Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality • Hacker News Board

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#111

Post by jadell » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

ci5er wrote: post #31

Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing... As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to…

> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too. I would prefer that the lesson were: "Gosh! The President has too much power!

This is not a fair assessment. Plenty of people learned that lesson a long time ago, but always get laughed out of the room by the party in power.

I remember in the aftermath of 9/11 when GWB made one of the largest executive power grabs in history, and the right-wing whole-heartedly supported him in the name of keeping us safe. A common refrain from my left-leaning friends explaining why this was a bad idea was "Imagine someone like Hillary Clinton with these powers." Of course, that was all hand-waved away until Obama took office, then suddenly "executive overreach" became such a hot topic.

The only way to change the momentum of the executive gaining more power over more things is to convince both the in- and out-of-power parties that giving the President more authority is a bad thing. Good luck convincing the in-power party of that, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#112

Post by throwaway729 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

cheetos wrote: post #83

throwaway729 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country That is the effect of the electoral college in modern politics, but it is not at all why the college exists.

I saw your other comment alluding to this and was intruiged. If you have time, can you please elaborate?

Direct election was a proposal at the time, and many founding fathers supported it, but the slave states shot it down.

The slave states are often mis-characterized as rural/not populous as compared to northern states. But that logic only holds if the color of your skin defines your humanity -- slave states weren't significantly less populous, it's just that a huge portion of their populations weren't enfranchised. In fact, the most populous state was a slave state. So IMO the thesis that the electoral college is a result of slavery is mostly accurate.

As far as the "official" reasons (since slavery was a touchy motivation, even back in the day), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68 which outlines the "official" reasons for having a college as well as all of the alternatives at the time. Most of these seem pretty irrelevant to the modern world:

* As a veto on dangerous men -- I don't see this ever happening in our modern world. * To avoid "cabal, intrigue, and corruption" as well as pandering. None of these function as arguments against a direct vote, but rather as arguments against the use of governors, congress, etc. in place of the electoral college.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#113

Post by pg314 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

cheetos wrote: post #83

throwaway729 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country That is the effect of the electoral college in modern politics, but it is not at all why the college exists.

I saw your other comment alluding to this and was intruiged. If you have time, can you please elaborate?

There's an explanation on wikipedia [1]. In the light of the current election, the following sentence from that article sounds ironic to me: 'Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity," attaining high office.'

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat...

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#114

Post by mstodd » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #15

ainiriand wrote: post #3

My opinion is that for the Trump supporter this is not a bad thing, per-se. It is going to be masked under some coat of security mixed with a bit of corporate capitalist liberty. And also, a lot of people is going to make a lot of money filtering and analyzing data.

I'll be good business for the incumbents. But bad for the regular users, startups, freedom.

How is it bad for those things, especially freedom? Regulation takes away freedom, by definition. An ISP start-up offering services which discriminate traffic now can't exist, and therefore can't give consumers more options. This is why I'm against net neutrality. I also believe that even with NN, companies will do what they want if it's worth the risk of being caught.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#115

Post by phailhaus » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

cheetos wrote: post #74

throwaway729 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too I'm from the midwest and I still don't understand this sentiment. Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? That seems extremely anti-democratic to me. It's not that people who don't live on the coasts shouldn't have a say. It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes , then t…

> Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? Because it turns out that has a very strong effect on the power of your vote :) The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country." It checks the power of highly dense populations who are more likely to vote for pro-city federal policies, so the needs of those in "the country" are not…

The bigger problem is that the EC is a winner-takes-all system. If California has 55 EV's, and Candidate A wins by 1%, why do they get all 55 votes? Nearly half the state voted for Candidate B! I have found that the debate on the EC has been over a false dichotomy: either have the EC, or have a popular vote. What about distributing electoral votes based on percentage?

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#116

Post by mzw_mzw » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #103

mzw_mzw wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election. Except that in a universe where the President was selected by popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently anyway, so your point is completely moot.

That they would try to appeal to all Americans and not just a handful in a few states? I think that is a better system.

No, they would try to run up the numbers in big cities and large media markets, and ignore the rest.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#117

Post by mozumder » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

ci5er wrote: post #31

Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing... As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to…

> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too.

So, how about this - instead of weighing electoral college votes by location, we could weigh electoral college votes by education level. That way, people with higher education gets more of say than people with lower education.

Pro-Trumpers need to explain why giving giving geographic weighting should be more valuable than giving educational weighting. There are a million factors that elections could be adjusted for.. why should we pick geography as a factor over anything else? Why should farmers be weighed more than University professors?

Is there something more special about farmers than university professors? Which one is more important for a modern economy?

How about this, we can weigh votes by race - black votes more than white votes. Isn't that just as valid as weighing farmer votes over urban votes?

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#118

Post by kyledrake » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #66

hristov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely normal and accepted for various agencies to make rules within the confines of the laws that have empowered them. It is in fact necessary considering how complex our society is. Congress cannot possibly control everything. If congress has power to pass certain laws, they have power to relegate some of such authority to a governing body. If the FCC's rules are in accordance with the laws that empowered…

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/53260835850816716... "Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media."

Clearly he understands what net neutrality is. I'm so glad he took to Twitter to show everyone his strong opinion on the thing he understands.

Repealing net neutrality is far more likely to shut down his alt-right nightmare sites as they fall under the cost margins of eyeball ISPs artificially inflating their peering costs (turns out playing out your Slytherin LARP fantasies in the real world doesn't provide the same revenue as companies like NBC can get).

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#119

Post by nickff » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #84

nickff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the philosophical basis of their conservative or libertarian beliefs. Many conservatives have had fundamental issues with the administrative state, since they first opposed it in Prussia. Many of the problems which they have with the administrative state have to do with the incentives of the administrators, and the broad, arbitrary power delegated to the regulators.

I have yet to hear a single argument that stems from that philosophical basis that does not turn out to be suspiciously aligned with corporate interests.

I could say the same of opposing viewpoints being aligned with statist (or union) interests.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#120

Post by jedmeyers » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

sxg wrote: post #63

lintiness wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election." what if she spent TWICE the money getting them?

That's a separate issue. Not saying it's right or wrong, but at the end of the day, she had more votes.

She got more votes in a system where opponent did not optimize his process for more votes, therefore it is a meaningless metric.