House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading

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

#281

Post by noasaservice » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #260

bobthepanda wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> Your worth should be based on your skills (meritocracy)

And with deciding "merit" are the kingmakers, or the "meritmakers".

Congratulations. You now have created a new class of people who can take bribes and subvert leadership under the term "merit".

And, explain how one would calculate "merit"? In my experiences, meritocracies are monocultures that put forth their own biases as "merit".

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

#282

Post by JamesBarney » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:53 PM UTC

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #73

nostromo wrote: post #51

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a round…

How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? We don't need politicians 15x out of touch with the median American's lifestyle. In NYC governor's last election, there was a question about how much the median house costs in Brooklyn, and two high level candidates gave absolutely bonkers answers like $90k and $120k, when it's actually $900k. You only want…

When you pay people very little you get

1. The selfless (or the insane or crazy activists) 2. The rich 3. The corrupt

When you pay people a lot you also get

4. Competent hard working people who aren't necessarily selfless. (this is most people)

This group of people makes up the vast majority of people in the US, so why not have some of those people represent us.

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

#283

Post by JamesBarney » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

xbar wrote: post #278

JamesBarney wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That study has a lot of problems, and several subsequent problems pointed out the holes. Here's a good summary of subsequent research that debunked it. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... Even if the study were true it shows that when economic elites (150k+) disagree with the middle class they get there way more often. (Btw it showed that the middle class and the rich agreed like 80-90% of…

Why is that at all more likely?

Do you think it's unlikely that people share the same opinions as their family/friends/colleagues?

Or do you think it's very likely that most federal politicians are extremely corrupt and not getting caught?

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

#284

Post by runarberg » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

Bloating wrote: post #213

runarberg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a sibling comment explaining why you might not actually want to live in an oligarchy, but regardless of your preference, there are a couple of flaws in your logic. First. The greatest predictor of individual wealth is their parents’ wealth. This undermines the whole notion of the free market (or at least in its current state) giving rise to a meritocracy. Second. Statistically, in a completely free and fair…

Maybe compounding interest should be outlawed If player1 can make the same widget with less resources than player2, its not zero-sum. That does often entail that player1 has some advantage, which could be any number of things. Is that OK?

This has nothing to do with compounding interest.

It happens because the less wealthy player has a lot more to loose then gain in an unequal economy. That is even if a trade outcome is favorable to the less wealthy player, it is unlikely that the outcome is significant enough to change the balance. However it is much more likely if an outcome is unfavorable that it will significantly hinder any future opportunities for the poorer player.

On the other hand, a loss for the wealthier player is unlikely to significantly effect future outcomes for them. The only likely way for a wealthy player to have a significant loss if they land a devastatingly bad deal with another equally or more wealthy player. The chances of that happening at random is pretty low overall, and gets lower the wealthier you are.

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

#285

Post by jjav » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:59 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…

Agreed. I've always felt such a randomized selection is the only way to have a representative set of people.

The people in legislative positions have a lot of power and there is no way to prevent that since the whole point is for them to have power to run the country.

Thus, it inherently attracts the sort of people who crave power and influence, which is exactly the sort of people who should not be allowed to have it.

So the only solution I can think of is to make it impossible to actively seek those positions of power, by assigning them randomly.

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

#286

Post by tastyfreeze » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #51

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a round…

Paying them more wont change the types of people that are drawn to politics. Power corrupts regardless of the salary. The only way to fix corruption is to make it illegal and prosecute it ruthlessly.

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

#287

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 9:02 PM UTC

noasaservice wrote: post #187

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If winning at capitalism was an antidote to the desire to do dodgy deals, we wouldn't have to worry about the effect of moneyed interests on politics in the first place.

As it is, I'm not sure the billion does anything other than ensure that the one policy absolutely every randomly-appointed political figure from the vague woolly liberal to the literal neo-Nazi agrees upon is zero inheritance tax...

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

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Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

ascagnel_ wrote: post #279

lambert_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Bernie sanders lost entirely because he didn’t get his funding from rich people or corporations. Democrats don’t like to admit that you also need the approval of the corrupt political bodies that decide everyone ie the DNC.

Yes, the DNC uses superdelegates, which is an undemocratic part of the process. But in both 2016 and 2020, Sanders did poorly enough in the regular primaries that the number of superdelegates was irrelevant to the final outcome. As much as I hate to say it, and as someone who very much would like to have seen Sanders win either of those primaries, much of America is further to the right than Sanders, and seemingly ha…

> Yes, the DNC uses superdelegates, which is an undemocratic part of the process. But in both 2016 and 2020, Sanders did poorly enough in the regular primaries that the number of superdelegates was irrelevant to the final outcome.

Superdelegates who had made public announcements were, through 2016, usually counted in running delegate counts by media and not distinguished from pledged delegates. Because the perception of winning votes is...actually, empirically, a powerful means of winning more votes, this meant the superdelegates were a significant influence on winning pledged delegates.

Because Sanders did so well in 2016, his faction won major concessions in DNC rules, including the erasing of first-ballot superdelegate voting rights (well, in the circumstances where they could matter). As a result, their collective thumbs were lifted off the nominating process in 2020 (now, Sanders did worse in 2020 anyway, both the situation and the field of primary candidates were different.)

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

#289

Post by lambert_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #253

lambert_ wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No post body was provided.

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

#290

Post by Uehreka » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #224

Uehreka wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that if the job doesn’t pay well, it attracts people who are independently wealthy and who are more likely to represent the interests of the wealthy. For most wealthy politicians, the bulk of their wealth comes from a business they own that pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions of dollars) per year, not their 100K-ish government salary. The upshot of this is that when “the peop…

> Part of the problem is that if the job doesn’t pay well, it attracts people who are independently wealthy and who are more likely to represent the interests of the wealthy. Just don't elect them. When running for office in most places, being considered wealthy or coming from a wealthy family is a considerable hurdle to overcome (as is being extremely poor).

> When running for office in most places, being considered wealthy or coming from a wealthy family is a considerable hurdle to overcome

I wouldn’t call it a major hurdle. Many voters have inconsistent beliefs: They may think wealth is a sign of virtue and hard work during campaign season and then start saying “cut congressional salaries!” when they get angry, not realizing that they voted for people who are insulated from the very tactic they are pushing. It’s not enough to just say “well then don’t elect them”, we need to make sure the system of incentives we’ve created doesn’t funnel towards bad outcomes.