"Safety"

(Yes, I know that's two words, "don't @ me" as the youths would say.)

Outside of the quote from the governor where she makes this statement, WHERE is this agreement? Under what authority was the agreement made, WHO in the legislature agreed to it? Under what authority did this person(s) make the agreement

I ask because currently the NY legislature is not in session, and no vote could have taken place which is normally how one gets an "agreement" from a legislature

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s4104/amendm...

Hasn't been updated yet.

The governor is able to stop "tyranny of masses" by their veto power. Almost no bill in our partisan age is able to pass with a veto proof majority. So the governor has the ability to prevent good outcomes for specific members of their party in the legislature in the future. Sure a budget that makes the party and governor look good will pass, but members who "step out of line", will find that they can't "bring home the bacon" in terms of what is allocated to their district.

So could the bill be pushed through unmodified despite an governor's veto? Of course. The system expressly allows this given a 2/3rds vote. But the legislature needs to weigh their options:

1.) Have all members push the bill forward anyways 2.) Have just enough members push the bill forward 3.) Accept the governor's revisions and move the bill forward 4.) Drop the bill

As a representative it is hard to tell which of 1/2 you are choosing in the moment. The issue is that 2 may paint a target on your back. The members of the party opposing the governor are less incentivized to care about the veto. So do you want the governor to hold a grudge with "1 of X" representatives of their own party who sided against them? Granted the legislature is about 2/3rds democrat, so for a break with the governor to happen maybe half the democratic legislature would have to break with the governor.

3 Is appealing over 4, since you are able to claim victory for now. Something was passed after all, and the name of the bill alone is usually enough to make a good ad come re-election. and if the issues really are so severe, this is just another victory for the future you.

That's democracy.

We live in representative democracies not absolute democracies and these table thumping maximalist positions rarely make good conversation or policy.

They get retweeted though.

The dichotomy above is impossible to interpret. What does that even mean. So when a democracy is representative, the minority's will can override the majority's will? Then what does the representation part in the representative democracy mean.

Yes, and this is a feature, not a bug. Majority voting on issues one at a time cannot generate a deal that a majority would prefer when the compromise is presented as a block. Eg, if there are six different compatible single-issues that 10% of the people care solely about each, each individual one would get voted down 90-10, while representatives can make a bargain that delivers a combined platform approved of by 60%.

If a vector space is more your jam, imagine a six-dimensional vector space of policies, and each of these six hypothetical interest groups as voting for any combination of policies with a positive value along the axis in question, and against any combination of policies with a negative value. [100, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1], [-1, 100, -1, -1, -1, -1], etc, will each get voted down when presented individually as policies, but their sum as a package gets supported by each interest group.

For a democratic majority-minority situation to occur, you must have 20% of the population wanting to pass something, but at least 20% of the population opposing it.

And when two or more minority interest groups feel this way on each other's issues, it is a failure to enact the "will of the people" if you use strict issue-by-issue majoritarianism. After all, each individual pet issue fails on its own merits - they just aren't broadly popular enough.

Fundamentally, the issue is that strengths of preferences do not show up in a referendum on a topic. Furthermore, there's no way to credibly commit to a compromise that gets you something important in exchange for a relatively unimportant concession. I'm not saying these issues outweigh the benefits of direct democracy, they're just problems that can get solved by a representative system.

That means that the majority wants those issues. If 20% of the population wants something, 10% opposes it, and 70% doesnt care if it passes, it means that a majority wants that policy to pass. The majority does not need to be for something explicitly for it to be a majority decision. There has to be more people in a society wanting something than those who dont, and the rest not objecting to that policy. Its still a majority decision.

That isn't the hypothetical I'm using to make my point. Obviously if you change the hypothetical you come up with different results, but then it isn't the scenario I'm using as an intuition pump.

Like, what I'm getting at is that there are sometimes policies you want your government to pass, even though more people oppose it than support it and nobody being truly undecided. Not all policy choices are equally important, and not everyone considers all policy choices equally important. A referendum is structurally incapable of enacting policies with minority support, for good or for bad. It's usually for good, true, but there are circumstances where you can do better by making sure that people think that the important policies are implemented, even at the cost of the majority not getting their way on relatively unimportant matters.

In no case in which sufficient amount of people oppose something, a policy can pass. Of course, Im talking about proportional representation systems. In first past the post, what you speak of is possible if that issue is not so critical to that amount of people that they may not vote on it as their #1 issue. Then the opposing party can win with a low margin on some other issue in which they have majority, meanwhile passing that other policy as well. This is an ill of the FPTP system. In proportional representation, that does not happen.

Of course, FPTP itself is something that was implemented to avoid the democracy of the majority, so that's no surprise.

With a single-subject rule, that’s often (but not always) true; without it, it is less true, because policies can be packaged to achieve a combined majority, so long as there isn’t a majority that thinks it is important enough to defeat any part to overcome any support within that majority for other parts. (Even with a single-subject rule, this can sometimes be done, so long as the policies packaged relate to sufficiently closely related subject matter as to fit within the way the rule is applied.)

This is common in legislative bodies, and it works with citizen-legislators, too.

Sure, after the package passes, groups can try to form separate coalitions to pick things out of it; there are methods to protect them, generally (such as putting together a similar coalition to put up a trigger bill that deletes the parts the other groups want to protect conditioned on the other repeal passing, undermining its support.)

> There’s no stable point

Yeah, real world politics is generally not about finding stable equilibria, as much are the things most easily amenable to theoretical analysis.

In reality, this turns into we should have billion dollar handouts to narrow interests because rather than use taxpayer funds to R&D cures into the public domain using the existing world class university system, the narrow interests would prefer being able to benefit from patented medicines:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/drug-prices-reach-new-highin-th...

> Since August, U.S. or European health regulators have approved four new products intended as one-time treatments for rare genetic diseases that carry list prices of at least $2 million a patient, including two from Bluebird Bio Inc.

That's an extreme extrapolation. Sure, the majority would maybe not care at all for such a minority treatment if it came to pass. But then again, the practical reality is that in a system that allows minority to override the majority, everything else goes wrong even if that one goes right.

There is an example. The US was explicitly crafted as a format that would allow the minority to override the majority to prevent 'the tyranny of the majority'. This was explicitly expressed by various founding fathers of the US, especially by de facto architect of its constutition, John Adams. And that's the reason why there is FPTP, the Senate, the supreme court, with the latter two easily able to override whatever majority vote is.

They did this because they feared the majority demanding land redistribution and passing it with their vote. The British aristocrats' lands were confiscated and redistributed after the revolution, that was ok. But the founding fathers feared that it would give ideas to the people about the lands of the now-American-but-ex-British elite like themselves.

Practically speaking, there are usually committees (may be area specific, or general such as scheduling/introductory) that make the first choice as to how the process will continue. For new york this seems to be the standing committee which decides what will be put to a vote, “ Members of Standing Committees evaluate bills and decide whether to "report" them (send them) to the Senate floor for a final decision by the full membership.”[0].

[0]-https://www.nysenate.gov/how-bill-becomes-law

I would like to know who the governor made an agreement with. The Standing Committees might be a possibility. kwiens named the bills sponsors as a possibility. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34193369). If the bill was changed shortly before signing it, i would also like to know what the text of the signed bill is. This whole process implied by memorandum #93 seems irregular to me.

Stuff like this should be documented publicly, IMHO.

Nice write up, but leaves me wondering how this works formally.

My main guesses:

1.) There will be a vote to formally accept the new changes, but it’s treated as a done deal.

2.) The governor can formally edit the text to say anything she wants, and it’s up to the legislature to protest afterwards.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34170525 (17 comments)

Yes and:

With Percoco v US and Ciminelli v. US, the current SCOTUS has another opportunity to bat down the government's ability to combat fraud.

https://crooked.com/podcast/making-fraud-great-again/

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/ciminelli-v-unit...

Embarrassingly, or perhaps tellingly, SCOTUS has previously been non-partisan in asserting their own immunity to frivolous stuff like anti-fraud and ethical oversight.

I would still agree with you though, most of the orgs on that list were likely at the table attempting to ruin the bill.

For instance, I’m sure that the execs at Microsoft, and a subset of their employees, agree with their lobbying. But I don’t understand how politicians can justify the level of engagement with a big economic player, who represents a tiny amount of people. When we vote, we have one vote each. But when we lobby, our “votes” differ in several orders of magnitude.

When it comes to autocratic foreign regimes, we understand the risks and monitor for behavior that can hurt the nation. But corporations are also autocratic, sometimes nation-state sized, and their interests are often directly opposed to the interests of our citizens. Even from an economic perspective, corporations are semi-detached from their original host nation through tax planning and funneling of assets overseas. However, since their public identity appears shared, from a nationalist perspective, we seem to put our guard down even though they have both the incentives and abilities to harm us in similar ways.

This description is not politically biased, even though it may sound leftist in our bizarre political climate. But this is equally – if not more concerning – from a free market perspective. Corporations don’t just lobby against consumers, but also against the competition. In the case of right to repair, we don’t actually need Apple to provide cheap components and repairs, we just need to be able to get them elsewhere on the free market.

The news may have it wrong, but that's an oddly specific claim to wrongly make, IMHO.

[1] Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, even when it is things completely within their power to control: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/air-canada-denies-compensatio...

Make spurious 'safety' cancellations expensive, very expensive.

As a sibling comment says it would be just swept under the rug until planes start to fall.

This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.

Humans don't work like tech, so adding more and more layers doesn't help really, and I haven't found any organizational form which can inherently prevent humans from being human, it just doesn't exist. For example, all the "paperwork" around safety only works if humans are actually interested in maximizing safety and not just filling out papers.

I just hope they don't drain additional time & people to check into each of these "safety issues" now, thinning out the crowd who will also check into actual incidents ...

which is already illegal, and has consequences. The airline will probably lose reputation and business if the public catches wind of it. The exception for cancellation should not have been in place, except as a way for airlines to get out of the obligations but also allow law makers to be seen to be doing something. Basically theater.

All this says to me is that the government does nothing to prevent hugely unsafe airlines from operating.

The cancellation loophole seems fine to me, it's the followthrough that's concerning. What am I missing here?

Thing is, you, as an external observer, can't tell.

There are a zillion things that slightly increase risk. If a manager ignores a couple to avoid having a black mark due to costing the company money its very unlikely to bite him in any way that can be pinned on him. But the combination of a very large number of these little decisions will eventually result in a crash.

And before you ask, no, saying "well you just tell everyone they must take no risks at all or its prison time" is not the answer as that will basically kill the airlines as a form of mass transit, leading to everyone taking the more dangerous car trips. There's always something more that can be done to reduce risk.

Asking because flying passengers on unsafe planes is already illegal.

But more seriously, I think the sibling posts are right here: A plane crash is more than a monetary risk: In the worst case, managers of the airline could be criminally liable for lost lives.

Do you have any clue how dangerous Soviet passenger aircraft and their flights were, compared to their Western counterparts?

The West has largely regulated away airline crashes - the last in the US was in 2009, and it's down 95% in fatalities-per-passenger in the last two decades or so. Stuff like the 1500 hour rule certainly weren't industry initiatives.

That’s hard to assess on an individual level, especially with how rare crashes are today; confidently stating it did nothing is hard to support. On a collective level, the impact of the entire set of regulations on safety is very clear.

> was applied as supposed remedy

No. The post-Buffalo changes included some direct changes like the rules on pilot fatigue. They also included some proactive changes like the 1500 rule.

We don’t have to wait for a crash to make things safer.

There are countless examples of this, but the most transparent I've come across is Chernobyl.

This casual cynicism regarding markets is dangerous and infectious because instead of focusing on fixing problems that have solutions via the levers of government, people give up completely and then nothing is ever made better. We need more participation in government, not less. When you toss up anything bad as “that’s the free market folks!”, people have no recourse. They can’t vote away airlines. So you end up directing action toward something that can’t be actioned upon. It’s misdirection.

Also claiming that “this is the free market” ignores the vast civilian infrastructure that is built and maintained by the State and regulatory agencies and practices that have been created. Not to mention bailouts in the past of bankrupted airlines and such. Airlines in particular are not a good example of “that’s the free market”, and even so markets don’t operate in a vacuum, they serve at the behest of the people and the government.

I don't think this follows, and I think it's because you're missing a piece of what's going on here.

You seem to be coming to this from a perspective of "obviously, a healthy system has a market with sensible regulations on it."

That's a world away from where most people (or at least, the loudest people) who criticize regulations are coming from, which is basically, "Unregulated free markets solve all problems, and government only creates problems."

If you feel like you're seeing a lot of cynicism directed at "free markets", this is likely why: it's a reaction against these extremely vocal "drown-government-in-a-bathtub" types.

Thing is, there are generally two different things that people can mean when they say "free market":

1. A "market economy", as contrasted with a "command economy"—ie, more or less the way the US does things, as opposed to the way the Soviet Union did things.

2. An "ideal free market", as described by Adam Smith, which can, in theory, ensure that many systems find a stable, efficient equilibrium that balances consumer desires with producer desires.

The problem is that, however much many (particularly of the Libertarian bent) wish to believe in it, the latter is not real. It is a thought experiment, and it requires a bunch of conditions that don't always apply (eg, perfect information, commoditization, etc). The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.

American style libertarian absolutists are usually not very subtle, sometimes even clownish like she was.

Thing is, he recognized them as theoretical. Too many of the people parroting them think they were meant to be applied directly to the real world, as if we had an actual spherical market cow in a vacuum.

Not only this, but large parts of the current economy only function because the conditions don't apply.

E.g., we know that humans don't make perfectly rational decisions but are influenced by all kinds of biases, etc. And we have the entire advertising and marketing sector that does nothing else than exploit those biases.

Yet at the same time, whenever there is the risk of new regulation being introduced, the fantasy of the perfectly informed, fully rational consumer is pulled out of the box...

Yea but that’s bad because it’s unsophisticated and it also creates people who start to believe that the market mechanic is a bad thing or the source of their problems, when it’s not. This creates bad ideas, cynicism because you can’t take action against this invisible market, or people lose interest in participating in government.

> The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.

That’s the fault of the author.

Well, that and all the government spending on aviation in WWII.

Which may be reasonable as a matter of policy. Increase ticket prices, hopefully reduce delays, and provide compensation when delays happen anyway. That may be a reasonable tradeoff but not sure everyone would agree.

Not so sure about that. Remember, the airline industry used to be very regulated and it was an absolutely wonderful experience.

The very young might not have experienced it, but flying was really great. No extra fees for anything, everything was included. Service and food for the whole plane was better than one gets in business class today. Flights were not jam packed full all the time, there was plenty of space to stretch and always space for your luggage. Plenty of knee room even in the cheapest seats. Flying was great.

Then it got deregulated and it has been a race to the bottom ever since. Less and less amenities, less space, even less space, every little thing is an extra fee, every flight is jam packed full, seats are within inches of each other, no room for your carryon because every square inch of space has been oversold, passengers getting bumped regularly due to oversold flights. Flying is miserable and I'd rather never do it again.

It reads to me like this law was intended to provide additional compensation to passengers who are delayed. The EU has something similar.

If you want less screws in pizzas, maybe you should petition your representatives in government [who we've paid off to ignore the issue]

In fact, we'd support any legislative action to subsidize investment into improving the rates of screws in pizzas across the industry because we care about your well-being so much [as long as there's no oversight over how those funds are actually used, papa needs a new Ford F150]

I've made about $1400 from delayed flights in the last 3 years

In the US, I suspect that pretty much any personnel who observed this could raise it as an issue through an FAA safety reporting program. There are some protections for reporters.

(These programs, and the people and organizations who participate in them, are a big part of why aviation is as safe as it is. It's something a lot of people seem to take very seriously. It's pretty inspiring, IMHO, and if only we could collectively believe in other common goals like this, and execute as well.)

The airline isn't being "punished" - they're being required to either complete a contract, or to compensate their counterparty for their failure to complete.

To take the example upthread, if the pizzaiolo drops a screw in my pizza, the resulting safety issue doesn't void the contract; he has to go off and make me a new pizza, or give my money back. It's not a punishment. If he can't complete on the contracts he makes, he has to stop selling pizzas or go broke.

I don't know any good reason why airlines shouldn't be subject to normal contract law.

In both cases, they were forced to pay out in arbitration after the arbitor determined that their stated causes were false (e.g. providing the tail number for a different aircraft that was legitimately delayed) , but there was no penalty for lying.

In such an environment, it's quite rational for them to lie and deny.

"Wrong" reason is subjective. Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. Every hole in that increases costs far beyond the refunds themselves further down the line.

Air travel is not a high margin, luxury product, it's a lot margin mass market product with tons of competition - ergo costs are cut wherever possible. When you force airlines to take on costs for moral reasons, they basically are obligated to find as narrow an application of the moral reasoning as possible to keep costs down.

Wait. I don’t understand you. “Nonrefundable” means to me that you who bought a ticket can’t decide to not fly and ask for your money back.

If the airline for whatever reason decides to not fly the route, or doesn’t have the capacity then that is a different thing altogether. Are you arguing that it is okay for an airline to take your money, do not provide you with the service promised and keep your money?

This is 100% false. Southwest Airlines is one of the most profitable airlines in the US and their refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight. For nonrefundable flights you get full credit if you cancel up to 10 mins before your flight, with no additional fees.

During the pandemic, ALL airlines moved to full credit with no change fees if you cancelled your flight. Previously they would have absurd $200 change fees or loss of your flight.

The idea that airlines can’t survive with flexible, consumer friendly policies is a lie. Things like the check in fees or fuel surcharge are pure profit.

What people forget is companies are in competition, if every airline is forced to refund ticks then the industry simply reaches a new equilibrium with very slightly higher ticket prices. However, if any airline defects to worse customer service they all end up doing the same. Thus the need for customer focused regulations.

Flight credits expire (with US carriers, typically in 12 months, sometimes within only 3 months (Spirit), with European carriers, sometimes up to 3 years), and cannot be transferred to any other passenger [0], unlike even airmiles; many passengers are unaware of both of those and airlines do not point it out, and rely on the fact that passengers may not realize till the credit has expired.

Just because an airline only initially offers (restricted, expiring) travel credits, doesn't mean much; in some cases [1] passengers may be entitled to an actual money-back refund: (a) canceled flight b) passenger has documented medical circumstance c) cancellations due to Covid d) possibly other circumstance).

Southwest in 3/2022 unveiled its long-awaited new fare category "Wanna Get Away Plus" whose key perk is the ability to transfer flight credits, which Southwest calls travel funds (which sounds like intentionally misleading language, but anyway). But again, SW charge more for WGA+.

> Southwest Airlines... refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight.

But that's the minority case: only Southwest's Anytime and higher fares are (money-back-)refundable, and they are typically way more expensive (2.5-4x) than non-refundable WGA fares. I can't find data but AFAIK most SW non-business passengers are WGA fares.

So the statement:

>> Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially.

is in the general case true.

(One well-known travel hack with SWA for frequent travelers who didn't know their departure dates 3 weeks in advance used to be to buy 3+ different non-refundable tickets spaced out by say a week each, then refund whichever tickets you didn't end up needing. This was still cheaper than one Anytime fare.)

  [0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/03/24/southwest-flights-new-fare-wanna-get-away-plus/7143951001/
  [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/advice/2020/10/09/flight-vouchers-yours-expiring-soon-what-to-do/5907794002/

Looking at a random domestic flight. The difference between the three tiers are about $30-$45 each.

Never buy Basic. But if you at least by the middle tier, while the tickets aren’t refundable, you can change the tickets without paying a fee or cancel a flight and get a credit that’s good for year.

The network works fine with people cancelling and changing flights all of the time.

I read somewhere that only 5% of seats sold on Delta are basic. I get it. It’s meant for people who are price sensitive. But aren’t those the ones who can least afford to lose money if something happens?

Anecdata, but I believe most “basic” tickets on the big US airlines were paid for by someone other than the flyer. If an individual themselves were price sensitive, they’d fly a budget airline like say Spirit more than likely.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

I've had a customer rep openly admit to me that they don't expect that anyone should ever actually fly this fare, and strongly discourage them for "satisfaction reasons".

Yet another weasely practice I found out the hard way recently was that some airlines rules (e.g. JetBlue) intentionally restrict it so that if one leg on a return ticket is Basic Economy, the other one must be too (even if it's priced $$ higher, as was in my case. It tooks me 2hrs of searches mysteriously failing when I tried to checkout ("Rule XXX does not allow this itinerary" and then it invalidates your entire flight search incl. seat assignments). Like the website couldn't tell you upfront. I called the support number and offered to show them a screenshot of the price difference and they didn't care. It was intentionally impossible to find the cheapest roundtrip price for my itinerary on their own website for any economy search, because their internal search engine typically shows the "cheapest economy fare" which will invariably tend to be basic economy for one segment; and of course this result is garbage if you have bags, which their engine doesn't even allow you specify. So you use a third-party OTE search engine.)

It's amazing the number of opaque anti-consumer practices the US airline industry gets away with.

The only legit use-case for a Basic Economy fare is a price-sensitive last-minute passenger who's 100% sure of their travel date(s)/one-way and has no luggage. Essentially what standby (or compassionate fares) used to be back in the 1990s, before the industry quietly killed those off.

The laws are basicaly made by those companies.

There have been various court cases to clarify and strengthen the regulations.

It will take another 5 years probably for the Canadian regulations to have a serious effect which gives the airlines plenty of time to shaft customers in another manner.

Then the regulators should be asking why there are so many safety issues? Seems like by the airlines' own admission, this is a perfect ground for a full investigation and penalties in case the issues are found to be misclassified under the category of safety.

Personally I believe they do almost nothing. Food born illness is pretty common and almost impossible to trace unless it is a wide spread outbreak.

Many cities only inspect a food establishment every 2-3 years and in some cases as long as 5 years.

I think reputation, and economics play a larger factor in safety then government inspections. Dirty places making their customers ill tend to close long before the government inspectors come around.

There is regulation and there are consequences of not following the spirit of the regulation (most focus seems to be on compliance to the letter of the law and avoiding to do anything beyond that ignoring the spirit of the law). Consequences don't seem to be particularly deterring in much cases; the offending company pays a penalty, no executive goes to jail and people forget about it soon. Unless these executives get jail time, there won't be any fear of consequences.

Regulation works just fine when done properly, and I’d like more of it here in NZ. I’d like the supermarket monopoly broken up via regulation. I’d also like the building supplies and fuels racket broken up.

If you have any interest, check out the below link for a great piece of legislation. It protects NZ consumers and effectively puts a warranty on everything you buy here.

Another great bit of regulation is what was fine to our telecommunications industry. We have gone from a trash copper network to an excellent fibre network that is fast and inexpensive to use - all via regulation, investment and legislation.

https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer...

These outlandish claims wouldn't work nearly as well as they do if claims of safety didn't cause a large part of the population to turn off their brain and side with whoever's making the claim regardless of the details.

Safety is often used as one of our modern analogs of "god's will."

https://futo.org/fellows

One catch on the site is no definition of FUTO? I looked all over and couldn't find out what the acronym (?) means. Future Use Tech Org? Fun Under The Orange?

FUTO Updates The Organization or something

[1] https://store.rossmanngroup.com/faq.txt [2] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FUTO

I've always thought the infamous Ben Franklin quote, despite this not being the intended context originally, has become a memorable and brief way to show your opposition for this sort of thing.

Or, the very fundamentals of the American democratic system have been eroded to a point I previously did not comprehend. This is not anything like the picture Schoolhouse Rock painted about how this all works.

Also, with a veto-proof majority, why on earth would the legislature ever even agree to any changes?

Also also, fuck the governor.

It was pretty much gutted. Right to repair for farm equipment was removed entirely, and rights involving digital devices made far weaker. That got press coverage in June 2022.[2] Other than cell phone screen and case repair, it doesn't seem too useful.

[1] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s4104/amendm...

[2] https://www.techspot.com/news/94843-new-york-senate-official...

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORIGINAL AND AMENDED VERSION:

This version makes technical clarifications to the bill, including providing that the requirements will apply to products with a value over ten dollars, adjusted annually based on the consumer price index. Another adds that nothing in the section will require that an OEM or authorized repair provider make available any parts, tools or documentation if the intended use is for making modifications to digital electronic equipment. Others provide that nothing in the section will require an OEM or authorized repair provider to make available parts, tools or documentation for 1) public safety communications equipment used for emergency response or prevention purposes by an emergency service organization, 2) where it may be in violation of federal law such as with gaming and entertainment consoles, related software, and components, or 3) home appliances with digital electronics embedded within them.

Manufacturers, distributors, importers, or dealers of off-road equipment are added to the exclusions, those to whom the requirements would not apply.

Amendments also include extending the effective date of the bill from 120 days to one year after it shall have become a law.

The governors memo also talks about eliminating the requirement related to overriding security features, which is section 2.B of the bill, again the change the governor mentions is not in the amendment made earlier this year.

The governors memo also talks about business to business and business to government sales. There is a new point 3.E related to emergency communication equipment, but it would be a stretch to match those. Again the change the governor mentions is not there.

[1] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s4104/amendm...

You get what you vote or don't vote for

Have some standards in the general election and people start looking at scum thinking their not electable.

Vote in primaries, there are different rules about this but if it means you have to join and participate in party activity to vote for a candidate then so be it.

hold them accountable together as ironic as it is: as a lobbying group, or even more grandiose work together with as many citizens of the state (even across the party line, no craziness though), to hold the governor/politician accountable.

Yeah. But my shiny karma doesn't want me to join a party whose policies I disagree with, just so I can influence their choice of candidates. That seems hypocritical, and I regard hypocrisy as the cardinal political "sin".

I've never agreed with the policies of any parties, so I have never joined a political party. The closest I got was that I joined CND, about 40 years ago. I quit about 39 years ago.

Thats red herring. Our electoral system is completely corrupt. The only way your vote would actuallycount is if all of the politicians we're replaced at once. Then maybe there would be an even playing field where it would matter.

Your statement of "you effectively voted for whoever had the majority" is like living in a state controlled by a two party system of gangsters and telling us that we just voted for the greater evil. Our two party system is corrupt, both parties are corrupt, don't lie to yourself.

There are efforts to introduce alternative voting systems that make 3rd party systems viable. There are efforts to get ~~corruption~~ lobbying out of the system, ...

If you really think that the system is "totally corrupt"; do something to fix it.

Yes my "do something" is focusing on supporting grassroots people and efforts that we have direct control over.

I have no interest in supporting systems that are not backed up by common individuals.

In the US system all power - nominally - derives from the people. And it still is controlled by the people, as the balance-of-power upset in 2016 - when Trump was elected GOP candidate despite the GOP leadership disfavoring him - showed. But yes; most of the time the two party system is doing a laudable job keeping the the people disunited over petty squabbles, while the moneyed class is poking the fire. And you feeling that "the system [..] is not controlled by the people" is just part of the strategy; you are still an actor in the system and as such you bear responsibility.

> You are supporting corruption by playing its game.

I'm not permitted to participate in US American politics. I'm just an observer. The system I'm living in is a semi-direct democracy with federal, regional and local levels, on each of which I do participate. It's pretty much "by the people, for the people". Still; not without flaws.

> Yes my "do something" is focusing on supporting grassroots people and efforts that we have direct control over.

That's a laudable effort, I congratulate you. Are you aware of other grassroot movements that try to break up the two-party system and to get money out of politics?

What are "common individuals"?

No. This is a nice lie that conveniently encourages one to vote for the major parties but no. If someone comes up to you and offers you a choice of being shot in the arm or shot in the leg and you say "I don't want to be shot at all" you have no moral responsibility for being shot or where you were shot.

However your quality of life in society is much more important than any single issue. Knowingly voting for a candidate who is not competent just because you agree with them on a single issue will not solve any of the larger issues in society.

Consider you have to 2 groups, A and B, and a set of issues. Each issue has different importance to me and each group has a generally opposing stance on each issue.

One group may have a stance on a subset of issues I generally prefer but more importantly the other group could have a stance on issues that terrify me. Their stance would lead to negative outcomes much worse than negative outcomes from the other group. It could even be that I disagree with many of the stances of the group I vote for but I’m not terrified of the outcomes associated with those stances.

So it is therefore more important to win to stop the opposition group from producing undesirable outcomes.

Unless, of course, you don't believe in democracy and an election process.

…assuming you trust the system to enact policies you care about. Punishing the act of disingenuously eroding trust in the system for political gain isn’t just a matter of principal but a clear long term strategy. Believe it or not there’s another election cycle after this one.

The winning at-all-costs attitude is what got us here in the first place: people so concerned with winning and having their people in office they don’t care if they actually won the election, and tell themselves increasingly nonsensical things to justify it.

The book “Rules for Radicals” talks about this and it has been a tool of left wing activists for 60+ years. You see it today for instance with various activists groups that plea for “our democracy” on one hand while destroying things and disrupting society until they get their way outside the democratic process.

That seems like a meta issue, that if not supported, all other issues are moot. So I'd certainly vote against party on any given platform plank in order to maintain the meta process that applies to both present and all future parties regardless of platform planks.

And WHY would they do that?

https://youtu.be/7xGBB-717AI [video]

Surprisingly, given the votes it got, it never made the front page, so I'll re-up it as well.

(Sorry, guiambros! In the future we will have some sort of karma sharing system so multiple submitters of the same story can 'win'.)