Comment by Vespasian
1 day ago
That's also problematic.
Currently the same proposal is being discussed over and over again but if that wouldn't be possible it's easy introduce "similar" ideas.
Ultimately law makers need to be able to pass new laws, even controversial ones, or the power to so slowly shifts to someone else (e.g. the executive in the USA)
Not having a majority is the only way to stop the process and if the population is in favor, doesn't care or can't be bothered any law will pass.
The whole point of governance in a democracy is consent of the governed. When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large, then they've entered into the realm of authoritarianism with an occasional election - which is exactly what we accuse the 'bad guys' of doing.
>When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large[...]
But how does banning subsequent attempts at passing bills prevent this? Moreover what's preventing this mechanism from being abused to block legislation that society actually want?
The tactic here is sneaking legislation through the system by bringing it up again and again, hoping for the public to eventually lose interest, or to catch a time with a lot of other drama going on so they can avoid the public attention/backlash.
I do think there are procedural ways to support this, like: proposed bills that are very similar to previous rejected ones need a preemptive vote with 60%+ support to be considered - if brought again with a certain time frame.
I do see your point though, there can be unforeseen consequences.
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> There should be sorts of an exponential backoff
So some cool off period that gets larger each time a bill fails. There is not a detailed proposal, but I would assume some max cool off period is reasonable/desirable as well.
So it could not be used to block legislation that society actually wants forever but it would block the legislature from passing it in a limited time frame.
Another reasonable addition that would work well at more local levels but would be a new challenge to implement at the national level in the USA is to have citizen lead referendums with minimum participation requirements to by pass this cool off period. That way if legislation is important the voters can bypass the cool off period.
I am not sure because this assumes a very well informed and educated population.
Think about this one, start a populist stupid referendum like: "Should the gov give you $10M?", I could bet it will end up at 90% yes and the entire country ends up in ruins. So democracy is good but you need some sort of trust in the middle. With this backward law, the trust is eroding.
> Think about this one, start a populist stupid referendum like: "Should the gov give you $10M?", I could bet it will end up at 90% yes and the entire country ends up in ruins.
I think people might agree with that if they alone were going to get the money, but far too many people vote against their own interests to keep "the wrong people" from getting anything. They'd never allow a "give everyone 10M" referendum to pass.
Making mistakes is a critical part of learning. What legitimate authority stands above the will of the people?
Such bullshit hypotheticals are used to justify the dismantling of democracy and keeping it only in name.
In actuality, most of the stupid decisions that drove countries to the ground are made by "respected statesmen".
We want the population to be well informed. But when you consider the history of literacy, journalism, and what media most people have access towards, that assumption was never really true in the first place. People were always getting propagandized as soon as they had the power to vote or even merely chose among suppliers. Probably long before that too.
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The problem here is that many who are in favour of Chat Control (and of its predecessors) really do honestly think they're doing something for the benefit of society.
Focusing on these supposedly well-meaning individuals - I'm going to assume they somehow never consumed any dystopian fiction as a child, the purpose of which was to inoculate a generation against totalitarianism. They don't understand the overreach they are committing to. They think that, because they're a Good Person and wouldn't abuse it, nobody else will, and the massive security loophole created by this effort will not have any downsides. They'll just be able to stop all the baddies!
Meanwhile, those of us who live in reality know that:
* smart criminals will just use unlicensed technologies to get around this, trivially
* dumb criminals will figure out how to use code words for plausible deniability / bayesian "hide in plain sight"
* political dissidents who are exercising free speech will become more vulnerable than ever
And, of course, that's all if the government was only populated by good people who don't intend to abuse this! I have no reason to believe that; does anyone? Is there anyone who so truly loves their government in 2025 that they want them reading all their messages (even moreso than now)?
Can't wait to go to jail for texting a meme to the group chat.
> Can't wait to go to jail for texting a meme to the group chat.
For a second I thought that was a great hypothetical example, then I remembered that's a thing that actually happens now in the UK and got a little sad instead.
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That's the benefit and frustration of the democratic or representative democratic process.
Balance access to governance with fairness, and accept that you will never always get your way.
Similar to this, indeed some kind of fair and predictable cooling off period for a piece of legislation ensures the governing body isn't frozen in one influential faction's obsessions, while also allowing the voice of the people that faction represents to still be heard.
But exponential backoff feels too open to be gamed by countervailing factions. Some small period of time within a session however could make sense.
> When lawmakers start actively going against
The bill is being pushed and reintroduced by elected representatives from each country, both in the council as well as EP.
People electing populist elements and then being surprised pikachu at the suboptimal policies.
It's not the populist elements that push for such things, it's the right, the "responsible centrist", and the fake-ass left of center scum
I guess the main thing should be, there should be a lot more transparency with this whole thing. We should know who is behind it and vote them out.
This whole Commission Grouping thing is smoke and mirrors, there are representatives of our governments facilitating this, we should know who they are, they should not be able to just stay anonymous. It should all be public when a vote is taken.
It's ripe for abuse such as corruption, they've been forced them to open up a bit but it's clearly not enough.
Usually it's the representatives themselves that propose laws (the ones we directly vote for). The commission could be viewed as a sort of potential trojan horse, in that it can make these proposals and yet it's inner workings are not fully transparent. With it's usual "government" work secrecy can be a good thing (trade negotiations etc.), when it comes to it drafting laws that should be transparent. Perhaps they should even look at splitting these things out but that also has a host of issues.
I disagree on this one.
In the same way you can't be prosecuted twice for the same crime in the US system under the "double jeopardy" clause, there should be an equivalent system where the same law can't be pushed over and over until it passes.
Double jeopardy in the US means being prosecuted for the exact same crime more than once. It does not, however, prevent being prosecuted for similar or related crimes.
For instance, when local white juries would acquit white defendants in for lynching black people in the South, the federal government could (and did) try them again for the crime of violating the victim's civil rights. Same set of facts, but different crime. Not double jeopardy because they were being prosecuted for a different crime.
That doesn't work for legislation, because defining when a law is "the same" is basically impossible. If I change one word, is it the same? What if I "ship of Theseus" the law? At what point is it a different law?
Many legislatures ban members from repeatedly bring the same bill in the same session, which does require a similar determination. But that's a much weaker prohibition (even if the determination was wrong, you can always bring the law for a vote next year), and it is a necessary limitation to allow the legislature to get other work done without having members clog the process by bringing the same bill for a vote over and over again.
In many countries, it took multiple attempts to get gay marriage legalised. Having a double jeopardy type block for repeated attempts at passing laws would prevent social changes being captured in law.
Also it would be easy to weaponised by proposing something that doesn’t have enough support now so that it can never be passed in the future.
You're fighting a strawman there I think. He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years.
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That's brilliant. Chat control discussions should totally get derrailed to gay marriage and weed legalization.
And there is in most parliamentary law, but usually restricted to sessions. Additionally, there's usually a proscription against passing negative laws (i.e. "we will not do X"), meaning that when something passes it becomes law and needs a supermajority to repeal, but when it fails, all it needs is a majority to be passed (in the next session.)
The problem is that parliamentary law and democratic processes have ossified for the last 175 years, while "positive" bills have been passed to push more power to the executive, but can't be removed without supermajorities (that are now impossible because the executive has more power over elections and the schedule.) The last person to think seriously about parliamentary law was Thomas Jefferson, and he was really just encoding, organizing into a coherent system, and debugging Commons practice.
If you think that the US has pushed too much power into the Executive, you should look at recent history (since the 80s-90s) in Britain. The opposition has no power at all, and even backbenchers in government have no power at all. They've been reduced to hoping that the right marble gets pulled from a bowl that allows them to hopefully read a bill out loud that might get on tv that might get an article written about it that goes viral, that might put pressure on the government to do something about it.
The EU doesn't even have that level of democracy.
Interesting seeing people downvoting this. I mean this is literally what happened after Brexit:
> you should look at recent history (since the 80s-90s) in Britain .. and even backbenchers in government have no power at all
All pro EU Conservatives were forced to either get in line or commit political suicide since local party constituencies aren't allowed to pick their representatives. US at least has primaries...
There are a bunch of people in my country who have been pushing against abortion rights for 50 years. So far they have never even come close.
Now I suppose theoretically one day all the other 100 members of parliament accidentally push the wrong button but it seems farfetched.
It would be nice, but they change it a little bit so it's technically a different law.
It is not at all obvious to me that a government, acting from the authority of a public mandate, has to be able to pass controversial laws—which by definition lack that same consent.