A while back there was some noise around potential favorable treatment she gave Visa around the time of their IPO. [1] Congresspeople really should be forced to stop all trading activity while serving in office, aside from maybe putting things in index funds. And have term limits.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-details-on-visas-attempt-to...
California can't be bothered not to elect this evil person that is the absolute epitome of corruption.
Except in the tiniest (by population) states, states at large do not elect members to the House, despite the fact that they are frequently identified by party and state.
California is the maximum example of the error of this kind of description.
When someone does a lot of trading, it is easy to cherry pick the successful trades or apparently conflicted trades while ignoring the whole picture, and scope of the portfolio.
Is this the right question? Insider trading is incredibly hard to prove as it is. But we know that Pelosi is privy to insider information. She's an 82 year old centimillionaire, does she really need to be day-trading options?
https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/congress
> As of December 22nd stimulus was just approved on that day. On December 22'nd, Pelosi’s Husband purchased deep ITM TSLA and AAPL calls. After Market close on December 22'nd, she voiced support for $2000 of stimulus after Donald Trump tweets the need for additional stimulus. Those same companies rally 5%, giving an instant +30 return, on Dec 23rd.
According to this they invest heavy in mostly big tech, probably similar to a lot of people here https://housestockwatcher.com/summary_by_rep/Hon.%20Nancy%20...
I think the public should be given notice immediately when Congress members purchase or sell shares/options. I think they should also have to hold on to shares/options for a certain length of time. I think this could solve most problems.
(The 3rd most powerful person in our elite ruling class, mind you)
“Primaried” usually refers to opposing in a partisan primary (as a way of distinguishing those people from other electors opponents.)
California has for some time not used partisan primaries except as part of the Presidential nominating process.
No, they aren't, they universally include numerous parties and independents, including Republicans, as well as Democrats.
They general election after the top-two nonpartisan primary is sometimes Dem v. Dem, though that’s only happened in exactly one (2020) of Pelosi’s five elections since the top-two nonpartisan primary was adopted, so even if you meant the general rather than the primary, “usually” is far misplaced.
I’m not sure which seat and which election you are talking about, but that would be consistent with the Republican strategy of trying to discourage more candidates from running, because that way vote splitting worms in their favor, maximizing their chance of making it into the top 2 and maximizing their perceived strength going into the general. Party leaders have been fairly open about their strategy of dealing with the top-two primary system.
> The Republican didn’t really even show up to various debates and round tables.
That's also a pretty common Republican strategy where there would be more than two candidates on the stage in California, on the theory (which has some support) that the hits coming out of such a forum will be on the candidates involved.
Uh, Meadows’ texts do no such thing.
We're not seeing their corporate media buddies belabor trivial information or twisting it to manipulate people into thinking it serves as evidence against Trump.
In fact, in the video I linked, it shows a clip from CNN of all places supporting my point because they can't even twist it.
Willful ignorance is a choice, it's just nice when folks are more honest about it.
On what basis do you claim they did?
I mean, sure, it might look like they had if they didn't question Meadows about it when he showed up to testify after they got it...but he didn't, which is why he’s facing a contempt referral. Short of that, other than it's absence from any final report, I’m not sure what concrete sign would exist that they had “dropped” it at all.
> We're not seeing their corporate media buddies belabor trivial information or twisting it to manipulate people into thinking it serves as evidence against Trump.
While I agree with the exact wording here, as what is being belabored is not trivial and the analysis of how it is evidence against Trump and his inner circle is not twisted, the media that's not full-time right-wing propaganda is indeed pointing to them as a “smoking gun”, so, if “major media pundits aren't claiming that they are evidence against Trump” is the basis of your claim that the committee is dropping the texts, the premise is as faulty as the logic (a few examples of thousands):
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/politics/mark-meadows-text-me...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/politics/january-6-committee-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/13/mark-mead...
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38514277/mar...
About the best you can say for the texts is that they are sometimes being treated as less of a smoking gun than the PowerPoint presentation on the strategy for the coup turned over by Meadows.
"Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government"
by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...
If you want democratically elected representatives to be able to gain power over the machinery of government, then you should advocate for longer terms, without limits. If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get better government.
Sure, but long terms make the democratically elected representatives are less representative of the public will because of lack of immediate accountability.
What would be better is current terms, absence of term limits, and candidate-centered proportional—e.g., by single transferrable vote (STV)—elections in multimember districts (say, up to 5 member districts for the House, two-member for the Senate by putting those from the same state in the same class and electing them together), so that typically there is some choice at the general election within parties (e.g., a party with an incumbent but not all the seats available would usually be incentivized to run at least one more candidate to contest for a potential additional seat) and more viable parties, so that you have both accountability and representatives that are durable in office if they retain popular support.
> If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get better government.
If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we get government even more detached from the popular will, both legislatively, executively (because of the Senates veto of top executive appointments), and in judicial selection.
And the reduced accountability would supercharge corruption, too.
Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels present an abundance of evidence that there is no popular will. The public does not understand the issues. The voters do not know what they want. Achen and Bartels also make the interesting argument that when there is more than one issue (more than one dimension) it becomes difficult to build a 51% coalition that also has 51% support on every issue, and where there are, say, 100 issues, it becomes almost mathematically impossible to build a 51% coalition that also holds the popular position on every issue. Put differently, to win elections, politicians must advocate for some deeply unpopular issues. This is the most important thing to understand if we are going to understand "Why elections do not bring about responsive government." (the subtitle of the book).
On the other issue, that the public is ignorant of most issues, remains a real concern.
If one takes that seriously, the solution is to abandon elections and the pretense of democracy entirely.
Arend Lijphart, on the other hand, has shown that there is a public will, people do know what they want, and that democratic systems with greater electoral proportionality deliver it to them better and make them happier with government.
That does not follow at all. The benefits of democracy have been well-documented -- as well documented as the fact that the voters don't understand the issues and do not know what they want. The evidence on both points is overwhelming. Those facts are not in contradiction to each other, rather, it is clear that the benefits of democracy do not come from the voters. The benefits must come from somewhere else:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...
We'd be right back where we are now - people server 30+ years, so entrenched in serving their own good and not the public good.
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...
With 15 year terms, that can't happen on any reasonable timetable, either. If you maintained the three-class system, you’d have 1/3 of the Senate elected every five years. If you kept roughly equal sets every two years you'd have 2/15 (13-14 out of 100) every 2 years.
The proposal was for Senators specifically. This is clearly different, but it's not clear what it is. So, is your proposal:
(1) to abolish the Senate, and do this in the House, or (2) to abolish the House, and do this to the Senate, maintains equal representation (540 not being divisible by 50 makes this problematic), (3) to abolish the House, and do this to the Senate without equal representation, or (4) to do this to the House, but retain the Senate as is, or (5) something else?
Note that #3 and arguably #1 are outside the power of even a Constitutional Amendment, since the power to amend the Constitution explicitly does not extend to removing equal representation of states in the Senate.
> Of course, when one side has a large lead, it means they are safe for a few months
A 4 seat (<1%) lead is safe for 6 mmonths. A 16 seat (3%) lead is safe for 15 months. A margin the proportional size of that after the 2018 House election in the US would take losing every seat up for election for 3 years, 9 months to lose. These are small margins; a large lead is absolutely secure for lot longer than “a fee months”.
> The important thing to realize is that most of the current problems with
I’m fully behind that. Long legislative terms just is a very bad idea that is hyperfocused on one (overstated) problem and which makes (almost independent of what else you try to do alongside) most other problems worse.
You make it sound like that is a long time. In Britain, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it unlikely there will be many elections held at less than 5 years.
But having a safe majority that is locked in for longer than 5 years can bring benefits. The evidence is overwhelming that the current majority is, at all times, ignorant, irrational, biased, bigoted and impulsive. Therefore, we should want all real power to be in the hands of the long-term majority, not the current majority. Big changes should come from majorities that manage to survive for several years.
I believe you are a software developer? So you should understand the concept that a signal can be derived from a noisy source, given enough time.
It is compared to the claim that “a large margin is safe for a few months”.
> In Britain, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it unlikely there will be many elections held at less than 5 years.
Yes, but it assures that 100% of seats will be elected in 5 years, and that no majority is safe for longer than that and none takes more than a majority of the elections in that time to overturn.
> The evidence is overwhelming that the current majority is, at all times, ignorant, irrational, biased, bigoted and impulsive
No, the evidence is that effectively representative, responsive democracies produce the best results for their people. The US mostly fails on effective representation, and the proposed change would compound that by making it also fail on responsiveness.
> Big changes should come from majorities that manage to survive for several years.
Sure, maybe, that's why procedures that require long (e.g., multistage, with legally or practically mandatory delays) process for major changes arguably make sense.
But rendering any substantial majority effectively immune to change once established defeats the purpose of that. If the argument is correct at all, it is that big changes should come from legislative majorities that survive for an extended time because they represent a durable majority in the electorate.
But tbh, if I had the answers, I'd run for govt :-D
It bugs me that every representative we elect is expected to have their own plan other than to "represent". Fast talk and snappy speeches are cheap. Willingness to acquire deep understanding, be challenged, and even sometimes put your own convictions aside for your constituents, and the systems that exist to serve them? That's hard.
- No federal employee making in excess of 2x (3x?) poverty level may remain on the job for more than 8 years. Possible exemptions: senators + enlisted military personnel. (Need more turnover at the top of officer corps anyway)
- No appointee federal bureaucrat may remain on the job for more than 8 years
- Any appointed bureaucrat or elected official, will have a fixed 79% and 99% tax bracket on any income in excess of the high watermark of the average income in the 5 years preceding their appointment or election.
There. Fixed it. Want to serve?
Do it for duty Not for money.
"Take, for instance, money. A small team of highly ethical individuals can generally trust one another to safeguard money in an appropriate way. Many small churches and family businesses are run this way, with loose controls over who can deposit or spend. However, as a company grows, the chance you'll hire an unethical individual also grows. At a certain scale it is almost certain that a worker will steal some money, if they have the chance to do so. So a company must impose rules about handling money, and there needs to be a process for paying bills, with someone authorized to write checks and use the company credit cards. This is the beginning of your financial bureaucracy, and the tight limit on who holds the authority to spend is the beginning of hierarchy in this area."
"Is this a bad thing? Again, you'll confuse yourself if you think about this in terms of good or bad. Just focus on your goals. What strengths do you want to build into your organization?"
"Nowadays, there is a widespread idea that bureaucracy makes an organization rigid. But consider the ways that a well-designed bureaucracy for money control can make your organization more flexible. If you decide to keep your money control bureaucracy small then you'll also need to keep your purchasing process simple, perhaps by centralizing all purchasing decisions in the hands of the CEO or CFO. That one individual then becomes a choke point that limits progress – nothing can get done until they find time to pay some bills and buy some necessary materials or services. And there is an obvious limit on how much the company can grow when the authority to pay a bill is so limited. But even when the money handling bureaucracy grows to three or four people, that’s still not enough to oversee complex spending patterns, so your company will still be forced to follow simple and inflexible rules. By contrast, what if you wanted to decentralize the power to make purchases? What if you wanted to empower each team with the ability to make whatever purchases they felt they needed, up to some reasonable limit? That would make your organization much more flexible, but it also makes it more difficult to track the money, and therefore it requires a larger bureaucracy for tracking each dollar. My point is, the larger bureaucracy can actually help enable some kinds of decentralized decision making, and thus improve the agility of the organization. A growing bureaucracy does not automatically equal growing inflexibility, rather, the whole point is to try to maintain flexibility at scale."
An excerpt from:
"Don't make a fetish of having flat organization"
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/dont-make-a-fetish-of-havin...
Term limits won't get us there. We need to go in the other direction.
Working for a long time on a given problem may make one competent, but it doesn't make one good.
'Sokay, the architecture is fundamentally flawed, in part because it was designed when less was known about the pragmatics of representative democracy because of less extensive experience and no systematic research and analysis, but also because in some parts it was designed with bad purpose (notably, entrenching chattel slavery.)
Undermining the whole architecture ought to be the goal.
I'm an outsider! They yell, as they have private meetings for billions.
Pelosi has been in office for 18 terms... so how hasn't she been able to "fix the system"?
Some people dislike the idea of legislators serving long terms. I've always wondered why, exactly, we are comfortable with judges serving long terms, but not legislators.
What's really needed is an end to backwards plurality voting and monopolistic primaries - have one big runoff vote. Make voting for better candidates not be at odds with accepting the safe option. Of course no politician is going to support this, as marketing themselves as the lesser of two evils has become the entirety of their promotion.
Furthermore, get rid of terms and have every single office on the ballot every single year, or better yet every quarter. This would make it much harder to spend overwhelmingly on campaigns (since the campaign would never end). It would also provide a stage for challengers to gain momentum organically rather than this long-iterated process where a challenger becomes viable in one cycle only to be forgotten the next time.
Electing Senators for life is essentially what we have now, and that seems to be working spectacularly.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/15...
Senate terms are 6 years, not 2.
We’re talking about the suggestion “if every Senator were elected for 15 years...
Which, yes, was an odd suggestion in this thread for the reason you point out, sure.
Through the 80s and 90s, I recall politicians and talking heads using the phrase "...even the appearance of impropriety". I'm tempted to conclude there's something telling about the way this quaint phrase seems to have disappeared.
EDIT: not saying term limits are the answer, just that I can see the relationship suggested.
I do agree that politicians aren't even trying to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Their response seems to be that in the absence of absolute proof of impropriety then any appearance of it is ok.
The Democrats held the House of Representatives for something like 40 years straight until 1994. You had famous scandals involving entrenched Democratic Congressmen. In 1994 Republicans made term limits a rallying point and they took over the House. Both parties have since jostled for control of the House. But when Republicans had the power they did not impose term limits. It’s just a rallying point and will do nothing to stop corruption. There may be good reasons for term limits but anti-corruption isn’t one of them.
I like to think people's terms limit would be reached before they get jaded and cynical.. At the very least, it would reduce the number of years (and hence the total amount of money) lobbyists, etc. would be focused on them. Someone that might think $100K in lobbyist money isn't worth the risk of repercussions, might think $1M (over time) is.
I think at the worst, we'd be right where we are now...
Plus with term limits, at least we'd be rid of them, instead of having them perpetually come back...
However, the litmus test would probably be if we actually get term limits.. After all, if they're that corrupt, they won't vote against their own interests.
In my opinion it's not a solution but it is another way to limit the amount of this kind of trading.
instead of 100 senators, let's have 100 per state [0]. instead of 1 representative per 750,000, let's go back to the original 1 per 30,000, giving us 11,000 representatives. let's have 99 supreme court justices, rather than 9. let's elect all the cabinet positions directly and separately. instead of multi-year terms, let's vote every single year for each representative office, and make election day a mandatory-paid holiday for everyone (to give folks time to research and consider their votes). let's convert many more administrative positions to elected offices. repeal citizen's united, which flooded political campaigns with unlimited amounts of corporate money (giving the wealthy even more disproportionate voice on top of their already disproportionate voice).
it's be messy at times, but we don't get good civics and good governance without the people being given more time and space to think about governance in depth.
[0]: alternatively, we could divide up states into smaller entities, which would be even better for decentralizing power (and limiting corruption), but that's much harder to do.
This is precisely why individual states can stand up to the federal government -- people in California could make policies that devastate Maryland, for example. Not because they want to, but because they lack context --- even reasonable authority.
I'm ambivalent on term limits for House members like Pelosi, though. They are representatives for the people of the States, and as such the people they represent have the right and ability to kick them out, or not. There is also the argument that would you rather have a dog that knows where the bones are buried, or a dog that digs up the whole yard?
That said, members of Congress should have severe restrictions on investing for themselves and their immediate family. They either need to police it themselves, or there needs to be some kind of law that covers it. Not that that is going to happen, as we have the ultimate in foxes guarding the henhouse in our government these days, but it would make for a powerful populist position if anybody had the courage to push it.
That might be tolerable, right after we reduce the powers of the Senate to those of the British House of Lords, which it's original theory of representation is as outdated and inconsistent with representative democracy as, and transfer it's para-executive functions to the House.
Pelosi is a Representative, so none of those things are true here.
Give the voters the ability to pick more than two options.
However, there are some states that don’t pay their legislators at all and that comes with its own problems.
Nobody is saying what she is doing is explicitly illegal. But it's abundantly unethical and, imo, a clear abuse of power. Her tone deaf response in this story only adds fuel to the controversy.
Also, $60k isn't that much, considering Wyden usually raises between $4 and $8 million during a reelection year.
My guess is that he would be more swayed by the fact that Nike is one of the largest employers in Oregon.
Like it or hate it, this is the system we have, I don't see any evidence that Wyden is being bought off any more than any other Senator that accepts campaign donations from special interests (which is all of them).
That's about the foreign emoluments clause (which already applies to other public officials including Congress), not the Presidential (domestic) emoluments clause, which is about the President getting money or other material benefit other than those legally due to his office from the federal or state government (which was also an issue with Trump's DC hotel, for many reasons, just not “foreign leaders staying there”.)
Yes, there are centrist neo-liberals in both parties. They don't want Bernie Sanders types or Donald Trump types to be elected.
I don't get it. Is it just sport at this point?
This woman is 82 years old and a leader of a nominally left-wing party.
So given the choice between: 1. taking a principled stand against the use of political access for financial gain, and dying in a few years with a NW of $100m 2. defending insider trading, and dying in a few years with a NW for $150m
It's worth asking what cultural programming would make someone even consider #2. It's not the usual reasons people want more money. There is no hedonic utility, no extra financial independence, no added social status that comes with #2.
I have no problem with accumulating wealth as a means to an end. But if you're willing to compromise your legacy to run that score up a little higher, you're an npc & you've lost the plot.
Society is worse off for it, probably, sure. But if our society doesn’t care about our society, why should I? Is that shameful? I used to think so but I’m not really that convinced anymore.
> Society is worse off for it, probably, sure.
You answered your own question. You are directly and knowingly contributing to the worsening of society and you should feel ashamed for it. If anything you should feel shame for your lack of self awareness here
But why? Telling someone they should be "ashamed of [their] own lack of self-awareness" sounds like you don't know how to answer the question, so you just hurl insults instead.
History has shown over and over and over that relying on people to be benevolent when they have outsized power is foolish. That they almost never have this "shame" you think everyone should have. I find this to be far more foolish: consolidating power into someone's hands with the assumption that they will rely on shame or pride to guide them towards using the power for good. We should all acknowledge humans are tribalist and self-interested, and limit the amount of power they can have to exploit. The way I see it, if you give them the power and they "misuse" it, that's as much your fault as theirs.
Additionally - we're talking about a pool of 435 people here - not thousands or millions. Individual house reps standing up and personally pledging to trade individual stocks does happen and usually gets accolades in the news. This is a case where the scale is so small that you acting benevolently against society has the power to sway society to act better.
So I think this particular scenario is a lot different than being a good person who properly separates their recycling (if that's a thing where you are) among the millions who can't be assed and a system that has no real expectation that you will.
Maybe what you think of as morality is actually just a set of dictum from powerful people that helps them enrich themselves at the expense of you. There's absolutely no cosmic or objective moral basis for our insider trading laws one way or the other. It just so happens that they conveniently enrich the people who make the laws at the expense of everyone else. Again, what moral framework does this fit into? People acting selfishly, or people acting in the interest of some nebulously defined "society?"
Kinda? I know that's the supposed cliche, but it doesn't really ring true. The "people's" will as defined by some collective subset of the population has certainly been a powerful influence at times, but it's far from a concept that is simply "given by the people." I don't think Pol Pot's power was given by the people. Hitler's wasn't. Xi Jinping's isn't.
And even Nancy Pelosi's isn't given in the way you imply. Through a strong network of bribing and brainwashing, our entire political system leaves us with the choice of empowering corrupt militaristic theocrats or a party that mostly uses tax dollars to bribe voters. I think a very good response to this situation is "I don't like what Pelosi is doing, but I would really hate what a republican would do in her place." And that doesn't sounds like people have much power at all.
[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
I think it's pretty rough to say Hitler was given power from the people in the sense that Rousseau would use the phrase.
My personal opinion is that this is immoral - and we're having this discussion because someone thought it was so immoral that they were motivated to write an article about how much they dislike it - but people write all sorts of articles so that's not a proof at the end of the day... Really, there are some things we can mostly (not all) agree are immoral like murder and rape - but even that isn't universally held (or agreed on to the same limit) because, well, some people do it. So yes - societal morals are pretty vague to define and I'm sure there are some people that feel fervently that House reps trading individual stocks is highly beneficial to society - but I feel like the majority of folks are on the other side on this one.
I don't think you'll find many fully informed people who thinks that house reps trading on insider info is good (myself included), unless they're personally beneficiaries of that system.
But this discussion isn't really about that. The original guy asked "why shouldn't she do this?" She can do it. She benefits from doing it. No one will stop her. Why is it immoral for her to do it? Which is a totally different thing from "the majority of informed people don't want her to do it." To that end, she is behaving exactly as should be expected of her given the amount of power she has.
The only way as far as I know to get people to not make decisions that are bad for the world but good for them is to not let them have the power to make that decision. The US government has become an atrocity of corrupt and consolidated power. That's the problem, IMO. And so long as its leaders can spy freely on Americans, can take 40% of their income, can deny them rights, etc, then this is what happens.
Wrong.
The Speaker doesn't set rules on house procedure, the House as a whole does.
> She has the power to unilaterally end this practice and chooses not to.
No, she doesn't. Neither does the House alone, since at the federal level, “lawmakers” includes the Senate.
Would such a restriction be constitutional?
How would it be enforced?
Who would investigate impropriety?
2. The House Committee on Ethics[1] can recommend a few remedies including Censure and Expulsion - whether these are actually enacted is decided by a general floor vote by the whole House of Representatives.
3. The same body - the House Committee on Ethics would instigate an investigation into any suspected wrong-doings.
The House essentially has an internal police force - but whatever the Ethics Committee finds is then brought to a general house floor vote to decide on punishment. If the populace suspected the house was acting immorally the remedy is to change the representatives - these investigations are supposed to root out extreme violations of generally agreed norms in the short term, but a sea change requires the election of house members that will advocate for the new norms.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_...
This is my whole point. The Congress knows this is an issue. The House Committee on Ethics knows this is an issue. The people know this is an issue. The members of Congress who have not moved on this issue were just reelected by the people, and have now telegraphed that they will not solve this issue in the future. It will not be solved, yet these representatives will be reelected by the people again and again. The House Committee on Ethics will not investigate. If you engage in this behavior you get richer and nothing bad happens to you. If you don't engage in this behavior, you are leaving money on the table and the only person you hurt is yourself and a nebulous, distributed entity we call "society". Our former President even pardoned a Congressman for the very crime of using his privileged position to facilitate insider trading for his family! The power of the pardon is one of the most solemn expressions of the values a society holds. Taken as a whole, this tells me that actually, American society does not consider this to be a problem. So if shame is an emotion derived from the violation of societal norms, I am only asking why this should be shameful? Insider trading is in accordance with societal norms.
> If you don't engage in this behavior, you are leaving money on the table and the only person you hurt is yourself and a nebulous, distributed entity we call "society".
I disagree with this statement because I think it is putting too much necessity on maximizing personal gain - there are plenty of reasons not to engage in insider trading and refusing to do so doesn't "hurt" you.
Trying to guilt-trip or shame people on HN for their views is absolutely against the HN guidelines[1] - "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation" "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive" "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument" and so on.
That doesn't really answer the question though. If knowingly making society worse were the standard for feeling shame, I think I'd be too depressed and shame-ridden to even get out of bed. I mean, you want to talk about damaging society: every single day I get into my car and burn fossil fuels on my commute to/from work, which is essentially slowly killing the planet. I know it's bad for society, but I do it anyway. Knowingly. On purpose. Can you imagine how psychopathic I am to treat society with such casual disregard?
As another poster put it: "To feel shame is an emotional reaction to violating standards of morality."
What I'm saying is an actor in American society is beholden to the standards of morality as defined by the leaders of its community, voted into office by the people in its community. It's been shown for a while now that this behavior is accepted, expected, and tolerated. It's not only unpunished when caught, but rewarded. This is the standard of morality in my community. If shame is tied to a standard of morality, which is orthogonal as to whether it helps or harms society, then there is no basis for shame for this behavior.
> That doesn't really answer the question though. If knowingly making society worse were the standard for feeling shame, I think I'd be too depressed and shame-ridden to even get out of bed. I mean, you want to talk about damaging society: every single day I get into my car and burn fossil fuels on my commute to/from work, which is essentially slowly killing the planet. I know it's bad for society, but I do it anyway. Knowingly. On purpose. Can you imagine how psychopathic I am to treat society with such casual disregard?
I think you bring up a good idea here. I recently came across a lecture by Jaron Lanier that discusses this kind of thinking and how to reason about it.
> I came up with an image to help me think about who the beneficiary is of our activities, whether we're engineers or writers or anything else, and I called this the 'circle of empaty'.... Those who are inside the circle are the beneficiaries of what you do, and anything inside the circle deserves your empathy. Things outside the circle perhaps don't deserve your antagonism but on the other hand they're not the beneficiaries of what you do. So I hope that people believe that all human beings should be inside the circle. That's not always the case; there are racists and homophobes and many other varieties of ideological people who would like to put _some_ human beings outside the circle, but I think decent people can agree that humans belong inside... Typically liberals wish to make the circle larger and conservatives wish to make the circle smaller... If you make the circle too small you become cruel and destructive... and if you make the circle too big so that all living things are inside the circle you can't live because your body kills bacteria all the time, you essentially become incompetent
I would recommend listening to at least the beginning of the talk where he goes over this idea because I think a similar approach can help with regards to contributing to environmental issues and such. For instance we can reason that it would be actually more harmful to us as a society to morally judge people who drive to the grocery store to buy themselves food so they can eat, because if people don't do that they can surely end up in a situation where they are sick and unhealthy.
On the other hand lets look at the situation we see here and ask: Would it be more harmful for society to continue to allow a small group of people who can effectively change the rules of a society be able to profit financially from these changes? I think again in this case, yes it would be more harmful!
We have to think about how things can get out of hand if we do not have the right checks and balances. Like Jaron mentions in his lecture, conservatism and the shrinking of the circle can go out of control like we saw with Germany after the first World War. We should aim to have _all of society_ within this circle of empathy, and not just _me and my family and friends_. If we can legally disincentivize people in power from shrinking their circle of empathy in these areas I think it is a net benefit for us as a society and sets a foundation for what we should find morally worth our empathy.
This is no place for these kinds of statements. Parent posed a question that can 100% be read charitably. In a system where all incentives promote individualism and self-interest, why should we care about others indeed.
To care about others is socialism. Or collectivism. Identity politics is probably part of the issue here, but I'm more interested in what other smarter people than me have to say, free from being shamed.
A trivial example of this would be any example of someone caring about someone else for non-selfish reasons prior to humans inventing socialism. Take your pick.
If you're no longer convinced of that, it's because you are looking for justifications for defect in the prisoner's dilemma, rather than cooperate.
This is quite likely a slow moving change going on unnoticed for decades, until it crosses a threshold were it starts to become quite visible. And possibly a major danger to society as we know it.
The big question is are we before or after the threshold, and can we reverse the process anyway?
> The general theme of "The Prince" is of accepting that the aims of princes – such as glory and survival – can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
Most people think Machiavelli was a jerk.
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Really the question to ask yourself isn't "Why shouldn’t I seek power to enrich myself and my friends?", the question is "What is the best method to achieve happiness for myself and my friends?"
All power seems to behave like this. Republicans, Democrats, Communists, corporate titans, office politickers.
I am not American but I do live in a country that has a government. It's curious to see stories of people going from <citizen grunt> to <elected official> and then using their power and insight for personal gain, while never capitalizing on opportunity to force the changes that were campaigned on, when presented with unique chances to force the issue to be resolved.
There's such a focus on "getting it right, the first time" instead of "anything will be better than nothing, and we can re-iterate on this in the future".
An issue with government is much like the issues you face at work every day; too much focus on introducing "new", and seemingly never enough time to evaluate and improve "existing".
See, we more or less structured the US on the Hobbesian state of nature, wherein we're all supposed to be greedy, self-centered, and violent. This was rife with induction and failed to account for a litany of examples that simply weren't present. It's old hat that never got scraped off, but now it's baked into literally everything we do.
But because the fundament of our system is developed on that conception of humanity, it contributes to the conditioning of the people laboring under it. My favorite thought experiment: My ex used to accuse me of cheating, I'd have to explain myself, she'd go through my phone, we'd argue; at that point, being punished for the crime, I had may as well cheat to reap the benefits of my just desserts. The Hobbesian affair is a slight alteration in the logical apparatus there - you're not being greedy so you won't be rewarded.
I'll credit the system this: I suspect a more "social" (via Rousseau) view would have immense difficulty in defense against the Hobbesian man. We're by nature, and the dint of our calling as humans (cooperative apes) intrinsically trusting. Granted, there are some conditionals, and some conditioning that as we grow wise, a skepticism emerges. To me that says a system that doesn't employ the Hobbesian mode, is highly susceptible to it. If your institutions are, historically, pristine in execution for a long period the social expectation would eventually gravitate to certainty. When some bad actor is seated, a little sophistry could go a long way in creating a system of exploitation. Something like that...
Most people, I think, and this is borne out by my own experience - just want left alone to their lives. The chains aren't uncomfortable until you find their limits, and as long as you don't reach that you're hardly aware of them after spending a life captive in their grasp. This coupled with intrinsic trust, and the world's inundations, add liberally debt and the construction of the social standard of "good" and "success" and you've managed to culminate a great ethical slavery.
Ultimately though, whether we're fighting fire with fire, the fact remains that we're pressing people to do exactly as you did. Offering a free ascension on a staircase made of the backs of mankind, blaming those who fail to acede to it on a moral basis, and complaining about the living who one tromps upon.
As to organizing, that's a joke. We've really not trialed any other approach at scale sans Marxism, itself a joke. And collectivization of small elements hardly marks a real difference when it's plainly easy to exploit.
I really found your entire comment very insightful. To the above quote, most people do want to be left alone, the rest want to tell those people what to do.
Just a heads up.
You really hit the nail on the head here. Members of Congress (and their staff) should either simply be held to the already existing rules on insider trading. They should not be able to act upon material non public information. They should be subject to trading windows and restrictions. They should not be able to vote on any legislation affecting held securities. Don't want to be subject to the rules? Set up a blind trust like the rest of us would have to.
If Congress is going to be held to a different standard than the rest of us, it should be a higher standard, not a more lax one.
This is the law, and has been since 2012 [1].
It was the law for approximately 1 year.
I suggest you read the amendment [0] to the STOCK Act that was quietly passed the following year, 2013. It largely rendered the STOCK Act useless.
[0] (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20140419032033/http://www.gpo.go...
This is false.
The bill [1] makes it harder to access records for e.g. Congressional staffers [2]. But insider trading restrictions for everyone remain. And the disclosure requirements for members of Congress are virtually untouched.
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-113s716cps/pdf/BIL...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/17749...
>"The database itself is almost meaningless," says Holman. He says the only option for those who want to get a comprehensive look at what some 2,900 staffers have filed is to review the cases one by one. "And that's just too big a job for anybody to do."
>The STOCK Act was supposed to make this task significantly easier. Records for members of Congress, the executive branch and their staffs were supposed to be posted online in a searchable, sortable and downloadable format.
>If you wanted to see who traded health care stock just before a committee acted on a health care bill, it would be easy. No trips to the basement required.
Taking the database offline due to identity theft concerns is understandable.
What isn't defensible is making it impossible to query the records in a useful way even onsite. SQL was 43 years old in 2013. It's perhaps unobvious to a nontechnical person, but the average reader of Hacker News should immediately recognize that it isn't normal to be unable to search a database of textual records, whose total size is probably less than 10 TB.
I agree. But this doesn't apply to members of Congress. Their trades are available online [1].
I'm not saying it never happens, but I think it's difficult to separate "insider trading" from "getting lucky" when you're talking about 538 generally well-off, active traders.
It's like when a CEO offloads stock before it drops and everyone loses their minds. But if you dig in to the story, the CEO is just selling stock on a regular schedule.
That's not what insider trading is, though. Insiders are, well, inside.
If you come across non-public information as an outsider, you are of course free to trade on it. Congresspeople are, theoretically, at odds with companies (as they impose regulation restraining those companies) and it's hard to view them as having a duty of any kind to the company itself.
If they are using insider information so effectively, anyone is free to copy their moves, no?
EDIT: That they only report 45 days after the fact is indeed a significant difference from company insiders and severely limits how well someone could profit by following along.
If I want to buy/sell Boeing stock and I'm a Senator, I should have to publicly file that intention three months in advance, and not be able to undo it. Those filings should immediately be public in a data feed.
I'd expect to see a "Congressional stock purchases index fund" arise, and it'd be fascinating to see how it performed.
Stuff like https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/11/politics/rand-paul-wife-stock... - "oops, forgot to disclose my stock moves for over a year!" - should be punishable by loss of trading ability and confiscation of the assets (not just profits) involved.
The "Congressional stock purchases index fund" would underperform though https://www.investopedia.com/tiktokers-track-lawmakers-perso...
> Academic research revealed that senators' stock purchases underperformed the benchmark during six-month intervals by 17 basis points between 2012 and March 2020
Only follow the trades of those in leadership, give special attention to transactions involving defense contractors by members of the Committee on Armed Services, etc.
I don't doubt that Congress has its share of confident morons to skew the numbers downwards, but you might be able to identify people who somehow manage to make better moves.
"Day of" should be the rule. Basically, have them trade in the public eye. You could subscribe to congressional stock feeds to see what they're personally buying and selling as it happens.
Letting them do "day of" doesn't really help; if you know Boeing's gonna get the contract at 3:00pm you could just do the buy at 2:59pm. No one has time to react.
When Boeing thinks about inking a contract, they crow about it. By the time the contract is signed, any changes in the stock are reflected.
"Three months without the ability to cancel" is a very naive solution and creates a whole new host of problems while not really solving much.
I just don't think Congress has much in the way of insider information most of the time. Antitrust litigation would be one example where they do, but what else? Company insiders by contrast almost by definition have insider information.
If they're long the market and then boosting the market... I mean, isn't that what we want? You'd have to go further than a blind trust even and ban owning equities at all.
Yeah... 45 days after the trade (per https://www.investopedia.com/tiktokers-track-lawmakers-perso...). Not to mention that both dominant parties don't take their responsibilities seriously (https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-staff-violated-stoc...), and that information can be filed on paper so sleuths have a much harder time digging through the data to spot suspicious trades (https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/04/action-alert-stock-...).
An effective law would require all elected representatives to identify themselves and their close relatives (i.e. parents, siblings and children) as such to their banks and brokers, with the banks and brokers having to maintain an instant feed exposing all trades executed on the accounts of these people.
There are two groups of people who laugh at the law: those who break it, and those who make it.
A market that is unregulated ends up with monopolies and huge power dynamics as the old guard is able to pool capital through momentum and compounding forces. Good regulation reduces the power imbalance so David has the possibility to defeat Goliath and they can fight on even ground.
Like most of government, they won't take their hand out of the cash drawer until someone threatens to put cuffs on it.
In socialism, if you have power you can get money.
I guess in a mixed economy, it flows both ways.
Also, keep in mind that regulation creates insiders of its own. Regulation always degenerates into a weapon of the corrupt.
There is no point in arguing against a false representation of someone's view. This is childish and intellectually unhygenic. It's noise.
Snake oil is always legal. It's legal now.
By definition, it's impossible to make all snake oil illegal. Think about all the crypto scams. They count. Even if crypto were outlawed, people will always come up with new "snake oil."
This is off topic. Let's drop it.
I think this is extremely unfair, as in your own pedantry seems fine, where you are correct only for very spesific and us-centric definition of 'force' and 'snakeoil'.
You free market people can't even agree if patents and copyright are part of free market. I had one of you tell me that endentured servitude was part of freedom of contract.
You seem to think we should leave snake oil salesmen alone, so it seems free market includes freedom to defraud the customer. Does it also include freedom to defraud the company?
This 'free market' is a spherical cow and would collapse into anarchy from pissed off people shooting each-other, it's no more viable than communism is.
Assuming good faith keeps discussion here at a high level. Let's not descend to strawmen. If you disagree with javert but do not wish to engage the argument, you do not need to respond.
Without regulation we would have a real hellscape.
It turns out you can't trust "the market" to do the right thing - ever.
Also, frankly, I don't appreciate the sass. It isn't necessary.
That's an easy target to sass, because it's such an easy target. Did I reply to wrong comment or something? Maybe it's because I'm on mobile. Apologies if I replied to the wrong person.
Not really. Why can't companies make "no insider trading" as a condition to employment?
Do you not understand the difference between a rule for employees, and the law?
This is not a defense, it's a dismissal.