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NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

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Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#111
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that it is more a consequence of politics than the system... Sure you have a veto proof majority on this bill, but what about what comes next? The governor is able to stop "tyranny of masses" by their veto power. Almost no bill in our partisan age is able to pass with a veto proof majority. So the governor has the ability to prevent good outcomes for specific members of their party in the legislat…

> "tyranny of masses" That's democracy. If you water down or prevent the democratic will through ANY means to empower the will of the minority over the majority for ANY reason, then you end up implementing the governance of an elite. Minority rights of the people are a different matter - they would be guaranteed by the civil law governing human rights in a country - they dont have anything to do with the democratic w…

Pure majoritarianism isn't necessarily best either, it just always takes the majority's side in disputes where a strongly-held minority opinion comes in conflict with a weakly-held majority one. Like, it's obvious that you should take the side of the majority when it's "we'd rather not be slightly inconvenienced by paying for rent-seekers" regardless of how intensely the minority of rent-seekers want to rent-seek, but it's much less obvious that we should have zero handouts to narrow interests when it's "please spend $10000 per life saved via rare-disease research and treatment, I don't care how little the general public is aware of and cares about it and would generally prefer lower taxes"

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#113

I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and cancelled flights, which included right to specific amounts of monetary compensation in those scenarios. The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. Lo and behold, the airlines have…

Lying to avoid a loss would be fraud, and therefore a pretty dangerous game.

But unfortunately pretty routine. In two out of two cases where I've claimed compensation for delayed/cancelled flights under the EU law, the airlines have outright lied about the causes and denied compensation.

In both cases, they were forced to pay out in arbitration after the arbitor determined that their stated causes were false (e.g. providing the tail number for a different aircraft that was legitimately delayed) , but there was no penalty for lying.

In such an environment, it's quite rational for them to lie and deny.

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We live in representative democracies not absolute democracies and these table thumping maximalist positions rarely make good conversation or policy. They get retweeted though.

> representative democracies / absolute democracies The dichotomy above is impossible to interpret. What does that even mean. So when a democracy is representative, the minority's will can override the majority's will? Then what does the representation part in the representative democracy mean.

> So when a democracy is representative, the minority's will can override the majority's will?

Yes, and this is a feature, not a bug. Majority voting on issues one at a time cannot generate a deal that a majority would prefer when the compromise is presented as a block. Eg, if there are six different compatible single-issues that 10% of the people care solely about each, each individual one would get voted down 90-10, while representatives can make a bargain that delivers a combined platform approved of by 60%.

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#115

Shameless plug, the organization Louis (and I) work for, FUTO, is hosting a fellowship program sponsoring people to work on open-source software for three months for $20k-$80k and free housing in Austin. Applications are due Jan 1st! https://futo.org/fellows

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Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#116
post #32

For folks wondering how the late changes to the bill happened, you can see who funded the lobby efforts here: https://reports.ethics.ny.gov/publicquery/AssociatedFilings/...

Lobbying in its current implementation is functionally equivalent to bribery. That doesn’t mean interest groups can’t talk to politicians. But the attention should be proportional to the people they represent.

For instance, I’m sure that the execs at Microsoft, and a subset of their employees, agree with their lobbying. But I don’t understand how politicians can justify the level of engagement with a big economic player, who represents a tiny amount of people. When we vote, we have one vote each. But when we lobby, our “votes” differ in several orders of magnitude.

When it comes to autocratic foreign regimes, we understand the risks and monitor for behavior that can hurt the nation. But corporations are also autocratic, sometimes nation-state sized, and their interests are often directly opposed to the interests of our citizens. Even from an economic perspective, corporations are semi-detached from their original host nation through tax planning and funneling of assets overseas. However, since their public identity appears shared, from a nationalist perspective, we seem to put our guard down even though they have both the incentives and abilities to harm us in similar ways.

This perspective is in my view politically neutral, even though it may sound leftist in our bizarre political climate. But this is equally – if not more concerning – from a free market perspective. Corporations don’t just lobby against consumers, but also against the competition. In the case of right to repair, we don’t actually need Apple to provide cheap components and repairs, we just need to be able to get them elsewhere on the free market. In fact, Luis Rossman is coming from precisely this angle, as an entrepreneur who wants nothing but the right to serve his customers.

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#117
As a country with a strong economy of defining things of producing IP, it makes no sense to allow others to modify our definitions; they are immutable and sacrosanct. On the other hand, if we were a country with an economy producing tangible things like parts or assemblies that can be used to repair something, it would make sense to allow folks to repair things.

I am all for right to repair, but that is a pipe dream in our country, given our economic realities.

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#118
post #107
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.

They want to avoid the following situation. X% of the time a plane crashes and costs $Y. It costs $Z to cancel/delay a flight due to penalties and compensation. $Z > X% of $Y, therefore fly the unsafe flight. So they lower $Y in the case that it's a safety issue to save lives.

Who are "they"and why would "they" want to do that?

Asking because flying passengers on unsafe planes is already illegal.

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#119
post #69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.

I think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.

If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right?

All this says to me is that the government does nothing to prevent hugely unsafe airlines from operating.

The cancellation loophole seems fine to me, it's the followthrough that's concerning. What am I missing here?

Re: NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

#120

I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and cancelled flights, which included right to specific amounts of monetary compensation in those scenarios. The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. Lo and behold, the airlines have…

The error is in trying to handle such a specific situation in the law. This should be sorted out using some form of court. If a customer is unhappy about any aspect of the service from any business, he can approach the court and the judge will decide what is appropriate. No super specific laws.
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