40,000 deaths each year in the United States resulting from cars, and nobody lifts a finger. The side of a plane pops off a few miles up in the air and everybody loses their minds.
US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
171–180 of 367 posts
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have The problem is the worst people NOT IN GOVERNMENT already have more power than that, and can thus easily crush such a government and turn it into a de facto oligarchy.
More power than the Government has? Which company or individual has nuclear weapons? Could send you to war like Russia in Ukraine to die? Could print as much money as they want. Can raise arbitrary taxes and people have to pay or you just incarcerate them. Can send you to prison. Spy everything you do by force. Governments can kill you, rob you, kidnap you, spy you, without consequences. I don't know any individual o…
If you think the worst people cannot have nuclear weapons, then by your own logic governments should not have nuclear weapons, because a bad person could get elected and then have nuclear weapons.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#173As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
> The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that…
I'd argue that the US biparty system tends to have fewer checks and balances than a parliamentary system.
In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power.
Historically, I think it's been exceedingly rare to have as finely balanced government as recent times have featured.
And to me, the Supreme Court is less about the people currently sitting on it, and more about the fact that they have all dedicated their lives to the legal profession.
They may rule one way or another on hot issues, for personal reasons. But you're checking with people who all hold the rule of law (as a concept) much higher than the legislature or executive. Which is a valuable check to have.
In that way, they're more like the UK's Speaker of the House of Commons.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#174As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
> The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that…
> The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability.
The problem in the US is actually the opposite -- the checks and balances were intended to be stronger but have been substantially weakened, in a way that creates instability.
In the original constitutional framework the federal government was meant to be extremely limited. Senators were appointed by state legislators so that they would limit expansion of federal power at the expense of state power, but that was changed and deprived the states of their primary representation in the federal government. Which not coincidentally was immediately followed by a massive expansion of federal control.
Which was itself meant to be much more limited. The original intention of the interstate commerce clause was for the federal government to handle things like mail fraud, where you have a perpetrator and a victim in different states and the victims have no representation in the perpetrator's jurisdiction. It has since been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate essentially anything, infamously including non-commerce that occurs solely within a single state.
In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level, doing things at the federal level was disfavored in general, and that was fine because anything outside the scope of federal power or without widespread consensus could be handled by the states. Laboratories of democracy.
But then we made it too easy to do things at the federal level, and of course power-hungry sociopaths are attracted to centralized power. So instead of the federal government being weak and uninteresting because strong checks and balances limited it from being abused, it became the battleground for winner-take-all popularity contests.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
While the Federalist Papers are great works, I don't agree with taking them as enlightened guidance from on high. They were theorizing. No one of them really knew how a modern democracy/republic would actually work in practice. Remember, the authors of the constitution (large overlap) stated on the record that they expected they got a lot of it wrong, and expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced once a…
> The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers. > expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced Would they have? There exists a mechanism to amend the Constitution, and it seems reasonable to me that the Supreme Court would insist on textual originalism until the text is amended through that legal process.
Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."
That's one founding father to another. Funny how the "originalists" never bring this quote up. It's one founding father, later our 3rd president, writing to another founder who would later be our 4th.
Edit: Here's the full letter, and it's actually from late 1789: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#17640,000 deaths each year in the United States resulting from cars, and nobody lifts a finger. The side of a plane pops off a few miles up in the air and everybody loses their minds.
You're making your (our) cause look bad. There are a lot of issues with cars but this isn't one of them. Cars essentially work as intended, and when they don't there are recalls, lawsuits, and NHTSA investigations.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#177As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
> Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another. Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their…
What they failed to recognize is that factions (i.e. political parties) will inevitably form so they should be regulated. There is nothing in the Constitution about political parties. They found the time to mention the Post office but not political parties.
> Ambition must be made to counteract ambition
Sounds nice but it’s fundamental a recipe for getting nothing done. And just because the government doesn’t do it doesn’t mean it won’t be done. Private entities, with far fewer restraints (any ambitions to restrain them are of course counteracted) will naturally fill in the gaps. It’s why the US has private companies selling expensive tax software rather than a simple system which would benefit everyone.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#178Who said show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome?
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers. > expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced Would they have? There exists a mechanism to amend the Constitution, and it seems reasonable to me that the Supreme Court would insist on textual originalism until the text is amended through that legal process.
Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s: "The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation…
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Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#180Please f*cking do it