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They make it really difficult to fight any of this. You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the corre

They make it really difficult to fight any of this. You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read, hope it changes their mind. This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying. This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if they have strong feelings about it. I wish there was an easier way for people to say they are against this

sidewndr46 1y ago
One of the failings of most modern democracies is that if a measure doesn't pass, nothing prohibits it from being introduced again immediately. I've seen ballot initiatives simply get copy pasted onto each election by city council until they happen to pass.
- soulofmischief 1y ago
  A well-funded institution will always outlast an individual or smaller organization in a war of attrition. I think a modern Constitution needs to consider 19-20th-century concepts such as game theory if it has any hope of preventing eventual corruption.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    The same game theory that could make a modern constitution so robust could also be used by the bad guys to thoroughly corrupt the drafting of any modern constitution you could get enacted.
    - rolandog 1y ago
      I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy — death by a thousand papercuts — will be lead to catastrophic tipping points. As a ChemEng, I can't help but compare the current coordinated attack on the democratic rule of governments worldwide to having multiple batches of emulsions undergoing phase-inversion [0]: only so much fascism can be added before things collapse into a greasy turd. That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to. I would argue that the root cause of the sad state of democracies is the fact that we were coaxed into a snafu by virtue of accepting the false equivalence of capitalism and democracy: the first does not warrant the other; in fact they are most times at odds. I am also reminded of the Behind the Bastards podcast and their episodes on Adolf Eichmann's careerist pursuit enabling the Holocaust... leading me to wonder how many people are burning the world down as part of a KPI... Or, in other words, are our economic systems and forms of government vulnerable to the paperclip problem? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemistry)#In_emulsions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemistry)#In...
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy I'm not a fan of democracy. You wouldn't be either, if you thought about it for very long... you just can't help yourself, it was championed as some sort of virtue ever since you were old enough to realize that governments existed. From kindergarten or pre-k. The things you'd claim you like about democracy aren't even things that make it a democracy. The one (and only) criterion of democracy is "can you vote". And there are better ways to get all the other things than voting... voting/people do not scale. It is the undoing of democracy, people get what they deserve from it. Good and hard. >That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to. It does not scale. You're aspiring to something that not only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make it even bigger, true "the beatings will continue until morale improves" style. If I can figure out how to strike out on my own and be a million miles away from you when you rally for your most ambitious attempt yet, that's what I will do.
        Kim_Bruning 1y ago
        Defining something in the negative is always tricky. What are some better designs, or design principles?
        NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        Sortition. If no one can vote, then there can't be any of the chicanery that comes from that. Political parties couldn't exist, because a party can't help someone get elected. We no longer have the problem of the only people in office being those who wanted to be in office enough to go to the trouble. No need for term limits (people are unlikely to win office twice, let alone more often). And yet it preserves everything you like about democracy.
        Kim_Bruning 1y ago
        I get the impression myself that no singular approach is perfect. They've all been tried and all have flaws. That and different functions of government might actually benefit from different methods. This is why most practical real world systems tend to be a hybrid of several different designs. Eg... the US constitution gives us Direct elections (congress) , indirect elections (president via electors, though that has been somewhat undermined), Sortition (juries), lifetime appointment (judges), appointment based on merit (civil service), and probably a few more that I've missed. One can even argue -if one would like to try- that separation of powers counts as anarchistic (certainly it is anti-archon).
  - deaddodo 1y ago
    Look at SOPA/PIPA. They simultaneously pushed the same bill through both chambers to try and guarantee it would pass. Grassroots efforts led to it being overwhelmingly blocked in both cases. And then they just slowly slipped most of it's provisions through other legislation over the years.
    - lern_too_spel 1y ago
      Except for a few types of bills that customarily originate in the house, most bills are introduced roughly simultaneously in both houses so that the information for debating the bill doesn't have to be brought twice. This obviously doesn't guarantee a bill will pass because it is required to pass both houses.
      - deaddodo 1y ago
        Every bill has to go through both chambers, but they usually originate in one and then are passed to the other once the originating chamber affirms them. It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so.
        lern_too_spel 1y ago
        > It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so. This is in fact extremely common. Both houses pass independent bills, and then they go to conference to work out the differences. https://gai.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tab-6-Resolving-House-Senate-Differences.pdf https://gai.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tab-6-... "Frequently, however, House and Senate committees each develop their own bills on the same subject. In these cases, one house often debates and amends the bill reported by its committee but then amends and passes the corresponding bill that the other chamber has already passed"
        deaddodo 1y ago
        You’re picking and choosing, and being obscenely obtuse because you want to win a nothing internet argument. They dual draft bills. A draft is not the same thing as a proposal. When it actually runs through the process, one of the two drafts runs its course (as a proposal) in the origination chamber. That same bill is then passed to the second chamber to get approved. If it happened “all the time”, you would link examples rather than barely related Georgetown University theory pieces. Do I need to link you the “School House Rock” video? Or are you going to continue to link out of context/slightly tangential articles to try and prove your point in a typical armchair expert manner? If so, just move on and pretend you “won”; it’s more productive.
- Kim_Bruning 1y ago
  That's what constitutional amendments are for, right? (or in this case ECHR updates)
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    Not really. There have been multiple times that California passed ballot initiatives that violated their own constitution. At the federal level in the US we have the annoying problem that effectively everything is interstate commerce.
- deaddodo 1y ago
  Meanwhile, they make the dismantling of legislation near impossible. You have to go through the same process, but in inverse; and hope that miraculously the representatives in gov't become altruistic with a desire for less power.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  The deck is stacked. They only have to win once, and it's law. You have to win over and over every time it's introduced.
  - sneak 1y ago
    Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress proposed a bicameral legislature, where one half needs a 66% majority to pass a law. The other half’s only job is to repeal laws, which they can do with a 50% majority.
    - Analemma_ 1y ago
      This is a dumb and outrageously anti-democratic idea, and is a much worse cure than the disease it's attempting to fix. If 65% of the population supports a law it's favored by 30 points-- far higher than the margin of most elections-- and yet would not exist under this system.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        There's nothing magical about 50%. The bar for "this policy should be inflicted on everyone" should be very high--I'd argue much higher than 50%. At the same time, the bar for "we should stop inflicting this policy on everyone" should be extremely low. I'd argue a 1/3 minority should be enough to repeal a law. If one out of three people feel they are harmed by something, maybe the government shouldn't be doing it.
        Arainach 1y ago
        This doesn't work in practice. Look at how Senate Republicans have weaponized the filibuster in the last 20 years. A 40% veto is conceptually similar to your repeal process and it results in gridlock and nothing getting done. It is harder to build than to destroy. If laws can be trivially repealed no one will be willing to commit to long term things. We're seeing that right now with the destruction of US soft power, economic power, and global leadership.
- noqc 1y ago
  This system would make a lot more sense if the number of people you had to get to agree to a bill with a bunch of riders was more than 50%.
- mc32 1y ago
  It'd be nice if bills were one item only and on failure or passage, there would be a timeout before it could be brought to vote again either to try to pass it again or to repeal it. Like at least a year. For some things maybe five years.
afarah1 1y ago
Same for any legislation piece. A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M. Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time. And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for. It's just the power structure of any representative legislature. "In vain do we fly to the many"...
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  A possible countermeasure could be to make the life of politicians (which we will of course all name individually) who voted for such laws a hell on earth ...
  - afarah1 1y ago
    Which is costly to do...
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    How do you get to them to force them into submission? Did Americans get the child rapists off the Epstein list yet? And the unelected EU leader Ursula VDL has had private security since she was a child. They're untouchable by the plebs, they have zero accountability.
    - fakedang 1y ago
      Tbf, a Jan 6 situation is very possible in the EUC and EUP, because the security for them is just like these constituent bodies - a joke. I for one would like to see a bunch of French and Dutch farmers drive by and fling shit on them, at the very least.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Other than shooting them? But they hire security… it's quite hard to hit them without hitting anyone else.
  - squigz 1y ago
    What does that mean, precisely?
HPsquared 1y ago
The proposing side can be centralised and organised; the opposition diffuse and disorganised. Hence the continual growth of all forms of legislation.
wyuenho 1y ago
The UK has a petition website. It logs the signatory by constituency. Once a threshold os signatory has cross, the government has to respond and parliament will have to consider a debate on the topic.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  And just because they respond, it doesn't actually mean anything will result from it. "No more something!" "We have seen your petition. Fuck off, peasants".
  - patmorgan23 1y ago
    And You can use the response as campaign material. Ultimately democratic governments are accountable to the people at the ballot box.
- crinkly 1y ago
  This exists only to pacify people and make them think someone has listened to them.
- voidUpdate 1y ago
  This is the relevant petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903. The government's response so far is "lol no"
atoav 1y ago
There is a German Verein called digitalcourage who lobbies for this: https://digitalcourage.de/en https://digitalcourage.de/en You can toss some money to the European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) as well: https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ All of those are doing good work in the digital rights space (Edit: there is probably more but those are the ones that came to mind)
MPSFounder 1y ago
This, I believe, is the only issue with our form of gov. Lack of referendums. In the US, much of the current unpopular issues (Abortion ban, support for Israel's genocide using American taxpayer's taxes, lack of regulations on data harvesting) could be circumvented. I believe the optimal way to avoid these is 1) an educated populace and 2) referendums. The people who were given objective facts, free of propaganda and private interests, decide accordingly. If the majority believes in something, then we the people decide. Congress and the senate have been too bought up by private interests, that starts with campaigning (you receive x millions, from a lobby group (AIPAC for instance), and every legislation that affects their interests has to go through them). I dated a girl who was a lobbyist in DC, and relocated back home. It is unbelievable what goes on behind the scenes. Much of us do not recognize for instance the extent to which fossil fuels or car dealerships dictate how we live our lives. We may be aware of it, but there is a bureaucratic apparatus built in DC, at least 50x the size of congress, that strips We the people of power.
- sevensor 1y ago
  > an educated populace Wherever someone attacks public education or free libraries, you know where they stand on government by the people.
FabHK 1y ago
It's equally difficult to support it, no?
miohtama 1y ago
The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in law, like right to online privacy and privacy of communications.
- cobbzilla 1y ago
  Historically, the window to enshrine broad positive rights like those is only briefly open in the wake of a revolution, civil war, or at best significant civil unrest. It’s not a pleasant future to look forward to, we all have a lot of work to do!
- mystraline 1y ago
  Yes, like the Soviet Union. Whereas the West has predominantly negative rights, the USSR had positive rights. And due to their campaign, even got the UN declaration of human rights to mostly include USSR's positive rights. https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on_human_rights_the_ussr_and_russia_part_one https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on... Part of USSR constition indicating positive rights: https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.html https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.... Women and men have equal rights in the USSR. Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights. Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs of society. Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure. Now, that isn't to say the USSR was blameless. We know it wasn't. However, we can take their successes and failures in what we propose and build next. Negative and positive rights both are needed. But the West is allergic to those.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept. Yes they had a "right for leisure", unless the State decided that you were a slave and sent you in Siberia to knock hard rocks for the rest of your life. Or your "rest days" were in fact forced, unpaid labor (subbotnik), no different than their previous feudal serf system. Same for a "right to a house", where the State provided you with a filthy, overcrowded slum and call it a day.
pcrh 1y ago
On the other hand, elected politicians (senators, MPs, etc) are supposed to represent what the populus wants, else be ejected. So in theory, they should be paying as much heed to lobbyists as to their constituents. The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There's no ground swell of public opinion in favour of being continually monitored.
- nucleardog 1y ago
  > The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There are huge bodies of research out there on voting behaviour. If you look at it, it's a lot less surprising. The means by which we're supposed to hold the elected officials accountable for not representing our best interests is voting. It doesn't work. Most people don't, as individuals, hold any sort of stable policy positions to begin with. People have a poor understanding of the candidates' position on various topics (strongly correlated with not having a stable policy position themselves). Candidates themselves have influence on people's view of subjects. People tend to take some of their views from the candidate they've decided to support, and project their own views onto the candidate in other cases making them seem more aligned/preferable. The entire model is basically set up assuming that: 1. People have a view on policy which they decided on. 2. People will understand the candidates' positions and vote for the ones most closely aligned with them. 3. If an elected representative does not follow through on their positions and views, the people will hold them accountable by voting them out of office. 4. Therefore, in aggregate and over the long term, the elected representatives represent and enact the will of the people. For the vast majority of issues in the vast majority of cases... one and two do not hold true to a level that's meaningful or significant. That means the third step falls apart. In practice, there's little accountability to the electorate for the elected representatives. Which means the fourth falls apart. Given the elected officials aren't really beholden to the electorate, what else would guide their position? On an individual basis, there are a lot of opportunities for wealth and power. Unless it's anything particularly egregious, the only real impediment to them taking advantage is their own personal ethics and morals. The kinds of people that want to put their life on hold to run a campaign so they can maybe take a shit job with mediocre pay where a bunch of people will be pissed at them no matter what they do... are unfortunately often not in for the mediocre pay and anger. And here we are. It's not whether there are enough people that support being continually monitored, it's about whether there's enough people and enough money _against_ it to stir up enough people to care to stop them. There's almost definitely not. And just to make it entirely hopeless--even if you are a well-informed voter with considered and consistent views on policy... Many countries have very little in the way of options for who else to vote for. Is this important enough to enough people to make them a single issue voter? Would they vote for the hypothetical "We Support Murdering Kittens" party if they were against the spying? Probably not--they'll probably hold their nose and vote for the "We Love Kittens" party as the lesser evil.
aunty_helen 1y ago
I donate to an org that supports free speech. They do a good job for me. If there’s something they need a signature on I’ll generally follow their instructions and sign it.
klysm 1y ago
Why would the politician in question give a shit what you think? They get into office mostly by funding which comes from… guess who?
dyauspitr 1y ago
I don’t think people are particularly against this. The kids are imploding and people dont care about a completely open internet as much.
sunshine-o 1y ago
I was told by a Brussels lobbyist a long time ago that the EU was by design made for them. I then was shocked how in your face it is within the EU walls. In a sense citizens also have legitimate lobby groups, they are the political parties we know. Foreign countries also lobby. Now recently what should worry Europeans is they don't bother anymore and just wipe the floor with the EU representative in front of everybody like Xi and Trump did last week. So you can vote and lobby but I don't think it is enough today. We should first opt out of a lot of things and defend ourselves digitally: - Buy some cheap LoRa devices and give some to your friends. Get into meshtastic and reticulum - Buy some cheap HaLow WiFi devices and get into things like OpenWrt and B.A.T.M.A.N - Self host as much as you can (It is worth doing just to avoid the Cloudflare " verify you are human" thing) - Look back into things like Ethereum and good projects, they slowly made some real progress. Crypto is not only about price, annoying bitcoin bros and memecoins. It is still bad but banks and credit card companies are worst. - Get some useful skills. We have entered some kind of world war already and it will most likely include some ugly cyberattacks. In that context ChatControl matters much less and you can kill two birds with one stone. I am still looking for a realistic solution to the email problem. If you have a suggestion I am really listening.
zx8080 1y ago
> This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying. That's gighting against an organized crime syndicate. It requires coordination, resources and aim. 1984 is coming in its worst scenarious. There will be no win for the people, no hope. Freedom is gone.
verisimi 1y ago
There is no way to resolve these problems. Every answer involves capitulation to governments with loss of personal freedoms. One has to admit the system is fundamentally broken. Once this is accepted, and people stop investing themselves further in the political system, then we will see change. Sadly, the change is already planned for and will likely be a jump to some sort of communistic, ai-managed technocracy. However, it is also an opportunity to make the point that force should be no part of a future system. People should be able to opt-in or opt-out. That's freedom.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Ultimately if you want politicians not to do this then you need to start pooling your resources and just paying them not to, because it's pretty obvious with how all this stuff is getting rolled out in a month that someone someone has bankrolled it.
Jommi 1y ago
just use a browser agent

sidewndr46 1y ago

One of the failings of most modern democracies is that if a measure doesn't pass, nothing prohibits it from being introduced again immediately. I've seen ballot initiatives simply get copy pasted onto each election by city council until they happen to pass.

soulofmischief 1y ago
A well-funded institution will always outlast an individual or smaller organization in a war of attrition. I think a modern Constitution needs to consider 19-20th-century concepts such as game theory if it has any hope of preventing eventual corruption.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  The same game theory that could make a modern constitution so robust could also be used by the bad guys to thoroughly corrupt the drafting of any modern constitution you could get enacted.
  - rolandog 1y ago
    I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy — death by a thousand papercuts — will be lead to catastrophic tipping points. As a ChemEng, I can't help but compare the current coordinated attack on the democratic rule of governments worldwide to having multiple batches of emulsions undergoing phase-inversion [0]: only so much fascism can be added before things collapse into a greasy turd. That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to. I would argue that the root cause of the sad state of democracies is the fact that we were coaxed into a snafu by virtue of accepting the false equivalence of capitalism and democracy: the first does not warrant the other; in fact they are most times at odds. I am also reminded of the Behind the Bastards podcast and their episodes on Adolf Eichmann's careerist pursuit enabling the Holocaust... leading me to wonder how many people are burning the world down as part of a KPI... Or, in other words, are our economic systems and forms of government vulnerable to the paperclip problem? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemistry)#In_emulsions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemistry)#In...
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      >I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy I'm not a fan of democracy. You wouldn't be either, if you thought about it for very long... you just can't help yourself, it was championed as some sort of virtue ever since you were old enough to realize that governments existed. From kindergarten or pre-k. The things you'd claim you like about democracy aren't even things that make it a democracy. The one (and only) criterion of democracy is "can you vote". And there are better ways to get all the other things than voting... voting/people do not scale. It is the undoing of democracy, people get what they deserve from it. Good and hard. >That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to. It does not scale. You're aspiring to something that not only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make it even bigger, true "the beatings will continue until morale improves" style. If I can figure out how to strike out on my own and be a million miles away from you when you rally for your most ambitious attempt yet, that's what I will do.
      - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
        Defining something in the negative is always tricky. What are some better designs, or design principles?
        NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        Sortition. If no one can vote, then there can't be any of the chicanery that comes from that. Political parties couldn't exist, because a party can't help someone get elected. We no longer have the problem of the only people in office being those who wanted to be in office enough to go to the trouble. No need for term limits (people are unlikely to win office twice, let alone more often). And yet it preserves everything you like about democracy.
        Kim_Bruning 1y ago
        I get the impression myself that no singular approach is perfect. They've all been tried and all have flaws. That and different functions of government might actually benefit from different methods. This is why most practical real world systems tend to be a hybrid of several different designs. Eg... the US constitution gives us Direct elections (congress) , indirect elections (president via electors, though that has been somewhat undermined), Sortition (juries), lifetime appointment (judges), appointment based on merit (civil service), and probably a few more that I've missed. One can even argue -if one would like to try- that separation of powers counts as anarchistic (certainly it is anti-archon).
- deaddodo 1y ago
  Look at SOPA/PIPA. They simultaneously pushed the same bill through both chambers to try and guarantee it would pass. Grassroots efforts led to it being overwhelmingly blocked in both cases. And then they just slowly slipped most of it's provisions through other legislation over the years.
  - lern_too_spel 1y ago
    Except for a few types of bills that customarily originate in the house, most bills are introduced roughly simultaneously in both houses so that the information for debating the bill doesn't have to be brought twice. This obviously doesn't guarantee a bill will pass because it is required to pass both houses.
    - deaddodo 1y ago
      Every bill has to go through both chambers, but they usually originate in one and then are passed to the other once the originating chamber affirms them. It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so.
      - lern_too_spel 1y ago
        > It is not common to push two independent bills simultaneously, despite your assertion so. This is in fact extremely common. Both houses pass independent bills, and then they go to conference to work out the differences. https://gai.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tab-6-Resolving-House-Senate-Differences.pdf https://gai.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tab-6-... "Frequently, however, House and Senate committees each develop their own bills on the same subject. In these cases, one house often debates and amends the bill reported by its committee but then amends and passes the corresponding bill that the other chamber has already passed"
        deaddodo 1y ago
        You’re picking and choosing, and being obscenely obtuse because you want to win a nothing internet argument. They dual draft bills. A draft is not the same thing as a proposal. When it actually runs through the process, one of the two drafts runs its course (as a proposal) in the origination chamber. That same bill is then passed to the second chamber to get approved. If it happened “all the time”, you would link examples rather than barely related Georgetown University theory pieces. Do I need to link you the “School House Rock” video? Or are you going to continue to link out of context/slightly tangential articles to try and prove your point in a typical armchair expert manner? If so, just move on and pretend you “won”; it’s more productive.
Kim_Bruning 1y ago
That's what constitutional amendments are for, right? (or in this case ECHR updates)
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  Not really. There have been multiple times that California passed ballot initiatives that violated their own constitution. At the federal level in the US we have the annoying problem that effectively everything is interstate commerce.
deaddodo 1y ago
Meanwhile, they make the dismantling of legislation near impossible. You have to go through the same process, but in inverse; and hope that miraculously the representatives in gov't become altruistic with a desire for less power.
ryandrake 1y ago
The deck is stacked. They only have to win once, and it's law. You have to win over and over every time it's introduced.
- sneak 1y ago
  Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress proposed a bicameral legislature, where one half needs a 66% majority to pass a law. The other half’s only job is to repeal laws, which they can do with a 50% majority.
  - Analemma_ 1y ago
    This is a dumb and outrageously anti-democratic idea, and is a much worse cure than the disease it's attempting to fix. If 65% of the population supports a law it's favored by 30 points-- far higher than the margin of most elections-- and yet would not exist under this system.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      There's nothing magical about 50%. The bar for "this policy should be inflicted on everyone" should be very high--I'd argue much higher than 50%. At the same time, the bar for "we should stop inflicting this policy on everyone" should be extremely low. I'd argue a 1/3 minority should be enough to repeal a law. If one out of three people feel they are harmed by something, maybe the government shouldn't be doing it.
      - Arainach 1y ago
        This doesn't work in practice. Look at how Senate Republicans have weaponized the filibuster in the last 20 years. A 40% veto is conceptually similar to your repeal process and it results in gridlock and nothing getting done. It is harder to build than to destroy. If laws can be trivially repealed no one will be willing to commit to long term things. We're seeing that right now with the destruction of US soft power, economic power, and global leadership.
noqc 1y ago
This system would make a lot more sense if the number of people you had to get to agree to a bill with a bunch of riders was more than 50%.
mc32 1y ago
It'd be nice if bills were one item only and on failure or passage, there would be a timeout before it could be brought to vote again either to try to pass it again or to repeal it. Like at least a year. For some things maybe five years.

afarah1 1y ago

Same for any legislation piece. A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M. Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time. And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for. It's just the power structure of any representative legislature. "In vain do we fly to the many"...

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
A possible countermeasure could be to make the life of politicians (which we will of course all name individually) who voted for such laws a hell on earth ...
- afarah1 1y ago
  Which is costly to do...
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  How do you get to them to force them into submission? Did Americans get the child rapists off the Epstein list yet? And the unelected EU leader Ursula VDL has had private security since she was a child. They're untouchable by the plebs, they have zero accountability.
  - fakedang 1y ago
    Tbf, a Jan 6 situation is very possible in the EUC and EUP, because the security for them is just like these constituent bodies - a joke. I for one would like to see a bunch of French and Dutch farmers drive by and fling shit on them, at the very least.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Other than shooting them? But they hire security… it's quite hard to hit them without hitting anyone else.
- squigz 1y ago
  What does that mean, precisely?

HPsquared 1y ago

The proposing side can be centralised and organised; the opposition diffuse and disorganised. Hence the continual growth of all forms of legislation.

wyuenho 1y ago

The UK has a petition website. It logs the signatory by constituency. Once a threshold os signatory has cross, the government has to respond and parliament will have to consider a debate on the topic.

Ylpertnodi 1y ago
And just because they respond, it doesn't actually mean anything will result from it. "No more something!" "We have seen your petition. Fuck off, peasants".
- patmorgan23 1y ago
  And You can use the response as campaign material. Ultimately democratic governments are accountable to the people at the ballot box.
crinkly 1y ago
This exists only to pacify people and make them think someone has listened to them.
voidUpdate 1y ago
This is the relevant petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903. The government's response so far is "lol no"

atoav 1y ago

There is a German Verein called digitalcourage who lobbies for this: https://digitalcourage.de/en https://digitalcourage.de/en You can toss some money to the European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) as well: https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ All of those are doing good work in the digital rights space (Edit: there is probably more but those are the ones that came to mind)

MPSFounder 1y ago

This, I believe, is the only issue with our form of gov. Lack of referendums. In the US, much of the current unpopular issues (Abortion ban, support for Israel's genocide using American taxpayer's taxes, lack of regulations on data harvesting) could be circumvented. I believe the optimal way to avoid these is 1) an educated populace and 2) referendums. The people who were given objective facts, free of propaganda and private interests, decide accordingly. If the majority believes in something, then we the people decide. Congress and the senate have been too bought up by private interests, that starts with campaigning (you receive x millions, from a lobby group (AIPAC for instance), and every legislation that affects their interests has to go through them). I dated a girl who was a lobbyist in DC, and relocated back home. It is unbelievable what goes on behind the scenes. Much of us do not recognize for instance the extent to which fossil fuels or car dealerships dictate how we live our lives. We may be aware of it, but there is a bureaucratic apparatus built in DC, at least 50x the size of congress, that strips We the people of power.

sevensor 1y ago
> an educated populace Wherever someone attacks public education or free libraries, you know where they stand on government by the people.

FabHK 1y ago

It's equally difficult to support it, no?

miohtama 1y ago

The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in law, like right to online privacy and privacy of communications.

cobbzilla 1y ago
Historically, the window to enshrine broad positive rights like those is only briefly open in the wake of a revolution, civil war, or at best significant civil unrest. It’s not a pleasant future to look forward to, we all have a lot of work to do!
mystraline 1y ago
Yes, like the Soviet Union. Whereas the West has predominantly negative rights, the USSR had positive rights. And due to their campaign, even got the UN declaration of human rights to mostly include USSR's positive rights. https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on_human_rights_the_ussr_and_russia_part_one https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on... Part of USSR constition indicating positive rights: https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.html https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.... Women and men have equal rights in the USSR. Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights. Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs of society. Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure. Now, that isn't to say the USSR was blameless. We know it wasn't. However, we can take their successes and failures in what we propose and build next. Negative and positive rights both are needed. But the West is allergic to those.
- Saline9515 1y ago
  While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept. Yes they had a "right for leisure", unless the State decided that you were a slave and sent you in Siberia to knock hard rocks for the rest of your life. Or your "rest days" were in fact forced, unpaid labor (subbotnik), no different than their previous feudal serf system. Same for a "right to a house", where the State provided you with a filthy, overcrowded slum and call it a day.

pcrh 1y ago

On the other hand, elected politicians (senators, MPs, etc) are supposed to represent what the populus wants, else be ejected. So in theory, they should be paying as much heed to lobbyists as to their constituents. The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There's no ground swell of public opinion in favour of being continually monitored.

nucleardog 1y ago
> The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There are huge bodies of research out there on voting behaviour. If you look at it, it's a lot less surprising. The means by which we're supposed to hold the elected officials accountable for not representing our best interests is voting. It doesn't work. Most people don't, as individuals, hold any sort of stable policy positions to begin with. People have a poor understanding of the candidates' position on various topics (strongly correlated with not having a stable policy position themselves). Candidates themselves have influence on people's view of subjects. People tend to take some of their views from the candidate they've decided to support, and project their own views onto the candidate in other cases making them seem more aligned/preferable. The entire model is basically set up assuming that: 1. People have a view on policy which they decided on. 2. People will understand the candidates' positions and vote for the ones most closely aligned with them. 3. If an elected representative does not follow through on their positions and views, the people will hold them accountable by voting them out of office. 4. Therefore, in aggregate and over the long term, the elected representatives represent and enact the will of the people. For the vast majority of issues in the vast majority of cases... one and two do not hold true to a level that's meaningful or significant. That means the third step falls apart. In practice, there's little accountability to the electorate for the elected representatives. Which means the fourth falls apart. Given the elected officials aren't really beholden to the electorate, what else would guide their position? On an individual basis, there are a lot of opportunities for wealth and power. Unless it's anything particularly egregious, the only real impediment to them taking advantage is their own personal ethics and morals. The kinds of people that want to put their life on hold to run a campaign so they can maybe take a shit job with mediocre pay where a bunch of people will be pissed at them no matter what they do... are unfortunately often not in for the mediocre pay and anger. And here we are. It's not whether there are enough people that support being continually monitored, it's about whether there's enough people and enough money _against_ it to stir up enough people to care to stop them. There's almost definitely not. And just to make it entirely hopeless--even if you are a well-informed voter with considered and consistent views on policy... Many countries have very little in the way of options for who else to vote for. Is this important enough to enough people to make them a single issue voter? Would they vote for the hypothetical "We Support Murdering Kittens" party if they were against the spying? Probably not--they'll probably hold their nose and vote for the "We Love Kittens" party as the lesser evil.

aunty_helen 1y ago

I donate to an org that supports free speech. They do a good job for me. If there’s something they need a signature on I’ll generally follow their instructions and sign it.

klysm 1y ago

Why would the politician in question give a shit what you think? They get into office mostly by funding which comes from… guess who?

dyauspitr 1y ago

I don’t think people are particularly against this. The kids are imploding and people dont care about a completely open internet as much.

sunshine-o 1y ago

I was told by a Brussels lobbyist a long time ago that the EU was by design made for them. I then was shocked how in your face it is within the EU walls. In a sense citizens also have legitimate lobby groups, they are the political parties we know. Foreign countries also lobby. Now recently what should worry Europeans is they don't bother anymore and just wipe the floor with the EU representative in front of everybody like Xi and Trump did last week. So you can vote and lobby but I don't think it is enough today. We should first opt out of a lot of things and defend ourselves digitally: - Buy some cheap LoRa devices and give some to your friends. Get into meshtastic and reticulum - Buy some cheap HaLow WiFi devices and get into things like OpenWrt and B.A.T.M.A.N - Self host as much as you can (It is worth doing just to avoid the Cloudflare " verify you are human" thing) - Look back into things like Ethereum and good projects, they slowly made some real progress. Crypto is not only about price, annoying bitcoin bros and memecoins. It is still bad but banks and credit card companies are worst. - Get some useful skills. We have entered some kind of world war already and it will most likely include some ugly cyberattacks. In that context ChatControl matters much less and you can kill two birds with one stone. I am still looking for a realistic solution to the email problem. If you have a suggestion I am really listening.

zx8080 1y ago

> This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying. That's gighting against an organized crime syndicate. It requires coordination, resources and aim. 1984 is coming in its worst scenarious. There will be no win for the people, no hope. Freedom is gone.

verisimi 1y ago

There is no way to resolve these problems. Every answer involves capitulation to governments with loss of personal freedoms. One has to admit the system is fundamentally broken. Once this is accepted, and people stop investing themselves further in the political system, then we will see change. Sadly, the change is already planned for and will likely be a jump to some sort of communistic, ai-managed technocracy. However, it is also an opportunity to make the point that force should be no part of a future system. People should be able to opt-in or opt-out. That's freedom.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

Ultimately if you want politicians not to do this then you need to start pooling your resources and just paying them not to, because it's pretty obvious with how all this stuff is getting rolled out in a month that someone someone has bankrolled it.

Jommi 1y ago

just use a browser agent