Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 246 posts

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#181

Post by tptacek »

jfager wrote: post #177
Bud wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has only been 15 years since Ralph Nader got W elected for two terms and cost us about $10 trillion in stupid wars and bad economic decisions, and just about destroyed the US economy to boot. Do you already need yet another new lesson on why Lessig running as an independent could easily be disastrous? Really?

The person Lessig would theoretically be Nadering, you do realize that as a Senator she voted on the wrong side of all of those bad things you're pointing out, right?

There are probably very few people on this thread who would pick Hillary Clinton as their dream candidate, but there's also very few people here who think that she wouldn't be a million times better than President Cruz.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#182

Post by vezzy-fnord »

tptacek wrote: post #175
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather intriguing causal chain of responsibility, though. You didn't say that Nader was a potential chain reaction for the election of Bush leading up to Iraq. No. You quite clearly said he was the reason for Iraq, and that is nothing but frothing lunacy. What kind of perverse ethics could lead to anyone but the actor who affirmed invasion (Bush) bearing responsibility for it? Or, to paraphrase from a scene…

I'm going to assume, I think safely, that a response that characterizes my comment as "frothing lunacy" is not one asking for further discussion with me.

Not necessarily, it's just a dramatic expression of bewilderment. Besides the whole issue of whether Nader being a spoiler and costing Gore the election as a result is even factual [1][2] (or just another intriguing but ill-supported legend like that of the disparate perceptions of Nixon/JFK on TV and on radio), there is the problem of whether blaming the person subject to an inefficiency in FPTP is overly disproportionate relatively to blaming the FPTP inefficiency itself, or the person actually responsible for the military intervention. Blaming the spoiler strikes me as a compositional fallacy at best, ethically repugnant at worse. Hell, we could even make the case that the spoiler is a victim.

[1] http://prorev.com/green2000.htm

[2] http://politizine.blogspot.com/2004/02/debunking-myth-ralph-...

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#183

Post by mbesto »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #29

With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, beca…

A perhaps more concise quote would be:

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#184

Post by danbmil99 »

nl wrote: post #167
gkoberger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United.…

Firstly: I'm not in the US, and fairly left leaning even for someone outside the US. That said: I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided. I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard. I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong…

Your proposal would run smack up against the First Amendment. Both right and left will will reject any sort of speech control out of hand here in the USA.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#185

Post by jfager »

tptacek wrote: post #181
jfager wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person Lessig would theoretically be Nadering, you do realize that as a Senator she voted on the wrong side of all of those bad things you're pointing out, right?

There are probably very few people on this thread who would pick Hillary Clinton as their dream candidate, but there's also very few people here who think that she wouldn't be a million times better than President Cruz.

Based on the actual voting record, on the most serious issues, she's about on par with the worst president of the modern era. Cruz and Trump would be worse, sure, but not by "a million times", more like 2x.

Four years of letting Republicans remind everyone how terrible they are at governing for a chance to be rid of Clinton for good and take back Congress and the White House in 2020? Maybe worth it.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#186

Post by tptacek »

jacobolus wrote: post #174
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs. Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practic…

I also think Lessig’s campaign was an absurdity. But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far far below your usual standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush’s election is pretty weak sauce. You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn’t resign, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush’s actions, foreign heads of state who went along and everyone at th…

I agree with you. Saying Nader "turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq" was a really dumb way to have put it. I think my reaction to the "pox on both parties" notion is more allergic than rational.

I think there's some culpability with Nader, the magnitude of what went wrong with Bush is very high, so even a small multiplier is a big deal. But Nader is surely not the most important factor in the Iraq war.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#187

Post by Bud »

jfager wrote: post #185
tptacek wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably very few people on this thread who would pick Hillary Clinton as their dream candidate, but there's also very few people here who think that she wouldn't be a million times better than President Cruz.

Based on the actual voting record, on the most serious issues, she's about on par with the worst president of the modern era. Cruz and Trump would be worse, sure, but not by "a million times", more like 2x. Four years of letting Republicans remind everyone how terrible they are at governing for a chance to be rid of Clinton for good and take back Congress and the White House in 2020? Maybe worth it.

You seem to be deeply confused. Hillary casting a pro forma vote for something does not equate in any way with initiating the thing in question.

Deep down, you know this, of course. You know it's blatantly silly for you to say that Hillary Clinton is "on par" with W. But somehow your filter just failed to kick in.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#188

Post by Bud »

13thLetter wrote: post #180
Bud wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around and run infinite quantities of ads with infinite anonymous funding for said ads, too, to support "Hillary: The Movie", which wasn't actually a movie that they wanted to release, btw, it was actually a big long TV ad. Come on, at least be intellectually honest. They wanted to shadow-fund a TV ad campaign. Clever of you to leave those facts out!

"Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around" Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?

Once again, you conveniently leave out the key part of the comment in question: the source of the funding.

Citizens United wasn't about speech. It was about unlimited anonymous money flooding our elections.

Nothing is wrong with criticizing a politician. That's obvious. But thanks for the clumsy obfuscation attempt.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#189

Post by tptacek »

dankohn1 wrote: post #147
tptacek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on "our" side of the ideological spectrum are going to have an unpleasant reckoning soon with the fact that the governing that really matters happens at the state and local level. State office campaigns build a back-bench for federal politics, and the states actually do serve as laboratories for democracy, and most of the rulemaking people come into contact with are state and city rules, not federal ones. If y…

Evidence that you are correct that the focus should be on state legislatures: Matt Yglesias's Vox story, "Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble." http://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9565119/democrats-in-deep-trou...

Wow, and here I thought I was just parroting a line Josaiah Bartlett had about school board elections in New Hampshire.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#190

Post by tptacek »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #182
tptacek wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to assume, I think safely, that a response that characterizes my comment as "frothing lunacy" is not one asking for further discussion with me.

Not necessarily, it's just a dramatic expression of bewilderment. Besides the whole issue of whether Nader being a spoiler and costing Gore the election as a result is even factual [1][2] (or just another intriguing but ill-supported legend like that of the disparate perceptions of Nixon/JFK on TV and on radio), there is the problem of whether blaming the person subject to an inefficiency in FPTP is overly disproport…

This is another example of an exculpatory analysis for Nader trying to convince readers that many of his voters would have broken for Bush instead of Gore if he had dropped out. Like Wikipedia, it points out that Floridian Democrats voted in anomalous numbers for Bush, implying that Floridian Naderites were the same --- which of course they were not.
Post reply on HN