13 ms·

Seems to me public review is a failsafe - an acknowledgement that laws and regs can't always keep up with real life harms.

ip26 5d ago
You can't give all citizens effective veto power and then expect it will only be used for good in cases where the law is behind.
- nielsbot 5d ago
  Right. But what about the cases it is used for good?
  - Dylan16807 5d ago
    In many environments it ends up acting like a generic "don't build things" mandate. Such a mandate's wins are by accident more often than by target, and it does more harm than good.
    - wredcoll 5d ago
      I mean, this is way too vague to really talk about usefully, but like, adding some friction to certain processes can be pretty useful.
      - Dylan16807 5d ago
        While that is true, the current default situation in the US is way too far on the anti-build side.
  - none2585 5d ago
    Hey man Sam and Elon gotta eat
tptacek 5d ago
Public review in practice is a mechanism for concentrated local interest groups that don't have enough democratic legitimacy to win at the ballot box to instead win via a series of Tuesday night meetings normal people don't go to. There's literature on this: public comment overwhelmingly trends negative. People show up to prevent change. They rarely show up to support it, even if they do support it; normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning.
- bcrosby95 5d ago
  > normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning. That's not how the vast majority of this works, and the average best case scenario on this you get to vote a politician out after they already fucked people over.
  - tptacek 5d ago
    This sounds like porting assumptions about national and statewide politics into local politics, which is a totally different animal. I hear this a lot from people, and if you're referring to local electeds as "politicians fucking people over", you're probably not thinking locally. If you disagree, can we reconcile our premises? What local politics are you doing that's indicating otherwise to you?
- cortesoft 5d ago
  I feel like this is a complicated issue, because there are two competing values here. On one hand, fair representation is important, and the idea that every person has an equal say in how governmental decisions are made. One person one vote. On the other hand, not everyone has the same ‘skin in the game’ for different decisions. For example, if we are deciding if a noisy building should be allowed to be built, someone who lives 5 miles away is not going to be affected by the noise, so they aren’t going to care about that. If someone comes to a community and says “we will give everyone in the community $50 if you let us build this loud building here”, then all the people out of the noise range are going to think that is a great deal. They get $50, and they don’t hear the noise anyway. Why WOULDNT they want to approve that? So is it fair for the community to decide to make one (or a few) people miserable for years so they get $50? So things like public review that let a “concentrated local interest group” have more power makes some sense if the thing they are reviewing also has a concentrated local impact. Of course, there has to be some balance, otherwise we will live in a NIMBY world and nothing will be built.
deleted 5d ago
[deleted]

ip26 5d ago

You can't give all citizens effective veto power and then expect it will only be used for good in cases where the law is behind.

nielsbot 5d ago
Right. But what about the cases it is used for good?
- Dylan16807 5d ago
  In many environments it ends up acting like a generic "don't build things" mandate. Such a mandate's wins are by accident more often than by target, and it does more harm than good.
  - wredcoll 5d ago
    I mean, this is way too vague to really talk about usefully, but like, adding some friction to certain processes can be pretty useful.
    - Dylan16807 5d ago
      While that is true, the current default situation in the US is way too far on the anti-build side.
- none2585 5d ago
  Hey man Sam and Elon gotta eat

tptacek 5d ago

Public review in practice is a mechanism for concentrated local interest groups that don't have enough democratic legitimacy to win at the ballot box to instead win via a series of Tuesday night meetings normal people don't go to. There's literature on this: public comment overwhelmingly trends negative. People show up to prevent change. They rarely show up to support it, even if they do support it; normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning.

bcrosby95 5d ago
> normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning. That's not how the vast majority of this works, and the average best case scenario on this you get to vote a politician out after they already fucked people over.
- tptacek 5d ago
  This sounds like porting assumptions about national and statewide politics into local politics, which is a totally different animal. I hear this a lot from people, and if you're referring to local electeds as "politicians fucking people over", you're probably not thinking locally. If you disagree, can we reconcile our premises? What local politics are you doing that's indicating otherwise to you?
cortesoft 5d ago
I feel like this is a complicated issue, because there are two competing values here. On one hand, fair representation is important, and the idea that every person has an equal say in how governmental decisions are made. One person one vote. On the other hand, not everyone has the same ‘skin in the game’ for different decisions. For example, if we are deciding if a noisy building should be allowed to be built, someone who lives 5 miles away is not going to be affected by the noise, so they aren’t going to care about that. If someone comes to a community and says “we will give everyone in the community $50 if you let us build this loud building here”, then all the people out of the noise range are going to think that is a great deal. They get $50, and they don’t hear the noise anyway. Why WOULDNT they want to approve that? So is it fair for the community to decide to make one (or a few) people miserable for years so they get $50? So things like public review that let a “concentrated local interest group” have more power makes some sense if the thing they are reviewing also has a concentrated local impact. Of course, there has to be some balance, otherwise we will live in a NIMBY world and nothing will be built.

deleted 5d ago

[deleted]