[McDyver]

They make it really difficult to fight any of this.

You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read, hope it changes their mind.

This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying.

This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if they have strong feelings about it.

I wish there was an easier way for people to say they are against this

[afarah1]

Same for any legislation piece.

A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M.

Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time.

And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for.

It's just the power structure of any representative legislature.

"In vain do we fly to the many"...

[p1dda]

The European Commission (EC) is particularly sinister in so many ways and not like any previously known modern democratic entity. The EC has been constantly pushing for less democracy, less transparency, more censorship for decades. All the while the horrible president von der Leyen makes billion dollar deals with Big Pharma in complete secrecy without any repercussions or oversight. Europe is doomed if we don't destroy the EU in its current form, but how?

[anthk]

The EU it's good, little American/Russian spoiled kid. It's these kind of turds who want Chat Control whose give the EU a bad name.

[p1dda]

LOL thanks for your great insight into this matter

[anthk]

I'm from Spain; before joining the European Economic Community (pre UE entity) in 1986 our country except for the main cities sucked a lot, it was behind France in lots of terms. By 1992 the gap went almost to /dev/null.

So, I you can be pro EU and denounce these STASI like mafias, you know.

[cortesoft]

This is the case for so many things… it is why every attempt to make filling out your taxes in the United States fails completely.

[staunton]

What does it mean "to make filling out your taxes"??

[datameta]

The omission was likely in that the failure is in trying to make filing taxes simple.

[rogerrogerr]

It’s pretty dang simple today. If you’re a usual W-2 employee, anyone who can read and follow simple instructions can file without paying any preparer a dime.

For those of us trying to collect all the weird tax situations: https://freetaxusa.com.

[the-smug-one]

In Sweden and Denmark the tax service prepares a tax statement for you. In Sweden, if everything looks OK, you press a button. In Denmark, if everything looks OK, you don't even have to press a button.

[ijk]

You mean that Americans used to be able to do that. Last year. For this coming year, it's over.

Article: https://www.theverge.com/news/717308/irs-direct-file-gone-bi... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757262

[cortesoft]

It could be way easier. Many countries send everything filled out and you just verify.

They already know all my income, my dividends, everything that is sent to the government already… why can’t they give me it all auto filled? They are pretty good at finding out if you left something off, so they could do that before hand.

[cortesoft]

*easier

Sorry

[Der_Einzige]

Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is.

Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war.

Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands of years.

It's telling that my boy Smedly Butler (ask your US marine friends who he is and they will recite his story perfectly or else their bootcamp will have smoked them for it) advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war.

[Arainach]

It's impossible for people to know about every topic. That was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now. People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and have no time to look into facts or primary sources.

Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock where you can't get 50% to agree on anything.

If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one, getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the scale of direct democracy.

[somenameforme]

People don't bother looking into stuff because they know their opinion, and their vote, doesn't really matter. Treat people like children and they start acting like children.

For some contrast Switzerland has a sort of defacto direct democracy in that citizens that obtain a relatively small number of votes can bring any issue they desire up for vote. And they have indeed brought issues like Basic Income with the suggested proposal of every single Swiss adult getting around $1700/month. That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it, but it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin in the current state of the United States. But in Switzerland where people actually do have real power, and responsibility, to determine the future of their country, it was rejected by 77%.

Instead, back in the states we can look forward to our true political power of getting to choose between Dumbo and Dingbat for our completely unrepresentative representatives.

[Timwi]

> That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it

What makes you say that?

[somenameforme]

Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency.

In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective.

I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.

[thaumasiotes]

> Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work.

We have those now.

[fc417fc802]

Direct democracy would replace politicians being vaguely influenced by social media driven trends with government policies decided directly by the social media outrage cycle. I've got no end of complaints about the current system but that doesn't incline me to go for a swim in a manure pit.

[aesh2Xa1]

Representative systems vest political power into concentrated points of influence. The reps are often as uninformed as the citizens. The US just had some infamous legislation pass that representatives didn't even read, and publicly stated so.

The system also makes reps uniquely vulnerable to targeted lobbying, corruption, regulatory capture, and threats. I find much to be faulty with opaque dealings with a few key individuals.

Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.

[Arainach]

>Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.

Have you paid attention to any US or global election since 2016? The special interests stay hidden and their influence works wonders.

If direct democracy could have ever worked, that opportunity died the moment social media became popular.

[aesh2Xa1]

You are correct that mass manipulation is a critical issue. However, this vulnerability is shared by any system reliant on voters, including the representative one. It is not a unique flaw of direct democracy.

So there are three issues we're talking about in this context:

1. Reps are also uninformed.

2. Social media manipulation of the populace (or, generally, propaganda).

3. Concentrated influence on a handful of legislators.

Direct democracy eliminates the third vector.

Furthermore, the stakes and incentives for corruption are vastly different. A lobbyist gains far more from corrupting one senator who decides for millions than from swaying individual voters. The return on investment for corrupting concentrated power is orders of magnitude higher.

Even if propaganda shapes opinion, the resulting decisions still represent the people's will at that moment. Representatives can betray even that will for personal gain, adding another layer of distortion between what people want and what they get.

[terminalshort]

How does direct democracy mitigate the issue that the representative is uninformed and not even reading what they voted for?

[aesh2Xa1]

I think my argument was written in a way that could allow this misinterpretation, sorry. I wasn't claiming direct democracy makes people more informed, but I was saying it removes the additional corruption layer.

Direct democracy doesn't cure ignorance, but it eliminates the corrupted/coerced middleman. An uninformed public voting directly is still more aligned with public interest than uninformed representatives voting for whoever influenced them most.

[maldonad0]

The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.

[mrnotcrazy]

If you think the republic is one of the worst books in human history I would ask what makes a good book? When there are plenty of implementation issues for direct democracy it feels strange to blame Plato... Particularly when the world has benefited from the republic in so many ways.

[p1dda]

I completely agree about the excellence of Direct Democracy (DD). One of the most common arguments against DD is that: "people aren't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to make important decisions". My reply to this is: and current politicians are? Politicians obviously aren't smarter or more knowledgeable than the average citizen, they are more inclined to act in their own best interest rather than the public's best interest though. We get rid of the middlemen and we get rid of: corruption and the abuse of power. The Swiss are doing excellent with DD!

[lupusreal]

I say only the patriarchal heads of households should get votes. Isn't that pretty much how Athens did it? No votes for slaves, women, anybody with mixed non-Athenian ancestry, no poors allowed to hold a political office...

Anyway, I'm all for putting the sons of politicians on the front line, but don't think that will stop wars. The British Empire was infamous for putting nobleborn men directly in harms way, they would proudly stand up right in the thick of combat making themselves tempting targets and were routinely cut down. In a society with a strong martial tradition this doesn't turn people into peaceniks, if anything it gets people even more excited for wars.

[int_19h]

The Brits had this as a custom back when it was viable on the battlefield. They tried to stick to it during WW1 with quite disastrous consequences, which is why they stopped. Well, some brave souls still tried it occasionally in WW2, but any British officer who'd try to do that kind of thing today would be considered an idiot endangering his unit.

Strong martial tradition or not, whether combat is seen as desirable depends a lot on the level of personal risk for those involved. Which, by the by, is why feudal nobility was much more enthusiastic about warfare than the peasants - having good armor significantly reduced risks, and chances were good you'd get ransomed if captured.

When applied to modern warfare, it pretty much depends on whom you're fighting. If it's a modern army (in the sense of military doctrine first and foremost) against premodern one, whether the latter is guerrilla or state, and you're in the modern army, your chances of survival are pretty good - look at casualty figures for Battle of Mogadishu or Desert Storm. But if you're on the other side, the casualty rate is so high that people need some other motivation to keep fighting (ideology, religion etc); very few would fight for loot or glory under such conditions.

And judging by how things are going in Ukraine, two modern armies going at each other isn't much better. Again, hard to be excited about being blown to pieces by an FPV drone the moment you poke your head out of the camo netting.

[staunton]

Have you ever read the (full) text of any bill that has been passed during the last couple of decades? How about reading all of them?

So are you proposing people vote on them without reading them? Or that we write very short bills aimed at a non-lawyer audience, effectively leaving most decisions up to the interpretation by courts? Or something else?

[Ray20]

>advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war.

I really like this position from an ethical point of view.

But in reality you will be conquered by a neighboring country with different principles in about 3 days.

[somenameforme]

Voting yes on a war implies you're the one invading.

[Ray20]

So you can just say that the war is defensive - and send those who voted against it to fight anyway? Or how does that work in your head?

[somenameforme]

In a defensive war - there is no vote whether or not to go to war. You are immediately at war because you have been invaded.

[chrischen]

Why not have one organization that collects $1 from everyone to fight on behalf?

[cookiengineer]

Check out the Chaos Computer Club. They're actively fighting this.

https://www.ccc.de

[somebodythere]

Roughly, this is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and comparable lobbying orgs in other countries.) However, an org like this doesn't have much power to compel individuals to give them $1.

[rekenaut]

Because whether the government gets it or this collective organization gets it, you’re still out a $1. Besides, very few people will actually care enough about $1 to partake in literally any amount of effort to regain it.

[bryanrasmussen]

I'm pretty sure any law that costs you 1 dollar will cost you 1 dollar per year, or 1 dollar some other shorter amount of time.

And anyway the actual law under discussion is bad not because it costs you 1 dollar per year, but because it costs you other things.

Also this how people do fight against this kind of thing, they join non-profits or other organizations, give them 1 dollar per year and use the combined might of the organization.

But yes at that point you are paying 1 dollar per year that way too, but then, as already noted this is not really a 1 dollar per year law.

And then we see that in fact people often do care about 1 dollar per year, because they are not joining the organizations, even to protect things worth more than 1 dollar per year.

[account42]

Opposing the law will also be an ongoing process as those benefiting can just push for the changes again under a different name.

[andyferris]

Should we call the organization “government” and the fee “tax”? </s>

It’s not a bad idea but it’s funny we need a funded people’s organisation to represent us to the democratic government!

I wonder if we need direct voting rights (for legislation etc) - now that we live in the internet age it may be feasible. Not sure how else to have the many overwhelming the few.

[coderatlarge]

like a peoples’ line item veto online?

[aleph_minus_one]

A possible countermeasure could be to make the life of politicians (which we will of course all name individually) who voted for such laws a hell on earth ...

[Ray20]

No, this cannot be a countermeasure.

Such laws are adopted precisely so that society cannot influence politicians and their decisions.

That is, if society does not have the ability to do something about it now, then they will be even less able to do something about it later.

[XorNot]

Assuming "the people" are on your side on this is first and foremost your biggest folly.

I see this problem over and over again - people start from "the politicians" (the other) is not listening to us (and we obviously represent everyone).

It leads to extremely unconstructive messaging ideas, where you assume no one can ever change their minds and if they do they are to be forever considered "lesser" for not being "right" the first time.

[afarah1]

Which is costly to do...

[hcfman]

But you don't know who voted for them. In Europe, laws are also formulated by a group called "The high level group" I believe, and the members of this group are anonymous.

[LtWorf]

Other than shooting them? But they hire security… it's quite hard to hit them without hitting anyone else.

[squigz]

What does that mean, precisely?

[FirmwareBurner]

How do you get to them to force them into submission? Did Americans get the child rapists off the Epstein list yet? And the unelected EU leader Ursula VDL has had private security since she was a child.

They're untouchable by the plebs, they have zero accountability.

[fakedang]

Tbf, a Jan 6 situation is very possible in the EUC and EUP, because the security for them is just like these constituent bodies - a joke.

I for one would like to see a bunch of French and Dutch farmers drive by and fling shit on them, at the very least.

[thephyber]

“Concentrated benefits and diffuse costs”.

[darkmighty]

On the other hand, a legislator is elected by a large number of people, so in theory he has incentives to act on their behalf. But I'm sure lobbying can tip the scales a lot.

Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help. Also, I think campaign donations and monetary influence should be extremely limited (to not make someone have too much influence *cough cough Elon Musk cough*), maybe to $100 or so. If lobbying is to be allowed, probably something like that should hold as well: each individual could give at most something like $100/yr to a special interest group, and those should be closely watched.

From wiki:

> Lobbying takes place at every level of government: federal, state, county, municipal, and local governments. In Washington, D.C., lobbyists usually target members of Congress, although there have been efforts to influence executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court appointees. Lobbying can have a strong influence on the political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or no independent influence"

Campaign donations, per this website:

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate...

It seems individuals can total $132k "per account per year" (I assume there can be multiple accounts for different roles?). Even the $3500 per person per candidate per election seem a bit oversized to me.

Of course, legislators also have an incentive to allow lobbying to make their lives easier and earn all sorts of benefits, further complicating things.

It's really not clear to me lobby should exist at all. Like probably legislators could simply fund their own apparatus to understand the issues of their country/region in an equitable way.

[dragonwriter]

> Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help.

Outlaw communicating with legislators to try to get them to adopt a position on legislation?

Or do you mean outlawing paid lobbying on behalf of third parties?

The first would obviously be deeply problematic even if it was possible to police, the latter would probably generally be ineffective however you managed to operationalize it.

[darkmighty]

> Outlaw communicating with legislators to try to get them to adopt a position on legislation?

Of course not. Communicating with legislators isn't what's considered lobbying I guess (at least as far as I understand it). Lobbying as far as I understand (or rather, object) is when special interest groups (usually funded by large corporations) fund people to talk to legislators for them, including buying fancy dinners, "conferences" and stuff. Basically, the opposite of grassroots.

See here: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/22/lobbyists-flout-eth...

Calling/emailing your chosen congresspeople of course is totally fine by me, it's actually very healthy to do so if you have a legitimate concern.

> the latter would probably generally be ineffective however you managed to operationalize it

How would it be ineffective? I suppose it depends on oversight, but it should be fairly easy to prevent it seems.

[dragonwriter]

> Communicating with legislators isn't what's considered lobbying

It basically is.

You may be thinking of who is considered a lobbyist or lobbying firm, which is (roughly, different laws on the matter have different specific definitions) someone (or some firm) who (or which) is paid to lobby on behalf of one or more other persons or entities.

> How would it be ineffective?

Because even if you are able to police it effectively, then the people that have money will instead lobby personally rather than hiring lobbyists, while hiring staff to do all the legislative drafting and organizational support work for their personal lobbying (but not actually doing the lobbying itself) as well as continuing to use the unlimited campaign financing channels opened by Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United to get people who they don't need to lobby once in office to convince them to vote in line with their interests elected.

[Ray20]

>Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help

I doubt it. The cure is way worse than the disease and is a direct path to totalitarianism. The influence of capital will not go to the people, it will go to the government, and the government will use it to depend even less on the will of the people.

[AlecSchueler]

> It's just the power structure of any representative legislature...

... Under capitalism.

[sidewndr46]

One of the failings of most modern democracies is that if a measure doesn't pass, nothing prohibits it from being introduced again immediately. I've seen ballot initiatives simply get copy pasted onto each election by city council until they happen to pass.

[ryandrake]

The deck is stacked. They only have to win once, and it's law. You have to win over and over every time it's introduced.

[sneak]

Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress proposed a bicameral legislature, where one half needs a 66% majority to pass a law. The other half’s only job is to repeal laws, which they can do with a 50% majority.

[lupusreal]

At the end of that book, the protagonist explains that all the high minded Luna libertarian values broke down and were more or less abandoned in the years following their revolution, and they returned to more normal political processes.

[sheiyei]

Classic "missed 100% of the point" literature phenomenon

[Analemma_]

This is a dumb and outrageously anti-democratic idea, and is a much worse cure than the disease it's attempting to fix. If 65% of the population supports a law it's favored by 30 points-- far higher than the margin of most elections-- and yet would not exist under this system.

[ryandrake]

There's nothing magical about 50%. The bar for "this policy should be inflicted on everyone" should be very high--I'd argue much higher than 50%. At the same time, the bar for "we should stop inflicting this policy on everyone" should be extremely low. I'd argue a 1/3 minority should be enough to repeal a law. If one out of three people feel they are harmed by something, maybe the government shouldn't be doing it.

[Arainach]

This doesn't work in practice. Look at how Senate Republicans have weaponized the filibuster in the last 20 years. A 40% veto is conceptually similar to your repeal process and it results in gridlock and nothing getting done.

It is harder to build than to destroy. If laws can be trivially repealed no one will be willing to commit to long term things. We're seeing that right now with the destruction of US soft power, economic power, and global leadership.

[nucleardog]

It's an interesting thought, but as presented that sounds fairly dysfunctional. If it takes 2/3 to pass and 1/3 to repeal, you may as well just say it takes 2/3+1 to pass, as otherwise anything passed can be, and likely will be, just immediately repealed.

[ncallaway]

I don't think the assumption that "law = things the government is doing" is a good one.

I could imagine a law that specifically restricts the government's ability to do things. For example, maybe the federal government passes a law that makes it easier to sue its agents when those agents violate individual citizens constitutional rights.

Perhaps 65% of the population feels they are harmed if this law doesn't exist, and 35% of the population feels they are harmed if the law doesn't exist. Should that law be repealed?

[Bluestein]

It's analogous to information security.-

PS. Maybe there's something there ...

[idle_zealot]

Is this really true, though? Couldn't you pass a law specifically banning the thing you don't want to happen, so any future law that contradicts it needs a supermajority to pass or something?

[Macha]

Depends on the system, but usually no, a parliament cannot restrict future parliaments.

e.g. the law to make changing thing X require a supermajority could itself be repealed with a simple majority here, unless it was approved as an amendment to our constitution. Which _does_ happen more often than it does for the US here, but usually just for large nationally popular things.

[vaylian]

Privacy is a fundamental right. Politicians have passed all kinds of surveillance laws which then got declared illegal by the courts. The problem is that courts are not fast enough and the bad laws linger around for a while until they are repealed.

[thyristan]

There is a system like this in Switzerland. The voters can change the constitution by a public initiative+vote, which binds the parliament. Only another public vote can revert the constitution.

This is e.g. why there was an initiative to constitutionally forbidding some religious buildings: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_controversy

[soulofmischief]

A well-funded institution will always outlast an individual or smaller organization in a war of attrition. I think a modern Constitution needs to consider 19-20th-century concepts such as game theory if it has any hope of preventing eventual corruption.

[deaddodo]

Look at SOPA/PIPA. They simultaneously pushed the same bill through both chambers to try and guarantee it would pass. Grassroots efforts led to it being overwhelmingly blocked in both cases. And then they just slowly slipped most of it's provisions through other legislation over the years.

[sheiyei]

I think we should be at least several decades past looking at the USA as a particularly functional democratic system...

The US constitution, despite its biblical status in their culture, manages to be more of a distracting throw-word ("LOOK at how this bill helping provide healthcare OBSTRUCTS your CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to NOT CARE ABOUT THE POOR!" (Ok, not a great example)) than a functional constitution that limits institutional overreach.

[deaddodo]

Your opinion is fine and all, but it's moot to this point.

The exact same things are happening in the EU, as evident by this very legislation this thread is concerning.

[lern_too_spel]

Except for a few types of bills that customarily originate in the house, most bills are introduced roughly simultaneously in both houses so that the information for debating the bill doesn't have to be brought twice. This obviously doesn't guarantee a bill will pass because it is required to pass both houses.

[deaddodo]

Every bill has to go through both chambers, but they usually originate in one and then are passed to the other once the originating chamber affirms them.

It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so.

[lern_too_spel]

> It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so.

This is in fact extremely common. Both houses pass independent bills, and then they go to conference to work out the differences.

https://gai.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tab-6-...

"Frequently, however, House and Senate committees each develop their own bills on the same subject. In these cases, one house often debates and amends the bill reported by its committee but then amends and passes the corresponding bill that the other chamber has already passed"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The same game theory that could make a modern constitution so robust could also be used by the bad guys to thoroughly corrupt the drafting of any modern constitution you could get enacted.

[rolandog]

I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy — death by a thousand papercuts — will be lead to catastrophic tipping points.

As a ChemEng, I can't help but compare the current coordinated attack on the democratic rule of governments worldwide to having multiple batches of emulsions undergoing phase-inversion [0]: only so much fascism can be added before things collapse into a greasy turd.

That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to. I would argue that the root cause of the sad state of democracies is the fact that we were coaxed into a snafu by virtue of accepting the false equivalence of capitalism and democracy: the first does not warrant the other; in fact they are most times at odds.

I am also reminded of the Behind the Bastards podcast and their episodes on Adolf Eichmann's careerist pursuit enabling the Holocaust... leading me to wonder how many people are burning the world down as part of a KPI... Or, in other words, are our economic systems and forms of government vulnerable to the paperclip problem?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemistry)#In...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy

I'm not a fan of democracy. You wouldn't be either, if you thought about it for very long... you just can't help yourself, it was championed as some sort of virtue ever since you were old enough to realize that governments existed. From kindergarten or pre-k.

The things you'd claim you like about democracy aren't even things that make it a democracy. The one (and only) criterion of democracy is "can you vote". And there are better ways to get all the other things than voting... voting/people do not scale. It is the undoing of democracy, people get what they deserve from it. Good and hard.

>That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to.

It does not scale. You're aspiring to something that not only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make it even bigger, true "the beatings will continue until morale improves" style. If I can figure out how to strike out on my own and be a million miles away from you when you rally for your most ambitious attempt yet, that's what I will do.

[rolandog]

> It does not scale. It scales pretty well; but we have let our guard down and naïvely thought the problems would sort themselves out by virtue of voting. We "live in a society", that means casting a vote on a paper ballot won't make the farmer understand the downstream effects of fertilizer runoff, nor the impact to communities of a CEO outsourcing away jobs. We can't go about living our lives without trying to meet each other halfway. And we won't survive without finding a way to make being nice to each other mandatory.

> You're aspiring to something that not only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make it even bigger [...]

On the contrary, I'm trying to prevent it from getting smaller. And, even better, to improve on it (we're a community of hackers and tinkerers after all, right?)!

We are all much more vulnerable to autocratic regimes nowadays due to the erosion of privacy rights and deregulation (again, the threat of instrumental convergence — the paperclip problem — threatens the fabric of society: censorship in the name of advertising-friendly content, spying in the name of targeted advertisement, and the weaponization of targeted ads and "the algorithm" propping up foreign-state-funded populists/autocrats).

[Kim_Bruning]

Defining something in the negative is always tricky. What are some better designs, or design principles?

[deaddodo]

Meanwhile, they make the dismantling of legislation near impossible. You have to go through the same process, but in inverse; and hope that miraculously the representatives in gov't become altruistic with a desire for less power.

[mc32]

It'd be nice if bills were one item only and on failure or passage, there would be a timeout before it could be brought to vote again either to try to pass it again or to repeal it. Like at least a year. For some things maybe five years.

[Kim_Bruning]

That's what constitutional amendments are for, right? (or in this case ECHR updates)

[sidewndr46]

Not really. There have been multiple times that California passed ballot initiatives that violated their own constitution.

At the federal level in the US we have the annoying problem that effectively everything is interstate commerce.

[noqc]

This system would make a lot more sense if the number of people you had to get to agree to a bill with a bunch of riders was more than 50%.

[atoav]

There is a German Verein called digitalcourage who lobbies for this: https://digitalcourage.de/en

You can toss some money to the European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) as well: https://edri.org/

All of those are doing good work in the digital rights space

(Edit: there is probably more but those are the ones that came to mind)

[miohtama]

The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in law, like right to online privacy and privacy of communications.

[mystraline]

Yes, like the Soviet Union.

Whereas the West has predominantly negative rights, the USSR had positive rights. And due to their campaign, even got the UN declaration of human rights to mostly include USSR's positive rights.

https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on...

Part of USSR constition indicating positive rights: https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....

Women and men have equal rights in the USSR.

Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights.

Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs of society.

Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure.

Now, that isn't to say the USSR was blameless. We know it wasn't. However, we can take their successes and failures in what we propose and build next. Negative and positive rights both are needed. But the West is allergic to those.

[Saline9515]

While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept. Yes they had a "right for leisure", unless the State decided that you were a slave and sent you in Siberia to knock hard rocks for the rest of your life. Or your "rest days" were in fact forced, unpaid labor (subbotnik), no different than their previous feudal serf system.

Same for a "right to a house", where the State provided you with a filthy, overcrowded slum and call it a day.

[Ray20]

>While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept.

I am sure Soviet Union is THE BEST example to demonstrate the concept.

It shows perfectly that you can have anything, anywhere and as much as you want - but it won't mean anything if you take away people's economic freedom.

[Saline9515]

It depends if you discuss about practical things - right for housing or things that are more abstract - right for privacy from the government's prying eyes, banking secrecy or in the US, freedom of speech. In the later case, I don't think that it affects the economic life.

[patmorgan23]

I don't think the USSR is the best example of a constitution protecting the rights and freedoms of the people.

> Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights

This rings pretty hollow when you look at the history of Russification. And no doubt this clause is in the constitution because of the Russification policies of the Russian Empire, yet that didn't stop the Soviet Union from doing very much the same thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

[lupusreal]

Article 35: Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.

https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20...

Constitutions are just paper. It doesn't matter how they're written if the guys with the guns don't care to respect it.

[bigstrat2003]

Yeah, when reading about the collapse of the Roman republic recently I was struck by how unimportant the law (about not crossing the Rubicon with an army) was. For a long time, the law wasn't meaningful because nobody would think of bringing an army into Rome, it just wasn't done! Then eventually Sulla said "fuck this, I'm bringing in an army to enforce my will", and the law didn't do a thing to constrain him (or anyone who came after him). It seems to me that it was the social norms of Roman society which kept people from using military force to get their way, and that the law served no purpose except perhaps a very visible way to reinforce the social norm.

[cobbzilla]

Historically, the window to enshrine broad positive rights like those is only briefly open in the wake of a revolution, civil war, or at best significant civil unrest. It’s not a pleasant future to look forward to, we all have a lot of work to do!

[whywhywhywhy]

Ultimately if you want politicians not to do this then you need to start pooling your resources and just paying them not to, because it's pretty obvious with how all this stuff is getting rolled out in a month that someone someone has bankrolled it.

[wyuenho]

The UK has a petition website. It logs the signatory by constituency. Once a threshold os signatory has cross, the government has to respond and parliament will have to consider a debate on the topic.

[Ylpertnodi]

And just because they respond, it doesn't actually mean anything will result from it.

"No more something!" "We have seen your petition. Fuck off, peasants".

[patmorgan23]

And You can use the response as campaign material. Ultimately democratic governments are accountable to the people at the ballot box.

[crinkly]

This exists only to pacify people and make them think someone has listened to them.

[voidUpdate]

This is the relevant petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903. The government's response so far is "lol no"

[HPsquared]

The proposing side can be centralised and organised; the opposition diffuse and disorganised. Hence the continual growth of all forms of legislation.

[klysm]

Why would the politician in question give a shit what you think? They get into office mostly by funding which comes from… guess who?

[pcrh]

On the other hand, elected politicians (senators, MPs, etc) are supposed to represent what the populus wants, else be ejected.

So in theory, they should be paying as much heed to lobbyists as to their constituents.

The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There's no ground swell of public opinion in favour of being continually monitored.

[nucleardog]

> The question arises, then, as to why they do not.

There are huge bodies of research out there on voting behaviour. If you look at it, it's a lot less surprising.

The means by which we're supposed to hold the elected officials accountable for not representing our best interests is voting. It doesn't work.

Most people don't, as individuals, hold any sort of stable policy positions to begin with. People have a poor understanding of the candidates' position on various topics (strongly correlated with not having a stable policy position themselves). Candidates themselves have influence on people's view of subjects. People tend to take some of their views from the candidate they've decided to support, and project their own views onto the candidate in other cases making them seem more aligned/preferable.

The entire model is basically set up assuming that:

1. People have a view on policy which they decided on.

2. People will understand the candidates' positions and vote for the ones most closely aligned with them.

3. If an elected representative does not follow through on their positions and views, the people will hold them accountable by voting them out of office.

4. Therefore, in aggregate and over the long term, the elected representatives represent and enact the will of the people.

For the vast majority of issues in the vast majority of cases... one and two do not hold true to a level that's meaningful or significant.

That means the third step falls apart. In practice, there's little accountability to the electorate for the elected representatives.

Which means the fourth falls apart.

Given the elected officials aren't really beholden to the electorate, what else would guide their position? On an individual basis, there are a lot of opportunities for wealth and power. Unless it's anything particularly egregious, the only real impediment to them taking advantage is their own personal ethics and morals. The kinds of people that want to put their life on hold to run a campaign so they can maybe take a shit job with mediocre pay where a bunch of people will be pissed at them no matter what they do... are unfortunately often not in for the mediocre pay and anger.

And here we are. It's not whether there are enough people that support being continually monitored, it's about whether there's enough people and enough money _against_ it to stir up enough people to care to stop them. There's almost definitely not.

And just to make it entirely hopeless--even if you are a well-informed voter with considered and consistent views on policy... Many countries have very little in the way of options for who else to vote for. Is this important enough to enough people to make them a single issue voter? Would they vote for the hypothetical "We Support Murdering Kittens" party if they were against the spying? Probably not--they'll probably hold their nose and vote for the "We Love Kittens" party as the lesser evil.

[pcrh]

This paints a depressing picture, which also has some support in empirical evidence.

However, democracy is not as feeble as this analysis would suggest. After all, we can see that major shifts in political support for policy positions are possible, and these do require public support (democracy) to occur.

For example, in the US the civil rights movements of the 1960's and 1970's. Or more recently the Brexit referendum in the UK or populist anti-immigrant positions that have arisen in recent years and acquired major political support. Whether you agree with these or not, they are politically impactful, and democratically supported.

Issues surrounding civil liberties have often attracted strong political and popular support. So the question here is how such support can be generated for privacy, which itself a right under numerous legal regimens including the US constitution and the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

[account42]

No the problem is much more basic: you only get one vote and you can only pick from a very small number of parties. That means unless something is the most important issue for you, you have zero voting power for it.

[zx8080]

> This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying.

That's gighting against an organized crime syndicate. It requires coordination, resources and aim.

1984 is coming in its worst scenarious.

There will be no win for the people, no hope. Freedom is gone.

[aunty_helen]

I donate to an org that supports free speech. They do a good job for me. If there’s something they need a signature on I’ll generally follow their instructions and sign it.

[dyauspitr]

I don’t think people are particularly against this. The kids are imploding and people dont care about a completely open internet as much.

[sunshine-o]

I was told by a Brussels lobbyist a long time ago that the EU was by design made for them. I then was shocked how in your face it is within the EU walls.

In a sense citizens also have legitimate lobby groups, they are the political parties we know.

Foreign countries also lobby. Now recently what should worry Europeans is they don't bother anymore and just wipe the floor with the EU representative in front of everybody like Xi and Trump did last week.

So you can vote and lobby but I don't think it is enough today. We should first opt out of a lot of things and defend ourselves digitally:

- Buy some cheap LoRa devices and give some to your friends. Get into meshtastic and reticulum

- Buy some cheap HaLow WiFi devices and get into things like OpenWrt and B.A.T.M.A.N

- Self host as much as you can (It is worth doing just to avoid the Cloudflare " verify you are human" thing)

- Look back into things like Ethereum and good projects, they slowly made some real progress. Crypto is not only about price, annoying bitcoin bros and memecoins. It is still bad but banks and credit card companies are worst.

- Get some useful skills.

We have entered some kind of world war already and it will most likely include some ugly cyberattacks. In that context ChatControl matters much less and you can kill two birds with one stone.

I am still looking for a realistic solution to the email problem. If you have a suggestion I am really listening.

[FabHK]

It's equally difficult to support it, no?

[verisimi]

There is no way to resolve these problems. Every answer involves capitulation to governments with loss of personal freedoms.

One has to admit the system is fundamentally broken. Once this is accepted, and people stop investing themselves further in the political system, then we will see change.

Sadly, the change is already planned for and will likely be a jump to some sort of communistic, ai-managed technocracy. However, it is also an opportunity to make the point that force should be no part of a future system. People should be able to opt-in or opt-out. That's freedom.

[Jommi]

just use a browser agent

[MPSFounder]

This, I believe, is the only issue with our form of gov. Lack of referendums. In the US, much of the current unpopular issues (Abortion ban, support for Israel's genocide using American taxpayer's taxes, lack of regulations on data harvesting) could be circumvented. I believe the optimal way to avoid these is 1) an educated populace and 2) referendums. The people who were given objective facts, free of propaganda and private interests, decide accordingly. If the majority believes in something, then we the people decide. Congress and the senate have been too bought up by private interests, that starts with campaigning (you receive x millions, from a lobby group (AIPAC for instance), and every legislation that affects their interests has to go through them). I dated a girl who was a lobbyist in DC, and relocated back home. It is unbelievable what goes on behind the scenes. Much of us do not recognize for instance the extent to which fossil fuels or car dealerships dictate how we live our lives. We may be aware of it, but there is a bureaucratic apparatus built in DC, at least 50x the size of congress, that strips We the people of power.

[sevensor]

> an educated populace

Wherever someone attacks public education or free libraries, you know where they stand on government by the people.