Hacker News Reader

Comment by advael | Hacker News Reader

So if I'm reading this right, they're banning something that is too underpowered to run the exploits people are using to steal cars (which are only possible in the first place because car companies' threat model is mostly about their customers rather than thieves) in order to pretend to do something about car theft

I've been pretty happy on balance with measures introduced through direct democracy in recent years (mostly happens at the municipal and state levels in the US), and it seems like most people are unhappy with measures introduced by the normal "democratic" means of governance in rich nations, where we elect people, who then make laws

Maybe we should do more of the former and less of the latter

View on HN

The main problem with direct democracy as performed in the US is that it's trivial to manipulate with sufficiently large ad campaigns, because the average voter is not super well informed on most topics and is usually not motivated to dig deeply when i.e. a ride-sharing company spends a cool hundred million to get the legal outcome they want.

This is not to say that the alternative is immune to these problems, but as a former long time california resident direct democracy was directly responsible for many of the state's problems, i.e. prop 13.

In many cases any special interest or sufficiently motivated rich person can also just keep putting their pet issue on the ballot over and over until it passes.

Do you mean to tell me that the general public weren't in favor of being screwed over by ride sharing companies, so much so that a 7/8 majority would be required to overturn their "democratic " decision? I'm not sure that HN is an appropriate forum for strong, unsupported opinions like that.

Or sarcasm, to be fair ;-)

That aside, I don't think a system where the spending disparity is in the territory of $200m vs $20m can be perceived as fair. I'd feel upset about it even if it turned out the way I personally wanted.

To add to the counter-argument you've already acknowledged, direct democracy at least forces the lobbying (and potential misinformation) out into the open. I think this particular part of the argument might boil down to "who is more likely to be able to discount misinformation and value accurate information, the general public or a handful of elected representatives and their private advisors"?

Sufficiently motivated and rich people are also motivated to repeatedly put their pet issues to our political representatives (sometimes alongside big political contributions).

Seems like a case of pick your poison (and antidotes).

Prop 13 is far from being agreed on as a problem amongst Californians. When your property tax could reasonably exceed your mortgage, something must change.

That prop 13 is not agreed upon by residents of California's population as a major destructive force here is precisely their point.

It has been both absolutely disastrous and incredibly popular.

Disastrous in your view. In the view of many homeowners, not so much.

There are competing interests and multiple perspectives to most of these issues where one position is not absolutely right as compared to the other.

Swiss here, curiously interested, what does direct democracy in the US look like?

Direct democracy means a lot around here, like not having a single party long term in some control positions who could block or manipulate bills. Voting on topics instead of politians is only a small aspect of this all working.

> what does direct democracy in the US look like?

Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 (massively screwed up the housing market in California, not feasible to reverse it now)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8 (defined marriage in the state constitution as between a man and a woman, still on the books but invalidated in court... for now)

Well owning a set of lock picks is illegal in the US so... 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

That is not true. It’s on a state-by-state basis and only a few states have laws that say ownership is automatically seen as intent to commit a crime.

It’s legal in most states to own lock picks and use them on locks you own.

I also believe most of the same states allow you to use them on any locks with the permission of the owner, but there may be a few that require a locksmith for that, even if you aren’t selling the service.

> Well owning a set of lock picks is illegal in the US so... 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

No. https://www.toool.us/lockpicking-laws.php

Oddy enough, owning lockpicks is sorta illegal in some Canadian provinces.

I've been curious as a Brit living thought the mess that was the brexit vote and implementation, how the Swiss would have dealt with such a matter? I'm told they have better systems and wouldn't have done it like we did but I'm not sure quite how.

We have voted in Schengen membership in 2008, but opted out of many association agreements with EU. We have a referendum like every 4 months, so all of this is not a big deal, things like these are routinely decided with a direct all-nation vote.

Ah - the every 4 months kind of thing might have helped rather than our every 30 years or something like that.

> in order to pretend to do something about ...

That basically summaries the Canadian government's history, and how we end up in multiple crisis and negative gdp per capita situation now.

How do you get negative gdp per capita? That must mean negative gdp unless you have less than 0 population. Do you mean negative growth? Then what does per capita have to do with it?

Oops, that's a typo. Negative growth is the right term

> Then what does per capita have to do with it?

If you are really interested, look up Canadian's policies. Tldr: import 'low cost' labor to pop up monopolies without real growth, declining average Canadian quality of life. Flattening gdp/huge labor population import = negative growth

I'm not sure how direct democracy is going to fix car theft? It would seem a problem best dealt with by experts in the field.

Direct democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.

I think the real problem is that the system is rigged.

Your vote only matters if youre in a non-gerrymandered swing state.

Even if your vote did matter you have to choose from a a small amount of candidates selected and vetted by the RNC and DNC.

So its less an issue with representation democracy and more an issue with how rigged and pointless the system has become in my opinion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com