
From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly - evo_9
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/from-net-neutrality-to-digital-privacy-congress-does-diddly/2017/11/28/bd2dd442-d44f-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6040d7c6044f
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makecheck
Even if Congress _were_ paying any attention to what constituents want (and
they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are
expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s
on the order of one _million_ regular people per representative!

Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it
just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few hundred people. If most
people need to work their entire lives to reach a million dollars, does it
really take much for billionaires to steer the ship?

Now, if you were to _vastly_ increase the number of representatives, you’d
solve both problems. Suppose there were _5,000_ members of Congress; then it
would take a lot more money to corrupt enough people to change outcomes, _and_
each of them would have to represent a much smaller fraction of the
population.

A huge number of representatives would’ve been impractical before the age of
the Internet (as you’d need a stadium just to hold a session) but with secure
remote access it’s _quite_ feasible to have tons of people logged in at once.
And heck, why not designate a Congress-stadium anyway, for rare in-person
sessions? If it works for mega-churches, it can work for politicians.

~~~
badestrand
Go down the path even more and you land at direct democracy, where every
citizen can vote on any legislative decision. Corporations can not buy half
the people.

Because it can be a lot of work to dive into the details of a decision every
citizen could delegate his vote to someone he trusts - delegate his vote in
general, per topic (economical decisions to Betty, foreign affairs to Tom) or
just for a single decision. You can change your vote delegation any time. This
is Liquid Democracy.

Our current parliaments are just a special case of Liquid Democracy: You
delegate your vote on all decisions to a single person but you can choose only
between a handful of people and are not allowed to change your choice of
delegation for the next 4 years.

Different Pirate Parties all over Europe tried to establish this new concept
of democracy but I am afraid it was not well understood/they did not explain
it well enough.

~~~
aaron-lebo
The Athenians had real problems with direct democracy. Plato is still
relevant:

 _Plato rejected Athenian democracy on the basis that such democracies were
anarchic societies without internal unity, that they followed citizens '
impulses rather than pursuing the common good, that democracies are unable to
allow a sufficient number of their citizens to have their voices heard, and
that such democracies were typically run by fools. Plato attacked Athenian
democracies for mistaking anarchy for freedom. The lack of coherent unity in
Athenian democracy made Plato conclude that such democracies were a mere
collection of individuals occupying a common space rather than a form of
political organization._

Corporations don't need to buy off half the people, they just need to convince
a winning minority to go along, which you've made easy because you've divided
all of your political issues into things people pick and chose not out of
expertise but out of ignorance. There are other issues like control of the
agenda which aren't obvious but hugely relevant to controlling democracies.

Was Prop 8 in Cali, with lots of outsiders weighing in on limiting other
people's rights a good thing?

This is my macabre favorite story about Athenian democracy:

 _The news of the victory itself was met with jubilation at Athens. Their joy
was tempered, however, by the aftermath of the battle, in which a storm
prevented the ships assigned to rescue the survivors of the 25 disabled or
sunken Athenian triremes from performing their duties, and a great number of
sailors drowned. A fury erupted at Athens when the public learned of this, and
after a bitter struggle in the assembly six of the eight generals who had
commanded the fleet were tried as a group and executed._

Sucked for those generals. Win the battle, lost men due to storms, then you
get executed because the mob is angry and some orators know how to harness
that. Modern direct democracy wouldn't be voting on executing people, but you
can see where things can get just as twisted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae)

spoiler: the Athenians lost the war. Turns out getting rid of winning generals
cause you're mad is dumb.

~~~
emodendroket
Plato preferred aristocracy; how many people do you think would like to live
under a government that abandoned any pretense and outright called itself an
aristocracy?

~~~
aaron-lebo
Does that make his criticisms of democracy any less valid?

~~~
emodendroket
Well, yes, for two reasons:

1\. If democracy is bad, we should have some other system. Surely we should
take into account the proposed alternative when we consider any criticism of
democracy itself.

2\. Implicitly any reference to the writings of Plato is burnished by the
image of "wisdom of the ancients," so it is worth considering the flaws of
these philosophers' work.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Direct democracy has flaws, we do have another system: representative
democracy.

The Greeks were certainly wise, but my main point is this is not untrod
ground, we've got at least 2000 years of experience to draw from.

~~~
emodendroket
Athenian democracy also frankly looks pretty different from direct democracy
as is being proposed in this thread since it was made possible by the
existence of slaves who did not participate. The Greeks were wise (or I guess
we should say the ones whose writings we still read) but they were humans and
products of their time.

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40acres
Congress is becoming a non factor. The amount of pettiness and partisianship
over the past few years had made Congress into the de factor weakest branch of
government. Most of Obama's legacy was executed via executive order and
guidance given to executive departments, a year into the Trump administration
and we are seeing the same thing.

The other big decisions (gay marriage, citizens United, etc.) are being made
by the courts, and despite the fact that Congress has to confirm judges (which
is less daunting now that the judicial fillibuster is removed) Congress has
become so partisan that you can get anyone confirmed with 50 Senators (+1 VP
for a tiebreaker).

We have so many pressing challenges ahead and we need new laws for this
country to adapt, it's disheartening to see that Congress is not up for the
task.

~~~
ISL
We get the Congress for which we vote.

~~~
rayiner
The problem isn’t Congress—most people are happy with their own
representatives. The problem is us. If we took 10 random people from New York
City and ten from rural Alabama, they wouldn’t be able to get anything done
either. Why are we surprised that the people those people elect can’t work
together?

~~~
wallace_f
I personally think we need a civil libertarian movement. The abuses of the
federal government are beyond ridiculous at this point. We are fighting over
political differences while _everyone 's_ liberties/rights are legitimately
being eroded.

Congress is subservient to the Military, the Federal Reserve, and even
relatively small-time players like Healthcare/Big Pharma.

How many congressman are actually crying foul that Afghanistan, etc., are
unconstitutional wars that are not approved by congress--a constitutional
right of congress.

Congress also has the right to issue and regulate currency, but even that we
leave up to a private bank that has Wall St's best interests in mind--not the
taxpayers.

These kinds of constitutional injustices could go on and on.

But most people are bombarded with the injustices of the latest Trump tweet,
or the inhumanity of mansplaining.

~~~
40acres
Definitely agreed that Congress is not executing their congressional rights as
strongly as they should. The unauthorized wars combined with the fact that
it's a guarantee that AUMF will continuously be approved is just one example.

Congress is simply too worried about toeing the party line and their own
reelection to understand it's collective power.

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jswizzy
Good. To quote Lao Tzu, "The more restrictions and prohibitions there are, the
poorer the people will be."

~~~
flatline
Partisan gridlock is a long way from wu-wei. They may bear a superficial
similarity but the situation we currently face is not really a choice between
more rules and regulations and fewer. It is the difference between running a
well-ordered state justly and efficiently, and leaving the most clever and
ruthless individuals to carve out their own stakes unchecked.

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bubblethink
Maybe it would help to just assume a completely adversarial model in every
facet of technology so that stuff like this becomes a non-issue in the long
run. At least for privacy, I don't see much point in any legislation one way
or the other. Does it even matter if a piece of paper says that some agency
can or cannot intercept something ? I feel that it would be better if everyone
just came to terms with the fact that loss of privacy is generally implied
unless proven otherwise (i.e. rigorously). Debating over specifics of this
phone case or that precedent seems so short sighted. Like if you are sending
postal mail, how much expectation of privacy do you have, irrespective of what
the law says ?

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fosco
Anyone have thoughts on exams that require a passing grade to serve in
Congress? I.e. demonstrate certain levels of knowledge in order to participate
in certain conversations with new bills listing requirements at top thereby
eliminating the ability to vote if that Congress person has not met the
minimum?

I realize this may be a bit off topic but my thought is that if more people in
Congress (or other agencies/departments/commissions) understood technology
they may behave differently, same goes for other areas.

Thoughts?

~~~
rayiner
Aside from being unconstitutional
([http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/...](http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/qualifications-
for-representatives)), it’d be undemocraric and tyrannical. If people wanted
to be governed by people who had more book learning they’d elect them.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Sure, unconstitutional and undemocratic. But I don't see that the
"undemocratic and tyrannical" argument applies any more to a test requirement
than it does to the existing constitutional age requirements for holding
office.

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Algurnon
Self driving cars will obsolete road rage just as machines can better
administer lucre than avaricious humans. c.f. any or all of recorded history.
Democracy is a very analog 18th century mechanism for collective resource
allocation. Designed by candle light, its grossly obsolete in these times and
could easily be replaced by an ERP type apparatus. It sounds like the start of
a good Sci-Fi novel. As do any of the last 24 mos.

------
ProAm
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.”

― Upton Sinclair

------
allan_golds
How unusual. A link to a paywall on hacker news.

------
dingo_bat
> In the case before the court, Timothy Carpenter’s cellular provider supplied
> investigators a record of his smartphone’s whereabouts. The pings placed
> Carpenter in the vicinity of several armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan.
> Now behind bars, he is asking the justices to find this a violation of his
> Fourth Amendment right to be safe from warrantless searches of his private
> domain.

What is this bullshit?! Next a guy will murder somebody in the woods and
return home in a bus. And the bus driver cannot tell the police he saw the guy
on that route at such time? Have people gone insane over "privacy"?

~~~
ISL
The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's
entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without
requesting a warrant.

Amendment Four: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and
the persons or things to be seized.

~~~
dingo_bat
> The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's
> entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without
> requesting a warrant.

The ISP/cellphone company can choose not to give the history.

> Amendment Four

Nowhere does it say that third parties cannot provide information about you.
Location data using cell tower usage is not the user's "person, house, paper
or effect". It belongs to the operator.

~~~
CaptSpify
> The ISP/cellphone company can choose not to give the history.

NSL's have shown us that they can't

