Comment by JudgeWapner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JudgeWapner | Hacker News Reader

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> elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere.

honest question: can you point me to any US politician that has stood up to a corporation or corporate interest with laws that effectively say, "No, you can't have what you want, the people need <this> instead." and - most importantly - got those laws passed? I can't think of one. I think obamacare came close (which became one of the most hardfought wins ever), and yet the health insurance lobby still came out ahead. I dare say that no congress shall ever pass a law that harms a corporation (a de facto constitutional amendment).

What does that have to do with carbon control ? ICE auto industry, coal industry, oil and gas, etc, would all be "harmed" if US lawmakers passed anything that had a material impact on CO2 emissions. It would require multiple layers of alternative realities for that to ever happen, in my (admittedly cynical) opinion. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm saying we should give up/not try. I _want_ us to solve global warming. I just can't picture it happening (at least for the redress method I listed above).

I don't know if this is the kind of answer you were looking for, but Elizabeth Warren was very successful in her efforts to get the CFPB off the ground, much to the displeasure of the financial sector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_.... It's true that under the Trump administration the bureau's behavior is being...modified...but it was quite a success when running as originally intended by Warren.

Furthermore, both Warren and Bernie Sanders seem to have genuine convictions w.r.t. climate change, health care, social inequality, etc. Whether or not their particular points of view are desirable is open for debate, but their multi-decade commitments to these issues are beyond question. They seem to have non-trivial support in the electorate as well - I encourage you to check them out, especially if you're feeling cynical or anxious about the future.

ok, they created a bureau, not a "rip consumers off and your executives go to jail (viz. wells fargo, HSBC...)" law.

Great convictions are a start. but in order for them to actually pass legislation, they need other congress members to vote for them. and that's where the dirty tricks start (I wont vote for your X unless you vote for my Y, etc).

I guess I'm contradicting myself a bit, because I said "name one" without acknowledging that it takes a majority in congress to pass anything. So yes, Warren and Sanders have the courage to face corporate interests. Thank you. I just yearn for the day where shareholders of XYZ get a 30% haircut because laws were passed that reigned in their company's behavior.

This is a misunderstanding how how government works. You need to have some kind of institution in order to get anything enforced. Building up institutions full of competent people with a mandate to craft and enforce carefully designed regulations and respond to changing circumstances is the way to attack these kinds of big problems.

(Of course, institutions can only be so effective when their leadership is unlawfully replaced with incompetent industry hacks by the next administration; the only way to tackle that is with higher-level political action: court fights, impeachment, and ultimately elections.)

Just laws on the books doesn’t accomplish anything. There are already plenty of laws against ripping off consumers, but corporatist ideologues in control of the US Supreme Court have spent the last several decades watering down the potential liability via increasingly tendentious reinterpretations.

you misunderstand how enforcement works. It's done via law enforcement agencies that exist already. It doesn't need a special new "bureau" for each type of rule. If you don't believe me that there are law enforcement agencies, I can show you how to summon them very easily.

Now, the question is, why don't these agencies enforce the same laws against corporations? That's the premise of my initial comment, which you also misunderstood.

There are many different organizations within the US federal government (not to mention state governments) which deal in one way or another with regulation and enforcement.

Many of the ones commonly considered to be “law enforcement agencies” per se are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the... but there are many other federal agencies which might also be considered “law enforcement” under a broader interpretation of that term.

Different agencies have different focus, different mandate, different institutional powers, etc.

Arguably the functions established for the CFPB to perform could be undertaken by some other institution. But the point of the legislation and its implementation (which Warren and others worked very carefully on) was creating a semi-autonomous institution solely focused on consumer financial protection.

During the Obama years the CFPB was pretty effective, despite unified and extreme opposition from GOP politicians. (Its effectiveness explains why some folks were eager to see it defanged.)

Even with cigarettes, a product that kills its consumer even when used exactly as designed, congress wont' ban them because that would negatively impact a corporation. But you seem to think that corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules. they need some kind of "bureau" so that there can be a constant back-and-forth, give-and-take, so that we don't impact that poor, tender corporation. Why is that required, but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau" ? Clear-cut laws seem to work fine for poor people. Why won't they work for corporations?

> corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules

This is a straw man. Nobody thinks this.

> but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau"

There are several federal institutions which deal with domestic violence (alongside additional state and local ones). For example the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and has the mandate to “understand, respond to, and prevent” domestic violence.

The FBI can also investigate specific domestic violence crimes, but my impression is that it is not their highest priority.

Domestic violence is a huge problem and is famously underreported, underinvestigated, and underprosecuted. Probably not the best example you might pick; arguably having additional government agencies with the power to do something about domestic violence might make a positive difference. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this subject.)

you keep backpedaling about bureaus, ignoring how 99% of the law in this nation is enforced. we can't have a conversation if you do contortions by reading the most implausible interpretation of everything I say.

Federal agencies enforce crimes that cross state boundaries. With rate exceptions, domestic violence cases do not. Agencies exist to enforce the laws of Congress. That if their entire reason for existing.

OTOH, most corporate crimes do cross state boundaries and thus are within the jurisdiction of both state and federal authorities.

With respect to cigarettes, the product itself doesn't kill people. There are people that live for decades smoking multiple times a day. The secondary effects kill many people, but there isn't a sufficiently strong correlation to ban cigarettes outright.

Unfortunately we all know that dems will proceed with Biden and that's how we will get 4 more years of our current president.. :\

teach them to shaft Bernie next time!

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