House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#171

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

thebiss wrote: post #165

zeruch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the specifics you outlined, but I do think a comp package that incentivizes grown-ass behavior (read: full attendance, voting, actual participation in the legislative process) is a great idea. I don't think rewarding certain behaviors like sponsoring is good, because its too easily abused. When a KPI becomes a target, its no longer a KPI.

Can you clarify when/how a KPI ever not a target? Bonuses and promotions always go to those who exceed them, and "improvement plans" or "restructuring" is reserved to those who miss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina...

Any imperfect measure that becomes a target gets pursued at the expense of the original intent.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#172

Post by arebop » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #94

brianwawok wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawmaker pay is a rounding error. Clearly we can't pay lawmakers $0 and expert high effort + no corruption. is there any proof of any way that saying pay from 170k a year to ??? 1 million USD? a year would have any impact on the problems? Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that...

Manchin has made it clear he will happily (and literally) burn the entire planet down for $5M/year. If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.

Suppose you did pay each legislator $50M to work for the good of the whole country. Do you think this would prevent Manchin from being influenced by a $5M lagniappe? It's an extra 10%! And a certain well-known politician infamously took care to fleece the secret service for overpriced golf cart and hotel room rentals, despite getting hundreds of millions per year in emoluments revenues. Some people are really motivated by every penny despite what economists might tell you about marginal utility.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#173

Post by Zamiel_Snawley » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

rgbrgb wrote: post #163

deltarholamda wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix for this was in the founding documents. We just jacked it up over the years. Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senat…

Trying to get clarification, as a layman here I think I'm missing your point. My understanding is that laws are by their nature kind of vague because the world is full of edge cases and they always require interpretation as they encounter new cases. > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs? >…

> hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.

I think they mean executive agencies like the FDA, FCC, EPA, etc. These agencies make rules that effectively carry the force of law. For example, the BATFE is (in)famous for arbitrarily changing their rules to criminalize things they don't like, with no new mandate from the legislature. These rules are effectively laws, because if you break them, you can go to jail for many years.

> We jiggered with this

I think they are referring to the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which made it so Senators are elected by the people instead of selected by state legislatures.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#174

Post by dahfizz » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #123

hedora wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take it further: $1M/year for life, have to divest all investments they own coming in to office (i.e., turn them to cash). Accepting any third party payment during or after being elected (and during campaigns) is treason. If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses. Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leav…

Nobody sane would take that deal.

A million dollars per year for life? Most people would kill for that deal. Not the HN crowd, but most people without hesitation.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#175

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

dugmartin wrote: post #167

hayst4ck wrote: post #105

Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…

I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…

Am I reading this right? We're going to pay $100Bn per year to 100 people chosen at random to run the country?

Why would they have any incentive to do a good job?

Also, why would they have any desire?

Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#176

Post by cortesoft » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #129

cortesoft wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think number of laws passed is a good performance metric... it is basically like paying developers per line of code.

More like bonuses for LoC . The idea is to encourage decision making and discourage gridlocks and not attempting to pass laws because they don't have support.

You are going to end up with a lot of meaningless laws… they will pass laws like “apple pie is now the official American dessert”

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#177

Post by Zamiel_Snawley » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

dugmartin wrote: post #167

hayst4ck wrote: post #105

Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…

I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…

I believe this would defeat the purpose of sortition. Giving all representatives such a large amount of money would instantly make them unrepresentative of the population they were selected from. They would all be in the uber-wealthy class, and be incented to make laws that favor that small subset of people.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#178

Post by notafraudster » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #158

ryandvm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them . However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate. W…

I wonder if the Senate could pass a rule that allows them to choose when to take a secret vote. I don't know of anything in the Constitution that prohibits such.

The Senate routinely takes voice votes for which no rollcall division is recorded.

But there is generally little incentive to make votes private because in general legislators want to engage in credible credit-claiming (including about margins of passage and rates of bipartisanship) and parties want to preserve the whip as well.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#179

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

Our political parties are failing us so badly, I wouldn't be surprised if the guillotine came back into fashion over the next decade.

I hope congress can get its act together and serve its constituents better before it comes to that, but it feels naive.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#180

Post by alexfromapex » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

This is the one time I want the Slippery Slope Fallacy to be true because then the next step would be banning money in politics which would be fantastic!