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Comment by kinsomo | Hacker News Reader

> But Callahan [VP of a tech industry group] doesn't think a privacy law should be written by advocates like Mactaggart and put on the ballot.

> "Without any sort of process ... the proponents came up with this law," Callahan says. "[Mactaggart is] suggesting [this] should be the law of the land without any sort of public vetting or scrutiny and we think that's irresponsible and dangerous."

Isn't the ballot initiative process the "public vetting or scrutiny" this guy is talking about? Seems like he's unhappy his group didn't get a chance to water down or kill the measure behind the scenes.

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The public aren't lawyers. One of the points of representative democracy is supposed to be that legislators are more experienced with the practice of writing effective laws - laws that will have their intended effect and stand up in court. With the initiative process, it's easy to find text that sounds nice when you describe it in 30 seconds to people on the street but is either ineffective or has awful unexpected consequences.

That's not to say that there's no place for the initiative process, but it's not without its problems.

Your criticism is valid, but keep in mind the alternative is generally legislation written by lobbyists.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googl...

If laws can't be easily written and understood, that's a problem with the legal system (and the media explaining said laws and initiatives).

The CA implementation seems terrible, but in general direct democracies end up with better laws, and the populace in such democracies ends up being better than a bunch of self selected politicians (who happen to not be experts anyway). US and UK lawmaking processes are a perfect example of why you need to give citizens more control (but you still want legislative bodies to do the grunt work).

"but in general direct democracies end up with better laws"

Is there something that indicates that?

>If laws can't be easily written and understood, that's a problem with the legal system (and the media explaining said laws and initiatives).

Do you write code by chance? Ever introduce a bug or unintended consequence? I bet 10-1 it was logic problem, not a compiler problem.

The hard part of writing laws is in exactly and completely defining your terms. It has nothing to do with the legal system, and more to do with the nature of language itself.

Gödel's 'incompleteness theorems' comes to mind.

> Isn't the ballot initiative process the "public vetting or scrutiny" this guy is talking about? Seems like he's unhappy his group didn't get a chance to water down or kill the measure behind the scenes.

This is the same electorate that banned gay marriage (prop 8) and caused the worst housing crisis in decades (prop 13). Even if his opinion is wrong, his criticism of the the process is spot on.

California ballot initiates have a pretty wonky history.

I'm not a legal expert or legislative one but I do think there is good reason for public vetting as in a ballot initiative, and other things that require a bit more / or different type of vetting, such as something that goes through a legislature and maybe has the input of some folks who pay attention for longer than a tv advert.

Especially since ballot initiatives, to my understanding, cannot be fixed after the fact by legislative actions.

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