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Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

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Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#41

Post by ethanbond »

dmix wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a generalization, there's always occasional exception to the rule The point is it’s not a rule. It’s a meme that results from misunderstanding the bureaucratic imperative and oversimplifying into a monolith the complexity of politics and power competition.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#42

Post by local_crmdgeon »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> government will never willingly give up power Governments regularly do this. One of the greatest losses for privacy advocates over the last generation is this brand of nihilism making the issue electorally useless.

what are some recent examples of governments giving up power?

YIMBY reforms

Weed legalization (NYS doesn't count)

Gun laws

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#43

Post by logicchains »

todd-davies wrote: post #36
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are some recent examples of governments giving up power? I’ll pick a negative one: antitrust. Government retreated from its enforcement duty and powers for a few decades. In the vacuum, private interests asserted themselves.

Great example. Another one is state governments joining a union or federal system, such as US states joining the Union or European states joining the EU, and becoming bound by federal/EU law.

>such as US states joining the Union

This doesn't really count as freely joining, since half of them were forced to join by a bloody war.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#44

Post by ibejoeb »

dmix wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a generalization, there's always occasional exception to the rule The point is it’s not a rule. It’s a meme that results from misunderstanding the bureaucratic imperative and oversimplifying into a monolith the complexity of politics and power competition.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

It's a real shame. Legislating isn't a full-time job naturally, but we've made it so by turning it into one of the most lucrative careers. We judge congress perversely by output of new laws.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#45

Post by Xeoncross »

todd-davies wrote: post #36
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are some recent examples of governments giving up power? I’ll pick a negative one: antitrust. Government retreated from its enforcement duty and powers for a few decades. In the vacuum, private interests asserted themselves.

Great example. Another one is state governments joining a union or federal system, such as US states joining the Union or European states joining the EU, and becoming bound by federal/EU law.

That's an interesting way to look at it; governments merging into even larger entities is them giving up power?

The "government" isn't a unified mind. It's a group of individuals looking to further their career and (rarely) pursue a cause they care about. If two governments merge their law-sets into one, they aren't losing anything - the people involved are simply being promoted and gaining a broader peer influence with more vertical growth opportunities.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#47

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dmix wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a generalization, there's always occasional exception to the rule The point is it’s not a rule. It’s a meme that results from misunderstanding the bureaucratic imperative and oversimplifying into a monolith the complexity of politics and power competition.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

I absolutely agree that the U.S. government has gotten more powerful since WWII almost monotonously. The times of honest reduction were in the 1990s and, potentially, now.

That said, I would be careful about conflating the volume of rules and staffing with power. The bureaucratic imperative will drive a bureaucracy to expand. But it also does that to others, the net effect being a lot of intragovernmental arguing that diminishes the state’s actual power.

That doesn’t make the bureaucracy less annoying. Just less powerful. In fact, part of the present problem stems from it being easier for politicians to create blocking bureaucracies than to liquidate the ones they don’t like.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#48

Post by ibejoeb »

ethanbond wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

I was expecting to find that federal employment has grown faster than the US population, but it looks like that's not the case. Since 2000, the federal workforce seems to have grown about 14%, while the overall population increased by about 20%.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#49

Post by _heimdall »

ethanbond wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

You may be assuming there isn't a connection there. Could it be that our society and economy are growing more complex because the government continues to grow?

More government agencies and employees create more rules. More rules almost certainly play into the growing complexity of both our society and economy.

Population growth is nothing new, its only the last 60-80 years that we've really cranked up the size of our government.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#50

Post by llamaimperative »

_heimdall wrote: post #49
ethanbond wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

You may be assuming there isn't a connection there. Could it be that our society and economy are growing more complex because the government continues to grow? More government agencies and employees create more rules. More rules almost certainly play into the growing complexity of both our society and economy. Population growth is nothing new, its only the last 60-80 years that we've really cranked up the size of our…

I am absolutely confident that our society and economy aren’t growing more complex exclusively due to government growth. The whole virtue of capitalism is that it finds increasingly niche ways and outright novel ways to change the world, that’s by definition net new complexity. I’m comfortable attributing the vast majority of complexity growth to that.

Not only is the population growing exponentially but one would reasonably expect the complexity of the overall economy would go up exponentially even with linear additions to the population (each new person is N new possible economic relations).

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