
Bernie’s Army of Coders - betolink
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-army-of-coders-2016-213647
======
SilasX
Interesting! This part got me thinking though:

>And last summer a map compiling all the Sanders campaign happenings across
the country, built by volunteer Rapi Castillo, a Philippine immigrant living
in Queens who isn’t an American citizen and can’t vote this November, became
the official “eventslink on Sanders’ website.

So a foreigner is effectively giving an in-kind campaign contribution to a
candidate? How come people (and the law) lash back at monetary contributions
but not this kind?

~~~
rapicastillo
Hi! I'm the immigrant in the story. For what it's worth I'm permanent
resident, not allowed to vote. Furthermore, it's seen as an in-kind
contribution, just like when you help building a stage for the campaign, only
in online-terms. It's explained more in
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/politics/bernie-
sanders...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-
presidential-campaign-tech-supporters.html?_r=0)

~~~
SilasX
Thanks for joining the discussion!

I understand that it's a non-monetary contribution; my confusion is just on
why we _should_ treat them differently from monetary and why people think of
them differently, even when they accomplish the same thing (deliver $X worth
of value to a campaign), especially given that, for a foreigner to contribute
money is a serious crime.

(Less of an issue in your case since you're not some random Chinese government
official but an actual US resident with legal status who can stay.)

~~~
rapicastillo
That's a great thing to think about. IMHO, it's about worth and intent - as
with any. And as with any software development, it's all relative. For me -
personally - coding the map was a way for me to practice leaflet, which I've
always been interested in learning, and at the same time D3. I never really
thought about or even expected the campaign reaching out to me. The original
map which is in bernie2016events.org used to take events from meetup.com and
facebook.com, which I have scraped and manually curated. The campaign's open
API for the events happened later.

So for me, the map was a practice exercise, which is essentially like a more
convoluted Hello World. The value was perceived by others, and the campaign.
The value for me was, "Ok, there's cluttered events all around the wild, I'd
like to make sense of it and help out while I practice D3 and Leaflet."

The value as perceived by others was beyond me, and I was really just happy
that it had bigger value that I originally intended.

This is different with foreign governments contributing online assets or money
to the campaign, because the intent is different, and the worth is different.
The intent is influence/leverage, and worth is tools/dollars. And as you have
predicated below as well, corporate money is very different if you look
deeper, compared to an individual who's just practicing.

~~~
stephenboyd
Rapi, as a permanent resident, you are legally American enough to donate money
to a campaign.

[http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml#Can_nonUS_citiz...](http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml#Can_nonUS_citizens_contribute)

~~~
rapicastillo
Yes, I understand. But I thought I'd put my 2cents on the difference between
what I did if I didn't have a green card. And how it differs with a
corporation/big donors/super PACs or a foreign gov't giving assistance to a
campaign.

------
m0th87
Their site, not linked off in the article:
[https://coders.forsanders.com/](https://coders.forsanders.com/)

~~~
bhaumik
And Slack group if you're interested in joining: [https://cfs-
slack.forsanders.com/](https://cfs-slack.forsanders.com/)

------
r721
This article reminded me of a feature about Obama campaign from 2012:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-
the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/?single_page=true)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794720)

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melted
The exact same folks who Bernie is going to raise taxes for, mind you. He
won't really be able to do anything against the 1% (since they own the
Congress, and will continue to own it), but upper middle class represents an
attractive target for a cash grab to pay for all those nice free rides he's
promising to the poor.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> but upper middle class represents an attractive target for a cash grab to
> pay for all those nice free rides he's promising to the poor.

TIL first world social services are "nice free rides promised to the poor."

~~~
nikhilkalegregg
The free-market capitalism that you are espousing, requires a ‘cash grab’ —or
distribution- to function or else it is completely incompatible with
technological advancement. Looping structures allow programs to increase
output and efficiency on the supply side, enabling startups to undercut
company's reliant on manual labor. Advancements in tech allow a single person
to run an automated script that does the work of thousands of manual workers
(while greatly reducing the risk of human error). However, increased
efficiency on the supply side decreases the value of human labor, which
consequently decreases purchasing power across the board in every industry
where a manual process is replaced. The more industry's that are efficient,
the fewer customers capitalists can offer their products and services too.
Capitalism can’t work unless there is some degree of a 'free ride to the
poor', because the wealthy cant generate revenue if there isn’t a middle class
to sell their products to. Its in capitalists best interests to have the poor
become the middle class—i.e., because no one can create marginal revenue if
there is no one to sell things too (or the value of the good being sold
deflates). Without a strong consumer market there is no incentive for anyone
to do anything in free market capitalism, because there is no incentive to do
something that cannot create enough marginal value to meet ones material need,
and because we are all finite beings reliant on external goods to persist, one
cannot create value without meeting their material needs. Would it not be a
more preferable for a centralized structure to provide everyone with the
basics, so everyone could study what interested them and add value to society
as a whole. If the govt invested say 60k in each individual, a greater # of
people be able to work on advancing the quality of life for our species,
finding new worlds to inhabit, and generally speaking — adding marginal value
to the way we spend our time. Instead of minds thinking about physics, and how
to improve things, minds are thinking about how to survive. Is this state of
affairs not a huge deadweight loss of humanity’s time? A Sanders
administration would hopefully be a small, necessary, and peaceful step in the
logical direction.

~~~
melted

        Would it not be a more preferable for a centralized 
        structure to provide everyone with the basics, so 
        everyone could study what interested them and add 
        value to society as a whole.
    

"From each according to their ability, to each according to his need." (c)
Karl Marx. We all know how well that worked out in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere.

------
anon987
So far: 51 comments and so far _zero_ comments about the technical aspects of
this article - only political bickering.

Yet another thinly veiled political story that somehow make it to the front
page because it has the word "coders" in the title.

------
ck2
Before we start admiring things, let's see what happens on Super Tuesday (12
days away).

Nothing of what Sanders is doing is going to survive past a left primary.
Absolutely nothing he is promising can be done without Congress.

\------------

reply to below since I can only answer two replies on HN anymore before being
blocked:

Wrong comparison.

That's like wanting to be manager when you have only worked at a company for a
couple years.

Come on now.

If Sanders ideas can work so well, why don't all these eager people first
implement them at a local level where they have more immediate power? Nope,
they want to go directly to the executive because it is a figurehead.

Sanders comes from a 96% WHITE state - they are ridiculously homogeneous and
are nothing like the rest of the United States. Only Maine is whiter. Why is
his state like that in the 21st century? Why does everyone else feel unwelcome
to live there?

Sanders will never attract the 3-4% of undecided voters and we will end up
with Trump picking the next few supreme court judges.

Why are you okay with losing the presidency for the next eight years based on
theoretical ideas that are not proven to work anywhere and won't get voted for
by the masses?

~~~
weatherlight
Ideas are powerful. What Sanders' rise (and to some extent, Trump's) symbolize
political system whose representatives that are woefully out of touch with its
constituents. I think congress and the Senate is next, we are going to see a
huge shake up in each party from the top down. Don't be surprised if we start
seeing more Sanders-like-citizens running for Congress. We live in interesting
times.

~~~
maxerickson
I think you mean candidates. The electorate is the subset of constituents that
can vote.

~~~
weatherlight
yes...will edit, and thanks!

