From doing it. From watching how DC works, from working next to DC lobbyists and politicians for many years, and watching people be effective and get things done in DC for many many years.
I'm not sure why you think it doesn't work. Have you actually done it?
They care tremendously what their constituents believe, contrary to popular belief. They get daily morning briefings on their constituents views on issues, etc.
So basically, anecdotal evidence. Got it.
This issue has been discussed on HN before, and we had overwhelming response from people who actually worked for Congresspeople that the vast majority of letters and calls from constituents get either ignored, or given canned responses. This fits my anecdotal experiences with politicians in general as well - for the most part, the politician is paid for by private interests and lobby groups.
So yes, on an individual level, your vote is worthless. However, in the aggregate, constituent feedback counts for a lot, possibly the biggest single input. And so once you accept that you as an individual are insignificant in the grand scheme of themes, you can actually accomplish a lot by minimizing the personal effort you expend on writing your congressperson and instead getting lots of other people to vote the same way you do.
This suggests an interesting hack. Create a really simple mobile app that lets you subscribe to all upcoming legislation on issues you care about. It'd be structured like a news app or RSS reader, where you can flick it open whenever you have a spare moment and read the latest upcoming issues. And then let you easily indicate your position - perhaps swiping right means "Aye" and swiping left means "Nay". A swipe automatically sends a canned form letter to your congressman indicating your support or opposition for the legislation.
Basically, you're leveraging technology to enable direct democracy. Create a direct information line between constituent and congressperson, where the constituents have all the information available to them that congresspeople do, and can vote just as easily.
I recall the creator talking about this at length on reddit or somesuch in recent months.
Also Direct Democracy is a nightmare. See: California. Arnold Schwarzenegger outlines why his attempt at making most of his major issues ballot initiatives in his first term was a disaster in his book Total Recall.
[citation needed]
I highly doubt this is what was said, because it's simply not true. I certainly don't remember it being said either. Certainly, if that was the the "overwhelming response", you should have no trouble providing links. If you do, i'm happy to admit I was wrong. As far I know, having talked directly to legislative assistants of congressman, and chiefs of staff of senators, is that they are a huge input into how congressmen and senators vote.
Excerpt from first reply:
"ETA: I've also typically seen that regardless of the amount of pressure applied by the public for one side of an issue, nearly every politician will simply vote the party line anyways. They know where their bread is buttered, and won't go against party leadership. I've watched legislators look over at a senior party member and be signalled which way to vote when their turn comes up. I don't think anything I've done or said to my representatives has had the slightest impact on their opinion or voting record. That's just how the game is played."
Excerpt from second reply:
"IME: email is worthless. canned letters / faxes go in the garbage. A polite phone call may accomplish something. Better yet if you donated or voted for that politician. Even better if you phone banked." [followed by an explanation of what works, i.e. money]
Excerpt from third comment:
"I was an intern for a congressman. My job was to answer and return constituent emails and calls. We took the feedback, searched for the proper prewritten form letter, printed it out and sent it back with a stamp of the congressman's signature. He never got a single bit of the feedback himself."
Fourth comment mentions that anti-SOPA call-ins seemed to have been successful, but they are forgetting the billions of dollars of corporate money that went into protesting SOPA. Again, it was about money.
If you look at the GDP to national debt map on wikipedia you will notice, that most (if not all) first world countries, the beacons of human rights and democracy, owe more that they can produce in the foreseeable future. It is not the tax money they are spending.
The highest debt:GDP ratio on the list under either measure is Japan's under the CIA measure, at a little over 200% of GDP. That's not more than it can produce in the forseeable future (its a little more than it produces in two years.)
It may be more than they can are likely to pay off in the forseeable future, but then, that's a completely different story.
> It is not the tax money they are spending.
That's not a question that is addressed by debt:GDP ratio, its a question that is addressed by deficit:budget ratio, which is a very different beast.
There was a country just a little over 20 years ago that was in debt up to its neck and was trying to do global surveillance and project global power. Half of the world was screwed when it fell, and not everybody in the eastern block did recover yet. God help us all if this happens to the usa.
After you misrepresented the last one without actually linking to it, I'm not really inclined to expend the effort to verify your characterization of this one.
> There was a country just a little over 20 years ago that was in debt up to its neck and was trying to do global surveillance and project global power.
AFAICT, the Soviet Union, just before it fell, had an estimated $65-$100 billion in foreign debt with a GDP on the order of $2.5 trillion -- it wasn't really "in debt up to its neck".
Are we still required not to use them, like > 40 bit DES in various circumstances? In 1997 I helped a lawyer who'd previously done embedded programming apply for an export license for a piece of my company's software, in which I either degraded the use of DES or confirmed that the code already did that.
But the Cold War/Clinton anti-strong crypo regime is over. For that matter, the Cold War/Vietnam national security and more ecosystem took major, major hits in the mid-to late '70s, e.g. the Church Committee (although for all we know the most critical thing was J. Edgar Hoover dying in 1972).
Why are you not heartened by the Amash Amendment vote? Especially in how it didn't break down according to any conventional lines?
Everything I can see in my corner of Red State America says enough people believe the government has stepped over a line such that we can very possibly win. Then add discrete lobbying by tech companies ... which will I expect play out a lot slower and limited than normal given the Joseph Nacchio object lesson.
Very few people go down this road and come back with their ideals and principles intact.
Outside of the tech community, i have yet to hear large amounts of actual outrage.
I thus predict the same outcome as say, patents:
Techies will complain on techie-friendly websites about how it sucks, rather than doing something productive like repeatedly contacting their congressfolks, requesting and having real live meetings with them.
People will propose technical solutions, apparently oblivious to the fact that the government will simply require you not to use them (as they have in the past).
Nothing will change.
Techies will then blame the tech companies for losing this war, or blame it on not spending enough money on lobbyists, or some bogeyman that does not require realizing the harsh truth: As a whole, techies refuse to actually get involved when it's something that actually requires doing something other than coding or writing comments on a website.
Instead, they rely on EFF and other orgs, which are simply not enough.