EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 6378
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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Sermokala
United States13754 Posts
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On December 07 2016 07:59 zlefin wrote: ah; I understand the needs/image distinction, I just didn't realize you were focusing on the image one. I focus on the needs one by default. I'm still not sure the difference and change is a result of what you say it is. I'd say my case that one of the big changes is simply the decline in union membership; as I previously cited it's gone down by some 10% of the total population; and the dems got a lot of their support from the unions. So less union membership = less dem trend. I'm not saying "do we really have to?" in the way wherein a whiny child does so on their toothbrushing or osmesuch (i'm not sure which inflection you're saying it with); I am aiming for an "is it actually necessary?" some things are in fact fine and are being worked on. There's representing what constituent want you to be working on, then there's actually solving the real problems they have. Also, maybe you have it the other way around, maybe some people stopped being democrat constitutents, so the dems don't cater to them as much. How do you know which way it is? Too bad people haven't learned that it's better to have leaders who actually work on and fix problems than blather on endlessly about inanities. It sorta feels to me like what the claims are is shifting, though that's probably from me not being clear on what you were driving it initially. Also, I'm not a dem, i'm a strongly democrat leaning independent. Why do you think union membership is down? People just got tired of having too much negotiating power and decided to work for less money and fewer benefits? Your causality is all messed up. And I'd like to know what you meant by unions are a sometimes "necessary evil." | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On December 07 2016 12:25 Sermokala wrote: Why not just advocate for a straight return to an absolute monarchy with a vested interest in taking feedback from people I mean, especially the US system was created with some tension in mind between the populace and the elected officials. They were supposed to make decisions on their own and 'tyranny of the masses' stuff was ironically a very real concern at the time but apparently isn't now, although the problems of democratic decision making really start piling up today. We don't need a monarchy but we do need a way to get some knowledge and moderation back into the system. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On December 07 2016 12:19 Nyxisto wrote: So you want to replace our existing democratic institutions with the Youtube comment section? I'd rather take a literal lizard people government. If anything we need to get the effects of social media under control and get some new checks and balances into the system, not make it even worse. A digital governance system where policy decision-making is open for discussion in a similar way that wikipedia articles are shaped. Adding likes/dislikes or comments/participating in the discussion would require you to use your Digital Citizen Identity (think: DigID). Politicians would essentially be full-time contributors to this wikipedia-esque legislative system and also act as moderators of any potential discussion (although perhaps one person can't hold multiple functions at the same time). They'd also, obviously, still be held responsible for the end result. What's wrong with the Wikipedia concept exactly? Is it not an incredibly valuable resource, despite all the criticisms that you can list? In the same way that you can criticize various things about democracy, capitalism, etc. The fact of the matter is that Wikipedia works, and it will work for legislation just as accurately. Whether that's better or worse, I don't know for sure, but I think it would be better than what we have going on now. You can mention YouTube comments or stuff like Twitter messages from 16 year olds, but I think the vast majority of that would easily be eliminated if you add in the Digital Citizen Identity (eg. DigID) as a requirement for participation. It would have to be built over the course of a decade, maybe, and possibly be part of a much larger digitalization of government. I imagine it could kick off on a county level where you can report stuff like loose street tiles, or maybe start a discussion on prostitution and find that you get a fair amount of likes if the discussion mentions the idea that they won't come out until after 9 PM or something. Turn it over to a state level-discussion and you can draft legislation around it in that wikipedia-esque manner where good ideas quickly rise to the top through upvotes or something. It's not like I'm capable of thinking out this whole thing all at once, and I hate thinking of examples in an attempt to make things clear because people tend to shit all over the crude examples that I can come up with. You talk about checks and balances in social media in order to not "make the effects of social media worse", but I'm not sure how you want to achieve that without something that might be labelled as (a mild form of) fascism. I think it would better to harness the power of it in a digitalized governance system and then apply checks and balances to that rather than try to enforce rules on social media at large. I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me not to use the (communication) power of the internet for this kind of collaborative thing (which is what government/drafting legislation is supposed to be, right?). But then again, at the risk of making people dismiss everything I just said, I am an anarchist at heart. Do people have other suggestions to remove the excessive influence that lobbyists hold over the decision-making of elected officials when it comes to drafting legislation? I'm thinking if everybody used this system (including the lobbyists), it would put the lobbyists on a more equal footing with "the people". On December 07 2016 12:25 Sermokala wrote: Why not just advocate for a straight return to an absolute monarchy with a vested interest in taking feedback from people Because that is an utterly ridiculous suggestion that holds no value or connection with reality whatsoever, while the internet and social media had a real impact on this election, and neither of them are going to go away any time soon. | ||
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biology]major
United States2253 Posts
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Sermokala
United States13754 Posts
On December 07 2016 13:02 a_flayer wrote: A digital governance system where policy decision-making is open for discussion in a similar way that wikipedia articles are shaped. Adding likes/dislikes or comments/participating in the discussion would require you to use your Digital Citizen Identity (think: DigID). Politicians would essentially be full-time contributors to this wikipedia-esque legislative system and also act as moderators of any potential discussion (although perhaps one person can't hold multiple functions at the same time). They'd also, obviously, still be held responsible for the end result. What's wrong with the Wikipedia concept exactly? Is it not an incredibly valuable resource, despite all the criticisms that you can list? In the same way that you can criticize various things about democracy, capitalism, etc. The fact of the matter is that Wikipedia works, and it will work for legislation just as accurately. Whether that's better or worse, I don't know for sure, but I think it would be better than what we have going on now. You can mention YouTube comments or stuff like Twitter messages from 16 year olds, but I think the vast majority of that would easily be eliminated if you add in the Digital Citizen Identity (eg. DigID) as a requirement for participation. It would have to be built over the course of a decade, maybe, and possibly be part of a much larger digitalization of government. I imagine it could kick off on a county level where you can report stuff like loose street tiles, or maybe start a discussion on prostitution and find that you get a fair amount of likes if the discussion mentions the idea that they won't come out until after 9 PM or something. Turn it over to a state level-discussion and you can draft legislation around it in that wikipedia-esque manner where good ideas quickly rise to the top through upvotes or something. It's not like I'm capable of thinking out this whole thing all at once, and I hate thinking of examples in an attempt to make things clear because people tend to shit all over the crude examples that I can come up with. You talk about checks and balances in social media in order to not "make the effects of social media worse", but I'm not sure how you want to achieve that without something that might be labelled as (a mild form of) fascism. I think it would better to harness the power of it in a digitalized governance system and then apply checks and balances to that rather than try to enforce rules on social media at large. I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me not to use the (communication) power of the internet for this kind of collaborative thing (which is what government/drafting legislation is supposed to be, right?). But then again, at the risk of making people dismiss everything I just said, I am an anarchist at heart. Do people have other suggestions to remove the excessive influence that lobbyists hold over the decision-making of elected officials when it comes to drafting legislation? I'm thinking if everybody used this system (including the lobbyists), it would put the lobbyists on a more equal footing with "the people". The scale of the conversations that you are proposing is beyond imagination. Reddit is absolute shit and wouldn't hold a candle to what you're seriously proposing and actually sounds a lot more like what you're proposing then wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't a real discussion engine its a handful of people doing the work of angels for no determinable reason other then to help inform humanity. How many people do you really think like that exist? I mean think about guns or abortion, then push in populist misinformation and see the sea of mud you find yourself in. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On December 07 2016 13:57 Sermokala wrote: The scale of the conversations that you are proposing is beyond imagination. Reddit is absolute shit and wouldn't hold a candle to what you're seriously proposing and actually sounds a lot more like what you're proposing then wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't a real discussion engine its a handful of people doing the work of angels for no determinable reason other then to help inform humanity. How many people do you really think like that exist? I mean think about guns or abortion, then push in populist misinformation and see the sea of mud you find yourself in. I tried to put in something in that regard by mentioning a "local level" such as counties and states, but it was poorly written/thought out. There would probably have be some restructuring in terms of what is decided where and how things are decided when it comes to drafting legislation at a national evel. The majority of actual conversations, I imagine, would be held at a county level, with the elected officials at that level deducing public opinion for legislation at a state level. And also, the vast, vast majority of people would never contribute more than a like or dislike. I mean, really, only half of the people bothered to vote at all this election. What I'm looking for with this system is to essentially help build up democracy from the bottom up rather than top down. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
It has its ups and downs, basically. Not saintly, not terrible. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On December 07 2016 14:03 Nevuk wrote: Also, Wikipedia has massive political issues and motivations behind a lot of the editors. (Not talking just about them making personal fiefdoms out of some pages). It's basically the last place I'd look to for inspiration in governance. Aside from reddit. What, and our currently elected politicians don't have political motivations? I don't understand the problem with that compared to the current way of working. And if you add the likes/dislikes from the public at large on specific sections, that could possibly help to eliminate some of the bias of people who are actively editing. And, only slightly related to your point, how about this regarding using direct feedback from the public to make decisions: do we think that SC2 gameplay was improved or worsened after Blizzard started taking more feedback? So far, everyone is just listing the problems that are obvious and quite frankly exist in basically every system I know that uses humans to operate. Anyway, I see this as an eventual inevitability. I am fairly certain we will begin to use the internet to increase the directness of our democracy in the future (like, 20-30 years from now). We already can't go around the fact that internet/social media/sharing/upvoting helped decide this election, so in 4 years time, the democrats will be looking to do the same. I say, we make it a structured and sane institution out of it rather than just the randomness and stupidity of Facebook and Twitter. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On December 07 2016 14:07 a_flayer wrote: What, and our currently elected politicians don't have political motivations? I don't understand the problem with that compared to the current way of working. And, only slightly related to your point, how about this regarding using direct feedback from the public to make decisions: do we think that SC2 gameplay was improved or worsened after Blizzard started taking more feedback? Definitely worsened. If people still think macro mechanics were a good idea overall, I have a bridge to sell them. Not saying they were worse for everyone, just that they were a definite impediment to the overall viability of the game on a longer time line. That's waaay off topic though. Of course our politicians have them. The issue isn't that wikipedia is political (any information repository will be), it's that the politics are systemically ingrained into its system - and its system makes them worse than would be expected. You'd basically be trading lobbyists for an extreme hierarchical system. I'll take the lobbyists. (Reddit would be trading lobbyists for a literal mob). The US system can definitely be improved upon, but it's basically "decent enough" to make extreme change unappealing. And even if it were, there are thousands of better systems to try out before getting wikipedia or reddit involved at any point. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On December 07 2016 14:13 Nevuk wrote: Definitely worsened. If people still think macro mechanics were a good idea overall, I have a bridge to sell them. Not saying they were worse for everyone, just that they were a definite impediment to the overall viability of the game on a longer time line. That's waaay off topic though. Of course our politicians have them. The issue isn't that wikipedia is political (any information repository will be), it's that the politics are systemically ingrained into its system - and its system makes them worse than would be expected. You'd basically be trading lobbyists for an extreme hierarchical system. I'll take the lobbyists. (Reddit would be trading lobbyists for a literal mob). The US system can definitely be improved upon, but it's basically "decent enough" to make extreme change unappealing. And even if it were, there are thousands of better systems to try out before getting wikipedia or reddit involved at any point. + Show Spoiler + Regarding SC2: I think the problems you are describing are not the result of the more recent line of feedback but rather of the original faulty design. Probably shouldn't have mentioned the game at all though, so I'll leave it at this. I did say "Wikipedia-esque", remember? I mean... the way I'm reading your post is that you are suggesting I meant we take over the wikipedia system 1 on 1 and then just leave it as it is. That'd be ridiculous and quite frankly an example of small-minded thinking, in my opinion. The level of collaboration that wikis make possible is essentially what I want to copy into the governmental system of drafting legislation. And, again, elected officials would be the ones who are moderating the thing, not some random group of people. Could you please name a couple out of the thousands of systems you are talking about, other than our current democracy, that is better in utilizing collaboration to achieve useful results like Wikipedia does, or even something that makes it clear X is more popular than Y when it comes to reddit-esque upvoting/downvoting? I would like to look into those to see if I can incorporate them into my line of thinking on this issue. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On December 07 2016 14:27 a_flayer wrote: + Show Spoiler + Regarding SC2: I think the problems you are describing are not the result of the more recent line of feedback but rather of the original faulty design. Probably shouldn't have mentioned the game at all though, so I'll leave it at this. I did say "Wikipedia-esque", remember? I mean... the way I'm reading your post is that you are suggesting I meant we take over the wikipedia system 1 on 1 and then just leave it as it is. That'd be ridiculous and quite frankly an example of small-minded thinking, in my opinion. The level of collaboration that wikis make possible is essentially what I want to copy into the governmental system of drafting legislation. And, again, elected officials would be the ones who are moderating the thing, not some random group of people. Could you please name a couple out of the thousands of systems you are talking about, other than our current democracy, that is better in utilizing collaboration to achieve useful results like Wikipedia does, or even something that makes it clear X is more popular than Y when it comes to reddit-esque upvoting/downvoting? I would like to look into those to see if I can incorporate them into my line of thinking on this issue. Specifically I was thinking of polity or republics. Theres been a great deal of examination done into the theoreticals of politics in philosophy, starting from plato on. Western political systems are all based on a backlash to pure Athenian democracy because of the republic and the execution of Socrates.. That's why a wikipedia-esque system sounds fairly absurd. Direct democracy is great for small populations, but it rapidly goes to shit once you reach a fairly low population by any standards. Others who are more recently read on the matter may be able to provide a more definitive list, but generally actual pure democracy is viewed as possibly the absolute worst form of government. Only a malevolent tyrant comes close to it (and even then a member of the minority is likely to be better off). If what you were suggesting was merely a wikipedia or Reddit esque system to give comments to the government on an official platform, it isn't a terrible idea in theory, but in practice you'll get white supremacists constantly suggesting genocide and other insane things. And whoever is running the platform will likely get blamed for that. C-SPAN taking phone calls is probably the best compromise on the matter. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On December 07 2016 15:18 Nevuk wrote: Specifically I was thinking of polity or republics. Theres been a great deal of examination done into the theoreticals of politics in philosophy, starting from plato on. Western political systems are all based on a backlash to pure Athenian democracy because of the republic and the execution of Socrates.. That's why a wikipedia-esque system sounds fairly absurd. Direct democracy is great for small populations, but it rapidly goes to shit once you reach a fairly low population by any standards. Ah yes, I remember reading about how the ancient Greeks failed to utilize the internet and social media appropriately to run their democracy.  (the point here is that technology changes and society/democracy should change with it)In all seriousness, this is where the focus on local communities (counties, and individual states) that I'd mentioned would come in. It would reduce the amount of population involved in the "direct democracy" and bring decision making closer to home. Also, it's not really a direct democracy in the sense that everything is put through a nation-wide or even state or, for that matter, county-wide vote. I feel a new name ought to be warranted for the full implementation, so maybe "digital democracy" or something would be a more apt description. On December 07 2016 15:18 Nevuk wrote: If what you were suggesting was merely a wikipedia or Reddit esque system to give comments to the government on an official platform, it isn't a terrible idea in theory, but in practice you'll get white supremacists constantly suggesting genocide and other insane things. And whoever is running the platform will likely get blamed for that. C-SPAN taking phone calls is probably the best compromise on the matter. I feel like you are meeting me about 1/10th of the way to what I am saying. A mere commentary system would perhaps be the first step in implementing what I am trying to depict. At the risk of doing what I accuse others of doing: I think your idea of suggesting that white supremacists would be dominating the conversation is absolutely absurd. Wikipedia isn't completely dominated by false information either. It might not be perfectly pristine and flawless information, but it is definitely not dominated by nonsense (which is essentially what 'people suggesting genocide' is). And C-SPAN taking phone calls sounds like something that was thought of to be "too new" and "unwieldy" in the 1950s or something (nevermind that it probably wasn't around back then). We're living in 2016, for crying out loud. Phone calls? Really? That's your idea of improving the processes of democratic governing? I don't understand how you can be so content with the current systems that your suggestion for improving them is C-SPAN taking phone calls. Just, wow. As the quote goes: "Sides in the voting game disappear into the same machine." I say it's about time we overhaul the machine. Phone calls aren't going to do that. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
It kind of works because there are no other interests than egos in line and because it's all towards a goal that most of the participants share. Us institutions are very good, or rather would be very good if there were safety nets to keep big interests out of washington. That works in France, in Germany, in Scandinavia. In those countries, the press is regulated, the parties and campaigns are financed by public funds proportional to your previous results, and in general people have an idea of the common good and a certain aspiration to equality. None of that will be happening in the us ever, though. | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
I actually hate the lack of neutral press. Very little press these days just report facts straight up, there's always a left-wing or right-wing spin. It's hard to stay informed without getting news from biased sources. True journalism and editorialized pieces are very mingled, too much if you ask me. | ||
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sharkie
Austria18311 Posts
On December 07 2016 18:49 Incognoto wrote: Regulated press receiving public funds just means that the press is going to be very pro-government. I actually hate the lack of neutral press. Very little press these days just report facts straight up, there's always a left-wing or right-wing spin. It's hard to stay informed without getting news from biased sources. True journalism and editorialized pieces are very mingled, too much if you ask me. Yeah I think that is one of the biggest problems. There is no neutral press. I'd love to just read what is happening around the world or in my country no matter how, who or what. No bias, nothing just facts | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10605 Posts
I doubt this is "better" then being a bit biased towards the goverment. The Press did never report facts straight up, i don't know where this idea comes from. Its not even its Job. Why would you need journalists if all you want to read is a fact sheet? They shouldn't spread missinformation and stay with the "truth", but interpreting the facts is their Job. | ||
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Furikawari
France2522 Posts
Remember, a lot of things look great in theory but never work when applied to humanity. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
On December 07 2016 18:49 Incognoto wrote: Regulated press receiving public funds just means that the press is going to be very pro-government. I actually hate the lack of neutral press. Very little press these days just report facts straight up, there's always a left-wing or right-wing spin. It's hard to stay informed without getting news from biased sources. True journalism and editorialized pieces are very mingled, too much if you ask me. Regulated press doesn't mean to be relying on public fundings. Regulated means there are some rules. You make laws to insure that the press can be independent and doesn't start to do stupid shit. Wondered why the french press doesn't do what the english press does, like publishing photos of possible "pedophiles" with their names addresss and a big title saying "HANG THEM ALL"? Regulation, namely the csa. The csa (and french regulations) is an example of how you can have a high quality press that is diverse and well regulated. And don't tell me french press is pro government. It's not. And although it belongs to powerful interests, many serious papers, in particular Le Monde and Liberation have agreements that are planned by the law that makes sure shareholders can't interfeer with their content. That works too, Liberation doesn't reflect Rotschild's opinions whatsoever. | ||
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