House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading

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

#251

Post by wkimeria » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

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 originally from Kenya. We used to have a joke

"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".

I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p...

From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen.

Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).

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

#252

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #214

philosopher1234 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a lesser concern? How can the public have any influence over their politicians this way? You're saying corporations can choose who gets into power becasuse they finance them, and the public cant even tell what they're voting for to punish them. It seems all around worse.

I'm not sure - I think there's certainly an interesting truth that people act differently when you remove the pressures of public scrutiny. In particular - they are much less likely to always blindly follow party lines, or corporate wishes, and I think there's value there. How would you feel about a tweaked system? All votes are recorded, but the voting record is entirely withheld until 3 months before the next elect…

>In particular - they are much less likely to always blindly follow party lines, or corporate wishes, and I think there's value there.

I want the politician I vote for to more or less follow the party line on important votes. That's why I voted for her.

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

#253

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

lambert_ wrote: post #245

plainnoodles wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I'm sure China or Russia would be *thrilled* if their citizens wanted workers to own the means of production. Definitely would not involve tanks or squares or soon-to-be iconic historical photography at all.

China is called the CCP… if Russia and China aren’t communists or communist friendly then who is? And why won’t you accept the proposition that americas problems might be due to a poor implementation of capitalism but then call all unattractive communist countries just “poor implementations of communism?”

Russia is a capitalist state, full stop, period. The West made sure of that in the 90s, remember?

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

#254

Post by altruios » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #210

noasaservice wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number needs to be effectively an unbribeable number. If you're selected for public service, then you're expected to do good for the country, and not just a specific monied interest. And that means not having to worry about money ever again. You win capitalism. Done. Have fun. Live your life. That could also be done with annuities so that they get a "allowance" each month until dead.

Why wouldn't you take the money AND the bribes? If you have a system in place that can find and punish bribes - why not pay them a reasonable amount of money - and just eliminate bribes without spending $0.1T per year...

people assume people will be satisfied with any (large) amount of money.

1: money isn't the only form of bribery.

2: people who want more... will always want more and will never stop taking.

3: there is no good way to tell a person from someone who wants to give to help, and someone who wants to give to get something in return.

A more effective if morally dark methodology is publicly and viscously execute people who take bribes in this system.

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

#255

Post by akomtu » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

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 thinking if "group identity" would be a middle ground: a few representatives belong to a group, e.g. "north texas", they vote anonymously and nobody van see their votes, but the summary vote of the group is visible to everyone.

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

#256

Post by altruios » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #189

mikeyouse wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars officially, outside groups that don't need to report all of their spending (like the NRA) spent further hundreds of millions, and he had hundreds of millions worth of "earned media" due to the circus-like nature of the campaign. Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020…

Trump is still proof an outsider can win. He needed money but someone outside the political class still came in and won despite his parties best efforts against it (at the beginning when he was just a primary candidate they made their bed with his now).

"outsider" trump couldn't be outside himself... if he ever found the will to try he would just reflected back at himself thanks to his Lovecraftian narcissism.

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

#257

Post by somenameforme » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #141

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…

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…

With regards to secret voting which scenario do you find more probable?

1) Politicians decide to pull a fast on corrupting interests and start voting in the interests of society instead of focusing primarily on what benefits themselves and special interests.

2) Politicians decide to pull a fast one on society and start defacto selling influence more than ever, given they can simply publicly claim they picked the "right" side of any given bill.

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

#258

Post by smaryjerry » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #198

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…

IMO, politicians are doing exactly what the people are asking for, which is spending their time virtue signalling rather than writing and negotiating meaningful legislation. Besides that, they do care about handouts, which is why we have so much pork barrel spending and stimulus checks. It's convenient to blame money in politics, but if that were the case, Congress would at least get something done. For example, Face…

I mostly agree but there isn’t really such a thing as beneficial regulation for tech companies. No rules is always the cheapest and easiest to implement. For example, why would a company even bother with disinformation in the first place if it wasn’t required by the government? You could argue for social reasons or say if you wanted your website to be like Wikipedia, that it serves some purpose, however trying to turn Facebook into Wikipedia seems like a gross misstep.

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

#259

Post by kelseyfrog » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:08 PM UTC

granfalloon wrote: post #244

anonymoushn wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will voters know whether their reps are voting for the right things though

They wouldn't! That's the downside. Or maybe not a downside -- there could be an even stronger incentive for politicians to get stuff done. Since voters would have to make their decisions based entirely actual results, and not an individual politician's voting record, the politicians might have a stronger incentive to build coalitions and influence other politicians' votes. My half-baked point is that the harm of vot…

Any differential privacy experts care to weigh in? Is there a differential privacy method that can introduce a specific amount of noise in voting results in order to not fully hide nor fully reveal specific representative voting records?

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

#260

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #250

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you take the money AND the bribes? If you have a system in place that can find and punish bribes - why not pay them a reasonable amount of money - and just eliminate bribes without spending $0.1T per year...

Bribes need to increase proportionate to salary to maintain the same risk/reward calculation. Famously, Singapore maintains a very effective, clean civil service by paying market rates, and sometimes for some ministers that is actually millions of dollars a year.

Okay, but are they choosing these people at random?

Your worth should be based on your skills (meritocracy) - not by winning the lottery and how much people will pay to influence you (luck).