HN user
How are mail-in ballots protected from fraud? I keep hearing that fraud is not a problem, but I'm wondering (a) how do we know there is little fraud; and (b) what mechanisms make it safe from fraud?
The revenue of bootleggers is sharply down since the 21st Amendment, because many people still choose to buy legal alcohol rather than moonshine.
Article I, section 3: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof...".
"Democracy" and "the will of the people" are abstractions, and pretty crude ones, at that.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have democracy, but we should acknowledge that it is far from perfect. As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
Democracy is also not a scale-free process. Very different dynamics play out in a democracy the size of a city versus a state versus the size of a nation.
It's hard to explain briefly, but basically all of these separations of powers are designed to avoid some of the worst aspects of democracy. They happen to look less "fair" in an abstract sense, but it's more important to have some practical safeguards than abstract fairness.
A lot of our most heated political battles are playing out at the federal level (and have been for a long time), and I think that's a consequence of the 16th and 17th Amendments. If some of these battles were playing out in the states, I think our society would be a lot less polarized.
Think about it this way: collecting taxes from states was a two-party relationship. The states were compelled to pay in this transaction, but it's still two parties on opposite sides of the table, and their are other topics to negotiate later. If the federal government were to play an obvious game of taking money and then giving it back with conditions, then states would have exerted their power in other transactions. For instance, with senators who were chosen by the state legislature (the same body paying the taxes). Additionally, the state is a stronger entity to fight back against this kind of abuse than an individual citizen.
Now, let's change the picture to directly-elected senators and direct taxation. Now, the money is collected directly from the citizens first, and then the government's relationship with the state is entirely different. Now, the state and the federal government are cooperating, and the sucker is the one not in the room: the citizen whose money is being passed around. The state just becomes a node in a hierarchy, rather than a formidable agent with its own powers and responsibilities.
It's actually very similar to negotiations with a public employees' union. The government and the union are "negotiating", but they are really on the same side of the table. The sucker is the citizen who's paying for it all, but isn't even in the room.
I am confused about what you mean. First, the federal government clearly has authority over international commerce. Second, the price of drugs in legal markets would be much lower, which would likely reduce revenue for criminal gangs in foreign lands. Third, the U.S.-Mexico border is long and it's hard to enforce smuggling laws, anyway. And fourth, Americans are quite capable of producing drugs on their own, and even more so if they were legal.
The biggest flaw when reasoning about government is overestimating how well democracy works as a method of solving problems.
If everyone agrees about the major stuff, and you just need to finally make a decision on what color to paint the bike shed, democracy is great. A decision gets made, enough people are happy, and you move on.
But when you have real differences, you need a way to protect minorities against large coalitions of voters. Even if you aren't in a minority today, shifting politics (and divide-and-conquer politicians) will ensure that you are in a minority soon enough.
And it's even worse when society is polarized, because the coalitions form too quickly and too strongly.
But limiting the power of the majority is hard. The Constituion is genius because they recognized that and divded the power so many different ways. The protection of political minorities is much more important than the small amount of additional abstract fairness you get with direct elections.
This is why direct taxation (16th Amendment) was a mistake. It allows the federal government to take away the citizens' money first, and then give it back to the states, with conditions.
If the federal government had to collect from the states, then there would be more oversight and power for states to say "wait a minute, why are we giving you money and then begging to get it back".
In theory, the result could be the same. Congress could still pass spending bills and give the money over with conditions. But in practice I think states would be in a more powerful negotiating position.
Federal drug laws were upheld on the grounds that they are regulating interstate commerce ("regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;").
The idea that growing plants on your own land for your own consumption would some how fall under this legislative power is ridiculous. It's not "flexibility", it's fraud.
What are the consequences to people in Tulsa who aren't tribe members? Landowners who aren't tribe members? Can the tribe expel them and confiscate the land?
Which justices do you believe follows originalism, which follow textualism, and which follow neither?
It's unlikely that we will effectively review the totality of Gorsuch's opinions in a HN thread. Let's just say he's an interesting justice.
Whether justices should be interesting is itself an interesting question.
Let's start by eliminating federal drug laws, and leave it up to the states whether they want to pass laws against it.
Then, have a hard conversation about what freedom means, and whether restrictions on it really lead to better outcomes. Usually not.
Good idea. How about:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That would keep the pesky federal government out of our personal affairs.
What is the financing and implementation plan? Will it be donor-funded, publicly-funded, or are they looking into some revenue options?
If I donate now, what will the money be used for? Will it put green sand on beaches, or be used for bureaucratic paperwork, or be used for marketing to raise awareness?
I've been wondering for a while whether the concept of "open source" and its connection to freedom are becoming meaningless.
Source code has been a dynamic thing for a while, and I think that's part of the reason the GPL (at least v2) is not very popular any more. I mean, nobody really even wants source code, it's just a maintenance headache.
Even after complexity started to take over, there was still the argument that you could audit your computer if it was doing something funny, or ask a different company to maintain it for you, instead. But that seems less and less practical as time goes on. The company that wrote the software is really the only game in town to keep it useful.
Snaps are a logical extension of this phenomenon. They cross a line in the sand, perhaps, but basically just continue a trend already going on.
Also, the unix security model seems fundamentally bad. The idea that any code you execute can delete everything in your home directory is insane. It imposes a huge burden of trust on your software distribution system for the most trivial things. That reduces the practicality of using third-party sources.
I'm not really defending snaps and I will probably avoid them as long as I can. But I sort of feel like the battle might already be lost.
It's weird how modernized things can end up so bad at their original purpose. Like a computer being a bad calculator.
The same thing with phones. Smart phones are good at a lot of things, but they are mediocre as a telephone.
I read about project vesta on HN a while back, and it seemed promising. Why do these approaches not get more attention?
Project vesta has the additional benefit that it works directly on the oceans, which may be the more pressing problem.
It's completely moving away from the client/server model to something else.
Perhaps that's a great thing to do, but it's not something to do quietly.
What is the magnitude of this problem? What are the possible solutions?
Can it be addressed with, say, liability insurance premiums (and is it already)? Do we need a stigma associated with unnecessary trucks? More laws?
Isn't that what I said: that it's a gas milage problem and not a truck problem?
Also, I advocated sharing a truck rather than owning one truck per household. So if we disagree about something, I don't understand what.
Having one truck for an extended family to share is really convenient. (EDIT: E.g. one truck per 4-6 households.)
And let's face it -- cars in general are completely unused at least 95% of the time (EDIT: probably an exaggeration). And you could just as easily say that most of the seats in a car go unused most of the time, even when in use.
So it's really about the gas milage rather than the fact that it has an open bed. Sports cars and SUVs fall into the same category. It's just that a bunch of empty truck beds on the road are more visible than empty seats or over-powered engines.
I want to apologize for this thread. I can't reply to my own comment or edit it now, so I'm replying to your comment which was a reasonable reply. I realize probably nobody will read this old thread, but I wanted to write this as a way to think through what I could have done better.
On complex topics is when it's most important to be clear about a point, rather than just throwing out a few data points and simplistic conclusions.
My point was that misplaced fear (e.g. not supported by data) has its own risks, and fear is probably not the right emotion for injustice anyway (anger makes more sense). The point may be right or wrong when the totality of the data is examined.
On HN, this could have been a productive discussion but my comment was a distraction. Next time I'll ask a question instead.
CS is a specialty. It is in high demand, but it's also centralizing. If you are in the periphery, it's easy to miss out on a lot of that demand.
It makes sense to reach out to build diverse CS talent, but I'm not sure that it makes sense to reach out for greater numbers.
Not quite.
Right now there's a lot of confusion. Is gluten a problem for me, or dairy, or fat, or sugar, or alcohol, or caffiene? It's easy to get overwhelmed.
If you eliminate everything that might be bad for you, there's not a lot left. There's a lot of value in specificity because it's actionable.
Can you explain? Is it a metabolic thing, or is it related to the carb content of beer/wine?
I think it comes from the idea that you'll have more knowledge about what you are eating.
There's some truth to that, but cooking for yourself still hides a lot. And it might end up just being a false sense of health.
It's also what stage you are at. Most people can't make soda at home, so eliminating that alone might be a big help for some.
I guess the holy grail is to get to the point where you can take some lab tests (genetic?) and a doctor can tell you: "eat this kind of diet, avoid these kinds of foods, and you'll be healthy".
Obviously it would take a lot to get there, but having a few high quality studies that can give a lot of people at least some advice (without tons of qualifiers and weasel words) would be a huge help.
This might cost ~50B, but that seems worth it.
I agree that it couldn't be a rigorous double-blind.
But the point is to make some kind of prediction about the results a policy will have, so that you can later reflect on what actually does happen.
"Judge systems for their results, not their motives."
There's a third important concept: the process.
In this case, the process is pretty horrible -- the article's author has no idea what was wrong, and therefore can't remedy it. Similarly, since he doesn't know what's wrong, we can't criticize the process in any specific way, so the process can't be improved.