In government, it’s not just a matter of having the best policy; it’s about getting enough votes. This creates a problem when the self-interests of individual voters don’t match the best interests of the country.
I think that’s a model that’s not sophisticated when you want to think about getting laws passed.
For instance, voting researchers widely consider the presidential voting system in America to be inferior to many alternatives. But if you want to change it, you require consent from Democrats and Republicans—i.e. the very people who benefit from the status quo.
That claim seems false. Ballot initiatives to change voting systems are possible in many systems and state law dictates how electors for the president are chosen and it’s possible for some states to use a different voting system.
The main problem with changing the voting system is that most people don’t care about the voting system.
No, you’re universalising my claim to something that I don’t agree with. My claim is not that the short-term interests of those in power always prevent the institution of policies that are in the long-term interests of the country, or that this is always the main barrier.
My actual claim that it is sometimes it is the case. E.g. gerrymandering. E.g. Republicans arguing against the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And so on. And just because ballot initiatives can be started, doesn’t mean they’re going to pass into law. They can still have the misaligned incentive problem due to the current voting-age population’s interests misaligning with the interests of the unborn. Or due to gerrymandered areas where a minority has control. My proposal solves a subset of these issues.
I’m hoping this comes across as constructive. You’ve made this same fallacy in another conversion we had. I essentially said “Countries that call themselves communist tend to do communist things”, which is demonstrably true, and you overgeneralised it to “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X”, which is of course false. And then you knocked down that straw-manned version of my claim.
They can still have the misaligned incentive problem due to the current voting-age population’s interests misaligning with the interests of the unborn.
The unborn have no political power to get laws passed whether the law comes into force today or in a hundred years.
There’s zero incentive for a congressman to put work into progressing a bill that does something in a hundred in which nobody has an interest.
And just because ballot initiatives can be started, doesn’t mean they’re going to pass into law.
You claimed that there’s something specific that preventing them from being passed into law, namely the opposition of Republicans and Democrats. Those groups control the legislature but not ballot initiatives.
Actually addressing your specific example is not strawmanning.
Concretely, someone making a ballot initiative to change the voting system has an option to write in a provision that it will only kick into effect in X years in the future. In practice, I would expect that this would not help the ballot process to get passed but more likely reduce it’s chances of success because it demotivates the participants.
There are cases where there’s a consensus among lawmakers that it would be good to do something and there’s current opposition that can be circumvented by writing the law into the future, but the strong clarity among lawmakers that something would be good does not exist in the examples that you mentioned.
In Berlin where I live, a reform that reduced the amount of districts in Berlin and thus the number of majors of districts is one example. It was written into the future to get less opposition from people currently being in the district governance. This was possible because there was a strong political will to do government reform to cut costs within the governing coalition.
There exists no such will in the kind of cases you mentioned.
There are cases where there’s a consensus among lawmakers that it would be good to do something and there’s current opposition that can be circumvented by writing the law into the future
This is exactly my point. It’s actually the entire point of the article. Everything else was simply trying to describe this problem and give examples so that it’s easier to understand. Whether anyone agrees with the examples does not matter. The article literally emphasises this point: “The examples I’ve given are simply for clarity.”
Actually addressing your specific example is not strawmanning.
Should I have been more general than saying “Republicans and Democrats” interests are the bottleneck? Sure, it’s the people in control of the actual vote that matters. But those details are entirely incidental. It’s kind of like pointing out a spelling error, and making a huge deal of it.
Now, I do want to hear this. What about your overgeneralisation that “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X”? Do you not concede that you were straw manning me in that instance?
This is exactly my point. It’s actually the entire point of the article.
No. You are not saying anything about the required initial buy-in by lawmakers in your article and you explicitly suggest that it’s a strategy that people who aren’t lawmakers can use.
What about your overgeneralisation that “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X”?
I did not generalize things in the post you linked as well. The other post was about a very explicit claim you made about whether certain governments care about the granularity of policies.
Me: “For the CCP to declare themselves as ‘Communist’ means they are likely to disregard much granularity that good policy must have”
You: “The fact that North Korea someone publically declares themselves to be democratic in the name of their country. That tells you little about how it’s actually governed.”
Again, to highlight the problem, I said “Countries that call themselves communist tend to do this communist thing”, which is demonstrably true. Then you overgeneralised it to “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X” and then gave an example of your overgeneralisation (North Korea claiming to be democratic) to say the form of my argument was wrong.
The actual form of my argument is that “Certain self-assigned labels convey information”. Sometimes that information is counter to the label, sometimes it matches. But given a specific context, you know which way it goes. For North Korea, “Countries that have ‘Democratic’ in their country’s name tend to be undemocratic” is a true statement. Certain self-assigned labels do convey information. This is not disputable.
Your argument was a total straw man. Honestly, you have a genuine problem admitting error. You care about winning more than truth. Please don’t comment on my posts anymore.
I think that’s a model that’s not sophisticated when you want to think about getting laws passed.
That claim seems false. Ballot initiatives to change voting systems are possible in many systems and state law dictates how electors for the president are chosen and it’s possible for some states to use a different voting system.
The main problem with changing the voting system is that most people don’t care about the voting system.
No, you’re universalising my claim to something that I don’t agree with. My claim is not that the short-term interests of those in power always prevent the institution of policies that are in the long-term interests of the country, or that this is always the main barrier.
My actual claim that it is sometimes it is the case. E.g. gerrymandering. E.g. Republicans arguing against the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And so on. And just because ballot initiatives can be started, doesn’t mean they’re going to pass into law. They can still have the misaligned incentive problem due to the current voting-age population’s interests misaligning with the interests of the unborn. Or due to gerrymandered areas where a minority has control. My proposal solves a subset of these issues.
I’m hoping this comes across as constructive. You’ve made this same fallacy in another conversion we had. I essentially said “Countries that call themselves communist tend to do communist things”, which is demonstrably true, and you overgeneralised it to “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X”, which is of course false. And then you knocked down that straw-manned version of my claim.
The unborn have no political power to get laws passed whether the law comes into force today or in a hundred years.
There’s zero incentive for a congressman to put work into progressing a bill that does something in a hundred in which nobody has an interest.
You claimed that there’s something specific that preventing them from being passed into law, namely the opposition of Republicans and Democrats. Those groups control the legislature but not ballot initiatives.
Actually addressing your specific example is not strawmanning.
Concretely, someone making a ballot initiative to change the voting system has an option to write in a provision that it will only kick into effect in X years in the future. In practice, I would expect that this would not help the ballot process to get passed but more likely reduce it’s chances of success because it demotivates the participants.
There are cases where there’s a consensus among lawmakers that it would be good to do something and there’s current opposition that can be circumvented by writing the law into the future, but the strong clarity among lawmakers that something would be good does not exist in the examples that you mentioned.
In Berlin where I live, a reform that reduced the amount of districts in Berlin and thus the number of majors of districts is one example. It was written into the future to get less opposition from people currently being in the district governance. This was possible because there was a strong political will to do government reform to cut costs within the governing coalition.
There exists no such will in the kind of cases you mentioned.
This is exactly my point. It’s actually the entire point of the article. Everything else was simply trying to describe this problem and give examples so that it’s easier to understand. Whether anyone agrees with the examples does not matter. The article literally emphasises this point: “The examples I’ve given are simply for clarity.”
Should I have been more general than saying “Republicans and Democrats” interests are the bottleneck? Sure, it’s the people in control of the actual vote that matters. But those details are entirely incidental. It’s kind of like pointing out a spelling error, and making a huge deal of it.
Now, I do want to hear this. What about your overgeneralisation that “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X”? Do you not concede that you were straw manning me in that instance?
No. You are not saying anything about the required initial buy-in by lawmakers in your article and you explicitly suggest that it’s a strategy that people who aren’t lawmakers can use.
I did not generalize things in the post you linked as well. The other post was about a very explicit claim you made about whether certain governments care about the granularity of policies.
Me: “For the CCP to declare themselves as ‘Communist’ means they are likely to disregard much granularity that good policy must have”
You: “The fact that North Korea someone publically declares themselves to be democratic in the name of their country. That tells you little about how it’s actually governed.”
Again, to highlight the problem, I said “Countries that call themselves communist tend to do this communist thing”, which is demonstrably true. Then you overgeneralised it to “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X” and then gave an example of your overgeneralisation (North Korea claiming to be democratic) to say the form of my argument was wrong.
The actual form of my argument is that “Certain self-assigned labels convey information”. Sometimes that information is counter to the label, sometimes it matches. But given a specific context, you know which way it goes. For North Korea, “Countries that have ‘Democratic’ in their country’s name tend to be undemocratic” is a true statement. Certain self-assigned labels do convey information. This is not disputable.
Your argument was a total straw man. Honestly, you have a genuine problem admitting error. You care about winning more than truth. Please don’t comment on my posts anymore.