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Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

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Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#211

Post by naasking »

dnadler wrote: post #193
naasking wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider: 1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do…

> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).

> I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes

Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall.

Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests.

The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#212

Post by smsm42 »

swebs wrote: post #179
smsm42 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people who do it would be called not "lobbyists" but "educators" and would be only allowed to say what agrees with some opinions, but not the others? Or allowing anybody explaining things to congressmen and just not calling it "lobbying" because it's a dirty word?

>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? So the options are either 1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast 2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcas…

All human sources of information are biased. That's why we have democracy - to duke it out in a market of ideas and find some common denominator that somehow summarizes people's opinions. True, this system is not perfect. But removing inputs would not make it more perfect - unless by some magic you imagine that the only inputs left are optimal ones. But finding the optimal ones is the problem with started with! If we knew that, there would be no need for the rest - it's because there's no definite obvious way to know what is right is that we have democracy, otherwise we'd just have one law: "always do what's right" and that's it, no need for congress, elections, etc.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#213

Post by smsm42 »

dhimes wrote: post #188
swebs wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? So the options are either 1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast 2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcas…

3. Require all meetings with lobbyists to be public- with video and transcript documentation. Mandatory jail time for those who don't comply.

There was something like this in California, public meetings law, called Brown Act. As I heard, it's not exactly working as intended http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-ope...

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#214

Post by smsm42 »

naasking wrote: post #184
smsm42 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people who do it would be called not "lobbyists" but "educators" and would be only allowed to say what agrees with some opinions, but not the others? Or allowing anybody explaining things to congressmen and just not calling it "lobbying" because it's a dirty word?

> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider: 1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do…

> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average.

Why?

> However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly

By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right? This does not require any technical knowledge.

> so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour.

You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.

> What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists

Depends on how biased it is. If it's biased in favor of NN, the ratio would be something different than if it's biased against NN.

> Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad

Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. The point of representative government is that it is a focus point of an effort to figure out the right thing to do, and that all participants at least kinda trying to do it. If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.

> whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter,

I agree, having elections makes more sense than having a King.

> However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent.

Nobody is truly independent in a modern society. Not even a King - historically, there were lots of weak monarchs manipulated by their courts and seconds in command. Neither a person living in a modern society. Of course people influence other people. And this can produce negative effects like groupthink and mass panics. So what's your suggestion - ban talking about politics? Mind-wiping congressmen before voting?

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#215

Post by frockington »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #203
frockington wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster but I'm normally a single issue voter and am registered just to vote no for 90% of the things the city wants to do. From a macro-perspective, in the last two years I've seen my taxes go down and unemployment drop. That's all that has personally affected me and I can say that the economic optimism in my city has sky rocket. Overall I'm pretty happy with how things are going.

Working more is important than living well?

I've never been unemployed but I imagine it would be boring. I enjoy going to work and having new problems to face everyday so for me yes, low unemployment is good. And I've noticed there are less bums when unemployment is low, which is great for me because I don't like homeless people

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#216

Post by tdb7893 »

mac01021 wrote: post #197
dhimes wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Require all meetings with lobbyists to be public- with video and transcript documentation. Mandatory jail time for those who don't comply.

What constitutes a lobbyist? Must a congressman record every discussion he has with every person he meets, just in case the topic of conversation turns to public policy?

We could broadcast the video on Bravo and call it "Real Senators of the US"! It would be like a better CSPAN.

Edit: also we could call in votes like it's American Idol. I think we should try it, it couldn't be worse than what we have now

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#217

Post by dcow »

jacquesm wrote: post #165
dcow wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said that the Republican platform has reprehensible policy. You then criticized single issue voting because when you do so you pull in the entire platform, reprehensible policy included, which you suggest ends up being a net negative, despite whether you agree or not. Now consider another person. If they are a republican and vote for their party, even if they disagree with the reprehensible pieces, they still end…

I don't give a fuck about downvotes and you are dishonest in your arguing, effectively you are arguing with yourself.

Stop being rude. I've lost you at this point.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#218

Post by Lionsion »

wilsonnb wrote: post #75
sykh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all issues are a equal. Clearly not. But what is important changes from person to person. To suggest that your concerns and what constitutes a single voter issue for you is wrong is condescending. Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you. But not everyone has your concerns. It’s not a big issue for me but I can see why it is for others. People need to get…

Some people's ideas of what's important are stupid. Everyone has the right to an opinion but that doesn't mean we should treat every opinion as equal. If someone was going to vote on the single issue of whether or not we should make it illegal to have more than 17,000,000 butterflies in a room smaller than 100'x100' I would have no problem telling them that their pet issue is stupid and there are other things they sh…

> Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Yes, it's not true because what you said is wrong. All a single issue voter has said is that single issue determines their vote. They doesn't say that's the only thing "we" should be concerned about. They don't even say that's the only thing they're concerned about.

Voting is not some kind of distilled expression of pure belief or priorities, it's a practical action subject to tactics, strategy, and trade-offs.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#219

Post by ryanpcmcquen »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #207
ryanpcmcquen wrote: post #34

I am surprised this even passed the Senate. It is almost as if Senators want to get re-elected.

The Senate has 51 Republicans but 3 of them are rather independent/centrist and sometimes vote with Democrats.

A lot of Republicans support Net Neutrality, including the stalwart conservative Scalia. The main reason so many current Republicans oppose it, is the association with Obama, and the piles of money Telecom is floating their way.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#220

Post by dcow »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #178
dcow wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we actually agree. Or at least that's what I'm saying too. I didn't use reprehensible, the comment I was responding too did. My point is your point, just worded differently.

The original comment said that there are some reprehensible policies. You then treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "not perfectly aligned". Your followup treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "don't agree with everything". We might agree on some things, but we clearly do not agree about what jacquesm was saying, because I think the original comment was fine.

Well I am extrapolating based on the way the argument was presented, yes. I don't disagree with the essence of what jacquesm said. I think that's what's not clear. I am quibbling with the idea that we should call the republican platform reprehensible in an academic discussion about single issue voting in the US. Why? Because reprehensible carries an implication of blame and it has clearly distracted from the argument and caused at least me to extrapolate from jacquesm's comment in a way that may not have been intended.

I understand that some people will choose to minimize negatives while some will choose to advocate for positives when stepping up to the poll. We all agree on this idea and this has nothing to do with whether one person diesagrees with or isn't fully aligned with a platform. (This is where I'm losing your argument which seems to be harping on this idea.)

My meta commentary is that viewing the other side's policies (_some_) as reprehensible distracts from the politics and pushes people towards the minimizing negatives game because it inflates the impact of negatives because of the association of blame that comes with a term like reprehensible. "If you are republican and vote for their reprehensible platform then you are to blame." Now it's not just about disagreement, it's about social justice. And for that reason I prefer, of late, when people focus on advocating for positive change rather than voting against negative change. That is where the semantics do come in.

A response to this point would involve asserting that their policies are indeed reprehensible and we should treat the entire platform in such a way.

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