Hacker News Reader

Comment by lacampbell | Hacker News Reader

If you don't like the law, you can vote, run for office, volunteer, donate to a candidate or nonprofit, or bother your elected officials.

In reality, you can do two things about it;

1. Like it

2. Absolutely nothing

This myth that an honest individual with good intentions can somehow influence the system is harmful and needs to die. If you're not a huge corporation or lobby group, your chances of getting a law changed is for all intents and purposes zero.

View on HN

Beh.

I personally stopped my government from spending $15m on an unneeded ballot tracking system (it added voter ids to ballots, eliminating the secret ballot).

I have friends that made the DREAM Act happen. Ditto my state's legalization of weed and gay marriage.

But if apathy and despair is your thing, I'll stop here and let you get back to it.

An individual can most definitely influence the system, but it involves doing unappealing things like participating in open comment periods, political organizing, labor organizing, attending meetings, making phone calls, interacting with bureaucracies, pouring your life into standards bodies, running for local office, and persevering in the face of indifference and tedium.

It's a high bar to clear (I certainly haven't cleared it), but to pretend it's impossible is the definition of cynisicm.

And maybe, just maybe, if you do all those things, you'll be able to get one law changed in five years.

There are 242,000,000 adults in the US. Getting one law changed every 5 years sounds like an absurd amount of leverage to gain from basic civic engagement.

http://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congre...

Step 1: Read article

Step 2: Resume cynicism

You understand that wherever you live has city, county councils. Schools boards and conservation and fire districts. Your state has a legislature.

Aside: I hate South Park. The smug self righteous cynicism it engenders is just another cult, but for apathy.

Sure, let's talk about my city. The mayor is on the board of the company that manages our toll roads, so we'll never get good public transportation. At a zoning board meeting the head chair literally said out loud, in response to complaints, that she was impervious against any campaign against her because alphabetically she showed up first on the ballot. Oh yeah, our governor's wife is on the board of some medical group... I forget the details but they bilked millions out of our senior citizens... and got re-elected.

Aside response: I don't watch South Park, so I don't know what you're even referring to.

Pssst! Most of the US readers of this forum are likely above the 90th percentile of income.

I'd take the word "can" out of your first sentence, but I do agree with you in general.

Airbnb, however, is a huge corporation with lots and lots of money. It's not a myth for them.

Its a huge corporation now. If they took your attitude they would never have gotten off the ground.

Except that there's plenty you could do with venture capital.

It isn't easy to overturn state or federal laws but it is far from impossible.

Here are a few examples.

Gregory Watson got the constitution amended in 1992[0].

Reverend Warren H. Stewart got Arizona to declare Martin Luther King day a state holiday[1].

Richard and Maureen Kanka got Megan's law passed[2].

[0] https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-a-c-grade-college-te...

[1] http://archive.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan%27s_Law

Aaron Schwartz, pipa and sopa.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com