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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

You don't try to make the distinction, you just regulate all political speech. During election time, you set aside fair slices of media time for every candidate, where they can make their case, and forbid all political speech outside of those times. Same thing with billboards, magazine ads, google ads, etc... The different candidates will police each other. Never going to happen in the US but definitely practically achievable as it is somewhat how elections work in belgium.

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That just kicks the problem up one level: now you've got to figure out the distinction between political speech and non-political speech. I'm not familiar with how things work in Belgium, but in the United States Hollywood has released a large number of explicitly political movies in the past fifteen years, such as Lions for Lambs or Bowling for Columbine or Munich, and that doesn't even get into the political subtexts that are often present even in mass-market blockbusters. Would those be forbidden under this policy?

Assuming that you do come up with a plausible way of drawing a line here, you also need to have general trust that this power will not be abused. Given the heavy politicization of regulatory agencies in the United States, a large portion of the population is worried -- not without substantial justification -- that "is this speech opposed to the party in power" will be one of the factors used to draw that line.

Political speech is jot forbidden as a whole, just political speech that appears directly related to an ongoing election.

For example, right now, you should be allowed to make a movie about how Reagan sucked, but not one about how Hillary Clinton will suck if she gets elected.

So in your ideal world, Paul Krugman is banned from writing editorials? John Stewart can no longer discuss contemporary politics?

And if a citizen notices that all the politicians are lying, he needs to just shut up about it?

> And if a citizen notices that all the politicians are lying, he needs to just shut up about it?

Honestly, does it even matter? Everybody knows all politicians are liars. It's common knowledge; it's beyond being a trope and basically a synonym. But then somehow a large part of the population still cares about what politicians have to say. They know that the politician they oppose is full of shit, and yet they feel obliged to engage with said politician's arguments. And they support another politician, conveniently forgetting that... he is a politician too, so he won't make good on their promises.

Basically, everyone got the memo. Those who were to heed it have already done so.

This is something that confuses me about humanity. The amount of denial and cognitive dissonance going on in general population's interaction with politics is so great you could fuel a power plant with it.

>Honestly, does it even matter?

It matters because, if Trump says he wants to deport all Muslims, I should be able to say thats a terrible idea without fear of reproach.

Despite the fact that all politicians may be lairs (although I personally believe thats horseshit), there are people who take the word of them very seriously.

>The amount of denial and cognitive dissonance going on in general population's interaction with politics is so great you could fuel a power plant with it.

Bull fucking shit. Just because Obama didn't end up closing Guantanamo, doesn't mean its all a farce. Political groups have a real effect, or we wouldn't be talking about this. Were the people who fought for gay rights for the past 20-odd years, living in denial? Are those pushing for marijuana reform, living in denial? Are the lobbyist pumping billions of dollars into the system living in denial?

Despite the fact that the system moves a snails pace (which may or may not be the intended goal of the system), the system does have very real effects that are caused by the tiniest nudges in certain directions.

I understand that it's common for a politician to commit to some action during his campaign, and for it not to happen when he's later elected. To that extent, I agree that it's common for politicians to be liars.

But I tend to think that it's not so much that they were planning to con everyone all along, but rather that they tried to push their ideas and failed to convince the rest of the legislature to go along with it. Maybe it died out because nobody cared about it in that year's Congress, and then the politician gets busy with other things while another year passes until the next legislature.

I imagine it's the same mechanism at work in large companies: Haven't you ever had a new manager come on board, go gung-ho on changing a couple widely visible organizational thing and getting everyone's feedback, and then calm down a year or two later once they're busy with their work? I've probably seen that at least 5 times.

However, there's a key difference: In the above situation, I would expect a politician to keep to the same general platform even if he fails to perform some specific action. The simpler statement 'all politicians are liars' leaves open the possibility that he might completely change his platform and starts actively pushing for things that he never mentioned. I don't know that I actually believe that about all or most politicians.

You act as if the problem is solely because of the politicians. In a large democracy such as the United States, many people are unfortunately simple minded and politicians that regular espouse nuance and contemplation in their campaigns are rarely successful, so the people are really getting the sort of discourse they want.

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