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Comment by joubert | Hacker News Reader

Stood out for me:

"The left-leaning parties — the Left-Greens, the Pirates and two allies — won 27 seats, just short of the 32 required to command a majority in Iceland’s Parliament, the world’s oldest."

and

"About 40 percent of Pirate supporters are under the age of 30. They had pinned their hopes on a party that has promised to install a more inclusive and transparent government."

and

"The Pirates have pledged to enhance direct democracy by passing the world’s first “crowd-sourced constitution,” drafted by Icelandic civilians rather than politicians. Parliament blocked the document in 2013."

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> drafted by Icelandic civilians rather than politicians.

What was the process for this to be? Having folks who are untrained in law draft a constitution and then passing it sounds... well about as dumb as having folks who've just learned to program write an operating system and put it in production.

Politicians are also untrained in law draft a constitution, which is why it generally is given to lobbyist that can pay people who are trained in law (paid by the companies that pays the lobbyist).

It would be nice to see a country (or EU) that forbade politicians to share or get input on law drafts from lobbyists. Just imagine how the many current trade agreements would look like if only politicians had seen and written them. Or just extensions of copyright law.

Its like having a operating system be written by an advertisement company and then be surprised when it is designed in favor of the advertisement company rather than the user who bought the device.

Sometimes getting input from lobbyists can actually be an all-around helpful thing to do. Think about things like industry norms such as the default sizes of shipping containers. Politicians who write such documents rarely have the technical knowledge to understand what the norms should and should not prescribe and the citizens do not care.

In such cases it is actually helpful for the lobbyists to decide, so long as different sizes of companies and different industries are represented.

Please do not confuse “getting input from industry” with “getting input from lobbyists”. Getting unbiased, balanced input from a large section of industry is important, but if you think you (assuming you are a politician) can do that by simply listen to the lobbyists who show up at your door then you are not doing your job. Company lobbyists, however, know that this is what you will do, and they will tell you things which will give them advantages over their competitors, not what will benefit the industry as a whole.

It is a huge mistake to think that individual companies want things to be better for their field or industry as a whole. They don’t; whatever ups or downs the industry suffers will be borne equally by all, and is therefore irrelevant to the real goal of companies: to get an edge over the competition. Companies will gladly make things worse for everyone in their field if it means they will get a larger share of it. Politicians, apparently, do not know this, or do not have enough incentive to realize this, so politicians choose to listen to the lobbyists and choose to believe that they are thereby listening to the industry.

"Lobbyists" is just the label attached to the people who give input. Yes, they're professionals and yes, this is where the corruption happens, but that's just the nature of seeking input.

You surely don't expect companies to not advocate for themselves and be wholly altruistic? A lobbyist is paid to advocate for their client's interests. Sometimes that aligns with the public interest, most of the time it's a grey area.

There are plenty of opportunities for corruption in the interaction and those need to be addressed; rebranding 'lobbyists' isn't one of them.

I would disagree, I think it's a label attached to those people that actively attempt to influence policy making on behalf of their client's interests.

Just offering specialized input would be consulting.

And the way I see it: company and industry group lobbying works just fine, but there is a significant lack of public interest lobbying.

Nope. Definition of a lobbyist: "A lobbyist is someone hired by a business or a cause to persuade legislators to support that business or cause. Lobbyists get paid to win favor from politicians. For example, oil companies send lobbyists to Washington to try to make life easier for oil companies."

A lobbyist is a lobbyist. It's not the label assigned to people who give input in general.

>It would be nice to see a country (or EU) that forbade politicians to share or get input on law drafts from lobbyists.

Agree. But unless there's a mechanism for learning about the industry affected by the laws being written, and a feedback mechanism, the danger is that the law is simply going to be ignorant and force out non-state organizations.

While out of hand, lobbying has an actual practical function that is important.

Actually, it was an elaborate and well thought out democratic process. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't arbitrary either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_constitutional_refor...

There's a long history of letting politicians, untrained in law, draft laws and constitutions. :)

What you mean like those rich landowners back in 1778 :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution#178...

Those "rich landowners" were not the gang of self-centered malcontents that revisionist historians describe. They were deeply aware and concerned -- rightfully so -- about the ways in which direct democracy can fail.

That's why they didn't adopt it.

Ok, so I'm super interested in what you said here. How can Ileatn more about the Framers consideration of direct democracy v

Search for "pure democracy".

http://thefederalistpapers.org/federalist-papers/federalist-...

Slavedrivers who are not malcontents seems like a contradiction to me.

People in real life are often contradictions.

No, people in real life delude themselves and others about how good they are.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that notices this.

The delegates were generally convinced that an effective central government with a wide range of enforceable powers must replace the weaker Congress established by the Articles of Confederation. Their depth of knowledge and experience in self-government was remarkable. As Thomas Jefferson in Paris wrote to John Adams in London, "It really is an assembly of demigods." According to one view, the Framers embraced the federal ambiguities in the constitutional text allowing for compromise and cooperation about broad concepts rather than dictating specific policies for the future.

Are these the "rich landowners" you are referring to?

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Could you give an example of a constitution written by people untrained in law that was well thought out.

Constitutions are generally not written by people trained in law. They are written to be inspirational and aspirational, not legally rigorous.

Couldn't you also compare it to letting people that don't know about programming describe what they want in a program, as a target?

Like every customer would do (potentially with multiple stake holders/persons trying to prioritize different things). In the end the trained people handle these wishes and either decline them ("Not feasible, because.."), discuss them ("You might think you want that, but that would cause X, Y and Z. I'd suggest doing..") or turn them into reality.

> Having folks who are untrained in law draft a constitution and then passing it sounds... well about as dumb as [...]

Does it? Laws, or more general, contracts are made between people. If the wording of those laws/contracts requires a special education to be understood, people don't understand the contracts they make anymore. But then, what's a contract worth if none of the parties involved understands it but they all have implicit expectations?

Shouldn't a constitution be understood by every citizen? Let lawyers point out potential ambiguities, but let regular people do the wording so that regular people can understand it.

Non-politician isn't the same as being untrained in law. There are plenty of lawyers who aren't politicians.

They didn't only solicit the opinions of Icelandic lawyers.

And that's a good thing, isn't it? That lawyers and other people are involved.

It would seem so, wouldn't it ? But changing a Constitution would at least require a validation from their Suprene Court in terms of structure and adherence to legal principles.

Coalition Parliament majority is not exactly an authoritarian takeover, in order to be able to push anything through, I would imagine.

"To combat the tyranny of ridiculous medical costs the people have decided to support a crowd sourced model of drug discovery and hospital administration."

Which sounds super crazy but only because there is a perception that good medical treatment is difficult and not something you can do with out a lot of training. Government on the other hand is often perceived as "easy" because, hey anyone can throw their hat in the ring and be elected to President right? No previous training or education required.

You spend your life studying the heart muscle, its ailments, and ways that it can be treated when it is old or damaged. And your a revered, board certified cardiologist.

You spend your life studying people, their governance, and ways to manage conflict and justice through the law. And your a despised lifelong politician.

If my medic was getting paid to take pieces of my organs, I'd take my chances with an amateur too. The prejudice against career politicians might unfairly hit some honest ones, but it's hardly baseless.

In any case, as was pointed out, the proposal wasn't to have a shared Google Doc that anyone could write, it was just a process with more democratic input.

With the left gaining so much power, they should probably be worried about US-backed assassination or government toppling... They have no idea what they're getting in to.

That's very far from the reality of European politics. Iceland has had left governments before, and many Western European countries do have left wing governments. Why would the us suddenly start assassinating people?

Yes, just like every other Western European country with a left-wing government worries over it, i.e. not one bit.

Please point out a "leftist" (or far-right, for that matter) government that has extracted their country from interlocking defense liaison, surveillance, and intelligence agreements.

I'm not sure I understand you.

Is your point that because the US hasn't toppled any governments in Western Europe we shouldn't worry about them doing it there? I see no reason to assume that Western Europe somehow is out of bounds.

I think it is different. In south American there was usually enough chaos for the US to march in an pretend they were restoring order. It would be more difficult to to so in countries with long solid democratic traditions and which are known to be very stable.

The US always relied on finding some extremists or sympathetic party which they could manipulate to their ends.

You can't topple people in a vacuum. In Iran they could rely on existing support for the Shah of Iran. In Chile they could rely on right wing military people like Pinochet.

There has to be some sort of chaos to exploit.

Or perhaps there are way in which the US could manufacture a crisis, but I think US governments today as simply nicer than in the past.

> I think it is different. In south American there was usually enough chaos for the US to march in an pretend they were restoring order.

Yeah, I used to think like you. Until that one time when the USA landed the plane of the president of Bolivia because they thought Snowden was aboard. That's not the USA doing its shit in a far away place, to "bad guys" in south america or iran. I know hijacking a plane isn't toppling a government, but do you see what I mean? They certainly have the power, it's just a question of are they brazen enough? And to me this shows that they are.

> I think US governments today as simply nicer than in the past.

I see no evidence of that. Look at what's happening in Syria.

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