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From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

washingtonpost.com

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Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#31

Post by secondbreakfast »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #28
makecheck wrote: post #22

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few…

...or because the positions are smaller (and even less salient), it becomes easier to buy off a bunch of smaller reps. If the rep for Chattanooga is corrupt, would you know? Do you even know who they are, right now? I'm not aware of any academic research on this off the top of my head, but it must exist, that's probably a better reference than a belief that everything changes if we adjust some numbers. That's a very…

It's not academic, but perhaps the founding fathers were onto something. The original constitution set the number of House Representatives to 1 for every 30,000 citizens. It was not until 1911 that the House capped the number at its present 435. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_H...

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#32

Post by zavi »

fosco wrote: post #2

Anyone have thoughts on exams that require a passing grade to serve in Congress? I.e. demonstrate certain levels of knowledge in order to participate in certain conversations with new bills listing requirements at top thereby eliminating the ability to vote if that Congress person has not met the minimum? I realize this may be a bit off topic but my thought is that if more people in Congress (or other agencies/depart…

A more practical approach would be to have an aptitude test for general voting (higher score means heavier weight for the vote). Additional requirements could be added to gate voter eligibility such as having paid more federal taxes than consumed via welfare in a given year.

All of these would, however, be unconstitutional, including the original proposal in the thread.

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#34

Post by aaron-lebo »

secondbreakfast wrote: post #31
aaron-lebo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or because the positions are smaller (and even less salient), it becomes easier to buy off a bunch of smaller reps. If the rep for Chattanooga is corrupt, would you know? Do you even know who they are, right now? I'm not aware of any academic research on this off the top of my head, but it must exist, that's probably a better reference than a belief that everything changes if we adjust some numbers. That's a very…

It's not academic, but perhaps the founding fathers were onto something. The original constitution set the number of House Representatives to 1 for every 30,000 citizens. It was not until 1911 that the House capped the number at its present 435. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_H...

Yeah, well those guys thought only land-holding males should vote, so maybe they didn't. Did the men designing a system of government for a nation limited to the eastern coast have special insight in what governing 300 million people would look like?

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#35

Post by zavi »

philhartmanonic wrote: post #17
ajmurmann wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the fact that this is never going to happen, it also is a unrealistic expectation. Not everyone can be a expert on everything but has to trust their colleagues and staffers on how to vote on some issues.

The problems with Congress isn't stupidity (not that they aren't stupid), it's corruption. There's no quiz for that. Beyond that, considering the history of tests as a precondition for participation in American politics...funny that it comes up as often as it does. Plus, if there was a test, isn't that something that'd quite possibly be on it?

Is there any evidence that there's corruption in US congress?

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#36

Post by ekianjo »

makecheck wrote: post #22

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few…

> buying them becomes “easy”;

That's precisely why systems where powers are concentrated among the hands of the few are bound to fail.

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#37

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #36
makecheck wrote: post #22

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few…

> buying them becomes “easy”; That's precisely why systems where powers are concentrated among the hands of the few are bound to fail.

[deleted]

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#38

Post by badestrand »

makecheck wrote: post #22

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few…

Go down the path even more and you land at direct democracy, where every citizen can vote on any legislative decision. Corporations can not buy half the people.

Because it can be a lot of work to dive into the details of a decision every citizen could delegate his vote to someone he trusts - delegate his vote in general, per topic (economical decisions to Betty, foreign affairs to Tom) or just for a single decision. You can change your vote delegation any time. This is Liquid Democracy.

Our current parliaments are just a special case of Liquid Democracy: You delegate your vote on all decisions to a single person but you can choose only between a handful of people and are not allowed to change your choice of delegation for the next 4 years.

Different Pirate Parties all over Europe tried to establish this new concept of democracy but I am afraid it was not well understood/they did not explain it well enough.

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#39

Post by mc32 »

kurthr wrote: post #25
ISL wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get the Congress for which we vote.

Well, if you can gerrymander the vote, then your vote may not count as much as others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

Like many things in life Gerrymandering has cons and pros. We know the cons, but the pros are people who would otherwise be unrepresented (by being a minority in a majority district) get to have a voice.

The major con is that it's the politicians who decide the boundaries rather than a neutral party (say semi-random boundary selection within certain bounds)

Re: From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

#40

Post by Clanan »

makecheck wrote: post #22

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few…

> Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”;

Not to ignore your point, but there's actually substantial contention in the Political Science field about the impact of money. Does money flow to views, or do views flow to money? It's a difficult topic to study and is certainly not settled. Fun to delve into.

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