Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
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Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#2What happens when things go the other way around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#3What happens when things go the other way around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy
The threat to democracy from closed electronic voting systems is well documented. But why do these systems get put in place? Could it have some connection with political donations by companies that manufacture the machines, such as Diebold?
Our political system cannot reach unbiased, good decisions about what types of voting systems to implement if it's being swayed by big donors.
We have to hack to get money out of politics, so that our politics don't get hacked!
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#4The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country.
As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that power.
Everyone who champions for more state-intervention, this is the natural side-effect you'll have to live with. Welcome to your unintended creation. Transparency is the only possibly counter-balance I could see helping the situation, but I don't see any level of transparency being added to gov operations. The trend has been in quite the opposite direction.
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#5The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country. As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that p…
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Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#6The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country. As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that p…
Very good points. In fact, transparency legislation in California failed by one vote just this week. Check out California Clean Money Campaign (who are also working with us on the hackathon event).
My point here is that the system is locked down as long as money controls it. We cannot release state control over the economy until we get money out of politics.
The corruption goes both ways: politicians depend on donor money, but to get the donor money they have to create complex legislation to extort with.
There is a great story in Republic: Lost about Al Gore and early internet regulation where the senators essentially say: "If we leave this unregulated, how will we make money off these guys?"
From where we are now, we have to work to reduce the influence of money on politics before any other reform can be approached sensibly.
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#7The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country. As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that p…
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dmix is roughly arguing that the existence of regulation incentivizes people to game the system by manipulating regulators, whether by il/legal, not/transparent, or other means.
He's not wrong, per se, but it's also not a relevant point when the problem becomes immediately unsolvable when you think about it a little more.
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#8The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country. As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that p…
You hit the nail on the head. Power corrupts and more power just leads to more corruption. In theory transparancy should help but is resisted in many ways and rarely effective in practice (e.g. FEC).
In my opinion the only real solution to government corruption is limits on government power.
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#9Since this board is full of logical people (programmers), I'm curious to know why any of them think that a system based on tyranny of the majority would increase freedom for people?
Also, I'm really curious what sort of things you all think you can "hack" that will really make people more free. After this, will the NSA be gone? How about the entire military industrial complex and all it's mouthpieces on tv and in Congress? What about the drug war and the power of big pharma? Diebold? Dynasty families like the Bush's and Clintons? Etc Etc Etc.
If any of you were serious about freedom you would be figuring out how to hire lawyers, not coders. A better voting app is just an easier way for my representatives to give me false choices.
Re: Hack money out of politics: Democracy Hackathon (March 29-30 San Francisco)
#10The amount of influence money has on the state is directly proportional to the amount of control the state has on the economy and justice system. Money in politics wouldn't nearly matter as much if the government didn't apply heavy-handed control to every market and courtroom around the country. As long as power is centralized into a few politicians hands, there will always be a massive concerted effort to buy that p…
What do you mean by applying heavy handed control to courtrooms? You seem to be making a wholly circular argument here.