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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#211

Post by ihattendorf »

chillacy wrote: post #204
surround wrote: post #121

“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993) > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100%…

> This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house). To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down. This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-enterable without a key.

Where the "bad guys" can build their own indestructible and un-enterable house themselves, without having to give the sheriff a key.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#212

Post by dllthomas »

lukifer wrote: post #183
dllthomas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. It's made much worse by the bad voting system, but it's perfectly possible that I simply disagree with enough of my fellow citizens that any compromise we can reach will be some "lesser evil".

I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences: you get to vote for your favorite option, and against your least favorite option. I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coali…

Yeah, my comment was intended narrowly - in no way was I endorsing FPTP. :)

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#213

Post by JoshTriplett »

lukifer wrote: post #183
dllthomas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. It's made much worse by the bad voting system, but it's perfectly possible that I simply disagree with enough of my fellow citizens that any compromise we can reach will be some "lesser evil".

I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences: you get to vote for your favorite option, and against your least favorite option. I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coali…

> would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences

The problem is that IRV/RCV doesn't capture your preferences, because it ignores all your preferences except your top choice, until your top choice is eliminated. IRV is reasonably good at making sure that third-parties can't prevent first-parties from being elected, but very bad at actually allowing third parties to actually be elected even if they have widespread approval.

Approval is a good compromise, and fully ranked systems (e.g. Condorcet) would be even better but much harder to enact. I would happily support universal adoption of Approval.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#214

Post by krapp »

bcassedy wrote: post #207
tzs wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to keep proposing bills to address these problems until something passes. By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be another bill from the same general set of pe…

Child porn is a serious problem in that it is abhorrent. I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem in that it has significant impact at a societal level. These bills are not being introduced to significantly reduce child porn. They're meant to further enhance surveillance powers or earn easy political points. Any actual effect on crime is a side benefit. Let's not forget that the same people that prop…

>I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem in that it has significant impact at a societal level.

>Let's not forget that the same people that propose these bills are the ones hanging out at Epstein's private island.

The implication in the last sentence of your comment would seem to contradict your initial premise.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#215

Post by JoshTriplett »

a1369209993 wrote: post #202
CamperBob2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.

Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you'…

> Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system?

Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens.

Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#216

Post by Dahoon »

ollo wrote: post #48
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.

> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.

There are lots.

Also, we don't vote EU wide so it is apples to oranges.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#217

Post by wz1000 »

ollo wrote: post #48
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.

> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.

https://diem25.org/

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#218

Post by syshum »

baddox wrote: post #199
syshum wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I guess I am not part of most people, as I believe Government is inherently inefficient, and should be microscopic.. I also believe that "whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." -- Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner is not taught in public schools civics courses, as far as I know.

Probably not, but he should be

No Treason should be required reading

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#219

Post by justin66 »

In one sense, the anti-crypto forces are not yet being as crazy as they have been at certain times in the past. People often forget that the federal government wanted to put Phil Zimmerman in prison over PGP in the nineties. [1]

In another sense, this is much crazier. There wasn't much at stake commercially in the nineties, but today, legislatively screwing up crypto could compromise trillions of dollars worth of commercial transactions if something goes wrong.

https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#220

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

I'm stealing your analogy but I'm also ready for people to smugly proclaim that they would have no issue with livestreaming their entire life since they have nothing to hide.
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