21–30 of 166 posts
But can we do that? Large corporations will have disproportionally much more economic power to bribe Congress. They can throw money at the problem repeatedly until they have exactly the law they want.
If Congress cannot work, then Congress should write the laws but not vote them. Citizens should vote the laws, like in California or Switzerland.
No, we are all very aware of how Congress works. Whoever has the most money to pay them (why it's not called a bribe, I'll never know) is the person who gets their ideas put into law. Congress hasn't been about the needs of the people they represent for some time now.
If that's the case, then how does that explain SOPA? Take the two primary backers, the MPAA and RIAA: 2010 revenue for the movie industry in the United States was about $10B, while the 2010 revenue for the music industry was approximately less than or equal to that figure (RIAA's FAQ suggests $7.7B in 2009). Compare that to tech companies: Apple alone had $28.57B in the Q3 of this year (to say nothing of yearly reven…
[1] http://www.mikewirthart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/howla...
As people of power in a position to make important decisions it is their PROFESSIONAL. ETHICAL. DUTY. to know all the facts that pertain to the situation. At no point is it our fault to not understand their system in its entirety but it IS their fault to be making conscious decisions that effect people and systems they do not entirely understand.
As an engineer it boggles my mind to see someone weighing in on an issue they haven't rightfully studied before attempting to tackle. If there is a project I'm asked to assist on and I'm not confident I can work with my current level of knowledge> I tell my employer and I either get reassigned or scheduled for training. There is no faking it in my industry, why should they be allowed to fuck everything up because they were willfully ignorant.
It goes past that though. They HAVE experts talking to them, or at least trying. The engineers, architects and experts that practically founded the internet have weighed in on how this is a bad idea and yet THEY'RE IGNORED! Don't pretend like this level of ignorance and pure negligence is acceptable for one minute because it just shows how complacent people have become with their representatives.
/rant
- George Carlin
I have this from an .mp3 I got from some weird torrent, but I haven't been able to find it on YouTube or on iTunes. I'll try to get it up on the web if I can...
American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…
Nice thoughts, but resolve individual clauses down to individual lawmakers, then back to lobbyists. In some cases you might be able to attribute a clause to a lobbyist, but this isn't the general case. And how could this be enforced? outward facing interface allowing the public to track the progress of bills in real time, increasing democratic awareness and participation. This exists, and doesn't seem to be helping.…
In my imagined utopia, all these justifying messages would be listed on a lawmaker's github profile-style page next to a big picture of their face, and any lawmaker with a long list of "interstate commerce" type messages would look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public. I'd put the messages in speech bubbles emanating from the headshot photo, like you see in some commenting systems, just to drive the point home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that's the case, then how does that explain SOPA? Take the two primary backers, the MPAA and RIAA: 2010 revenue for the movie industry in the United States was about $10B, while the 2010 revenue for the music industry was approximately less than or equal to that figure (RIAA's FAQ suggests $7.7B in 2009). Compare that to tech companies: Apple alone had $28.57B in the Q3 of this year (to say nothing of yearly reven…
It is only tangentially profit related. It is directly related to money spent on law making. RIAA understands this and spends quite a bit. Tech companies either don't or don't care enough to play the game, so they don't spend.
American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…
This would indeed be great, but as Clay pointed out software like this would need to be housed on hardware belonging to Congress. That being the case, it could be very difficult to get them to agree to something having the sole purpose of holding them to a greater accountability. I'm not saying it isn't an idea worth pursuing; just that it may not be a walk in the park to get them to use it.
I wrote a post about this last week saying why this sort of thought is wrong. In summary it is basically this: As people of power in a position to make important decisions it is their PROFESSIONAL. ETHICAL. DUTY. to know all the facts that pertain to the situation. At no point is it our fault to not understand their system in its entirety but it IS their fault to be making conscious decisions that effect people and s…
I agree with the author of the article: we need to figure out a better way of educating Congress. I don't know how, but their ignorance makes this obvious. Blaming Congress for being ignorant does not get us what we want.
I'm going to assume that we (where I define "we" as those people who have technical backgrounds and could explain the problem to someone in Congress given the chance) have done a poor job of educating Congress on how the internet works. With that as a given, and further assuming that we know organizations likes the RIAA are actively lobbying Congress, the current situation is inevitable. People in Congress are like passive journalists: they need to have a basic understanding of a wide range of topics, but sources come to them, instead of them going to sources. If only one side of an issue talks to them, then they're only going to understand that side.
Oh, look! our Congress is sooooo dumb, they decided to do away with the Bill of Rights on the 222nd anniversary of its signing, and declare that disagrees with them is a terrorist and that "terrorists" can be held indefinitely without recourse.
From childhood we are told that we are smart and politicians are stupid. But maybe, just maybe, the average netizen is so prideful he believes that he cannot be manipulated by a powerful combine of men, pretending to act stupidly, but in truth acting maliciously.
