[uda]

Initially I'm enraged against the publishers, the judge and the system in general as many of you, but they are not the issue, while I can't talk on behalf of IA, I don't see this as a fight against the publishers, but a fight against broken business models flourishing because and protected by broken laws meant to protect earlier broken business models

The current law is broken, we know that, but most of us don't grasp broken laws as a threat until it is challenged (and we as a society usually lose), and then we expect the judge to "save" us from the broken law instead of holding the legislators accountable

This circuit should be shortened, we need to react better to laws as they are being drafted, not wait out their inevitable harm to society like with DMCA and PATRIOT act

If anything has proven this lately is the Roe v. Wade overturn, we really need to stop relying on courts to "save" us and instead fight for better laws, be more involved in the legislation process and actively propose and push for fixes

[dahart]

> The current law is broken

I think many agree that copyright needs to be shortened, but what does “broken” mean, exactly?

I have good feelings for the Internet Archive, but in this case it’s about a handful of books that are being copied and distributed a mere 5 years after initial publication, which I think a lot of people who want copyright shortened would still agree is quite a bit too short. Books frequently get popular long after initial publication, they’re not anything like blockbuster movies that make most of their income in a few weeks (which used to be true before streaming but might not even be true anymore).

Keep in mind that this isn’t about the Internet Archive specifically. If the court ruled it’s okay for them to copy and rent books, then anyone can copy and rent books, it undermines the entire market for books (and also web sites and images and other media, because this is the Internet Archive). Think about what it means for the company you work for, or the creative works you or your artist friends create, if people can copy their things legally and take away their revenue streams after only 5 years.

I wonder why the Internet Archive doesn’t keep things unpublished on their site until it’s not generally available online, this would keep them clear of the most obvious copyright violations.

[ghaff]

Really the main (even only?) thing "broken" about copyright is the terms. (ADDED: I generally favor orphan works legislation but I also get the argument that this is also more likely to favor corporations than individuals.)

And basically all the schemes to make copyright more expensive, difficult, requiring jumping through hoops and paying increasing amounts of money to renew? That just basically screws individual creators (who already don't make much money for the most part) to the benefit of the major content rights holders who are not going to forget or be unable to pay for copyright renewal. Which is probably not the objective of most of the people dreaming these up.

The US actually took a pretty big step towards benefitting more small-time creatives when it aligned with the Berne Convention and did away with explicit notices being required.

[jacobolus]

The point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, not to be fair or to guarantee a lifetime of income to popular authors and their children. To that end, the exclusive copyright is supposed to be of limited time.

Having no-effort century-long copyright might narrowly benefit a tiny number of small-time creators, but it robs the public of our collective culture.

[dahart]

It’s definitely worth including the full quote and discussing what it means.

“Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The idea is that creators will have an economic incentive to create, because they’ll have some protection from copiers. The idea was not primarily to promote culture by releasing works into the public domain. This framework acknowledges both means of promotion, the short term protection of profits, combined with the long term acknowledgement that society will benefit from works becoming public after some time. So it is trying to be fair to both authors and to the greater social good, and it requires deciding & balancing what the term length should be.

[jacobolus]

It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years).

The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to me, in broad strokes, like a good balance between promoting new works vs. giving public access to previous works.

The century-long term only benefits a vanishingly small proportion of creators (which is to say, a vanishingly small proportion of creators' inheritors). The primary beneficiary is a small number of very large monopolistic media/publishing firms, who have e.g. bought up the rights (for peanuts) to the past century of back issues of thousands of scientific journals, and now keep them behind a paywall.

But the harm to the public is incalculably large.

[dahart]

The original terms do sound pretty good relative to today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What does the Berne Convention say? “the general rule is that protection must be granted until the expiration of the 50th year after the author's death.” Since this is fairly globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that the Berne Convention allows for terms this long, and if we want them to be shorter, what needs to happen, in order to get lawmakers globally to agree?

I certainly might have misunderstood your comment about being “fair” to authors. I guess you were saying that the US copyright law isn’t doing anything to distinguish between independent authors, small businesses, or large corporations? It certainly does allow for big business to have an easier time of things, and is not at all fair to individuals and small businesses, that’s true.

[mindslight]

Besides the lengthy term, another major problem with copyright is how forcefully it has been applied to the personal realm. If it were a limited commercial right that made companies play fair with each other while leaving individuals alone, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it. But from yesterday's nastygrams near libraries' xerox machines [sic] and stores' blank tape aisles, to today's shakedowns of torrenters and kneecappings of software developers, the way it has been conceived as some absolute property right is utterly draconian.

[dahart]

Oh I don’t think either the main or only problem is terms, I’m simply asking parent for clarification. Declaring it wholesale broken needs a Chesterton’s Fence justification; we can’t fix it until we acknowledge why it’s there, and identify what parts are worth preserving.

I only recently learned that the US has a bit of a Berne Convention loophole in the sense that you are required to register works with the copyright office before you can seek damages for copyright infringement (otherwise you can only demand they cease and desist). That fine print seems like it undermines the spirit of the Berne Convention just a bit, and most other countries that adhere do not have this extra hoop.

[benj111]

>Books frequently get popular long after initial publication.

Is that relevant?

To me copyright is there to encourage the creation of new works. I doubt any publisher takes into account book sales more than 5 years out when deciding whether to publish a new book.

I have artist friends. Current copyright acts as more of an inhibitor than enabler of their creativity.

[dahart]

I think books (or any works) staying popular on a long time scale, or becoming popular long after creation, is extremely relevant to how long copyright terms should be, yes. That seems apparent, so why do you ask?

You’re right that copyright is there to encourage creation of new works, and the stated mechanism for doing this is by granting the creator a limited-time monopoly, so they have a chance to make money.

Why do you doubt that publishers aren’t considering more than 5 years, and to turn your question back on you - why exactly is that relevant? There certainly can be a difference between why they decide to publish a book, and whether they should have the exclusive right to make money from a book after 5 years, can there not? Since you’re making a broad generalization, think about all book types, text books, reference books, novels, literature, non-fiction, etc. Aren’t some of those slower to publish and slower to go out of date? Think about walking through Barnes & Noble and tell me you believe that everything in the store in less than 5 years old.

And how does copyright inhibit your artist friends? Copyright doesn’t enable creativity, it just protects it, right? Are you sure your artist friends would even get paid for their work without copyright laws in place? If you are sure, then why?

[xhkkffbf]

Yes. This would really hurt the ability for authors to make a living if everyone could do what the IA claims the right to do. It just won't work for sales to be cut off after a few physical copies by digital copies everywhere.

[thebooktocome]

Is there really no middle ground between “five years after publication” and “seventy years after the last author’s death”?

[dahart]

I’m suggesting there is a middle ground, yes.

[jwestbury]

What differentiates libraries from the IA in this context, though?

[dahart]

Good question. I would guess four things that make a meaningful difference are 1) libraries are attempting to adhere to first sale doctrine, and attempting to have the ebook “returned” before lending it out again; 2) libraries aren’t trying to use Fair Use as their justification for ebook lending; 3) libraries aren’t scanning books, they’re only offering existing ebooks; and 4) libraries are publicly funded and not a private, for-profit company. Combined, I would guess these things put library lending on a stronger legal foundation.

[politelemon]

> and then we expect the judge to "save" us from the broken law instead of holding the legislators accountable

Why can't it be both? All this does is keep us busy looking where the 'root cause' is and never actually solve anything because the mechanisms to fix those things don't exist... all the while others reap its benefits.

[colonwqbang]

A system where judges ignore the law and just rule based on their general gut feeling, is much worse.

[magicalist]

This was a fair use case. The judge ruling on a question of law is exactly how it works.

[bdw5204]

If the Internet Archive's digitizing and distribution of old books is fair use then so is a video game ROM site that distributes digital images of pre-PS360 era games that are no longer available to purchase legally. except at exorbitant rates on eBay. And there's also a strong case for the original Napster being fair use if IA is.

I don't think there was ever any serious doubt that the Internet Archive would lose their case as they are clearly in violation of copyright law. The issue in the case is that the copyright laws are bad laws that have become contrary to their purpose of "promoting the useful arts and sciences" due to the copyright terms being absurdly long (and the lack of any serious deterrent to fraudulent DMCA claims which has allowed for the proliferation of such claims as a censorship and/or doxxing technique) and need to be reformed. It was unwise for the Internet Archive to violate copyright law just as it was unwise for Bowser the ROM site owner[0] to violate copyright law because flagrantly violating copyright law is an effective way to get yourself bankrupted via lawsuits and an ineffective way to get bad intellectual property laws changed.

[0]: https://venturebeat.com/games/gary-bowser-has-to-pay-nintend...

[dcow]

If the ROMs are out of print then they should fall into the public domain.

One much needed copyright law adjustment would be to limit copyright protection to a period where the work is actually commercially viable meaning the owner is making an effort to sell it. It doesn't benefit anybody to have old works locked up for years and years with no way for the public to acquire them legally.

[mdp2021]

> If ... digitizing and distribution of old ... is fair use

It's a library. A library does that.

[ghaff]

Libraries and archives have very little in the way of special rights when it comes to digital distribution of copyrighted works even if they have certain backup/preservation rights.

[forgotusername6]

Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it. You can't hope that the judge takes your side because then the judge could just as easily take the other side. There is of course an element of interpretation which the judges can use to decide in different directions over the same thing, but that again is an example of a broken law.

[bachmeier]

> Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it.

That's not the right characterization of the argument. Judges are there to tell legislators that they can't make certain laws. The abortion dispute is not about judges making abortion legal, it's about judges telling politicians that they cannot make abortion illegal. Without that, politicians would literally have the ability to do anything they want.

[frankfrankfrank]

I find it both shocking and terrifying that people lack the most fundamental understanding of how a properly separated government system would work, let alone why it should function that way.

It should concern everyone that these types of top down authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people without a tradition or culture based in western philosophy that has led to what used to be a clear separation of powers, become more prominent even all over the western/European based world.

It will not end well for most of humanity, even in this community, regardless if how much we believe ourselves to be doing good here, or at least not even considering the destabilizing consequences of what we do here.

[MikePlacid]

> authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people without a tradition or culture based in western philosophy

I think you are wrong here. We, the people with “lived experience” in authoritarian countries, look with astonishment at how the American people dismantle the basics of their own political system “based in western philosophy”.

You know, Stalin’s constitution of 1936 was one of the most liberal and progressive at the time. Then 1937 came. So the suggestion that judges should stop looking at the code of law and just eagerly follow the Party line - produce cries of “danger” from my very own carbon-based neural network.

So my estimate is quite opposite - the “native” Americans took the benefits of the political system based on western philosophy so much for granted, that they’ve stopped thinking where these benefits were coming from.

[krapp]

>It should concern everyone that these types of top down authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people without a tradition or culture based in western philosophy that has led to what used to be a clear separation of powers, become more prominent even all over the western/European based world.

Do tell, what people specifically are you referring to?

[meany]

But the judges should only overrule legislators when their laws violated higher level legislative authority or constitutions, right? Do you think a judge should be able to legislate what the law is independent of elected officials? Why would you trust them, especially since they are appointed by politicians or elected themselves?

[salawat]

...There's a reason the judiciary scared the bajeezus out of Thomas Jefferson.

Look at how the 2nd Amendment basically does not exist for some of the most populous states because SCOTUS refuses to reign in the more egregious examples of judicial/legislative reacharound like Wickett v. Filburn, or the vast majority of firearms legislation in places like NY and California.

Roe v. Wade is a shining example of how legalism can get turned on it's head just by changing out the authoritative judge who has the last word, or a new case coming up and being heard that threatens a change in viewpoint of SCOTUS.

The Writ of Certiorari is in my opinion the most overpowered political lever in the entire U.S. in the negative sense in that it's not being granted robs millions of an opportunity for redress of real harms, and in a positive sense in that when it is granted it can completely alter the judicial landscape for decades without legislative action.

[forgotusername6]

I assume you are coming from the standpoint of the judges working out if a law is unconstitutional. My country, the UK, does not have a written constitution, so this kind of thing doesn't come up as often. However, a constitution is still just a bunch of legal principles, set by government. The judges are still making rulings based on a set of rules. If the rules need changing then the people should elect the right people to change them.

[ratboy666]

Judges do NOT legislate from the bench! That is incredibly anti-democratic, and a collapse of our system. Judges do NOT tell politicians that they cannot make abortion illegal. That right, and yes, it IS a right, is reserved to the electorate. Who gets their will expressed through politicians. Judges judge against the body of legislation (and common law). And, yes politicians LITERALLY have the ability to do anything that the electorate want. That includes Global War.

[acomjean]

We have rights as individuals, which can’t be infringed by laws. The courts are there to prevent those laws. It’s what abortion and 2nd amendment lawsuits are all about.

These right declarations aren’t super clear so the political leanings of the court weight heavily.

[orangepurple]

You assume "rights" exist in a vacuum. The so called "rights" given to "the people" are clearly defined in the constitution and the bill of rights. Judges compare laws to those documents for conflicts, and err on the side of the constitution and the bill of rights. They do not make rights up as they please.

[thebradbain]

To get pedantic, the executive is there to enforce (and decide how to enforce) the law.

The judicial is there to decide if a given law should be enforced (and if a given enforcement method is valid)

This is why I’m not a big fan of originalism: that is almost always a subjective decision.

Otherwise we would just have a legislative and an executive.

[salawat]

Nitpick: >To get pedantic, the executive is there to enforce (and decide how to enforce) the law.

The Executive is there to implement an enforcement mechanism, even if the decision os to implement a null mechanism.

The executive cannot (or normatively should not ex nihilo) just materialize enforcement infrastructure without Congressional approval. The existence of Administrative law, however, rather shopts down the original intent of the Founders in terms of Governmental architecture.

[cduzz]

You certainly can if you're in east texas!

[retrocryptid]

Absolutely. Marbury v. Madison didn't happen.

[punnerud]

Could the law be nullified? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_(U.S._Constitu...

[shadowgovt]

No, because no jury was involved.

[lagadu]

Switching from common law to civil law systems should fix a lot of that up. This wouldn't be possible, considering the amount of law that would need to be written to replace an existing common law system but it's an interesting thought experiment.

[redtexture]

Louisiana has a civil law system, subject to the Federal Constitution.

[komali2]

What actions can Americans possibly take given the captured two party system and drawing back of voting rights? Not to mention the wildly unrepresentative government, wherein for example more people can vote for Trump in California than Texas in 2020 yet each of those person's votes are functionally meaningless, or, republicans can fail for over two decades to win a popular vote and still elect three presidents in that time. Or the fact that California gets very few senators per person whereas north Dakota gets a much larger power per citizen in the Senate, and the House is similarly unrepresentative.

It seems that working within the system isn't an option for Americans that desire a better world anymore. Perhaps a billionaire has the means to change this within system-allowed parameters such as lobbying and ad buys?

[prox]

Getting involved, grass roots style. The feeling of powerlessness is exactly the way you become inert to do anything. “What can I do.”

Politics work from the local to the national, so getting involved locally is a good thing, or organizations that work to promote the ideals you want to see in the world.

[jzb]

Getting involved locally is a very non-specific guidance. Part of the problem with “local involvement” is that a lot of folks are in very very gerrymandered areas. Either you’re hopelessly outvoted or preaching to the choir when trying to affect local politics.

But also, I think we are well past affecting change through voting and so forth. Not that you shouldn’t vote. But if we want to see actual change in the United States, we need to start taking some cues from the French and other countries where they go on strike aggressively until they get what they want.

As long as we keep getting fucked and showing up for work anyway the powers that be are just going to keep fucking us.

[vinyl7]

Even if you do get involved, you're going to get tackled by the quarterback trying to enact the changes that you see are needed. What has been happening in politics over the last several years? Bickering about non-issues that don't really effect people.

What did the senate do this week? Interview the TikTok CEO. Meanwhile our economy is in shambles, inflation is out of control, housing and rent is unaffordable, the middle class is dying.

Why are they over there arguing about wokeness, screaming about communists and facists being on the precipice of taking over the country, and interviewing the tiktok CEO? Because that doesn't require any action. It distracts the public from real problems. The partisan inflammatory and meaningless screeching is enough to get them re-elected, so why do any hard work fixing problems?

And so people who do try to get involved in order to fix real issues like the economy or housing, end up getting blocked by pointless debates. It's system-wide filibustering.

[dogcomplex]

Economic/systemic change has been off the table for quite a while. These poor politicians are just playing the only cards they have available - social tribal chanting - while filling their personal coffers as much as possible while the getting's good.

[maxwell]

Odd to open asking what actions Americans can take, and then closing with a bizarre appeal to a noble wealth hoarder.

What can we do? Uncap the House. Repeal the Reapportionment Act of 1929. The billionaires easily bribe 435 reps, several thousand would be harder. And in line with historical representation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/uncapthehouse

[ncphil]

Something many have advocated for decades. But keep in mind that there are tens of thousands of elected offices in the US, most of them nonpartisan, local positions that cost little to contest: yet it's incredibly hard to find people willing to run. Voter apathy is a huge problem here, in part due to historic voter suppression efforts baked into the system, but the dearth of candidates willing to participate in elections is even more serious. There again, legal discouragements, especially in the most significant races (state and federal legislature, executive), are endemic. Still, too many offices at the local level (town and city council, special district boards) go uncontested: leaving one or the other major party -- or venal representatives of the FIRE sector -- in control to mismanage and misappropriate power in areas directly impacting public life.

[ghaff]

Many of those local or state offices also pay little to nothing. A state rep in NH gets paid $200 for a two-year term based on an 1899 law.

That's something of an outlier but $25-50K is common.

[komali2]

The bizarre appeal was poorly communicated sarcasm.

[hyperman1]

As an non-USA inhabitant, one thing I see is that you have a lot more voting chances than most countries. I heard e.g. you can vote for officials like sheriffs and stuff.

So don't only vote for a president, vote for everything you can. Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential candidates at both sides.

I think after that, you shouldn't be afraid to 'throw your vote away'. Gerrymandering and other stuff made most voters in the presidentials irrelevant. So the only voice left there is the signal function of 3rd part vote. Make it clear yo don't like the hobson's choice you've left. You did what you could in the previous round.

Don't succumb to nihilisms. The powers that be seem to have dividers in a dumber and smarter half. The dumber half gets very simplistic reasons to vote for some extremist side. The smarter half gets tamed by nihilistic passiveness. Both get all kinds of divisive news as a side dish. Don't fall into this trap. A big enough group of people aligned around a common cause is the biggest danger to any powerfull entity, and they fear them and do anything to break them up.

[alistairSH]

Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential candidates at both sides.

This usually isn’t allowed. At least in my precinct (in an open primary state), both primaries are on the same day, in the same location, and you select which party’s ballot you want when you arrive. Anybody can vote, you don’t have to be a party member.

Some states have closed primaries, where only party members can vote. Usually you declare party membership in advance. Not sure how these states prevent people from joining both - I suspect there is a state register of party affiliation.

As the parent post alluded to, the US is at a bit of a crossroads. The protections built into the political system that were added to protect minority political groups from the tyranny of the majority has been turned on it’s ear over the last several decades and we’re now stuck with an ever-decreasing population of angry christo-fascists making decisions against the will of the vast majority of the nation.

[NoZebra120vClip]

> Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential candidates at both sides.

That's not permitted in any state which I know.

I am a registered voter in "NO PARTY", which gives me the option to request a ballot from any party in a primary and vote within that party.

Any registered voter can vote any candidate or issue in general elections. I think what would improve our abysmal two-party system would be runner-up benefits, and coalitions, rather than winner-takes-all.

[alistairSH]

The likely best solution to the 2-party system is a change to balloting from single-choice to something like approval voting (check any number of candidates you could live with) or ranked-choice/instant run-off (number candidates by preference).

If I were king, I’d do away with party primaries completely. Run a jungle primary with all candidates on a single ballot. Ranked choice to pick the top 4-5 for the general. Then ranked choice in the general to select the winner. Something like that.

I’d also ditch the EC for direct election of the president. And legislate the size of a House district be derived from the smallest state population. This adds hundreds of members to the House, and brings voting parity back to CA and TX (who currently have districts substantially larger than Wyoming’s single seat.

[youainti]

The "jungle" primary you speak of is in use in Washington state.

[the_only_law]

I’d wager it’d be even more useless for me to vote for sheriff than president. The sheriff where I live is a populist figure who’s continuously re-elected in power for nearly 20 years at this point. He’s probably going to re-elected till he dies since he has that “celebrity” mentality Americans love.

[ajdegol]

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Perhaps have chatgpt search through drafted laws to identify inconsistencies, curtails to liberty, and evidence of self-interest…

[dogcomplex]

Entirely open (at best) question, which no smug hacker news commenter is going to answer. What does one do?

(My current longshot hope? Digital democracy, on the backs of open source production economies running on the latest AI for highly-accessible/affordable data processing / labor. If we just start making online group decisions and scale it up, that's a power bloc that can run its own parties and strongarm existing gov processes - assuming the network even wants to interact with them... )

[andsoitis]

> Digital democracy, on the backs of open source production economies running on the latest AI for highly-accessible/affordable data processing / labor.

Politics is the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals.

Throwing technology at these human affairs isn’t an answer.

[dogcomplex]

It also gives a fresh space to develop democratic systems that aren't dominated by previous parties to the extent that there is barely a functioning democracy. Existing systems are ridiculously compromised.

[shigawire]

Not the sole answer but it does enable different ideas that weren't possible at scale without technology.

Something like liquid democracy.

[komali2]

I agree with many that the most effective method will be some combination of empowering communities and destruction of property.

[orangepurple]

Way too much focus on the HOW and not the WHAT

[denton-scratch]

> yet each of those person's votes are functionally meaningless

Not sure what a "functionally meaningless vote" is; is that simply a vote cast for the losing side? If something is to be decided by a vote, then one side of the argument is going to lose, otherwise you don't need a vote.

[Matl]

I'd guess you took what OP meant a bit too literally, I'd say that there's so many things to change, campaign for, convince that even if you say convince enough people to vote to change this law, there's already another rolling your 'win' back being prepared, backed by interest groups with much deeper pockets.

So in the end your individual vote does little, because real power is at the hands of much better resourced interests.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

I bet in your county it would take the dedicated organization of maybe 10-25 people to tilt who is out on the ballot in your local government. (If your county is much larger, you may need 50 or so.) register for a minor party and then only nominate members of that minor party that fit your views. A friend of mine in his smaller town was able to, with his local family, put on only democratic candidates under Republican nominations because his family had minor party share.

[criddell]

A decade ago, activists made a difference protesting SOPA and PIPA.

[Matl]

Or Google did.

[meany]

The slowness and lethargy of the system is by design. For instance, The constitution is really hard to change to prevent tyranny. Checks and balances against power protect all our rights. There is no garauntee that the people in power will choose your path forward. There is also no garauntee that the majority view is yours. Hitler for example was elected. The system was setup to ensure for hundreds of years at the price of short term inefficiency. Read the history of an imploding republic - France, Rome, Weimar - and you will see similar pushes to speed reform for the masses that ended in tyranny. Reading the federalist papers will give good perspective on the rationale for these things. One may disagree with the conclusions, but the concerns and rationales are reasonable

[unholythree]

It’s hard for people to appreciate just how much better our lives are, and how much more just life is in western society now than all of the millions of years of human life before. 200 years ago some people were literal property, 150 years ago women couldn’t vote almost anywhere, less than 75 years ago Turing was chemically castrated for being a homosexual. Huge, meaningful strides have been made for equally and fairness very recently.

It may seem terrible and unjust that there are some now that are as rich as a Roman emperor and can buy a great deal of influence, but the world was once thousands of unaccountable tyrants, free to brutalize their peasants and slaves.

[komali2]

Millions of years? If I recall, our societies are quiet a bit younger than that, several hundred thousand sure, but millions?

Anthropologists have been arguing for quite some time that society wasn't "all that bad" here and there over the last twenty thousand years or so. Bad sometimes in some places certainly, but for many, there was general communal comfort and a large degree of sharing resources. As recently in the last 500 years, it was written with a note of surprise by European settlers in north America that the indigenous population never let someone go hungry or homeless.

Recommend reading some David graeber, his latest book is a phenomenal insight on new archaeological findings as well as bad assumptions anthropologists have made in the past.

[patrick451]

Aside from the two party system, this is all working exactly as designed.

[salawat]

>wherein for example more people can vote for Trump in California than Texas in 2020 yet each of those person's votes are functionally meaningless.

Executive election and apportionment of electoral votes are specifically a matter for States to determine the implementation details of. Therefore, any complaints on that front are entirely California's problem.

> or, republicans can fail for over two decades and still elect three presidents in that time

...The Chief Executive is determined in a two-fold election pipeline. A popular vote to elect State electors to cast votes for the President The number of electoral votes is set by a Constitutionally defined function that strikes a balance to ensure the most populous states can't steamroll the less populous. The means of choosing who the electors are are up to the States. Original intrnt was that Electors were unaccountable to anyone, as the Founders wanted a specific check on demagoguery, as they greatly feared the charismatic charlatan who could work a crowd, and believed a second smaller unaccountable party of voters would either eventually reconfirm the majority if it was a genuinely uncontroversial decision, or conscientiously object if they could not in good conscience believe it was in the best interests of the nation to cast that vote. The Founders believed a person was virtuous. People were easily led and prone to being swindled by a charismatic speaker.

The popular vote literally was antithetical to what the Founders set put to do. It was specifically not the system they wanted to get anywhere near.

>Or the fact that California gets very few senators per person whereas north Dakota gets a much larger power per citizen in the Senate,

This is by design. The Senate represents the States. Not the People directly. Each state gets two Senators, no matter how big, no matter how populace. Only the House Scales as a function of Population. The Senate is specifically a check on the House. It was recognized that the House would be the Heart/Vehicle of the People's passions. The Senate was intended to be a smaller, more rational filter to keep the House checked as Reason is the check on Passion.

Again. Working as designed/Civics 101.

[komali2]

This kind of comment confuses me. There's always one rigid constitutionalist that shows up and just kind of... Pretends the usa was a determinist system kicked off the second the constitution was signed? Despite the immediate amendment when they needed to add some human rights to the thing?

Actually, America was designed to be a slave state, with laws explicitly laying out why African people are less entitled to rights than European descendants, and laws working around different states' positions on slavery. Working as designed, right?

> The Founders believed a person was virtuous. People were easily led and prone to being swindled by a charismatic speaker.

And yet, the people voted for the less charismatic candidate, and the electoral college elected the swindler. Working as designed, right? Now we have executives directly trying to influence the electoral college, and it seems to be working (supreme court stepping in during bush's election to force stop a recount that would have led to him losing the election, which we know as fact now).

Not only is it absurd to suggest the USA is a deterministic system like constitutionalists claim, there's a very easy retort: ok, it's a bad system then. Americans need a better design.

If America is working by design, then it's designed to be easily exploited by haliburton to send its soldiers to die in foreign countries so as to feed the military industrial complex. It's designed to have one of the largest prison populations on earth and a systemically racist police system. It's designed to have an outsized homeless problem, massive painkiller addiction crisis, and a population of people with no savings, no hope for retirement, and one paycheck from homelessness.

[GuB-42]

Judges here to apply the law made by the legislators. That's the basis of the separation of powers. If it wasn't the case we wouldn't have a legislation in the first place turning judges into oligarchs.

The way people are supposed to support better laws is by electing better legislators. Easier said than done I admit, but I think that's better than giving judges power beyond their role.

[Qahlel]

every monopoly is created by the government (read: state and laws).

[eggburger]

Who gave them the right to say it was legal or illegal in the first place? People in here pretending one party is better than the other because they give you back fundamental human rights they have no business controlling the legality of to begin with.

[Eumenes]

That's the Supreme Courts job?

[retrocryptid]

The constitution.

[account42]

This is the correct answer but it is worth pointing out copyright being spelled out specifically in the first amendment recognizes that this is something that he government would normally not have authority to enact because it goes against more fundamental rights. The first amendment also restricts the authority of the government when it comes to copyright by requiring it to be done "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and for the aritificial monoboly to be "for limited Times". It isn't clear that the current implementation of copyright still falls within either of these limitations.

[frankfrankfrank]

I agree with you until you parroted the propaganda trope about Roe v Wade. Roe has always been known as “bad law” even though it was never law, only illegitimate judicial dictate. It’s always been known as one of the worst rulings in American history.

It’s unfortunate that you would demonstrate such logically compromise in such a blatant manner, ironically, in a post about “bad law”. Ironically, overturning Roe specifically was good law, in that it followed the law the ruling was a blatant violation of.

[saint_fiasco]

I'm confused. You act hostile yet you seem to agree with the original comment.

The reason Row v Wade was overturned is that the judges don't want to have to decide if abortion is legal or not. They want legislators to be responsible for that.

You, the judges, and the parent comment are all in agreement here.

[patmcc]

Oh, bullshit. The same judges who "want legislators to be responsible" for deciding abortion laws also explicitly don't want legislators deciding campaign finance and firearm laws.

It's political. It's always been political. It always will be. The judges that want abortions illegal will find legal arguments to make that happen and vice versa.

[OJFord]

I have no idea what Roe v Wade is about (I'm not American or in the US), but I like GP read the parent comment to theirs as meaning 'these jokers overturned it, that is bad, we cannot rely on them'. Re-reading after seeing your own comment, it is ambiguous really, you could read it either way, but you're probably right (having the context of what it's about) and GP just mistook the meaning as I did.

> If anything has proven this [that 'we need to react better to laws as they are being drafted, not wait out their inevitable harm to society'] lately is the Roe v. Wade overturn, we really need to stop relying on courts to "save" us and instead fight for better laws [...]

[smokeypanda]

Your first reading was correct. The ambiguity is whether the comment was referring 'we'(author is part of referenced group), or 'them'(author is describing disgruntled group), possessing the viewpoint that the overturning was bad.

[orangepurple]

It all boils down to people fighting for the right to do whatever they want to an unborn soul including shutting down its life processes at will. They all have different justifications and excuses. It boils down to the local morality hence why judges kicked it back to the local governments.

[guelo]

Souls aren't a real thing.

[orangepurple]

Neither is "abortion"

[MrVandemar]

> The reason Row v Wade was overturned is that the judges don't want to have to decide if abortion is legal or not.

No. The reason Roe v Wade was overturned is because conservative middle-aged/old white-guys with money are not happy about people, and by people I mean women, having reproductive choice.

It's one of the areas that fundamental islam and conservative "Christians" have significant overlap, and that's not a good thing.

[account42]

> white-guys

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

[MrVandemar]

It's not just about the make-up of the supreme court; it's about the people and politics of the people who appointed them.

[l8rlump]

Yeah, we can’t have major world religions agreeing about stuff. Especially stuff you don’t agree with ;)