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Why would politicians ever pass such a law? Who do you think they work for? update: Yeah, my bad. The point of this comment was to express my increasing cynici
by Eddy_Viscosity2 6mo ago
Why would politicians ever pass such a law? Who do you think they work for?
update: Yeah, my bad. The point of this comment was to express my increasing cynicism at how we just keep seeing this kind of corporate behavior over and over again and how even when a tiny win is achieved on things like data collection, right to repair, ease for cancelling subscriptions, privacy, and so on and so on, they are so quickly over taken by new tactics or clawbacks/loopholes/non-enforcement of those laws.
HN comments was probably the wrong place to vent and its too late to delete it.
- post-it 6mo agoWhat's the point of this kind of comment? Have pro-citizen anti-corporate laws never been passed in the past?
- wilg 6mo agoThe point of the comment is to spread toxic and deadly cynicism.
- traderj0e 6mo agoIf you never trust anyone, nobody will ever fool you except for yourself.
- arikrahman 6mo agoAnd also to karma farm. Thankfully the comment is greyed out for what it is.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo agoYou never see corporate media doing anything like that.
- kevin_thibedeau 6mo agoOnly when Congress might be embarrassed. The VPPA exists so we can't find out what videos they watch in their spare time between orgies.
- tardedmeme 6mo agoSo it should be as easy as buying tracking data and searching for Congressmen. We can put up license plate readers around Washington too, since that's legal.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- guelo 6mo agoVery rarely. Most of the consumer protection laws were passed before Reagan in 1980. We did get the CFPB after the 2008 financial meltdown but it's been under attack ever since.
- anonym29 6mo ago"Citizens" United (which allows unlimited corporate political donations by classifying them as "speech", for those out of the loop) has fundamentally changed the core incentive structures of the modern political landscape. To compare a pre-CU world to a post-CU world when it comes to matters at the intersection of corporate interests and government regulatory / legislative power is comparing apples to oranges. We need to overturn CU if we want to be able to go back to a world where government serves people rather than multinational conglomerates.
- parineum 6mo ago> We need to overturn CU Or we could stop looking at SCOTUS to fix legislation and ask the branch of government who's job it is to fix legislation, Congress.
- anonym29 6mo agoThat would be nice in principle, yes, but in a CU world, that's asking the fox to vote to lock itself out of the hen house. In practice most of the foxes that promise to do so never actually will. What's your proposal to solve this?
- parineum 6mo agoFrankly, I think it's much less of an issue than it's made out to be. If money meant so much, Donald Trump wouldn't have beat Jeb Bush on the way to beating Hilary Clinton. To me, money in politics is the red herring to keep you from looking at the real election reform that needs to happen, some combination of open primaries (to remove the effect of primaries going to more extreme candidates rather than centrists) and an alternative to first past the post elections to allow people to vote for who they like without worrying about throwing away their votes (there are many different systems to do this, they're all major improvements). The money in politics is used by the parties to back their preferred candidates and the voters go along with it in the general elections because they don't want to waste their votes. The money helps them do the bad thing but it isn't the bad thing.
- lovich 6mo agoDoesn’t really seem like the environment where the common persons going to get more rights or protections since the POTUS and SCOTUS are currently ripping those up while Congress sits in the cuck chair.
- wat10000 6mo agoIdeally because we'd vote in politicians who would do it, and vote out those who didn't.
- nomorewords 6mo agoIs that even possible in the US anymore with donations and corporate backing being so important to a campaign?
- applfanboysbgon 6mo agoI don't believe donations or corporate backing had anything to do with Trump, for example, winning. Trump won because he genuinely appeals to the average voting American. American voters are willingly choosing to support these politicians and all of the consequences that entails.
- dgellow 6mo agoFor the president election, maybe, but without corporate backing of the GOP he would have to face an adversarial congress. Or at least, that’s the hope
- fn-mote 6mo agoYou can believe the latter but the former ignores everything we know about the effectiveness of advertising. And also about the targeting of swing districts.
- triceratops 6mo agoBoth can be true.
- exe34 6mo agoTo discount advertising and manipulation in this context amounts to conspiracy theory in my opinion.
- wat10000 6mo agoIt's possible. Ultimately the voters do make the decision, even if they can be swayed. How realistic it might be, I can't say. We certainly need a lot more engagement with the process. There are far too many people ignoring the primaries and then complaining about their lack of choice in the general.
- applfanboysbgon 6mo agoThey work for the people. In some countries, people actually vote for politicians that benefit the population. In other countries, people repeatedly vote for politicians despite knowing that those politicians are only interested in enriching themselves, with a track record going back decades of doing nothing but that. The problem, then, is the voters in certain countries, not the politicians.
- dexterdog 6mo agoAnd in some countries people are only given a choice of two, neither of which benefit the population.
- roughly 6mo agoMany of those countries have mechanisms by which one can express their preferences earlier in the process, ones which have been successfully used to pivot major political parties in new and unexpected directions, although those mechanisms are more complicated than just showing up at the end and whining about the results, so usually it's only motivated individuals and entities which leverage them.
- grassfedgeek 6mo agoIn some countries a major party has succeeded in convincing a majority of voters to vote against their self interest by leveraging "red meat" topics such as abortion, jesus and guns.