[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.

[arghwhat]

But note that for Denmark, it's only correct by default in simple employment cases without notable investment, retirement, transport/house/mortgage related deductibles, etc.

And it's not at all simple once you have to actually check or change details. It's so complicated that the online UI will only show you a fraction of the available fields by default, and they often reset year-by-year, or get weird values. And then there's the whole real estate taxation scandal...

And more importantly than fixing the statement, you have to actually understand the whole taxation situation to make financial decisions throughout the year. How a mortgage partially interacts with capital gains taxation, dividend and income interact with progressive taxation, how your different investments are spread across a number of different taxation types and intervals, how your spouse's tax situation affects yours, etc. etc.

If you don't pay attention to that, you'll end up missing out on the deductibles the politicians promised you but intentionally handicapped to death by making it yet another obscure tax exception stacking on top of the rest. >:(

I'd gladly pay a bit more tax if I could just get it to be ONE flippin' rate.

[realusername]

Same in France, I even get tax exempts from retirement plans and taxes from stock market holdings automatically.

[johnisgood]

I assume it is the same in Hungary, it definitely was the case a few years back, so I assume the same system is in place. It might not be rolled out for everyone, however. Probably not for companies, or in complex cases.

[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

[bigstrat2003]

No, Americans can still do that. You can get the forms to file your taxes from many public places (e.g. the library), and filling out a 1040 is dead easy if you are just bringing in wages from your job. The instructions are very clear and will walk you through the whole process.

I agree that we should have a government-provided e-file option in the modern age, but it is not true to say that Americans have no way to file taxes for free.

[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.

[wizzwizz4]

> how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets

If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained.

Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then!

Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.

[int_19h]

I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.

[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.

[terminalshort]

I'm not at all convinced of the existence of this corruption (other than small scale one offs). I just think the voters want stupid and impossible things and vote for the politicians who promise them.

[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.

[Ray20]

No, that's not how invasions work. Or rather, the defense against invasions does not work that way, unless you plan to lose in about three days.

[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.