise it would block iterations on any controversial topics that need time to reach consensus. Some others here asked how would we decide what is the same law. That’s pretty easy: same as with many other not so clear things, if some sues a judge/jury hears both sides and makes a decision.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Terr_ 1y ago
> There should be sorts of an exponential backoff mandated for the contents of bills. I don't think that's workable: * If it only works for exact bills, they'll just change a tiny bit and resubmit, and we're back to square one but with frustrating procedures/paperwork. * If it works for approximate bills, then it will be abused by opponents that introduce fatally-flawed versions of your good bill in order to block you from ever getting it voted-on.
account42 1y ago
Maybe it would be enough for rejected bad laws to have consequences for the politicians proposing them.

by m000 1y ago

zenmac 1y ago

Good idea. yeah at this point, law making every were just seems like brute force attack at this point. We need some kind of security assure to keep out these 'law making crackers'

mariusor 1y ago

I doubt that this can be actually done as intended because the wording of a bill can be changed enough to pretend it's not the same as the previous versions. I can't really think of a way to make this work, but indeed it would be a great addition to law passing.

nickslaughter02 1y ago

It exists but the proposal must be voted on. These people will not put the proposal to vote if they know it will not pass. That's why they ask countries' positions up front.

arlcode 1y ago

That's also problematic. Currently the same proposal is being discussed over and over again but if that wouldn't be possible it's easy introduce "similar" ideas. Ultimately law makers need to be able to pass new laws, even controversial ones, or the power to so slowly shifts to someone else (e.g. the executive in the USA) Not having a majority is the only way to stop the process and if the population is in favor, doesn't care or can't be bothered any law will pass.

mariusor 1y ago
I disagree on this one. In the same way you can't be prosecuted twice for the same crime in the US system under the "double jeopardy" clause, there should be an equivalent system where the same law can't be pushed over and over until it passes.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  It would be nice, but they change it a little bit so it's technically a different law.
- digitalPhonix 1y ago
  In many countries, it took multiple attempts to get gay marriage legalised. Having a double jeopardy type block for repeated attempts at passing laws would prevent social changes being captured in law. Also it would be easy to weaponised by proposing something that doesn’t have enough support now so that it can never be passed in the future.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    You're fighting a strawman there I think. He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years.
    - mschild 1y ago
      He did make a reference to the double jeopardy law in the US though which, if I'm not mistaken, explicitly prohibits exactly that type of behaviour.
    - digitalPhonix 1y ago
      That's not double jeopardy then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy The clause in the US constitution specifically has no time limits and it looks like it's the same for all the countries listed on wiki.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years. So if gay marriage or weed legalization was defeated in 2015 you shouldn't be able to have a go at it until 2025? Or if YIMBY zoning reforms or AI regulation were defeated in 2025 you shouldn't be able try again until 2035?
somenameforme 1y ago
The whole point of governance in a democracy is consent of the governed. When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large, then they've entered into the realm of authoritarianism with an occasional election - which is exactly what we accuse the 'bad guys' of doing.
- gruez 1y ago
  >When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large[...] But how does banning subsequent attempts at passing bills prevent this? Moreover what's preventing this mechanism from being abused to block legislation that society actually want?
  - the_duke 1y ago
    The tactic here is sneaking legislation through the system by bringing it up again and again, hoping for the public to eventually lose interest, or to catch a time with a lot of other drama going on so they can avoid the public attention/backlash. I do think there are procedural ways to support this, like: proposed bills that are very similar to previous rejected ones need a preemptive vote with 60%+ support to be considered - if brought again with a certain time frame. I do see your point though, there can be unforeseen consequences.
    - Yeul 1y ago
      Good thing we have paid professionals whose job it is to vote on these things.
      - gruez 1y ago
        But the whole premise is that those paid professionals have gone rogue?
        idle_zealot 1y ago
        There's really no fixing that kind of failure state with a bandage solution. The whole idea of a representative democracy is premised on citizens being able to elect representatives who represent their interests. If that's not holding then that's the part that needs to be fixed.
adastra22 1y ago
It is not at all obvious to me that a government, acting from the authority of a public mandate, has to be able to pass controversial laws—which by definition lack that same consent.
KoolKat23 1y ago
I guess the main thing should be, there should be a lot more transparency with this whole thing. We should know who is behind it and vote them out. This whole Commission Grouping thing is smoke and mirrors, there are representatives of our governments facilitating this, we should know who they are, they should not be able to just stay anonymous. It should all be public when a vote is taken. It's ripe for abuse such as corruption, they've been forced them to open up a bit but it's clearly not enough. Usually it's the representatives themselves that propose laws (the ones we directly vote for). The commission could be viewed as a sort of potential trojan horse, in that it can make these proposals and yet it's inner workings are not fully transparent. With it's usual "government" work secrecy can be a good thing (trade negotiations etc.), when it comes to it drafting laws that should be transparent. Perhaps they should even look at splitting these things out but that also has a host of issues.
- account42 1y ago
  I disagree that trade negotiations should be done in secrecy - that's one of the most abused backdoor for antidemocratic laws.
  - KoolKat23 1y ago
    Fair enough, you're probably right, but it's perhaps one of the only plausible use cases. Otherwise it should not exist in in this sphere.

achenet 1y ago

As other comments on this post have mentioned, exponential backoff would still have some issues. However, we could envision a rule where controversial bills have to be validated by a strict majority, or even a supermajority (75% minimum) of the voting population via referendum. I feel like in 2025 it should be doable for a state to ask its citizens to vote online to show that they support a bill, and if a given bill lacks support amongst the citizen body of that state, it's probably not worth passing.

kstrauser 1y ago

I wish there were a “No, And Stop Asking” law where you couldn’t propose a law again within X years after it fails to pass. I know a million reasons why that’s probably impossible, starting with “what makes it the same law?”, but I can still wish we had one.

pqtyw 1y ago
So if a party which rejects some policy loses the election (possible even directly because of that) their opponents who always supported that law wouldn't be allowed to vote on it again? Seems extremely easy to abuse...
- kstrauser 1y ago
  I did mention that it had a million problems.
monomers 1y ago
It would be possible to proactively pass a law that is incompatible with future attempts, right? E.g. in this case something like a "right to chat secrecy" law.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Yes, but whatever law you pass that is incompatible with future attempts can just have its repeal included as part of future attempts.
  - godelski 1y ago
    Yes but so would a "stop asking" option. I don't find this as a flaw, instead it's a pretty good feature. Everything should be able to be revisited, if only because times change and there's unintended consequences. Just because you can still drive over speed bumps and knock over road blocks doesn't mean that they aren't effective tools.
- 1718627440 1y ago

worldsayshi 1y ago

Wouldn't that potentially be exploited by the opposition where they could push a similar bill but with unpopular additions?

NotPractical 1y ago

It is the courts' job to block unconstitutional or otherwise illegal laws. I believe someone said in a previous thread that a court in an EU member state had already found this mass surveillance on citizens who are not criminal suspects to be illegal under either their constitution or the Charter of Fundamental Rights, but I can't find it anymore. I am wondering why that is not sufficient to permanently block this. Edit: This is not to say that you shouldn't resist the laws at every other level, too, because you definitely should.

Belopolye 1y ago
I believe it was Germany's constitutional court, which given the experience of East Germany is understandable.
account42 1y ago
It's the circuit breakers job to prevent a faulty appliance from burning the house down yet I'm glad that appliances include their own fault protection.

mytailorisrich 1y ago

But that's exactly how the EU works. If you give the "wrong" answer they'll keep going until you give the "right" answer. France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed EU constitution... nevermind, the same was in the later Lisbon treaty. Ireland rejected the Nice and Lisbon treaties... nevermind they still passed when asked again after cosmetic changes and "information campaigns". Poland voted for the wrong government... EU suspended funds until they voted for the right government at the next election.

darkwater 1y ago
> Poland voted for the wrong government... EU suspended funds until they voted for the right government at the next election. On the other end there is the "don't interfere with anything" and you get totalitarianism as a side effect, eventually. If a democratically elected government passes a law that makes killing some category of people lawful, should they be allowed to do it?
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  That escalated quickly from my comment to "but Nazis"...
  - immibis 1y ago
    I don't know if you noticed, but some things awfully similar to Nazism are currently popular again, worldwide. Mostly not popular enough to actually win elections in most cases, but enough that many people are thinking about how to stop almost-Nazis from winning elections, which of course gets the latter group labelled as almost-Nazis for trying to interfere with elections. There are many groups with agendas to kill or expel gay people, trans people, Muslims, atheists, etc. It's sadly normal for those groups to exist; it's not normal for them to be anywhere close to power and we need to stop them getting power because we already know what happens if they get power. "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" and all that.
  - kiicia 1y ago
    Because nazis were peak of totalitarianism disguised as democracy and stemmed directly from seemingly (that is while looking at smaller parts of it) democratic process

elevatortrim 1y ago

Trying to prevent stupidity by regulations and rules is proving to be problematic: Because we have very successfully prevented stupid from destroying themselves, and let them thrive on the successes of others built (e.g. anti-vaxers are relatively safe thanks to everyone else vaccinating their children, or you can thrive on benefits in the UK which is great when you genuinely tried your best but fail, but terrible when it is motivating you to stop trying). This fundemantally conflicts with a lesson startup scene learned very early: Fail fast, fail often. Our societies do not fail fast when they make mistakes, thanks to the incredible safety and stability intelligent and sensible people created. This is preventing people from learning from their idiocies, which in turn allows them to reach to critical mass and forcing their idiocy on the whole society in the form of bullshit or hurtful laws and orders. We should change this and let idiots fail fast before they become a danger to everyone.

thaawyy33432434 1y ago

Also an expiry date for every bill. All things should have a timeout. We should fund another lobby that pull in the other direction.

torben-friis 1y ago

Not sure how true that is, but I heard people mention that the law would be unconstitutional in Denmark, where this iteration was born. If so, I think that should be a limitation as well.

ManBeardPc 1y ago

Maybe on the condition that the law was struck down by courts. Otherwise it would block iterations on any controversial topics that need time to reach consensus. Some others here asked how would we decide what is the same law. That’s pretty easy: same as with many other not so clear things, if some sues a judge/jury hears both sides and makes a decision.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Terr_ 1y ago

> There should be sorts of an exponential backoff mandated for the contents of bills. I don't think that's workable: * If it only works for exact bills, they'll just change a tiny bit and resubmit, and we're back to square one but with frustrating procedures/paperwork. * If it works for approximate bills, then it will be abused by opponents that introduce fatally-flawed versions of your good bill in order to block you from ever getting it voted-on.

account42 1y ago

Maybe it would be enough for rejected bad laws to have consequences for the politicians proposing them.