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From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

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

#51

Post by smallnamespace »

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”

Are the People paying them enough though?

A talented trader, entertainer, or athlete can easily make ten times what we pay our President or the average Congressperson, yet the latter have vastly greater levels of responsibility.

If you want to know what a society values, then look at what they are willing to pay for. It looks like the public is not willing to pay for effective leadership.

Unfortunately a lot of people are angry at politicians and will be dead-set against paying them any more than current levels. But are we not putting ourselves in a vicious cycle of:

relatively bad pay for politicians -> incompetent leaders -> angry people -> bad pay for politicians?

Btw, a lot of countries have had issues with petty bribery of the police. How do you think they solved it? By doubling the pay of cops, not demonizing them for taking bribes.

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

#52

Post by bubblethink »

Maybe it would help to just assume a completely adversarial model in every facet of technology so that stuff like this becomes a non-issue in the long run. At least for privacy, I don't see much point in any legislation one way or the other. Does it even matter if a piece of paper says that some agency can or cannot intercept something ? I feel that it would be better if everyone just came to terms with the fact that loss of privacy is generally implied unless proven otherwise (i.e. rigorously). Debating over specifics of this phone case or that precedent seems so short sighted. Like if you are sending postal mail, how much expectation of privacy do you have, irrespective of what the law says ?

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

#53

Post by Algurnon »

Self driving cars will obsolete road rage just as machines can better administer lucre than avaricious humans. c.f. any or all of recorded history. Democracy is a very analog 18th century mechanism for collective resource allocation. Designed by candle light, its grossly obsolete in these times and could easily be replaced by an ERP type apparatus. It sounds like the start of a good Sci-Fi novel. As do any of the last 24 mos.

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

#54

Post by colordrops »

badestrand wrote: post #38
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.…

> Corporations can not buy half the people.

They can get them for free. See Fox News and Facebook.

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

#55

Post by thaumasiotes »

rayiner wrote: post #10
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…

Aside from being unconstitutional ( http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/... ), it’d be undemocraric and tyrannical. If people wanted to be governed by people who had more book learning they’d elect them.

Sure, unconstitutional and undemocratic. But I don't see that the "undemocratic and tyrannical" argument applies any more to a test requirement than it does to the existing constitutional age requirements for holding office.

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

#56

Post by didibus »

SteveNuts wrote: post #44
mac01021 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying I disagree in general but, in this case, I don't think the megacongress would help. The issue here is that the vast majority of citizens do not know or care about net neutrality.

In fact a lot of the older people I've talked to think "net neutrality" means the government can censor partisan comments on the internet.

True, time to call it internet freedom instead.

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

#57

Post by emodendroket »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #46
emodendroket wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato preferred aristocracy; how many people do you think would like to live under a government that abandoned any pretense and outright called itself an aristocracy?

Does that make his criticisms of democracy any less valid?

Well, yes, for two reasons:

1. If democracy is bad, we should have some other system. Surely we should take into account the proposed alternative when we consider any criticism of democracy itself.

2. Implicitly any reference to the writings of Plato is burnished by the image of "wisdom of the ancients," so it is worth considering the flaws of these philosophers' work.

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

#58

Post by dcow »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #34
secondbreakfast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Okay yeah fuck the patriarchy too but they weren't idiots. What they did was no small task and it's.. disrespectful.. to ignore that because they weren't progressive enough for your taste. We could appreciate the fact that they created a system that lets us change the rules as it evolves because they themselves admitted it would be impossible to forsee all the future context needed to make a perfect government. IIRC we've abolished slavery and granted women the right to vote and redefined marriage--we've corrected the issues you mentioned and more. What really kills the whole thing is when we feel the need to circumvent the rules in order to push an agenda down other people's throats. The system was designed to balance a plurality of of factions by preventing abuse of localized powers while at the same time reaching concensus for majority rule.

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

#59

Post by colordrops »

ISL wrote: post #13
40acres wrote: post #7

Congress is becoming a non factor. The amount of pettiness and partisianship over the past few years had made Congress into the de factor weakest branch of government. Most of Obama's legacy was executed via executive order and guidance given to executive departments, a year into the Trump administration and we are seeing the same thing. The other big decisions (gay marriage, citizens United, etc.) are being made by…

We get the Congress for which we vote.

This statement, or variations of it, such as "We get the politicians we deserve", are trite and don't capture the complexity of our social system and the power structures that exist within. It's meaningless.

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

#60

Post by aaron-lebo »

emodendroket wrote: post #57
aaron-lebo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that make his criticisms of democracy any less valid?

Well, yes, for two reasons: 1. If democracy is bad, we should have some other system. Surely we should take into account the proposed alternative when we consider any criticism of democracy itself. 2. Implicitly any reference to the writings of Plato is burnished by the image of "wisdom of the ancients," so it is worth considering the flaws of these philosophers' work.

Direct democracy has flaws, we do have another system: representative democracy.

The Greeks were certainly wise, but my main point is this is not untrod ground, we've got at least 2000 years of experience to draw from.

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