When I lived in Texas, the responses I got from my representatives were comically evil. Straight up bond villain.
This guy and my former Arizona senator must have gone to the same school. During the campaign, we listened to a PBS feature of this future senator and family from their kitchen, a happy working middle class setting, discussing their views. He was strongly against bailouts he said, and within 4 months after getting elected he voted just the opposite. The public seldom hears these in our media.
I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider:
1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists with deep pockets? Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad (and this applies to any issue, not just NN).
2. To further the above point, the wisdom of the crowd is a robust phenomenon whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter, probably for exactly the reasons I explained above. However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent. Lobbying destroys this property. If you look up the "wisdom of the crowds", lobbying encourages homogeneity, centralization, imitation, and emotionality.
Why?
> However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly
By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right? This does not require any technical knowledge.
> so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour.
You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.
> What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists
Depends on how biased it is. If it's biased in favor of NN, the ratio would be something different than if it's biased against NN.
> Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad
Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. The point of representative government is that it is a focus point of an effort to figure out the right thing to do, and that all participants at least kinda trying to do it. If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.
> whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter,
I agree, having elections makes more sense than having a King.
> However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent.
Nobody is truly independent in a modern society. Not even a King - historically, there were lots of weak monarchs manipulated by their courts and seconds in command. Neither a person living in a modern society. Of course people influence other people. And this can produce negative effects like groupthink and mass panics. So what's your suggestion - ban talking about politics? Mind-wiping congressmen before voting?
I mean in the interests of their constituents.
> You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.
I imply nothing of the sort, but the majority of people certainly favour NN.
> Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. [...] If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.
Except it's not random, as I explained.
Constituents have different interests. Sometimes diametrically different.
> but the majority of people certainly favour NN.
The majority of the people favor a vague description of NN in the form of "do you want to access sites for free". The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018. It's fine to favor this specific regulation, but claiming "the majority supports it" as an argument is bullshit, the majority has no idea what it is about. It's like asking people "would you like to be murdered?" and presenting the results as support for specific crime reform or gun control proposal. This can't be taken seriously.
> Except it's not random, as I explained.
You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN, if only those pesky lobbyists didn't meddle. It is an unsupported statement based on fallacious premises and so far the only factual support is the abovementioned unserious polls. Not enough by far.
Please point to all the polls or surveys that framed the question this way.
> The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018.
And the same can be said for our elected representatives who, on the whole, are just as technologically illiterate as these other citizens you seem to disdain so much.
> You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN
Really? Please quote the exact text where I made that claim.
Furthermore, that explanation is completely immaterial to the point I was responding to, which was about your claim of randomized bill voting. I suggest you reread this thread.
I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).
Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall.
Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests.
The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.
So the options are either
1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast
2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcast's lobbyist only. A person elected into one of the highest positions in the US is too incompetent to do their own research.
https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165
Example: https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html
There will certainly be attempts to end-run the disclosure, but in principle it's a regulated industry.
Edit: also we could call in votes like it's American Idol. I think we should try it, it couldn't be worse than what we have now
Every democracies problems. The problem with lobbies is that they allow "deeper pockets" to have "more influence", which is exactly what democracies should prevent. Thus big lobbies (especially the corporate funded ones, which ar by far teh larger part) are undermining the democratic process.
We see the results of this all over the world.
[Regarding Obama Administration]
"Then there was the 'fairness doctrine,' designed to limit opposing voices in radio and on television; 'net neutrality,' which promised to regulate the Internet so as to prevent, ultimately, individuals from frequenting Web sites that might disagree with an administration;"
- Larry Schweikart (What Would the Founders Say?)
[Endorsed by Glenn Beck and read by Tea Party supporters all over.]
I think if you just give them the correct definition of Net Neutrality and explain how it works and why they would be for it. But people frequently leave out the "how it works and why" part of an argument so it just defaults to polarized scream matches. If people took the time to explain things to people, IE: "speak truth to stupid", we would be much better off.
To be fair, Larry Schweikart is incredibly intelligent and well read on history.
"Mr 'Buckley' - well-spoken, intelligent, curious - had heard virtually nothing of modern science. He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It’s just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, our educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretence and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works."
- Carl Sagan (Demon Haunted World)
But at some point they'll spend an hour or so voting, and at that point your "priorities" doesn't factor in anymore, as you should just represent your constituents. Unless you have an incredibly good reason not to. "Different priorities" isn't one, it's straight up misdirection.
Who said they don't? We just heard from one person so far, which disagreed with the elected representative's priorities. Since they are still elected, clearly many people do agree with their priorities. Presenting this - completely routine and normal - policy disagreement as "straight up bond villain" implies that there is only one constituent that matters and only one order of priorities that is legitimate, and any disagreement is not just difference in opinion, but supreme villainy. By a weird coincidence it turns out the only legitimate priorities are exactly the ones of the author of the comment, what are the chances!
Polling says they don't. [1]
> Since they are still elected, clearly many people do agree with their priorities.
That's not accurate. Since they are still elected, clearly enough people agree with enough of their priorities (or perceived priorities). That's not to say that they couldn't better represent their voters, when that representation is clear.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/12...
Thank you for contacting me regarding net neutrality.
As you know, in 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established rules to regulate the Internet. The FCC claimed it could regulate the Internet under the authority of its traditional telephone regulations developed during the monopoly-era. A DC Circuit Court recently struck down certain parts of these rules and decided the FCC does not have jurisdiction over broadband providers to implement regulations in this manner.
The Internet should certainly be free and open to those who legally provide content to consumers. This principle does not necessitate additional government regulation, particularly given the innovative and highly competitive broadband marketplace. Attempts to preemptively implement industry-wide regulations may inadvertently harm consumers by stifling competition and innovation. As a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, I intend to remain fully engaged on this issue to ensure the rules governing broadband service providers maintain the flexibility needed to evolve as rapidly as the technology they provide.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to continuing our conversation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SenatorBlunt) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RoyBlunt) about the important issues facing Missouri and the country. I also encourage you to visit my website (blunt.senate.gov) to learn more about where I stand on the issues and sign-up for my e-newsletter.
Sincere regards,
Roy Blunt United States Senator
Lucky you. Here we don't have elections that matter because thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering, the outcome (along party lines) is well established.
All that means is that the general election doesn't matter, and so you need to move your vote to whatever comes before the general election in your district to make it matter.
1. Register for the party that the redistricting and gerrymandering favors.
2. Vote in that party's primaries or participate in their caucuses to support candidates who are closer to center.
Some will object that step #1 is dishonest. I might agree in districts where the district boundaries are actually sensible based on economics and other demographics factors other than party. In districts where one party has redrawn the boundaries to give itself a major structural advantage, they have stolen your vote. Joining their party is simply taking it back. If they do not like that, then they can fix the district boundaries.
That is to say, game the system by looking at the rules and vote for someone you don't actually believe in. (In the primary.) Whether or not that rises to the level of being dishonest is up to you to decide.
(The "new" rules are that the "less likely to win" candidate may be harder to determine in the current political climate.)
If you’re in a caucus state, that process might be different; I’m not sure.
Of course, nothing prevents you from being a member of whatever party you want, though there are sometimes laws prohibiting when you can change your registration. Oftentimes, you're prohibited from changing your registered party affiliation within a month or so of the primaries.
What it affects is which parties' primaries you can vote in.
You can vote however you want in official elections.
We really need Ranked Choice Voting, I really think these polls affect the actual vote tallies at the end of the day.
If there is a wave election in November, gerrymandering backfires and ends up losing you more seats than you hope to gain through it. You pack the districts so that you win with 55% to 45%, except for a district here or there which will go 10% to 90%.
In a wave election, it only takes a shift of 5-6% in those gerrymandered districts for them to be lost.
In practice, heavily-gerrymandered districts rarely swing parties, and when they do, they almost always swing back.
Imo one of the biggest problems with our current system (single winner FPTP) is it results in two parties, with various side effects such as extremist candidates in primaries, complete lack of representation for minority voters, and gerrymandered districts. Moving towards better systems would help a great deal.
If things go well, that can be an example for the rest of the country. More states should follow the Maine example!
However, I'm still not all too sure whether Net Neutrality is worth promising support to existing Republicans. There are so many other issues on the table this election cycle and they next Congress is likely to be as, or more, supportive on this.
Putting it on paper is valuable. It clarifies your thoughts. And it makes it clear how draconian these red lines are. (I constantly re-evaluate them, with the goal of talking myself out of them.)
Enough people make such a list, change happens.
And yes, voters cold-calling senators is an incredibly unreliable way to know who cares about what. I am astounded that it is still that efficient. I guess many candidates haven't figured yet that a lot of people can lie.
Personally I wouldn't say "I will vote for you if you do X or Y". Given the current political climate, I would present myself as a republican voter who has doubts "and really, this net neutrality things really makes it hard for me. I don't really see why I should go vote for either side now."
They wont believe someone who pretends they can switch on a single issue but their current fear is that their base won't come on election day.
It's not a one way street, and never has been. Of course, neither is the disregard of what people say that isn't the supported by concrete, substantive action that it engenders.
Off the top of my head I can’t name another issue that has support by majorties of both parties. This is an issue that is most likely to gain sympathy of Republican senators and most likely to result in an instance of the peoples' interest outwaying corporate interests.
Instead of encouragement we have jaquesm here to let us know that you follow American politics pretty closely and we should all concentrate on something else. I do not subscribe to your patronizing attitude.
Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral. People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.
The author of the comment you call patronizing made no statement on whether or not he's happy that people are involved in the political process. I know I'm happy about it, but I also think single issue voting on net neutrality is stupid. These views are not linked.
In summary, net neutrality is important but there are more important issues in America at the moment. It's not patronizing to point that out.
It’s not a big issue for me but I can see why it is for others. People need to get involved and active. I’m not going to discourage anyone from doing this.
There is always a more important issue on the horizon. There’s always some cause that is more important. We don’t all get up in arms over the same things. To me climate change is the most important issue facing humans. I’ll advocate this position but my arrogance is not so great as to belittle someone else's pet cause.
So I’m not going to tell you that health care policy is a stupid issue to get energized about when the climate is changing.
If someone was going to vote on the single issue of whether or not we should make it illegal to have more than 17,000,000 butterflies in a room smaller than 100'x100' I would have no problem telling them that their pet issue is stupid and there are other things they should care about more.
I don't see why that principle shouldn't hold for other issues. Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.
If we elect a government who reinstates net neutrality and proceeds to immediately launch a nuclear missile at Moscow, will the 20 minutes that half of the US population got to enjoy net neutrality matter?
Thank you for definitively letting me know that
Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.
Your argument has been convincing. Convincing enough that I'll be sure to consult you on other issues in the penumbra of the hierarchy of human concerns to see if they merit being single voter issue. Perhaps you can make a flier for those of us not in the know.
> Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you.
This argument seems to have finished on the wrong point.
It isn't that net neutrality or any other issues have more or less value (although they intrinsically do -- that's for the individual to decide). Instead it's that single issue voting is severely short-sighted since the very same politician may support several other policies contradicting your own well-being.
Yes the example above is extreme but this is what it attempts to convey.
Yes, it's not true because what you said is wrong. All a single issue voter has said is that single issue determines their vote. They doesn't say that's the only thing "we" should be concerned about. They don't even say that's the only thing they're concerned about.
Voting is not some kind of distilled expression of pure belief or priorities, it's a practical action subject to tactics, strategy, and trade-offs.
Yes, and people are going to die based on our self-driving car policies, our affordable housing policies, our food subsidy policies, our energy policies, our alcohol policies, our gambling policies, our foreign aid policies, etc.
The crippling of the Internet via poor net policies could hamper technologies that ultimately would have saved billions.
You are presumptuous to claim your issues are more important than any of these others.
We know that some people without access to medical care will die. You're saying it's okay to gamble those people's lives on the chance that future lives might be saved. Obviously a balance between spending on research and health care must be struck so this isn't a black and white issue but you would need to put forth a pretty convincing argument that a lack of net neutrality would prevent us from saving billions for me to buy that.
For the record, I do not support single issue voting at all. There is no issue that outweighs the others.
I also think the idea that someone who was going to vote based on a single issue would choose something as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.
This happens every time a double-blind medical trial takes place.
> as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.
Trivial to you.
>is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.
If immediacy of life is the sole thing driving your decision behavior, you should quit your job and go help people in developing nations. Some people need to do this. But others also need to focus on longer-term things that promote a better economy that leads to new technologies and surpluses to advance the quality of human life.
That actually sounds like an argument for allowing patients the option of a "fast lane" to their hospital for telemedicine and monitoring with higher priority than Netflix and YouTube.
Probably not very many as a first-order effect, no.
> People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.
And a narrow range of corporations with a fairly tight alignment on policy preferences controlling media access affects long term ability of the public to understand thode issues, organize efforts around them, and achieve positive results.
Which is why a lot wide-view activist organizations that aren't particularly focussed on tech issues have made it a priority, when they do normally focus on the issues you have concerns about make it a priority.
Every issue in the US is one of tremendous privilege. Recognizing that doesn't change anything.
Single issue voters make policy, and this is a case where the small weight of my vote could tip a scale and actually accomplish something.
Plus, I hate our current state of extreme polarization, and I value politicians who have the independence to go against their party. If he'll do that, it's another aspect I'd like to reward.
IMO absolutist stances like this miss the entire point of politics which is to strike compromise in the face of disperate ideologies. Sure the two party system is broken, but the way to make progress is to focus on relevant issues one at a time instead of the entire platform.
The OP is suggesting that he wants to use his vote to encourage a Republican to do the right thing on a very narrow issue. The parent is effectively saying this focuses on a single tree instead of the entire forest. In a two-party system you are effectively voting for the entire platform and not for a single issue, so I have no idea why you consider his critique absolutist.
No, the implication was that you should maximize your agreement with one of the platforms available (two here). One issue voting most likely doesn't do that.
You then treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "not perfectly aligned".
Your followup treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "don't agree with everything".
We might agree on some things, but we clearly do not agree about what jacquesm was saying, because I think the original comment was fine.
I understand that some people will choose to minimize negatives while some will choose to advocate for positives when stepping up to the poll. We all agree on this idea and this has nothing to do with whether one person diesagrees with or isn't fully aligned with a platform. (This is where I'm losing your argument which seems to be harping on this idea.)
My meta commentary is that viewing the other side's policies (_some_) as reprehensible distracts from the politics and pushes people towards the minimizing negatives game because it inflates the impact of negatives because of the association of blame that comes with a term like reprehensible. "If you are republican and vote for their reprehensible platform then you are to blame." Now it's not just about disagreement, it's about social justice. And for that reason I prefer, of late, when people focus on advocating for positive change rather than voting against negative change. That is where the semantics do come in.
A response to this point would involve asserting that their policies are indeed reprehensible and we should treat the entire platform in such a way.
Strawman.
I'm not sure what other conclusion someone is supposed to draw. That's how the stereotype you used works. I'm not republican, I don't care. But I do know republicans and I know that calling the platform reprehensible isn't helping anything or changing any minds.
I can excuse it if you were only intending to present an academic example supporting your general point about single issue voting in a two party system. I often do the same and have fallen into the same trap before. But if that was your intention it was lost one me. Maybe work on slightly more finessed phasing to avoid the downvotes in the future?
Everyone in America faces this dilemma, it's the problem with our two party system.
* Two parties
* Candidates to choose from in those parties with slightly different platforms trying to capture appeal based on big-ticket trending issues
* No one person you could possibly agree with on all things unless you are voting for a hardliner and blindly drink the party koolaid
So I mean really, if your vote is all you can offer and you have no hope of getting someone from your preferred party elected, the next best thing is to try to support your preferred candidate.
I mean, so there are two games going on here. The biggest lie is that politicians have convinced the public that they are in the same fight to get their party in control. Except really you have:
* Politicians trying to get their party in control and stay elected
* Citizens trying to get things they care about addressed, improved, whatev
It's the whole "We won't vote for Hillary 'cause Democrats even though we don't like Trump" problem, but it goes both ways..
1) I'm going to vote in November,
2) I will vote for him if he votes to keep the pre-existing title II net neutrality regulations, and against them if he does not, and
3) Net neutrality is even supported by a majority of Republican voters [1], so if he votes against it's clear he's voting against his constituents.
[1] http://www.publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming...