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Since when do these companies get such a big say in our Democracy? Since when is "Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Make Year-End Lobbying Push to Curb NSA Spying" a h

Since when do these companies get such a big say in our Democracy? Since when is "Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Make Year-End Lobbying Push to Curb NSA Spying" a headline and not "American people rally the vote to stop sweeping surveillance"? Personally, I think it's mostly a show to bolster consumer confidence (rant purposefully left out). But let's say it's not. Why should a handful of private individuals be more important for the direction of legislature than democratic consensus AND what's written into law by the Constitution. A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through. I'm not upset that (publicly) these corporations are against surveillance, I'm upset that it matters. Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
Downvoted within 7 minutes. Nice going.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  When I posted that, the only other replies were fawning about this, and this was as I said instantly downvoted. Sure, it "doesn't add to the discussion", it adds to a discussion about the discussion you don't want to have. Oh well, that's fine, but I stand by my post and would do it again, pile on it all you want. Anyone who thinks this site could possibly be 100% free from PR people has my condolences, and if you think that doesn't matter, then I wonder why you think any of this matters.
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    I'm with you PavlovsCat. Love the name by the way. I saw your comment and saw it get nuked. When you wrote it there was the start of a downvote brigade on my comment but it made its way back up.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 12y ago
The American people just went to the polls to demonstrate that NSA surveillance is not something they particularly care about. If you're an anti-surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  Really? The NSA was a ballot issue? It was a wedge issue during the congressional elections? I wanted to vote against collect-by-default programs. But I didn't see the checkbox. The parties defined the issues for the voters. The Democratic Party ran on the usual 'get out the vote' and The Republican Party ran on equating officials with the Obama administration and discouraged voting except from their base where they could. Both promised financial change but neither advanced anything concrete enough to be a platform. And did we want a big item like widespread surveillance to be on the ballot during the national elections most famous for poor voter turnout? Or maybe you're talking about a different ballot? > If you're an anti-surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue. A philosophical equivalent to tactical/dishonest voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting). You're suggesting that I accept the (presumed) assistance of these corporate leaders. I do, actually. But I also do not accept the fact that this class has the power that it does. These two things are not actually mutually exclusive.
- 001sky 12y ago
  The NSA relies on executive orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333 Executive orders don't need congress to fix. Nor are they on mid-term election ballots. Executive Order 12333 has been regarded by the American intelligence community as a fundamental document authorizing the expansion of data collection activities.[9] The document has been employed by the National Security Agency as legal authorization for its secret systematic collection of unencrypted information flowing through the data centers of internet communications giants Google and Yahoo.[9] http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execut...
zkhalique 12y ago
Since this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-america-tpm-interview http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-...
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  The Gilens and Page study is a must read.
javert 12y ago
You'd rather see us all live in an Orwellian surveillance society than have American corporations owned by American shareholders defend America? All right, you'll no doubt get what you want, though ultimately at the cost of the republic you claim to be defending.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Uh, what? No, he'd rather see you all live in a society where you have a say in what's going on.
tn13 12y ago
People rarely care about government decisions that do not affect them directly. People are generally blind to secondary effects of any government policy. Price control and Minimum-wage are prime examples. Facebook or Microsoft are not entities in themselves but they represent their investors which are just people just like you and me. Whatever these companies do essentially represents the will of those people. It makes perfect sense for their lobbying because they are the ones who are likely to get affected in long because of increases cost of their services and reduced credibility.
StevePerkins 12y ago
Most people aren't voting, period. The U.S. just had federal elections a couple of weeks ago, and two-thirds of the country stayed home: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-tu... I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game. * We don't show up in local and state elections, where the politicians are elected who draw the maps and gerrymander the congressional districts. * We don't show up for the primaries, where the candidate who is going to win that gerrymandered district is selected. * Then we don't show up for the general election. Admittedly, most races are a foregone conclusion by this stage, and there aren't good candidates to choose from. However, even at this stage there is always at least a "lesser of two evils". With only 35% turnout, the outcome could be flipped in even the most gerrymandered of districts if people were simply engaged and showed up. Money drives the system, but only because the public is so disengaged, and votes for whoever has the funds to shout at us the loudest. I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe, but there's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt. Is has to come from us.
- rayiner 12y ago
  As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. Neither party will dismantle either our military or the welfare state. Taxes are not going to fluctuate more than +/- 5%. Nobody is going to dismantle Obamacare. Abortion is here to stay, legalization of same sex marriage is inevitable, etc. And I think these are all good things and I have no pressing incentive to vote to change the status quo. I understand that other people don't have the same views and want to see fundamental change. But I think most people really don't want fundamental change. They maybe want to move the needle a bit one way or another, but they're basically okay with how things have evolved to be. There was a great graphic on reddit the other day showing voter preferences by party. There is little difference between peoples' priorities with the exception of the military. Everyone cares about jobs and social security. Nobody cares about the environment or infrastructure. I find it difficult to look at the US and think anything other than that it closely reflects what your typical voter wants, or at least represents the inevitable compromise between what subsets of typical voters want.
parasubvert 12y ago
>A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through. These guys aren't the elite. The elite are from a different generation, and different industries. This is part of their play to replace them with the new generations. And this is the US system "functioning as intended", btw. > Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors. You don't have to vote for the board, the supreme court and constitution ensures the elite is always to have more say than you. The US government was structured specifically to contain the power of the propertyless majority against the new propertied elite. You couldn't even vote if you weren't a property holder until at least 1850. The founding fathers didn't like the UK aristocracy because it was hereditary and corrupt, but they certainly wanted to protect and grow that they and other minority "gentlemen" had collected. There was a swing to more populist influence for the past century, but now with bipartisan distrust at a high, the Citizens United decision, and the very slow uptake of issues like Lessig's Mayday PAC, we are decades away from having any substantive progress on this. I'd underscore: by design. Give the power to the people, but not so much that the elite aren't first among equals. (EDIT: clarity)
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  I would add here that the current compression of wealth into top tiers has exacerbated the situation. The top 1% currently own approximately 70% of assets in America (Piketty); the Walton family's brood will be inheriting wealth that amounts to the combined holdings of the bottom three quarters of black households. The steeper the gini curve (or better metric), the fewer families compose the elite. The last time America was squeezed this tightly we found ourselves in a Great Depression and tens of millions of people marched the streets. This resulted in a 94% tax on the rich (among other things). We're finding ourselves there again - slowly. Our Great Recession isn't the final expression of these systematic pressures - Keynesianism can only do so much when macroeconomic failures are but a symptom of societal issues. The other day I spoke on a bus with a very well-spoken yet disillusioned man who had internalized that no matter how hard he worked he would never be able to join the class of people around him, who were mostly amusing themselves with smart phones. He was antagonistic - a little of it misplaced toward those who had inherited rather than designed class separation - and he was agitated. He struggled to understand how the "land of the free" TM could fix him into a modern equivalent of indentured servitude and who he should be angry at that this condition was his at birth. The point is well taken that America's roots in Jeffersonian Democracy blesses those who are fortunate enough to arise from the correct vagina or who are given a leg up or are married to such a person. In context of the past four and a half decades there are fewer and fewer blessed vaginas to be born from and more for us chumps.

PavlovsCat 12y ago

Downvoted within 7 minutes. Nice going.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
When I posted that, the only other replies were fawning about this, and this was as I said instantly downvoted. Sure, it "doesn't add to the discussion", it adds to a discussion about the discussion you don't want to have. Oh well, that's fine, but I stand by my post and would do it again, pile on it all you want. Anyone who thinks this site could possibly be 100% free from PR people has my condolences, and if you think that doesn't matter, then I wonder why you think any of this matters.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  I'm with you PavlovsCat. Love the name by the way. I saw your comment and saw it get nuked. When you wrote it there was the start of a downvote brigade on my comment but it made its way back up.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 12y ago

The American people just went to the polls to demonstrate that NSA surveillance is not something they particularly care about. If you're an anti-surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue.

xnull2guest 12y ago
Really? The NSA was a ballot issue? It was a wedge issue during the congressional elections? I wanted to vote against collect-by-default programs. But I didn't see the checkbox. The parties defined the issues for the voters. The Democratic Party ran on the usual 'get out the vote' and The Republican Party ran on equating officials with the Obama administration and discouraged voting except from their base where they could. Both promised financial change but neither advanced anything concrete enough to be a platform. And did we want a big item like widespread surveillance to be on the ballot during the national elections most famous for poor voter turnout? Or maybe you're talking about a different ballot? > If you're an anti-surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue. A philosophical equivalent to tactical/dishonest voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting). You're suggesting that I accept the (presumed) assistance of these corporate leaders. I do, actually. But I also do not accept the fact that this class has the power that it does. These two things are not actually mutually exclusive.
001sky 12y ago
The NSA relies on executive orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333 Executive orders don't need congress to fix. Nor are they on mid-term election ballots. Executive Order 12333 has been regarded by the American intelligence community as a fundamental document authorizing the expansion of data collection activities.[9] The document has been employed by the National Security Agency as legal authorization for its secret systematic collection of unencrypted information flowing through the data centers of internet communications giants Google and Yahoo.[9] http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execut...

zkhalique 12y ago

Since this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-america-tpm-interview http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-...

xnull2guest 12y ago
The Gilens and Page study is a must read.

javert 12y ago

You'd rather see us all live in an Orwellian surveillance society than have American corporations owned by American shareholders defend America? All right, you'll no doubt get what you want, though ultimately at the cost of the republic you claim to be defending.

StavrosK 12y ago
Uh, what? No, he'd rather see you all live in a society where you have a say in what's going on.

tn13 12y ago

People rarely care about government decisions that do not affect them directly. People are generally blind to secondary effects of any government policy. Price control and Minimum-wage are prime examples. Facebook or Microsoft are not entities in themselves but they represent their investors which are just people just like you and me. Whatever these companies do essentially represents the will of those people. It makes perfect sense for their lobbying because they are the ones who are likely to get affected in long because of increases cost of their services and reduced credibility.

StevePerkins 12y ago

Most people aren't voting, period. The U.S. just had federal elections a couple of weeks ago, and two-thirds of the country stayed home: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-tu... I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game. * We don't show up in local and state elections, where the politicians are elected who draw the maps and gerrymander the congressional districts. * We don't show up for the primaries, where the candidate who is going to win that gerrymandered district is selected. * Then we don't show up for the general election. Admittedly, most races are a foregone conclusion by this stage, and there aren't good candidates to choose from. However, even at this stage there is always at least a "lesser of two evils". With only 35% turnout, the outcome could be flipped in even the most gerrymandered of districts if people were simply engaged and showed up. Money drives the system, but only because the public is so disengaged, and votes for whoever has the funds to shout at us the loudest. I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe, but there's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt. Is has to come from us.

rayiner 12y ago
As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. Neither party will dismantle either our military or the welfare state. Taxes are not going to fluctuate more than +/- 5%. Nobody is going to dismantle Obamacare. Abortion is here to stay, legalization of same sex marriage is inevitable, etc. And I think these are all good things and I have no pressing incentive to vote to change the status quo. I understand that other people don't have the same views and want to see fundamental change. But I think most people really don't want fundamental change. They maybe want to move the needle a bit one way or another, but they're basically okay with how things have evolved to be. There was a great graphic on reddit the other day showing voter preferences by party. There is little difference between peoples' priorities with the exception of the military. Everyone cares about jobs and social security. Nobody cares about the environment or infrastructure. I find it difficult to look at the US and think anything other than that it closely reflects what your typical voter wants, or at least represents the inevitable compromise between what subsets of typical voters want.

parasubvert 12y ago

>A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through. These guys aren't the elite. The elite are from a different generation, and different industries. This is part of their play to replace them with the new generations. And this is the US system "functioning as intended", btw. > Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors. You don't have to vote for the board, the supreme court and constitution ensures the elite is always to have more say than you. The US government was structured specifically to contain the power of the propertyless majority against the new propertied elite. You couldn't even vote if you weren't a property holder until at least 1850. The founding fathers didn't like the UK aristocracy because it was hereditary and corrupt, but they certainly wanted to protect and grow that they and other minority "gentlemen" had collected. There was a swing to more populist influence for the past century, but now with bipartisan distrust at a high, the Citizens United decision, and the very slow uptake of issues like Lessig's Mayday PAC, we are decades away from having any substantive progress on this. I'd underscore: by design. Give the power to the people, but not so much that the elite aren't first among equals. (EDIT: clarity)

xnull2guest 12y ago
I would add here that the current compression of wealth into top tiers has exacerbated the situation. The top 1% currently own approximately 70% of assets in America (Piketty); the Walton family's brood will be inheriting wealth that amounts to the combined holdings of the bottom three quarters of black households. The steeper the gini curve (or better metric), the fewer families compose the elite. The last time America was squeezed this tightly we found ourselves in a Great Depression and tens of millions of people marched the streets. This resulted in a 94% tax on the rich (among other things). We're finding ourselves there again - slowly. Our Great Recession isn't the final expression of these systematic pressures - Keynesianism can only do so much when macroeconomic failures are but a symptom of societal issues. The other day I spoke on a bus with a very well-spoken yet disillusioned man who had internalized that no matter how hard he worked he would never be able to join the class of people around him, who were mostly amusing themselves with smart phones. He was antagonistic - a little of it misplaced toward those who had inherited rather than designed class separation - and he was agitated. He struggled to understand how the "land of the free" TM could fix him into a modern equivalent of indentured servitude and who he should be angry at that this condition was his at birth. The point is well taken that America's roots in Jeffersonian Democracy blesses those who are fortunate enough to arise from the correct vagina or who are given a leg up or are married to such a person. In context of the past four and a half decades there are fewer and fewer blessed vaginas to be born from and more for us chumps.