Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY’s hedged repair bill • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by acituan » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

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

Being anti-majority doesn't mean pro-minority.

It is about decreasing the weight of merely being in the majority as an input feature to optimal decision making. It is protecting against pseudo-relevance majority can pose as an overemphasized decision making strategy. This doesn't mean all ideas that manifest as majority is irrelevant, not at all, it is protecting against the false positives.

Mind you a lack of steamrolling with majority alone forces a downstream integration of opponent thoughts.

Think it like a collective intelligence architecture that is trying to make sure we don't get stuck in local optima.

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

#142

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

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 US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority.

So instead, we get old-fashioned tyranny of the of the rich and powerful minority.

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

#143

Post by acituan » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 10:41 PM UTC

properGander wrote: post #136

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…

Appeals to authority of dead people’s political documents is propaganda. Just because we can invoke historical story does not mean we abide it today. The majority inherently rules whether it’s US Constitution or the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Not really sure how you get to a system of material comfort and logistics we have without majority buy in to not fight and kill. I wish people would realize how silly they so…

> dead people’s political documents is propaganda.

Yours is no less propaganda.

People do cultural learning, pretty much everything you use from technology to medicine and yes politics is overwhelmingly based on dead people's ideas. That is the basis of us as cultural beings.

You're right with cultural learning we might inherit noise too, but you'll have to fight against the content of those ideas, not dismiss from mere historicity. If an idea has merit, it will be timeless.

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

#144

Post by properGander » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

calibas wrote: post #133

What the word for a government system where large businesses write the laws?

It’s still a person. Stop buying into euphemisms for person like “employee” and groups of people like “company”.

Very militaristic, simplistic fake world with hierarchy. Not a shock many winners in the post-world war economy were also fighters in world wars and our job memes echo the structure they had foisted upon them. How were they to make sense of their business if they weren’t at the top of the hierarchy with a rigid chain of command?

Society still has plenty of embedded post-war shell shock and Cold War paranoia in its collective limbic system given all the folks running the world the last few decades were kids in those eras.

Just like with religion before, a lot of effort is put to validation and preservation memory of the elders.

Prior to world wars 90% of workers were self employed. Many economic truisms are driven by contemporary nostalgia. Whole lot of sunk cost fallacy backing why we organize as we do.

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

#145

Post by comte7092 » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #141

candiddevmike wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Being anti-majority doesn't mean pro-minority. It is about decreasing the weight of merely being in the majority as an input feature to optimal decision making. It is protecting against pseudo-relevance majority can pose as an overemphasized decision making strategy. This doesn't mean all ideas that manifest as majority is irrelevant, not at all, it is pro…

That’s all well and good, but when these issues come up, people seemingly turn their brains off and repeat “tyranny of the majority” without evaluating the empirical reality of how these systems function in practice.

I’m amenable tot he notion that there should be some guardrails on simple majoritarianism, but it shouldn’t follow that all anti majoritarian rules are good.

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

#146

Post by rqtwteye » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 11:06 PM UTC

nmeagent wrote: post #117

rqtwteye wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole process would be fine if the legislators listened to all lobbyists. But realistically they only listen to the lobbyists who bring in the most money.

I don't think the process will ever be fine until lobbyists have nothing to offer legislators besides the merits of their arguments. As long as corporations can make financial contributions to legislators' campaigns, the system is cursed.

In theory a lobbyist is just somebody who raises an issue with a politician. It’s sad that it’s so dominated by money now.

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

#147

Post by 1_1xdev1 » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 11:14 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #101

pdonis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the government followed the constituion this wouldn't be problems: 1. Marijuana would never have been illegal at the federal level because an amendment wasn't passed. 2. Healthcare and any other federal welfare policies could be ennacted by passing an amendment. If there isn't broad consensus across the country to pass an amendment then states can do it independently. There is no reason a state can't have single p…

You are ignoring the constitutional article granting congress the ability to make laws. Congress passed laws making weed illegal and hasn’t passed a law granting (or prohibiting) universal healthcare.

States can, indeed do it independently. There’s at least 3 states with a public option

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

#148

Post by yamtaddle » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 11:15 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #132

yamtaddle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a whole lot of things in the US system of government that were put there on purpose but have turned out to definitely be bad. The fact that an element is a "feature" doesn't mean it didn't turn out to be a bad idea, in practice. If a tiny minority of rich people & companies can leverage our "anti-tyranny-of-the-majority" features so well that their use of it is practically the only use... that's broken. "I…

> There were a whole lot of things in the US system of government that were put there on purpose but have turned out to definitely be bad. I don't agree that there were "a whole lot", but yes, some of the original features were bad. The founders knew they couldn't avoid that, which is why they included an amendment process. Which has been used to fix a number of the original features that turned out to be bad. I also…

> The founders knew they couldn't avoid that, which is why they included an amendment process.

Our bad election rules make coalition-building to accomplish even very popular things really difficult if powerful interests oppose them, and it's getting worse the more sophisticated the game-playing within our set of rules gets. Moreover, a bunch of the reforms we need would threaten the power of those who could, realistically, work to effectively change the system (see again: broken election process) so they simply will not happen.

We have trouble accomplishing things with overwhelming popularity in the general population that don't need an amendment—amendments are all but dead under modern electoral and political game conditions, and fixing that would require... an amendment. Key reforms that would fix the very deepest problems are about as likely as a literal miracle happening.

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

#149

Post by ndiddy » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

convolvatron wrote: post #34

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…

I was totally with you until the last sentence. please go on.

The people doing the blocking have names and addresses.

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

#150

Post by MichaelZuo » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 11:28 PM UTC

comte7092 wrote: post #68

MichaelZuo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If you genuinely don't understand how congress came about and why their actions are accepted by the other branches of government, I would recommend doing some reading of history.

Ah yes, the classic condescending response. It must be the case that I simply haven’t read enough, simply because my understanding differs from yours. It can’t be possible that my points are a result of careful study over several years. Speaking of careful study. I suggest that you go back and actually read what I wrote and address what I said. Please inform me where in the constitution there is a prescription for wh…

If you think my response was condescending, why did you provide a substantive reply?

Since it's quite rare, other readers will have the suspicion that something's up, either that the substantive part is not really so or that the alleged condescension is only imagined.