The real truth is that strong privacy laws would cause economic harm to flagship corporations. That would have a ripple effect on the economy as those corporations are responsible for thousands of high-paying jobs. The elected representatives know that people care more about the economy (specifically what's in their wallets) than about privacy.
One could say that Norway's flagship corporation has a horrible business model. The Norwegians have never held a referendum whether they should stop drilling , but they are so environmentally conscious that it's not unlikely. Should Norway stop drilling and let its sovereign fund collapse (along with the value of many global companies where it invests)? Is there any State that is purely moral?
I see what you are trying to say, but I'm not quite sure why Norway's sovereign fund would collapse just because the Norwegians would stop adding more money to the fund? And why would the companies they invest in collapse?
The companies in the S&P500 don't collapse, when I stop making regular new payments into my retirement fund.
> Norway distributes the returns from the fund, not the fund money itself.
Is that adjusted for inflation?
To explain, suppose I have a stock that went up 10% last year (and paid no dividends, to keep things simple). If inflation was also 10%, there was no real return from my investment, and nothing should be distributed. If inflation was 2%, my real return was about 8%, and we could distribute that without touching 'the fund money itself'.
Inflation is usually priced pretty efficiently into securities on top of whatever growth. However, it gets a bit more complex when you are trading securities in multiple currencies. I am not sure how Norway handles that, but they almost certainly have a team of currency traders to manage it.
This wasn't a question about efficient pricing (they could just buy an index fund and be done with it), but it's a question about distributing returns vs principal.
Because the question didn't make sense. The fund wouldn't collapse if they stop adding oil funds to it, it will continue to exist as an investment. That's actually the point of it, to continue once the oil is gone.
Wrt. privacy here at least, I don't think you need to be moral or ethical per se. It's more a matter of incentives: carrots and sticks. Regardless of what the rules are, corporations will react to them.
So if regulation simply maximizes the greatest good for the greatest number of people the rules will likely end up protecting privacy.
So what we see here is that some high paying jobs create a bunch of powerful groups that lobby to keep their current jobs, ie. against stronger regulation.
You're conveniently leaving out the pressure from TLAs outside of corporate greed and lobbying. There's no way the intelligence community would allow for this vector of gathering information without a fight. Tapping into the take of the social platforms is a huge amount of money and work not needed to spend by the agencies.
The greater good for the greater number of people is a nice concept, but I don't think it has been true for much of the US's history. The thing was started with lines like 3/5 of a person included in it while totally ignoring half of the population based on gender.
This is exactly what happens with one exception, these groups don't have to lobby.
The politicians know full well that many of the highest paid people in their respective districts are employees in tech. This is true across most of the US. No one, and I mean no one, is interested in becoming a new rust belt city. So politicians act to keep the money flowing and the tax coffers full so that they can then dole out projects. The doling out of projects is a necessary, some would even say foundational, basis of whatever corrupt extraction is able to be carried out.
Your "preferences" exist only in the context of the set of choices before you. Hence, Nash equilibria, etc. I don't think you can extrapolate very far morally in "golden handcuffs" situations. Or, at least, we should "hate the player not the game" when lamenting such outcomes.
What? I'm Norwegian and very surprised at every assertion here.
Not unlikely? It has never been seriously discussed (e.g. because others would simply increase production to compensate). The fund would collapse? Why?
It was a hypothetical scenario. It is true that most of the world considers Norwegians as very enviromentally forward people. If you assert that norwegians would not vote give up drilling , then that means they are more sensible than most.
The fund wouldn't collapse, but would be severely hit , and would be entirely dependent on the valuations of tech companies over decades.
A campaign to stop drilling would need to answer questions about the likely effect, not just about the intention. Since OPEC has cut production many times in the past 50 years, and generally other producers have increased their production to fill the void, what do you think the likely effect would be?
It doesn't matter because in virtue-politics like the OP post, consequences don't really matter . That's e.g. how germany found itself stuck in a pipeline-shaped hole. It may be that norwegians are not as moral as they are portrayed often (e.g. https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/is-norway-the-new-east-indi...). In any case, i used the Fund to make a hypothetical argument that doesn't need to match with reality.
Oh, Norwegians are quite moral. I think you're making the mistake of considering intention-driven behaviour to be somehow moral and effect-driven behaviour not.
Except the ad market is a very lucrative source of revenue. Every corporation that owns/operates a platform is incentivized to exploit that market to bolster their overall revenues. We're talking about user privacy, so it's really about user privacy while being on the platform. Companies not participating are at a competitive disadvantage to their competitors in their respective markets. Even Apple collects data for ads now. They can't afford not to.
Is this a trickle-down style of argument? Or that corporations are holy? Or that they always have the job takers interests at heart? Or that the elected representatives are elected by the 16% who don't want stronger privacy laws? I'm confused.
>Or that the elected representatives are elected by the 16% who don't want stronger privacy laws?
This one is closest. Said companies hire lobbyists to always be in the ear of politicians. For example, here are the recent bills that Google has lobbied on. Note that most of them are about privacy.
They also give large donations to politicians when they're campaigning. Or the opposition if the candidate isn't willing to play ball. This is all completely legal, as long as its disclosed.
It's clearly a "corporations are holy" kind of argument, where it's implicit that if one breaks down the oligopoly that is oppressing the market and disallowing innovation, the entire economy will go down, since the oligopoly is the entire economy.
This is not a personal belief, merely an observation. Given past and present behaviour of the US govt., it's apparent that corporations receive a rather light touch. By comparison, the govt is much harsher with individuals guilty of the same behaviour. This is perhaps not just economic but also strategic: The corporations are often brand ambassadors of the "American Way Of Life" at a global scale. It's soft power.
It's some weird system. The corporations pay powerful people to say people need them, otherwise there wouldn't be jobs; then the people listen and believe. All while those powerful people have an excuse for accepting money and protecting the corporations.
Anyway, if you think Google or Facebook are good "brands" for the US, you've got way too much exposition. The Hollywood propaganda works great, that big-co one doesn't.
A brand's worth is based on how many people know about it. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Disney, Tesla, etc. etc. are some of the most well-known brands on the planet. Globally, they consistently rank at or near the top. You don't have to take my word for it [1]. Step outside your bubble and do your own research :)
Confusing fame and noteriety is a common problem, except they aren't the same thing. Not to mention copycat crime is definitely a thing. Your point is moot.
I think the argument is that people say they care about privacy, but they really care about money. Online privacy laws will cost at least some people some money, and those people vote too. And their representatives know they vote.
At the same time, we allowed the problem of economic harm to grow worse by not dealing decisively with the problem of online privacy from the outset. For this same reason, an argument could be made that ripping the bandaid off now would be less painful than in the future. (And I'm not blind to the amount of pain this would cause. I realize that what I'm advocating would decimate our own industry.)
Then on the other hand there's the argument, that has apparently found the most resonance, that letting online privacy whither on the vine is the logical way to go. Good or bad, these privacy invasions are funding a sizeable chunk of the economy. I can see people thinking it's nonsensical to get rid of 10% of the nation's jobs. Especially when it's the exact 10% of jobs likely to pay the most.
I'm a privacy advocate, so I fall on the "burn it down" side. But I do understand the other side of the argument. I just think right now, at about 10-12% of the economy, decimation of the tech industry is survivable. If we wait, it could be 20-30% of the economy, at that point, pro-privacy actions would effectively be completely off the table.
So you think over 10% of the economy is working on the advertisement industry? Isn't that number at least a little bit hyped up? I also cannot imagine how we, lacking targeted advertising, would eat less or buy less.
I believe it's an argument for representative democracy instead of direct democracy. I feel that representative democracies allow for unpopular things to happen (e.g. taxes), if the alternative means the economy or country crashes. I'm not an expert in this field.
It's none of those. It's a representative considering the interests of multiple stakeholders and acknowledging the deleterious effects that well-intentioned legislation can have. If these issues were black and white, the solutions would be easy.
Privacy has minimal overall economic impact because of the zero sum nature of advertising. Specific companies get harmed, but advertisers don’t suddenly have less money if advertising is less targeted. Net result that money is simply going to support different jobs.
Similarly with more/less efficient advertising consumers have just as much money so total spending stays the same, so the only change is which companies capture it.
The economy grows or shrinks with productivity but advertising specifically is zero sum. Coke vs Pepsi makes a great deal of difference to those specific companies and little else.
If anything it’s slightly negative due to inefficiency because the winner isn’t the best product.
Advertising is not zero-sum. It is a money multiplier.
To illustrate this, we start from the position that a new business creates net new value in the economy (on top of existing value). This is an economic maxim that must be true otherwise our GDP would never grow from 1770 standards.
Now, the new business has to allocate a percentage of its budget to advertising. It doesn't have a choice in the matter:
1) In a competitive market, not advertising places it at a competitive disadvantage to its rivals who are advertising.
2) In a non-competitive market, not advertising leads to a smaller overall market and a weaker position (loss of market cap and easier to disrupt).
Once the new business start advertising, other businesses become aware of it and either (a) choose to enter the market themselves, or (b) invest in advertising targeted at blocking/reducing this new market. Both cases result in more money spent on advertising. That's the multiplier effect.
> Advertising is not zero-sum. It is a money multiplier.
You misunderstand zero sum here. Gas stations can’t grow total gas sales making the selling of gas zero sum, but they very much provide a useful function in aggregate.
Advertising is going to exist with and without tracking individual users, the difference is simply relative value of undifferentiated content. Selling camping supplies on an outdoor website is targeting, but linking user’s history allows anyone to get a cut of premium revenue even if it’s lowest common denominator crap. But remove tracking of users and specialty content like local news becomes a lot more valuable and clickbait far less, a major public good.
> we start from the position that a new business creates net new value in the economy (on top of existing value). This is an economic maxim that must be true otherwise our GDP would never grow from 1770 standards.
I understand the point you are trying to make but existing companies also evolve their offerings over time. Nintendo in 1889 wasn’t selling video games.
I think you missed the forest for the trees. I will make it very clear. The advertising business is a growth vector. It grows with the size of the economy. Singular industries may rise and fall (ex. ads for riding crops) but in aggregate, advertising always continues to grow. Zero sum means explicitly that the total pie stays the same, which advertising is not. It forces the pie to grow. And that's for a straightforward reason, because advertising is an arms race. A company can't afford to drop out, can't afford to fall behind.
> Advertising is going to exist with and without tracking individual users, the difference is simply relative value of undifferentiated content.
So what you mean to say is that targeted advertising is the same as mass advertising, that there's no benefit, perceived or otherwise, of targeting users. Well, I'm afraid you're very wrong. Both buyers and sellers of advertising love targeted advertising. For buyers, it makes the most efficient use of their budget allocation, and for sellers, it allows them to to take maximum advantage of user self-segmentation. The analogy of indiscriminate bombing being superseded by precision munitions is an apt one. There's no going back at this point.
Regulations will only distort the market further. The platforms will make the fines the cost of doing business, and pass them onto the buyers. The buyers, in turn, will pass that cost along to consumers in the form of higher prices. Every company will continue to pay for advertising because they can't afford not to. And so it will continue. All the fines will do is concentrate more wealth into the platforms and the government. And that's exactly what's happening in the EU with advent of GDPR.
Your own words demonstrate the zero sum nature. During COVID YouTube had a huge spike in viewers as people stayed at home, but rates absolutely tanked because the value is defined between advertising budgets and available distribution not some inherent property of a viewer seeing an advertisement.
This is just like how gas in aggregate grows with the economy/oil prices not the efficiency of gas stations. It’s these external factors which make them zero sum.
> So what you mean to say is that targeted advertising is the same as mass advertising, that there's no benefit, perceived or otherwise, of targeting users.
No, I am saying tracking users is one of many methods to target users. The value of individual means of advertising varies, but the ability to target users doesn’t disappear when you ban tracking users. What changes is how valuable individual options are not the total value of all methods of advertising combined.
> There's no going back at this point.
Things often seem more stable than they actually are. Banning tracking is a tiny blimp compared to the kinds of changes you see after major Supreme Court decisions let alone major events like revolutions.
> in aggregate, advertising always continues to grow.
Yes, like a cancer.
> Both buyers and sellers of advertising love targeted advertising.
Of course they do. But that's all at the expense of everyone who isn't in the business of buying and selling advertising.
> There's no going back at this point.
We'll see. I cannot accept that being forced to live in a massive surveillance state is an inevitability.
> Regulations will only distort the market further.
Bad regulations will. However, the appearance of ubiquitous spying by marketing companies are also heavily distorting the market. The introduction of rules to correct the serious misbehavior of these companies has the potential to correct, or at least reduce, the harm.
At this point, it's pretty clear that there is no other mechanism available to us. Simply resigning ourselves to bending over and taking it is not acceptable.
Rivalrous advertising spending between two megacorps everyone already knows is zero-sum. You’re spending money just because the other guy increased spending, and market share stays the same. But you can’t not spend or you might lose market share. Now you’re both spending more to achieve the same result.
[edit] zero sum in terms of the market-share game—the size of the pie stays the same, you’re just adjusting who gets how much. Negative sum for the overall game in the case that total spending increases.
You're ignoring the fact that a customer buying from a business incurs an opportunity cost from other things they could have spent money on (or invested). In addition, it merely shifts the money. If someone is thinking about getting Subway, but sees a McDonald's ad and goes there instead, that helps McDonald's but hurts Subway.
> cost of acquiring a customer > cost of serving a customer
For a successful and popular product the cost of acquiring a customer is low. Heavy investments in advertising are needed for unpopular, overpriced products that naturally have a low demand.
For example, almost everything that I buy I bought not because of advertising but based on the comparison of product price and quality.
In advertising it can often be true in a sense though. A very illustrative example of this when regulations tightening advertising for cigarettes were introduced, cigarette companies started reporting more profits because they all collectively stopped advertising at the same time and got to pocket the money they would have spent on it. The pool of cigarette smokers isn't/wasn't growing that much, so all the advertising was really doing was trying to take consumers away from their competitors and the net effect was 0.
To be fair, then they started investing in vape companies and things might have changed. I don't think that's a good thing, although vapes are probably less harmful than cigarettes.
I think you are close but not quite. The real problem is that tech giants rule the SP500 now and Congress all have portfolios laced to the gills with stocks. My only hope is that eventually the rich realize they make more money betting on the market going down than up, the stock market does mean reversion, and we break up the obvious tech monopolies that are causing the dystopia we all find ourselves living in right now.
And then we “break up Google” so we have a Google Search company, a Google YouTube company, A Google Chrome company and instead of one company having all of your data to target you, now multiple companies are sharing data between them…
But more to the point, which tech company has a monopoly at all and which one is based on structural issues and not network effects and how do you propose to break them up? Better question is where is the consumer benefit of breaking up any of them and how would you slice them?
If there are corporations that are the world's largest by headcount or by capitalisation, i.e., "flagship" corporations, and these entities are dependent on online surveillance and online ad sales to operate in their present capacity, then certainly privacy regulation is likely going to affect them. One could argue such regulation is targeting them, i.e., the harm they do, specifically.
As a result of regulation these entities might no longer be able to maintain their position as "flagship" corporations. Other corporations that are not dependant on surveillance and ad sales for 90+% of their revenue may again become the "flagship" corporations, as they were prior to the 2010s.
The current online surveillance and online ad sales-based "flagship" coporations have only held their "flagship" positions for a relatively short time period. Arguably, the general absence of regulation governing their privacy-violating behaviour, which remarkably is the core of their "business model", has provided a competitive advantage vis-a-vis other corporations in more regulated industries. One could argue privacy regulation might effectively level the playing field.
This argument may well have some truth, but it shrinks the debate to
individual choices about "money in my wallet" versus "privacy".
Increasingly the debate is moving to national security. We hear that
the US government has lost trust in Microsoft. In the UK the choice of
GCHQ to use AWS has caused consternation. A much more complex and
nuanced landscape is emerging. Two of the links in the Techdirt
article reference national security issues.
National security and economic welfare of citizens are not separate.
Private profit of a few global surveillance and data trading companies
creates a problem that affects more than individual rights.
So even if one ignores ethics and rights and takes a purely economic
perspective, one has to ask whether the damage to a nation caused by
big-tech surveillance companies outweighs their net benefit to the
economy.
I agree with this. I don't know if we have easy solutions left to tackle this pernicious problem. But legislating privacy definitely won't work the way people think it will.
In the past, boom and bust cycles, while causing major hardship for regular folks, would also wipe out most incumbents and monopolies, effectively resetting the economy. Modern monetary policy is designed to minimize economic shock, so that option is off the table, and has been for some time now.
As parasitic as the advertising business is, the "legitimate" commercial surveillance activities provides a nice cover for other types of surveillance, obfuscating the operations of state actors who can run their own programs or tap commercial networks to just buy whatever data they want.
The real real truth is that most consumers are totally content with the current state of things, and spend virtually zero time worrying about online privacy (yes, people exist outside tech bubbles).
If google pushed to a privacy subscription model, where you could pay for google services and have all your privacy protected, people would get mad and tell google to "bring back the free stuff!".
I'm surprised people here don't see this as plainly true. Consumers _love_ the ad-supported internet, as evidenced by the incredible success of ad-supported vs subscription supported services.
What people actually want is "Privacy protection yet the internet stays the same". Which is akin to "$50 minimum wage but society stays the same". Purely naive idealistic thinking.
> Consumers _love_ the ad-supported internet, as evidenced by the incredible success of ad-supported vs subscription supported services.
Consumers also love the lottery and casinos, even though they both have a negative ROI.
Consumers think they're getting something for free, but the bill for their "free service" comes the next time they go to the store and pay $10 more, spread over dozens of items they buy every month, to pay for marginal cost of advertising.
The price is hidden so well that our lizard brains don't connect the two, that's what makes the entire scheme so effective, but it definitely isn't "free".
This is an interesting argument I've heard from various quarters but have never seen any evidentiary material supporting it. Do you have any reliable sources that explore this correlation?
> The real truth is that strong privacy laws would cause economic harm to flagship corporations.
The real truth is that flagship corporations think this will happen. They seem to believe that tracking users is the only way to deliver ads efficiently. It's not, and there are other ways to do that, such as displaying tags in environments devoted to a given topic. But this would imply a change, and why change if you can bribe congresspeople?
> > The real truth is that strong privacy laws would cause economic harm to flagship corporations.
> The real truth is that flagship corporations think this will happen.
The real truth is that flagship corporations want everyone else to believe this will happen. They want to do whatever they feel like unopposed, and what better way to accomplish that than making everyone think what’s best for themselves is to let the company do exactly what it wants.
> The real truth is that strong privacy laws would cause economic harm to flagship corporations.
Won’t somebody please think of the ~~children~~ corporations!
> That would have a ripple effect on the economy as those corporations are responsible for thousands of high-paying jobs.
Bullshit. This is the argument for “trickle-down economics” and if there’s anything the past decades have proven is that when the people at the top get more money, they keep more of it for themselves.
Problem is it actually decimate the engineers in Nebraska, South Carolina, and Texas as well.
Oh! And don't forget the youtubers and content creators in Montana, Indiana, and Kansas.
And on and on and on.
It's not as straightforward as people think, and it reaches a whole lot further than people realize. I'm a privacy activist and have studied the issue, but I still fall on the "more privacy needed" side of the fence. Likely because I'm very much in the "burn it all down" faction of privacy advocates. However, I do understand what I'm up against. There are a lot of people who are either on the other side presently, or will be on the other side as soon as they realize their pay checks will go away as the effects of closing privacy loopholes ripple through the economy.
We have to be clear eyed here, and prepared for enormous opposition to these ideas when these issues become better understood. Which is why I say we should act now. It's like Andor said, "There will never be fewer guards than there are today." As more people gain understanding of the financial impacts, the number of people on the other side will grow.
On the one hand, it is a clear indication that citizen's wishes are ignored. On the other, US is supposed to be a republic and politicians are supposed to be smarter than to give in to the mob, who will always vote itself whatever it currently wants.
The problem is that while 84% ( I am taking that number at face value for the time being ) say they want stronger privacy laws in aggregate, as individuals they differ on what that actually means. While this is happening, corporations and interests that are opposed to that know exactly what they want and coordinate appropriately.
Privacy needs lobbyists too , I suppose?
I am not sure at what point it breaks. Ellison famously quipped that privacy is long dead anyway.
> On the other, US is supposed to be a republic and politicians are supposed to be smarter than to give in to the mob, who will always vote itself whatever it currently wants.
Just the other day I learned of the Sunshine Protection Act. From the first paragraph on Wikipedia¹:
> the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, although several senators stated later that they would have objected if they had known that the bill could pass.
Maybe politicians are “supposed to be smarter”, but they’re not.
And yet in other countries when Facebook was forced to give users a choice of pay for the service or accept targeted advertising, people chose to keep their free service.
The ad tier of services like Hulu makes more than the paid tier.
It seems like the "give users a choice" part is the important part here. Most of use that have almost no social media footprint are still being tracked and targeted with ads.
This problem of “representatives” failing to represent their constituents, let alone their supporters, was the impetus for me to develop my most recent political advocacy.
I call it “expand the powers of justice by jury”.
Essentially, bills in congress will be litigated by representatives, in front of a judge, for a jury, and the jury ultimately casts the vote either for or against the proposed legislation.
I think this would resolve many of the issues that we are seeing in contemporary politics; mainly the negative effects of the influence of money.
Why would jurors be harder to buy than career politicians? Especially when there are probably no career consequences for a juror if such a scheme found out.
The other obvious problem is jury selection. You can basically choose the outcome by selecting the "right" jury.
Here’s a clip of Jon Stewart laying it out for you:
@11:00
> “And that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, is why we need courts. Whatever flaws the American justice system has, and they are legion, especially for non billionaire former presidents, it does appear to be the last place where you can’t just say whatever the fuck you want regardless of reality.”
Disappointing the article goes for the usual "congress is corrupt" instead of getting into details of who within the US congress is corrupt and being controlled by whom.
It's like the DJ-3000 automated DJ inane chatter bot from the Simpsons
"Looks like those clowns in Congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns."
Once again campaign finance reform should be on the ballot, and once again the duopoly has made sure we're not even talking about it let alone voting on it.
The key to actually ask people "What are you willing to give up for X"?
Are you ok being more annoyed with popups asking your permissions every time?
Are you ok with a recession in Ad-based ecosystem (merchants, ad brokers, stock market depression, fewer IPOs) that may result due to this?
Would you be OK with paying for services instead of an Ad model? (and before Virtue signaling HNers jump in, how many of you have subscribed to YouTube premium)
Any idiot will say Yes to "Do you want $1000?"
Change the question to reality "Do you want $1000, but have to pay back $1100 tomorrow?" and see the numbers drop.
Passing legislations has to deal with reality. Do lobbyists influencing law making? Yes. But the lobbyists is a necessary evil because general population will always want $1000. Lobbyists are there to remind you of the costs and prevent from populism destroying civilizations.
Edit : Expected nothing better than downvotes from massively brainwashed HNers with ZERO independent thinking. The irony isn't lost that they are the 84% ers
So just in case people occasionally vote for shortsighted policies, we should preventatively remove their democratic autonomy altogether, replacing them with corporate puppets just to be safe? The enlightened shills will lead civilization to a new golden age of personal prosperity and financial prudence.
The targeted ad industry grew during the time where data privacy was not being actively discussed in the mainstream, it grew to be a massive cash cow for some of the largest tech corporations to ever exist. After this period we have found the issues with the lack of control on data privacy, we now know much better the side-effects of that, and people want it to be controlled.
Your argument is that because the industry is massive it now shouldn't be controlled even though it can be harmful because it might increase costs, or it might create annoyances.
Try to apply the same argument to other industries which are regulated due to their potential harm to see how flimsy this argument is. Food could be much cheaper if there were few regulations on quality control, cars could be much cheaper if safety devices weren't required.
> Are you ok with a recession in Ad-based ecosystem (merchants, ad brokers, stock market depression, fewer IPOs) that may result due to this?
Totally ok, it will free up brilliant minds working on this to figure out new, and potentially better ways that fit into a more privacy-focused regulatory framework.
> Edit : Expected nothing better than downvotes from massively brainwashed HNers with ZERO independent thinking. The irony isn't lost that they are the 84% ers
Lobbyists are there to maximize the profits of whoever hires them, not to care about general population. Nobody will care about general population except for themselves.
We are also welcome to advocate for banning lobbying in the country we're in, because it has clearly-demonstrated detrimental effects on our daily lives and our democracy.
If this is the way that the flagship sites for the EU are going to do it and show how to be in compliance with the law, any other approach is too risky to implement.
Disagree, every time I use a EU proxy, I feel like a first-class citizen who has a privilege to opt-out. For comparison, other citizens only have the "agree" button.
In a party based assembly(UK, Canada) the party leader tells each party member how to vote = the party line. Members can not vote against the party = out.
In the US assembly(Congress and Senate) each members votes as he/she wishes. In all houses the votes(hands) are visible.
This turns a vote into a currency. A lobbyist can see he gets what he has paid for and the 'bag' is passed.
Every US voter has what both the Senate and Congress do not have = a secret ballot. Why? = $$$
How to fix = 2 votes, a secret ballot AND a show of hands, the secret ballot carries. There is no longer a cause/effect monetisation link. The lobbyist will see his paid for vote by show of hands pass, but lose by secret ballot = fully deniable as a member can say is was not me that wavered.
Ever hear the squeals of hundreds of stuck pigs? That will happen. I wonder if the Supreme Court can interpret the current laws to ensure a secret ballot?
Why wouldn't a congress person in this instance do the opposite? Give a show of hand for sake of TV and voters. Say they voted one way, but then vote the way they might be lobbied/influenced to? The public votes of congress people is frequently a campaign talking issue by virtue of opponents lambasting each other's vote records. How would secret ballots in congress have anything but the opposite effect of what you intend?
> I wonder if the Supreme Court can interpret the current laws to ensure a secret ballot?
There is no way the current bench on the Supreme Court of the United States of America does any sort of interpreting towards a stronger administrative state, regardless of popular support for it.
Ideally, your representative's ballot should be open, so you know they are representing your concerns, not their own. So no, absolutely not. I do not want my representative voting secretly. Focus on fixing the corrupting influence of money instead.
" In a party based assembly(UK, Canada) the party leader tells each party member how to vote = the party line. Members can not vote against the party = out. I " Im not sure about UK and Canada, but the general statement is plainly wrong.
I wouldn't say that statement is wrong, at least for Canada.
MPs, MPPs, MLAs, etc., that belong to a party typically don't deviate from the party line, even if it means going against their own constituents' wishes and interests, especially for prominent issues.
A party typically has a member who acts as what's called the "party whip", and whose role is to ensure the rest of the party's members vote as the party wishes them to, and to punish those who might not.
Voting against one's own party doesn't guarantee that that a representative will be kicked out of caucus, but it certainly has resulted in expulsions in the past (Nunziata, Casey, and Karahalios are cases I can think of off the top of my head).
I think it's reasonable to believe that Canadian politicians represent their party and themselves to a greater degree than they represent their constituents.
It's unclear to me what value the public vote would add in the system you propose. What's the point of raising hands if it doesn't matter in the least anyway?
Why not keep everything transparent and make lobbying illegal? I know neither secret voting or making lobbying illegal will ever happen but it seems like you're just putting a bandaid on an issue without regard for the consequences. People that vote for representatives like to know how they vote. Why even have the theater of a transparent vote that does nothing?
Secret or not, please don't generalize - in Switzerland they can vote as they please (even expected, although often parties will decide a certain line)
This would break the trust in voting. People want to know how someone voted if they can lie to their constituents on how they voted we will lose faith in democracy. Ban lobbying is the solution.
