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Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

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Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#51

Post by MichaelZuo »

comte7092 wrote: post #48
MichaelZuo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure of the U.S. government was explicitly designed to be anti majoritarian. For many people, in fact probably the majority of the population this is a feature.

The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the constitution, and they aren’t really a part of any explicitly planned design. Now, do people claim that anti majoritarianism is good? Sure. Clearly there are people who benefit from this system. In addition, a lot of people do justify it who seemly don’t directly benefit economically, simply due to an ideological affinity.

> The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the constitution, and they aren’t really a part of any explicitly planned design.

Huh?

Congress derives its authority from the constitution, at least in the U.S.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#52

Post by nimbius »

so i see a lot of posts about the nomenclature of democracy and its machinations of change in favour of elites but i think theres something people are missing here.

the amended text is blind and harmful not to the end user in the near term, but to the corporate entity itself in the longterm. as technologies like 3d printing and machining advance, and as the end users equipment becomes evermore cumbersome to engage and repair, it is a foregone conclusion that hackers can and will circumvent, override, and make obsolete the arbitrary controls and restrictions that forbid reasonable owners from performing repair and maintenance outside the confines of a rent-seeker. The sheer volume of people and groups this inconveniences makes this inevitable.

manufacturers had their chance to meet on common ground, to re-evaluate their profit strategies and predatory practices, and in the end they fell back on the simplest laurels and chose to poison the legislative assuming this was an absolute control. You cannot stop hackers by doubling down on the very policies they seek to amend, you can only slow them for a time and in the process discourage and infuriate your paying customers. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo could give a doctoral lecture on this, if agricultural farm equipment manufacturers cared to listen.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#53

Post by comte7092 »

pdonis wrote: post #44
comte7092 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. On the federal level, the filibuster is an obvious example of a an anti majoritarian rule that creates perverse incentives. Going deeper, the way that the individual houses are structured gives significant power to committee chairs who gain power through seniority and fundraising for their parties, which creates centralized points of leverage for…

> it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. You say this as if anti majoritarian is a bug. It's not. It's a feature. The US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority. That's why there are checks and balances in it. That's why the Constitution limits the powers of the branches of government, and why further limits were put in place in the Bill of Rights. The US system is not supposed…

The original founders didn’t design the current iteration of senate and house rules. You didn’t need 60 votes in the senate to pass anything in 1795.

But in a way you’re right. “The founders” created a government that protected aristocratic interests explicitly. Most states had property requirements to vote when the constitution was ratified, and even higher property requirements to hold office. So you can definitely say that they would have been fine with a system that allowed moneyed interests to block legislation they didn’t like.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#54

Post by GeekyBear »

pdonis wrote: post #44
comte7092 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. On the federal level, the filibuster is an obvious example of a an anti majoritarian rule that creates perverse incentives. Going deeper, the way that the individual houses are structured gives significant power to committee chairs who gain power through seniority and fundraising for their parties, which creates centralized points of leverage for…

> it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. You say this as if anti majoritarian is a bug. It's not. It's a feature. The US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority. That's why there are checks and balances in it. That's why the Constitution limits the powers of the branches of government, and why further limits were put in place in the Bill of Rights. The US system is not supposed…

> It's supposed to be a tool for protecting everyone's basic rights and limiting government to certain particular functions, not to allow it to do whatever a 51% majority wants. That was the original idea of the founders of the US system.

The US Senate process to force an end to (previously unlimited) debate on an issue and hold a vote on the matter is not a feature put in place by the Constitution.

It's a rule put in place by the Senate in the 1900's.

> this is an example of too much majoritarian thinking; whoever has the majority in either house of Congress takes that as permission to gerrymander the rules however they like to favor their preferences.

This is literally how the Constitution specifies that the legislature will operate. The Senate sets it's own rules, by majority vote. This is how the "nuclear option" to change the Filibuster rule was recently implemented.

>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used the nuclear option Thursday morning, meaning he called for a vote to change the Senate rules by a simple majority vote. It passed, 52 to 48.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/harry-reid-nuclear-op...

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#55

Post by comte7092 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #51
comte7092 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the constitution, and they aren’t really a part of any explicitly planned design. Now, do people claim that anti majoritarianism is good? Sure. Clearly there are people who benefit from this system. In addition, a lot of people do justify it who seemly don’t directly benefit economically, simply due to an ideological affinity.

> The pieces I talk about having nothing to do with the constitution, and they aren’t really a part of any explicitly planned design. Huh? Congress derives its authority from the constitution, at least in the U.S.

Nothing about what I wrote had anything to do with what congress is authorized to do. It was about the internal rules of the house and senate, and the process by which they are made.

None of that is prescribed by the constitution.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#56

Post by tootie »

comte7092 wrote: post #29
user3939382 wrote: post #7

I’ll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People. If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it’s a coincidence that some big power’s agenda accidentally aligned with your own.

The Princeton study actually showed that when it comes to advancing policies, it was pretty much a wash. Their difference came in when looking at getting policies blocked . If a policy was unpopular with economic elites, they were effective at getting it shut down. It’s an important distinction, because there’s a clear way to see what causes this behavior. There are a myriad of ways that our systems make it easy to b…

If you click through to the (much better) article on The Markup, you can see that the lobbying group strongly advocating killing the bill entirely and apparently thought they had succeeded until was voted through and signed. Their request for revisions to be based on some genuine concerns that being obligated to sell every component off-the-shelf means they are telling competitors (and counterfeiters) exactly how to build their devices. It seems like it was just laziness on Hochul's part to just accept their terms verbatim instead of meeting in the middle. But the bill is still a first of it's kind and huge win for Right to Repair.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#57

Post by GeekyBear »

mistrial9 wrote: post #46
GeekyBear wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in the second Gilded Age. >Political corruption was rampant, as business leaders spent significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not regulate the activities of big business—and they more often than not got what they wanted. Such corruption was so commonplace that in 1868 the New York state legislature legalized such bribery. Historian Howard Zinn argues that the U.S. government was acting…

ok - but you could see these things as persistent illness in any civilization of this size.. So, outrage at the existence alone is not constructive; instead treat the illness knowing that it will never completely go away. "checks and balances" you know? there is a tendency to boil over and demand immediate change.. temper that, make longer commitments?

Outrage is absolutely constructive.

The first Gilded Age only gave way to the Progressive Era's reforms after an expose that got the general public completely pissed off.

>The Treason of the Senate was a series of articles in Cosmopolitan magazine by David Graham Phillips, published in 1906. The articles were each published a month apart, beginning with the forward in February and the last article, in July. The series is a caustic exposé of the corruption of the United States Senate

Phillips published this series of articles at the close of what is to be considered the Gilded Age, which is the period when money and politics became very interconnected. The expansion of the railroad industry combined with increased production of steel, iron, and oil contributed to a group of immensely wealthy businessmen that came to be known by the term tycoon. These wealthy tycoons used their wealth to influence the already contentious politics of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treason_of_the_Senate

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#58

Post by comte7092 »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #47
MichaelZuo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure of the U.S. government was explicitly designed to be anti majoritarian. For many people, in fact probably the majority of the population this is a feature.

^ this. It turns out a government will more effectively avoid flagrant injustice if its structure makes it difficult to accomplish anything quickly without supermajoritarian agreement.

Example?

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#59

Post by pdonis »

candiddevmike wrote: post #50
pdonis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. You say this as if anti majoritarian is a bug. It's not. It's a feature. The US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority. That's why there are checks and balances in it. That's why the Constitution limits the powers of the branches of government, and why further limits were put in place in the Bill of Rights. The US system is not supposed…

The alternative to majority rule is tyranny of the minority, specifically the minority with the most power/voice/money. I think what you're arguing for isn't against tyranny of the majority, but a limit to the power of the federal government/more local government. For instance, the majority of the country wants universal healthcare and legalized cannabis, yet the tyranny of the minority keeps blocking these efforts f…

> The alternative to majority rule is tyranny of the minority

That's one alternative, but not the only one. Another alternative is for the government to not have the power to tyrannize in the first place. As the saying goes, the problem is not that politicians can be bought but that they have something valuable to sell.

> the majority of the country wants universal healthcare and legalized cannabis

I don't think this is true. I think vocal minorities want these things.

Re: Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill

#60

Post by kevviiinn »

tootie wrote: post #56
comte7092 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Princeton study actually showed that when it comes to advancing policies, it was pretty much a wash. Their difference came in when looking at getting policies blocked . If a policy was unpopular with economic elites, they were effective at getting it shut down. It’s an important distinction, because there’s a clear way to see what causes this behavior. There are a myriad of ways that our systems make it easy to b…

If you click through to the (much better) article on The Markup, you can see that the lobbying group strongly advocating killing the bill entirely and apparently thought they had succeeded until was voted through and signed. Their request for revisions to be based on some genuine concerns that being obligated to sell every component off-the-shelf means they are telling competitors (and counterfeiters) exactly how to…

Meeting in the middle is an illusion when the window keeps shifting
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