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Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

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Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#221

Post by baddox »

tjr wrote: post #152
baddox wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that matter, why even bring up the electoral college? Even if the president were elected by a majority vote, the odds of the election being a tie or decided by a single vote is incredibly small—almost certainly too small to be able to rationally justify the time spent researching candidates or even traveling to the polling location.

It looks like in my state about 1,500,000 people voted in the 2012 presidential election. So if a few hundred thousand people decided to not vote because their one vote doesn't matter, it's conceivable that the result in a state could be swayed. So why try to persuade people their vote doesn't matter? If enough of them (an admittedly large number) listen, it will matter.

> So if a few hundred thousand people decided to not vote because their one vote doesn't matter, it's conceivable that the result in a state could be swayed.

Yes, but it's extremely unlikely that your vote would sway the result, and I'm operating under the assumption that you can only control your own decision to vote.

> So why try to persuade people their vote doesn't matter? If enough of them (an admittedly large number) listen, it will matter.

You're confusing two things. I would never try to persuade people that the sum of everyone's votes doesn't matter, because it obviously does (discounting for the moment the possibility of election fraud). But I would try to persuade individuals that their vote will not matter with a very high probability.

Even though this is often phrased in such a way that it almost sounds like a contradiction or paradox, it's not at all. It's analogous to the lottery: the more people that play, the higher the chance that someone will win (assuming random picks), but one person buying a single lottery ticket has such a small probability of winning that I would recommend against relying on the lottery to change one's financial situation.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#222

Post by mikeash »

anonymuzz wrote: post #197

I dont understand why more United States citizens aren't voting for the underdogs. In the last election, it was possible for the greens to "win" . If you want to protest, instead of not voting, vote for the least likely to win. It makes a statistical analysis of the "protest votes" possible.. Under some (eg, normal curves) statistical models, you assume that the non-sampled closely resemble the sampled (with some lev…

There's a common narrative that the two major parties are disliked, but win because people feel they have no alternative. That the will of the people gets railroaded by the political process. That things like TSA, wiretapping, drones, etc. are plots by those in power that the American people dislike but are powerless to change.

This narrative is dead wrong.

There are not many people who are properly fed up with the two major parties. The vast majority of the electorate still strongly identifies as either R or D. They may not agree with everything, but they will still see people from their party as "our guy". Those who do not identify with a political party but still feel strongly about politics are very much in the minority. You probably routinely hear about how Congress's approval rating is in the single digits. What doesn't get as much play is that the average approval rating for an individual representative by their constituents is still quite high. People may dislike Congress as a whole, but they like their own people.

As for these bad policies, there's a simple reason they persist: people want them. The Rs and Ds differ on many significant issues, but not on these. They want the TSA, they want massive anti-terrorism surveillance, they want terrorist leaders killed by faraway drone strikes.

The American electorate is, by and large, terrified of al Qaeda and anything that resembles them. Just look at the reaction to the attempt to try the Guantanamo prisoners in New York. Just the idea of bringing terrorists into the country, no matter how harmless they've been rendered, frightened people out of their minds. You can talk about "security theater" all you want, but the TSA makes them feel safe to take an airplane. The fourth amendment is a distant and abstract concept compared to the possibility that massive surveillance might prevent another Boston Marathon bombing. The collateral damage from drones is sad, but every terrorist they kill is one that can't blow up a building in the US, and a lot of those other people killed were probably terrorist sympathizers anyway.

Now, to be clear, I don't agree with any of this, and I expect most people here don't. Which is, of course, part of the problem. If you hang out on HN, you get the idea that everyone thinks these security programs are terrible overreaches, and if you have that idea, then there's only one possible conclusion: politicians are ignoring the people to advance their own agenda.

The reality is much scarier: on these issues, politicians are simply listening to the people. This is scarier because it's vastly easier to convince politicians to obey the people's will than it is to change the people's will.

I have no idea how you go about convincing the American public that it's not worth doing these things to fight terrorism, but that is what must be done if these things are to change. Telling people to vote for third parties isn't going to cut it, because people don't want to vote for third parties. They want to vote for for the major parties because the major parties are by and large the ones with the policies they like.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#223

Post by Legion »

kunai wrote: post #110

"Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and…

It's so easy from the outside to simply say things like this with absolutely no first-hand knowledge.

Maybe he did just say those things at election time and doesn't truly care. But assuming that to be the case for certain is lazy thinking.

The discussion I want to have is, what else could make a person who is dead-set against surveillance turn around so drastically once in office? What did he see, what did he come up against? Right or wrong, what scared him?

Unfortunately, we never have that discussion. Politicians are all just simple liars, it's as easy at that, there is no nuance to even remotely consider, blah blah.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#224

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #216
mullingitover wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that the Constitution explicitly granted the federal government certain powers, and the 10th amendment clarified that if a power wasn't granted to the fed in the Constitution, it was because the power was retained by the states and the people. So the Constitution wouldn't need to grant the people a right to privacy. It was implicit, and even further emphasized by the 4th amendment.

In the Constitution, the federal government is given broad, exclusive, power over national security and defense. Intelligence-gathering has always a part of national security and defense. That was a key purpose of the documents, to address the failure of the Articles of Confederation to provide for a robust centralized defense. Intelligence gathering has always been a part of the historical understanding of defense a…

> In the Constitution, the federal government is given broad, exclusive, power over national security and defense

Like "privacy", "national security" appears nowhere in the Constitution. The federal government is given certain specific powers that can be grouped under the umbrella "national security", just as it is given certain specific limits based on particular rights that can be grouped under the umbrella "privacy".

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#225

Post by nathan_long »

mpyne wrote: post #123
jmagoon wrote: post #80

The oddest thing about this is that people seem totally fine that corporations control all of their personal data (and use it to develop new revenue streams), but if the government gets that data (that already exists), then there's a serious problem. What?

The second oddest thing is that the same people who complain about how the corporations are running the world are for some reason much more incensed about governments getting access to this personal data for actual useful reasons (however minor they're perceived) than they are about corporations accumulating this data to sell to each other and anyone with enough dollars (as clearly mentioned in the privacy policies t…

Both are troubling, but governments can imprison and/or kill you. Corporations usually can't or won't.

The "actual useful reasons" you mention may exist alongside personal or political reasons of individual government employees.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#226

Post by nathan_long »

mpyne wrote: post #123
jmagoon wrote: post #80

The oddest thing about this is that people seem totally fine that corporations control all of their personal data (and use it to develop new revenue streams), but if the government gets that data (that already exists), then there's a serious problem. What?

The second oddest thing is that the same people who complain about how the corporations are running the world are for some reason much more incensed about governments getting access to this personal data for actual useful reasons (however minor they're perceived) than they are about corporations accumulating this data to sell to each other and anyone with enough dollars (as clearly mentioned in the privacy policies t…

Both are troubling, but governments can imprison and/or kill you. Corporations usually can't or won't.

The "actual useful reasons" you mention may exist alongside personal or political reasons of individual government employees.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#227

Post by nathan_long »

mpyne wrote: post #123
jmagoon wrote: post #80

The oddest thing about this is that people seem totally fine that corporations control all of their personal data (and use it to develop new revenue streams), but if the government gets that data (that already exists), then there's a serious problem. What?

The second oddest thing is that the same people who complain about how the corporations are running the world are for some reason much more incensed about governments getting access to this personal data for actual useful reasons (however minor they're perceived) than they are about corporations accumulating this data to sell to each other and anyone with enough dollars (as clearly mentioned in the privacy policies t…

Both are troubling, but governments can imprison and/or kill you. Corporations usually can't or won't.

The "actual useful reasons" you mention may exist alongside personal or political reasons of individual government employees.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#228

Post by lbebber »

edw519 wrote: post #36

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…

I disagree, that's blaming the wrong people. The voters don't necessarily create any mess. In one way or another some politician will get into office, and sometimes people just have to choose between the lesser of the evils available.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#229

Post by [deleted] »

baddox wrote: post #221
tjr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like in my state about 1,500,000 people voted in the 2012 presidential election. So if a few hundred thousand people decided to not vote because their one vote doesn't matter, it's conceivable that the result in a state could be swayed. So why try to persuade people their vote doesn't matter? If enough of them (an admittedly large number) listen, it will matter.

> So if a few hundred thousand people decided to not vote because their one vote doesn't matter, it's conceivable that the result in a state could be swayed. Yes, but it's extremely unlikely that your vote would sway the result, and I'm operating under the assumption that you can only control your own decision to vote. > So why try to persuade people their vote doesn't matter? If enough of them (an admittedly large n…

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