> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

According to who? I understand that this is a kind of framing used here often, but the federal government has been concerned primarily with itself for a long time now at least to my eyes.

According to ground realities. In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

So if you want to be the one politician that values non-citizens’ rights over citizens’ rights, good luck getting re-elected.

Or you could set up an autocracy and try to manage this anyway. For further reading, I recommend the book The Dictator’s Handbook or CGP Greg’s 20 minute summary of it.

ground realities are that, for example, flint michigan barely has clean water after seven years.

if you are claiming the usa is not a well functioning representative democracy, i agree.

Obviously the Flint water crisis is a tragedy and an embarrassment, and I can understand how the issue might cause you to question the competence of the local leadership, but in what way is it an indictment of the functionality of America's representative democracy?

>in what way is it an indictment of the functionality of America's representative democracy?

To a certain extent, I can see it as a case study against the functionality of representative democracy.

One one hand, elected leaders were fiscally irresponsible enough to enact policies that bankrupted the administration leading to a change to the water supply to save money. If I were playing devil's advocate, this could be seen as representative democracy incentivizing short-term political thinking leading to this outcome. E.g., it's easier to get elected on promises that benefit voters while ignoring harsh realities of how those promises will be paid for.

On the other hand, the decisions that led directly to the water crises were made by emergency managers appointed by the governor. This means non-elected officials overruled elected officials. Playing devil's advocate here can lead one to believe the displacement of elected officials is an indictment of the functionality of the system to truly be able to select those who govern the constituency.

it's just one example of many of huge swaths of people in this country not being treated in the way they they would be treated if they were in a well functioning representative democracy.

see if:

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

and "half of this country is a very small bill from crisis for their entire lives, people do things like describing the insurance agent as the most traumatizing part of the bear attack they survived" are both true, in what way can it be considered well functioning?

>don’t represent their interests

Can you put a finer point on what you mean by "their interests"? Is this relegated to just economic interests?

If it extends beyond economics, I see no reason why those two statements can't coexist. For example, I can vote against my own economic interest if I vote for higher taxes that I don't directly benefit from on the grounds that I want to support a more equitable society. Or I can vote against government run healthcare that I may also benefit from if I don't think that is the role of government. Both can be examples of voting against my economic interests to reflect my moral interests.

food, water, shelter, and healthcare are universal human interests. it's fine for you to believe the government shouldn't have a hand in them, but then in my view you are simply not in favor of what has been defined in this thread as a "healthy representative democracy"

you could argue that it's not your fault if lots of people don't vote so they get what they get, but you would be oversimplifying things for a HUGE section of the populace who don't vote because they have no one to represent their interests, where their interests are not starving or getting thrown on the street or being in debt for years and years because they slipped on the ice. these people not only do not have a meaningful way to vote, they also often do not have the time or energy to engage in local politics or trying to massage the system. they are currently risking their lives at metaphorical gunpoint every day to deliver "essential" services. minus the pandemic, it's been this way for a long time.

This:

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

and this

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

do not describe this country, even if you assert that only those who vote are represented. There's zero accountability to the people, the gaps are too large for people who do represent our interests to get through the door (and when they come close the rules tend to change suddenly) Something being against the rules has never stopped someone from doing it if they really wanted to when they are the enforcers or writers of the rules.

if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you. i have no intention on acting in your interests. politics is a crooked game, and ours is a particularly easy one to fix.

and what of the rest of the citizens who didn't vote because they risk losing their job or because of a million other reasons? are they not still citizens? most of them didn't choose to be, and regardless of whether that gives them some sort of moral obligation to participate to their best in the politics of their situation it does not remove their need for food, water, shelter, and healthcare which has been an increasingly difficult need to meet with essentially zero assistance from the system that is supposed to represent them.

to me it seems a lot like the conclusion is either that they are simply lesser for whatever reason and too bad for them or that the institution is just insisting on itself the way that institutions tend to do when they've been around long enough, and maybe a lot of people are actually very out of touch with what it is like to live in america for about half of our populace.

There's a lot here, so I'll try to summarize your point and you can tell me if I'm off.

>food, water, shelter, and healthcare are universal human interests.

I'm assuming you mean this is in the governments purview as part of promoting the general welfare clause. While I would agree, I can also understand those who do not because they take a more Jeffersonian view that the point of the government is to protect individual rights. At times, I can see where promoting general welfare and protecting individual rights can be at odds. I didn't see that specific definition of "healthy representative democracy" so it's may be too broad a reach (or I may have just missed it within the thread).

>if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you.

This feels like a contradiction to the previous point that "voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.". Maybe a lying politician gets to do this once, but after that it's the populace's job to hold them accountable. The people have a responsibility in a democracy as well. I agree it's not easy and opportunists will try to rig the system. Being difficult doesn't absolve us of the responsibility. I get the impression we fundamentally disagree that there's "zero accountability to the people". I think there is, but people may just not have the fortitude to do it for a variety of reasons. In many ways, I think the adage of "People get the government they deserve" is true. If you want to tolerate rigged systems or lying politicians, or don't want to get actively engaged, what kind of system do you think you deserve?

you're off by a little bit.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

part of what i'm saying is that if these statements are true, then we are not in a functioning representative democracy.

>if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you.

>This feels like a contradiction to the previous point that

correct. it is an argument against it.

> Maybe a lying politician gets to do this once, but after that it's the populace's job to hold them accountable. The people have a responsibility in a democracy as well. I agree it's not easy and opportunists will try to rig the system. Being difficult doesn't absolve us of the responsibility.

regardless of whether or not i agree that in "the way its supposed to work" this is the case, it's been a lot more than once and for a lot longer than a little bit of time. longer than i've been alive.

with what time, resources, or authority are you suggesting the populace hold them accountable with? don't answer that just yet.

> I get the impression we fundamentally disagree that there's "zero accountability to the people". I think there is, but people may just not have the fortitude to do it for a variety of reasons.

We don't disagree in the sense you are talking about, technically. Zero accountability that the accountable will accept as valid though.

If i am born into a life with zero political agency and a constant threat of not having food or shelter in a populace that is largely entirely alienated not only from their peers but from also what they produce and consume how is that me getting what i deserve? In what way do you expect the hypothetical me to be organized or able to organize? How successful do you think someone like that could be at doing what you are suggesting when they don't have more than a $400 buffer and no supply chain?

> In many ways, I think the adage of "People get the government they deserve" is true.

I don't think the adage you're referring to is true at all; on the contrary I think that the responses you are speaking of simply take a long time to bubble up into enough of the populace to make them inevitable. Once that threshold is crossed you may as well swap the adage around. The structures and superstructures of societal organization are things that exist prior to you, it's natural for them to be baked into assumptions of "just how things are".

> If you want to tolerate rigged systems or lying politicians, or don't want to get actively engaged, what kind of system do you think you deserve?

I don't think that inaction in face of miserable conditions that have been part of your experience of reality since day one makes someone "deserve" those conditions. It just makes them someone living in the reality they've been presented with. Engagement however, of all sorts, has been rising

>If i am born into a life with zero political agency

Genuinely curious, what would you cite as evidence of "zero political agency"? If it's the de facto sense of it being prohibitively hard for one person/group than another as you allude to in your previous posts, this is a very different thing than zero agency. Again, I think it's dangerous to conflate hard with impossible.

The $400 buffer hurdle is a loaded topic that would be difficult to get into without being drawn into more walls of text, but I think this is often an artifact of poorly aligned priorities and choices. I actually tend think the counter is true; lower economic strata tend to have more free time than higher strata, etc. But I'm afraid this would turn into a long digression to get into.

I can agree that a government deserves it's constituency. However, I think can be true without negating the previous statement about a populace deserving it's government as well. It's hard to be both an advocate for empowerment while also absolving oneself of responsibility.

I do appreciate you taking the time to elaborate, but a common thread seems to be an almost infantilizing of a constituency. While I can empathize with the marginalized, I don't think it does any pragmatic good if it just stops at hand-wringing. If we resign ourselves to a lack of agency, ironically it's a good way to guarantee not to get it. It's a personal viewpoint, but I think those who will take ownership of these problems are in a much better position to affect change than those who constantly say it's out of their control.

I spent a decade homeless in appalachia and the general midwest for a decade, and another largely below the poverty line. I'm fine with citing my life and the lives of everyone I knew for the amount of political agency that was present in our lives.

I would not describe that period of my life as having more "free time" but I can understand how that may look the case.

I agree with you in spirit in some ways here and I do not believe in absolution of responsibility. Material conditions, however, often skew the will in ways rather extreme, possibility is not probability and it's a fool that eats shit after watching 20 people take a bite of a cake and realize it's shit.

>I would not describe that period of my life as having more "free time" but I can understand how that may look the case.

It’s more than just perception. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, but The Meritocracy Trap gives the actual stats. Obviously, the higher strata have an abundance of other resources (chiefly money, by definition) but not free time because of the competitive nature of maintaining within that economic level.

I do think that the middle class is attainable for most as long as they do a few essentially things, like graduating high school, avoiding massive debt, avoiding addictions, and avoiding becoming a parent before financially secure. I also believe we should, as a society, help those who are disadvantaged by things outside their control. However, there will always be consequences for life choices and some of those can’t be completed mitigated.

I didn’t grow up with money but I also eventually learned comparison is the thief of joy

uh because presumably if you ask people if they want safe water, they say yes, and yet ...

if Flint isn't an indictment of US democracy, what would be?

Sanctioned government violence against its citizens by the police comes to mind. Weak environmental policies that are leading to things like wildfires on the west coast. The president* making his Dex fueled escape from Walter Reed and immediately taking off his mask telling people to not worry about COVID. The same president* profiteering off the presidency and 40% of the country unquestioningly supporting it. The same 40% refusing to wear masks in public because somehow being a spoiled brat is patriotic.

This is what I imagine the Roman Empire felt like right before it collapsed on itself. The US has grown too big and too spoiled and is ripping at the seams.

Can you give me an example of the kind of “weak environmental policy” you are talking about? One which would lead to more wildfires on the west coast? Because the only policy I know of that leads to more wildfires, is the 20th century mistake of putting them out, which led to runaway undergrowth leading to hotter fires, such that trees were destroyed that would normally survive. The policy that best protects the environment long term is to let the fires burn. So again, what is the strong environmental policy you are envisioning that would prevent wildfires?

Several. Pulling out of the Paris climate accords is one such policy. Prohibition on further nuclear power plant building. Policy of subsidies for coal power plants. Current policies regarding vehicle efficiency requirements that amongst other things let you classify your 8 mpg SUV or pickup that you drive all by yourself as a light truck instead of a commuter vehicle that it actually is which lets it legally be on the road with its dismal emissions rating. Keystone pipeline. Rolling back environmental regulations. Removing the words “climate change” and “science” from the EPA website because this administration finds science inconvenient. Prohibition on studying climate change by NASA as well as putting gag orders on any other agency from NASA to EPA to CDC on talking about it. Public policy of denying climate change (see last night’s debate as a prime example). Want me to keep going?

Fires are burning not because we have too much forest (though of course finding better forest management instead of Wall Street would be a much better investment). They are burning because global warming (climate change was a conservative TV talking about because they used the fact that global warming could include local cooling to confuse the matter) means longer dry seasons, draughts, lots of dry underbrush. Wildfires have always been a thing. Wildfires that span such areas and can’t be put out like this have not existed on this scale in recorded human history. Those who pretend that this isn’t happening should put a plastic bag with a large zip tie over their heads and tell us how they can breathe just fine in there. It will be just as effective at not suffocating as continuing down this path for another 10-20 years.

40% is a high estimate. Because voter turnout in 2016 was about 60%, only 27% of eligible voters voted for Trump. And probably a significant portion of those are not unquestioning supporters.

His approval has been well tracked by polls that target both likely voters and registered voters with the same 40% +/- 4% result.

>if you are claiming the usa is not a well functioning representative democracy, i agree.

A claim on the intent of a government can be made without making a claim whether that intent is being fulfilled

right, that's why i put "if" there :P

Imagine that you are a politician in that area and you have a crisis with the water supply, you aren't going to win votes by promising to first fix the water supply problems somewhere else that's not in your electorate. Even if things are broken there's always pressure to campaign on addressing local needs first in order to get (re)elected, hence the phrase "all politics is local".

The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens even if a particular government fails at this duty. When a government does not properly fulfil their role, that is the direction towards which we push them, to better represent the interest, desires and choices of their citizens - not to act for the benefit of everyone else in the world.

That's a pretty basic tenant of democracy. The government is by the people and for the people.

Perhaps just a typo, but since I've seen this mistake before: it's "tenet" rather than "tenant".

if i write "bees" on a box, does the box contain bees?

Gobbledygook.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

Truism. The point of contention is around what constitutes "best interest."

> The interests of outsiders are simply not relevant to that

If this is so simple, why did it require an additional 500ish words to qualify it?

Your point seems to boil down to this:

In cases where there is a conflict between the perceived "best interest" of citizens and those of non-citizens, if the citizens haven't specifically directed the government to do otherwise, the government should act in the perceived "best interest" of its own citizens.

But it's reductive and short-sighted to say that humanitarian aid "hurts" one side and "helps" the other. For instance, the marginal impact of a U.S. dollar on a U.S. citizen's productivity is effectively nil. But that same dollar spent in a third-world country would have much higher marginal impact. The productivity of that other citizen allows them to specialize and trade, and then everyone benefits in the long term.

The hyper-nationalism perspective that your country should take whatever it can at the expense of other countries is exactly what led to both of the world wars.

Lol so you're saying EEO is out the window

The duty and role of government is to act in the interests of those with power and influence. If a vote has more power and influence than money or connections due to how the government is structured or elected then the government can represent the interests of the people.

However, even voters are not equal in the US with those in Wyoming holding almost 3x the voting power for president compared to California due to the electoral college. Senate votes are an entirely different ballgame where small population states are equal to large states in theory but the vote count behind the senator may be millions vs tens of thousands. Also, the less populated but more numerous red states have led to a tyranny of the minority in the US Senate since 2010. If you are curious about that look at the number of justices Trump has appointed vs Obama, and Obama had 2 full terms: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/15/how-trump-c...

The US is not really a functional democracy or represenatative republic at this point. Money and power run most policy: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-cor... (from 2015).

Lobbying dollars hugely outweigh voter preference in policy: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2014...

And if you are a company looking to make a profit lobbying may be the best investment to make over capital or other useful growth moves: https://medium.com/numbers-that-matter/return-on-investment-...

That's right, ROI on lobbying is about 200,000% though 10 years it ago it was closer to 20,000%: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2009/04/09/return-on-lobbying...

There's been an admin change in that time plus the Citizens United decision. Remember there are many questions around where PPP loans went, including millions to the newly appointed USPS leadership plus Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate Majority leader, and his wife, Elaine Chao, Secretary of transportation: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/lawmakers-and-transportati...

Trump himself won with a 2.8 million popular vote deficit, similar to Bush in 2000. There are 3 other examples in the mid 1800's. In 2016 the GOP won a minority of votes in the US house yet held a 10% seat majority alongside a lopsided Senate. These are not symbols of a functional republic or election process, or at lest one that reflects the will of the people. From the 2016 election results alone your first statement on the duty and role of government is failed by the US. We are at risk of becoming a failed democracy for similar reasons.

Lobbying and campaign finance operations are destroying the value of voter preference and need to be reigned in through massive overhaul of the campaign and election processes. I'm all for setting a window for campaigning like the UK, assigning a budget from public money that ALL donations go into to remove lobbying issues, as well as an overhaul of the actual voting mechanisms reverting to paper ballots handled entirely by mail and air gapped technology using a ranked choice or first alternative process to determine the popular vote like Maine implemented this year. Connect that to the bill going around for states to pass their electors to the popular vote winner directly and you have the start of a government serving at the will of the people, not lobbyists, a minority, the powerful.

The duty of the government is to justify the existence of the government.

>The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

This is the same argument that is used to justify slavery. You don't want to go there.

What a ridiculous statement. If anything, reforming the h1-b program is a good thing for the incoming workers. There were tons of H1-B workers who did not get visas because some 'IT sweatshop' flooded the program with cheap, relatively low skill applicants. Now? Better applicants have a higher chance to be approved!

The only reason why H1B is a problem is that there's a limit and requirement for being employed. That disrupts the free market approach with sunk cost fallacies and fear of being "sent home".

I saw a study somewhere that if USA opened its borders, roughly 1 billion people would move in there in a short order. Obviously, no country can handle that, hence the need to have limits.

GP is suggesting removing the 85k H-1Bs annual cap but keeping all other requirements in place (with or without new wage standards). EDIT: GP is also suggesting removal of the immediate deportation proceedings should someone lose their job in H-1B status. The status should follow the employee, not the employee/employer pair.

This wouldn't necessarily lead to a lot more immigration. It would lead to fewer people leaving who are already working for US companies on F-1 student visas in OPT status (they attended US institutions)

You've seen a study? Have you seen the experiment that proves the opposite?

Romanians(with GDP of 8k per person) didn't just get up and move to UK once they were completely free to do so in 2012.

US also had mostly free migration between Mexico and US, till some xenophobe decided to put up a legal wall.

Which xenophobe put up a wall, and why is it that the US is the only country not allowed to have borders all of a sudden?

Many Mexicans worked seasonally in the US and then returned to Mexico "back in the day". I'm not sure at what point that became a problem though. Although still to this day many people are here in the US undocumented. The extent of that being a problem I'm sure we could debate. It's certainly not fair for those who attempt to play by the rules though.

Is Canada xenophobic? They won't allow just anybody in. I'm not allowed to move to New Zealand without some legal work visa thing they made up. What about France? Can I move to Japan? Why do I have to sign papers to move to any of these countries?

I'm fine if you want to advocate for open boarders (and I think it actually would be great, but we need far fewer people on the planet to make it work) but I think you really should be consistent about it.

This is not an apples to apples comparison.

Romania is a first world country with a PPP per capita GDP of $33K, compared to $48K in the UK. Their murder rate is 1.28/million, effectively the same rate as in the UK is 1.2/m.

Romanians didn't move en mass because the difference isn't all that great. They would gain 1.45X more income and no change in personal safety.

The average South American country has a PPP GDP of 16K and a regional murder rate of 16/m.

South Americans who migrate to the USA gain 4X more income (8X the economic gains of an emigrating Romanian) and enjoy a murder rate 1/4 of the South American average.

The incentives to flee Romania for the UK are trivial compared to the incentives for South Americans to move to the US.

PPP GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Murder Rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

It's not. Broad studies and broad claims don't work like that.

There is a lot of correlation between immigrant populations across the board, though.

As for income difference... 1.45 times? How about 4-6 times? Unless you seem to think that they would be going to the mythical average UK income area. And let's not forget that there's plenty of EU countries with high income levels. You can get an apartment in Berlin for roughly 2x the rent of an apartment in Bucharest... and get 4x the income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

Here are some things that can be straight up disproven: * Violent criminals don't migrate en masse with completely open borders * Economic migration doesn't happen, without severe hardships(drought, famine, etc) * Asylum seekers aren't invading armies, that seek to expand war to other countries

> economic migration doesn't happen, without severe hardships(drought, famine, etc)

I'm suspecting that that billion in large part included people at severe hardships. Although to be fair a lot of them would have super hard time affording a one way plane ticket to the US, as they live on roughly dollar a day.

Nothing about my statement was related to H1B type programs. Go read it again.

Go read your own comment again. Saying that a nation acting in the best interests of its citizens is ethically wrong is laughable. Saying it's as ethically wrong as slavery is absurd. On net, this is a good thing for highly skilled H1B applicants (which is whom we were attempting to bring over in the first place, right?)

Slaves (from a different country) are in the best interest of the people of that country. Thus acting in the best interests of your people can in fact be ethically wrong.

Are they? They're useful to individual slaveowners with enough capital they can have the slaves work. But what about for the working class? People in the U.S. today remark that immigrants willing to work for lower wages than locals drives down wages. A population forced to work at zero wage (or rather, at the cost to the slaveowner of keeping them alive and captive) would surely do the same.

It doesn't seem clear to me at all that, if I were the spirit of democracy/the hypothetical purely benevolent (to specifically the people I consider of my country/nation/tribe, to the possible detriment of all others) emperor of wherever, that on balance introducing slavery and slaves into my country would be a net boon on average.

Even ignoring the material aspects, it seems like americans had to contort their worldviews quite a bit to justify slavery to themselves, given their otherwise stated moral beliefs (that were useful to maintaining society). Something would have to give a pretty decisive advantage to justify that required cognitive dissonance, and I don't think 'enriching some already-rich landowners a bit more' is useful enough.

I mean, look at america. Are the descendants of the ethnic groups in the us at the time of slavery on average better off for slavery having existed? Now?

Plus it's wrong to inflict such horror on your fellow man etc etc, and there's a pretty huge difference between not letting people in and abducting them into your country and whipping them.