Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that Congress is talking about sunsetting section 230 which provides protection for web sites that display user generated content from being responsible for what that content says, and what Amazon wants here is apparently the equivalent for drop-ship/forwarding sales companies and the products those companies ship through them. But the argument is that safety agencies are unconstitutional?

For me, this suggests a high level of dysfunction in the Government if people asking for things from the Government do so using the biases of the people in power as the basis for their argument rather than reasoning to it by some set of principles. I don't know how much of this article was inferred by the person writing it and how much accurately reflects Amazon's position, so I can't draw strong conclusions from it but it's an interesting reflection on the extreme 'buyer beware' attitude of cut throat businesses that take no responsibility for the harms they inflict on their own customers.

That just kinda follows from democracy. Principles are for voters. Elected officials do what they think the voters want (as affirmed by getting re-elected). If they went back to first principles, and disagreed with their constituents, they'd lose.

The closest thing you get to principles are civil servants, who are hired for their domain expertise. But voters grumble because those civil servants aren't elected; they are basically self propagating by hiring their successors.

That actually used to kinda work. There was enough inertia to keep elections from making everything about people's moods, and enough input from Congress, SCOTUS, and POTUS to keep it competent.

But the mood has shifted to extreme distrust of those institutions. So they're getting wiped out in one fell swoop. There is a principle in place, but it's the principle that the government itself is irreparable.

Even if you’re deluded to the point where you’re convinced government can’t work, what is your end game? People who can only criticize never offer solutions, but are always happy to profit from the work of others. Like Ayn Rand who was dependent on social security handouts. Even if you drive over roads that were built because of government programs, you’re a hypocritical profiteer in my book.

While I broadly agree with your point, I think it's easy to say that the end game for many is a change in sovereignty — who gets to define what "OK" even means.

Government can work. All it needs is for voters to not actively hate each other. Democracy works when the politicians all agree that the good of the community as a whole matters.

That works in a lot of places. It's not perfect but it really is the best option.

If your citizens do hate each other, there really isn't any system that can work. I don't have an end game in that scenario, except to wait for it to collapse and hopefully be replaced by something else.

> Even if you drive over roads that were built because of government programs, you’re a hypocritical profiteer in my book.

Tangent maybe, but talking about where the rubber literally meets the road gets pretty interesting. Because government programs focus on politically important places, those places that are not politically important tend to have worse roads. Lots of people in those places do not care much, because they have big trucks with big tires. But once politically unimportant people are paying for bigger tires for decades, and getting hit with inflation on those tires, and still paying for other roads in other places that don't benefit them.. they get fed up eventually and this leads to the rise of angry populism and the desire to tear down road-building institutions. Doing this seems like it can't make anything worse, and will only help them be able to pay for their next flat tire, and they know that the flat is going to happen regardless of whether city-dwellers get to enjoy a new turnpike.

This is an oversimplification, but on the other hand, it really is pretty simple.

Labeling anyone as a hypocritical profiteer since they "benefit" from crappy roads that were actually paid for in full many years ago and neglected since then is one way to think about this I guess. But you could also say that it's natural for rural people to object strongly to that part of the wealth pump that actually affects them, and it really is more likely to be a function of government itself rather than corporatism. (This is because they have no disposable income to throw at corporations when there's not enough left after taxes.)

Whereas urban people are just more likely to object to the part of the wealth pump that affects them, and that's less about government and more about corporatism. The rural/urban divide will only be cured when everyone agrees that all wealth pumps are unsustainable, instead of spending all their energy fighting about how to get on the most of profitable side of the pumps.

I'm not saying the rural people in this scenario are not misguided.. but if you're completely baffled by support for things like MAGA and DOGE, then it's probably worthwhile to reflect on this.

It is an oversimplification, because those people were getting more federal money. They voted for lower taxes in their local states and thus underfunded own infrastructure. Then they got angry about crumbling infrastructure they were not willing to pay for. Frankly, the economics is just an excuse here.

Republicans never voted for better roads, never asked better roads. They don't want that. They will punish politicians trying to improve infrastructure. They have available free vaccines, but they don't want them. Instead, they actively go around villifying them trying to carve more legal ways to avoid vaccinations. They don't want to improve healthcare or make it cheaper, they actively rejected any such attempts for years. They don't want better school system, they want women to stay home and homeschool. They will actively work on trying to make schools worst.

Making up rationalizing motivations when those people actions are consistently and clearly saying "I don't care" is loosing proposition. Yes, it makes them sound better, but no, you are not closer to understanding them.

In other words, they lack empathy. And they’re unable to grasp that if someone benefits from something, that it doesn’t mean it automatically disadvantages them.

For a long time I’ve tried to not give in to the thought that republicans, at large, are actually that short-sighted. It’s the literal guy sitting on a tree gleefully sawing off the branch they sit on. It felt like I was missing something, a change of perspective, but no. I’ve come to accept they really can’t look further than their own noses length, or at least won’t vote for more capable representatives.

> It is an oversimplification, because those people were getting more federal money. [..] They voted for lower taxes in their local states and thus underfunded own infrastructure.

You cut what you can when you're strapped, and Kansas and Louisiana can't control their federal tax obligations, or federal contributions to things like the Big Dig or the post-collapse Baltimore bridge building projects. They just hope that when the tornadoes / hurricanes come and the levee breaks that the rest of the country will be keen to pay for something that benefits them. This doesn't always pan out though. As an example.. it doesn't get more federal than the army corps of engineers, but they argued for sovereign immunity.

We'll see whether the LA wildfires get handled better or worse than climate catastrophes in the flyover states or the south east, but naturally California will probably do better and get more help than a politically unimportant place would. Without getting way into the weeds on details, perhaps we can agree that the optics of this stuff just aren't great. Without "rationalizing motivations" or "making people sound better".. basically you can choose to either double down on the other'ing or you can at least try to listen and empathize.

This must be the most USA -centric (meant in a bad way) vision on infrastructure I have ever seen. You guys really don’t go out much.

Well the acronyms I mentioned are definitely US-centric. But if you don't see the rise of populism world wide, and you don't see the right/left dialectic being driven in large part by rural vs urban tension.. then I'm afraid you don't get out much either.

I’m convinced at least in Europe populism has peaked. With Trump as an example, the counter campaigns write themselves. It’s democracy vs fascism now, not woke vs coke.

The headlines about French or Dutch farmers dumping loads of manure at the front door of their own institutions have probably peaked. But these things are cyclic and fascism masquerading as populism is just part of the standard playbook. For related reading I suggest Turchin[1], who tries to strike a balance between US-centric commentary and looking at international trends. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62926960-end-times

EDIT: Near the top of BBC-world today is a related article about villagers in Romania, highlighting once again that this is very much an ongoing thing, and that populism, fascism, and decline in quality of rural life are so entangled that it probably makes no sense to speak of them separately https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7w3v5vw7o

> Elected officials do what they think the voters want (as affirmed by getting re-elected).

There was a time when I thought this. Some observations cast strong doubt on it. Primarily:

    how close congressional votes track with major campaign contributions and 
    the revolving door where major donors later reward officials who voted for their interests

It's difficult to see how voters can compete with this, particularly while info about these routine arrangements rarely reaches voters.

I agree with you. In the United States, the Citizens United ruling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) basically legalized the corporate takeover of government and buyout of elected government officials in the name of free speech.

"Elected officials do what they think the voters want (as affirmed by getting re-elected)."

should be:

"Elected officials do what corporate sponsors want and say that they are doing what voters want (as affirmed by getting campaign finance donations by corporate sponsors to help them get re-elected)."

> It's difficult to see how voters can compete with this, particularly while info about these routine arrangements rarely reaches voters.

Exactly. This puts elected government officials in the role of the Dungeons and Dragons Warlock class:

"Warlock patrons are powerful entities that grant mortals access to their power in exchange for a pact that binds the warlock to their patron's will." [1]

They serve at the pleasure of their patron which means they are not serving "we the people".

It is legalized corruption that puts profits and power above people and the good of the nation.

[1] https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-and-dragons-dnd-roleplay-w...

Thing is, what CU enables is advertising. They can't give money to a candidate, or even to a PAC that the candidate controls.

CU buys candidates by buying voters. In the end, the voters have a choice to turf out the politician. They don't.

Maybe that's not what voters "really" want deep in their hearts. But they vote, and that's all anybody can really know. I care about that more than I care about what they tell pollsters.

It literally pays campaign in slight disguise. Simply, in politics you can't compete without campaign. Simple as that, you get corporate takeover because of corporate ability to pay much more.

> the Citizens United ruling … basically legalized the corporate takeover of government and buyout of elected government officials in the name of free speech.

No, it didn’t: it said that the First Amendment protects the right of American citizens to air movies and advertisements critical of political candidates. The First Amendment literally says, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’: a law which abridges the freedom of speech and of the press is thus blatantly unconstitutional.

Right, and when people rightfully criticize the Cit United ruling, they are specifically and emphatically speaking only about "movies and advertisements critical of political candidates", no other reasons. /s

Yes it did and then it slapped barely believable excuse on it. Like common, this had zero to do with freedom of speech or freedom. It was about power and that is it.

Voters vote for free. If they want something different they can vote for it.

They can tell pollsters whatever they want. And what the candidates hear, and what I hear, is how they vote. If they're sending that politician back, then they can't disapprove all that much.

At some point I saw some material that purportedly computed "Voting Power" as a function of population scaled by economic demographics.

It defined someone with a full time job and the option to take some time off to vote on a Tuesday without economic cost a voting power of 1.0V (i.e. One Vote) and went on to define people with full time hourly job where it 'cost' them to vote as .85V, down to single caregivers and unhoused people at 0.5V. On the other side of the scale people in management as 2V (they influence people who work for them to vote like they do), senior leadership at 10V (they have "extra" money to fund additional campaign activities to drive votes), and above that 50V for people who aren't constrained by "work." I would guess billionaires would be 100V or something.

This was in response to a anti-gerrymandering legislation where defining a district to have more voting power for your party while still having an even distribution of individuals representing different parties. Pretty evil IMHO.

I recently started reading a great book called "Democracy for Realists". Voters may believe that they are electing someone who will represent their principles, but that is not how it works.

This is a good summary of the book: https://sppe.lse.ac.uk/articles/52

The review you linked to is pretty critical of the book. Do you have an opinion about its criticisms?

"Tyranny of the majority" and "paradox of tolerance" are both problems for Democracy. And solving for both creates a tension that is almost a paradox itself.

So elected officials also need to be able to manage their constituents, push back on the masses, and explain why compromise / commitment to values / etc are important in society. As you say, this requires some level of trust in officials which sadly has deteriorated.

That's a property of democracy with very small districts. With larger districts (and proportional elections or something similar), it's enough that a few percent of the voters support you. Carving yourself a niche and sticking to it then becomes a viable strategy for re-election.

> Elected officials do what they think the voters want (as affirmed by getting re-elected).

Elected officials do what their corporate contributors want. They then convince a small minority of voters that that's what they want and then their party redraws voting districts to ensure that their votes have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the next election.

> The closest thing you get to principles are civil servants, who are hired for their domain expertise. But voters grumble because those civil servants aren't elected; they are basically self propagating by hiring their successors

It’s a principle-agent problem. Civil servants have principles and act on them, but they’re not necessarily the principles voters share.

> It's interesting that Congress is talking about sunsetting section 230

Congress will never stop talking about Sec230. Early on it was because 230 hampered thin-skinned congress people from disappearing speech they didn't like.

ref:https://www.techdirt.com/2019/03/19/rep-devin-nunes-sues-int...

Modern attacks on 230 are more likely to enabled by major platforms, who are the only ones who can afford to defend legal attacks on user speech.

ref: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

agreee except if people asking for things from the Government… - in this case they are asking Government to butt out :)

FWIW I consider that a form of asking, "stop doing this" :-)

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