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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

You are missing part of the point of the article. Don't blame the tech company or the sports owner for getting these concessions. Business owners are always going to act in their own best interest. Individual people do the same thing. Lots of people who live along the Washington/Oregon border make all their big purchases in Oregon because of the lack of state sales tax. I don't see anything morally wrong with doing that. They are just responding to economic incentives. Instead blame the politicians for setting up this perverse game of incentives in the first place. This article is trying to educate politicians (and the general population) of a better way to accomplish the same goals.

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Why does the blame always lie with "politicians"? That's unhelpfully reductionist... we are a democracy. Businesses, private citizens, and representives all come together to define our public policy.

Those "perverse" tax incentives were a reasonable compromise between voters and businesses within a state. The perversion only exists at the interstate level, so which politician is "at fault"? The Washington legislature, responsible for all of Washington? Individual WA representatives, who get one vote regardless of their constituent's distance from the border? Or is it on the Oregon side?

If either state copied the other, there's no problem - but which one "wins", and how do those changes get implemented?

The politicians at fault are the ones who were without foresight and allowed the wrong incentives to exist for local politicians.

I live in a one-party gerrymandered state, not a democracy. It makes perfect sense in my case to blame the politicians.

For those unfamiliarwith gerrymandering, I highly recommend the John Oliver explanation, a humorist of actual facts, showing maps and tactics of politicians that are borderline criminal.

https://youtu.be/A-4dIImaodQ

Amusingly, my friend is a high school math teacher, and had to find topics to keep the kids interested in between the AP test and the end of the school year. So he had an exercise where the kids used a software program to come up with different strategies for gerrymandering our state.

Politicians are the ones responsible for reaching the compromise between citizens (and businesses are just a collection of citizens). If you do not like the compromises reached, you should work harder to convince the politicians to change their mind. Attacking the citizens you disagree with gets nothing accomplished. That is how we got into this crazy polarized political climate in which a solid third of this country thinks a different third are either fascists or Marxists.

The politicians are ultimately accountable to their constituents. The people of Walla Walla likely have different opinions on sales tax than the people of Redmond. If the politicians don't represent those opinions then they should be voted out. If they do represent those opinions, it is simply a numbers game from there. If your side loses, that is just how democracy works. That applies to every level of government from the local up through the federal. It applies to individuals the same way it applies to businesses.

If you do not like the compromises reached, you should work harder to convince the politicians to change their mind. Attacking the citizens you disagree with gets nothing accomplished. That is how we got into this crazy polarized political climate in which a solid third of this country thinks a different third are either fascists or Marxists.

While this is true to some extent, changing the minds of politicians sometimes requires changing the minds of voters.

Customers are a business's constituency. Whether we want to change the behavior of a politician or a business, ultimately it's done by garnering the support of some threshold of our fellow citizens. There's no real basis for blaming politicians rather than businesses for deals like these.

I am talking about complaints with the elections of other districts.

My representative fairly represents my district's sentiment. The policies we want are blocked by neighboring district representatives - who also fairly represent their districts. The compromises tend to land squarely in between the extremes. If we're not happy with the compromise, the answer is to try moving the opposing side closer... which means convincing citizens of that district to change their mind.

Citizen discourse is the core of effective democracies. Elections merely represent public sentiment - peer to peer discussions are how we change the status quo.

America's problem is we seem to have forgotten how to talk about politics. Even your language reflects that... no suggestion of civil debate, just a false dichotomy of surrendering to the numbers game or "attacking" other citizens.

Insults are an attack, but genuinely challenging beliefs is not an attack. My neighbor and I may disagree, but we aren't enemies - we are both citizens that want what's best for our family and friends. Talking politics is how we figure out what that means. Those discussions between private citizens is the decentralized process of moving a democracy forward.

I generally agree with what you are saying here. The "attacking" comment in my last post and the overall tone was more about the original comment that spawned this thread that used accusations about oligarchs holding cities ransom. I don't think that type of name calling is productive.

I also wasn't attempting to setup a dichotomy between surrendering or attacking (although I can certainly see that implication after rereading my comment, sorry about that). I would consider civil discourse part of the "work harder to convince the politicians to change their mind" comment. You can convince a politician by talking directly to them or by rallying other citizens to your cause.

However the discussion was about "blame" and "fault". I think those are very aggressive words to use against other citizens you disagree with. If we are going to use those words, I think they should be focused towards politicians who are accountable to your wishes. Your neighbor or the citizens in the next district over are not accountable to you and therefore should not receive blame for disagreeing with you.

>Why does the blame always lie with "politicians"? That's unhelpfully reductionist... we are a democracy. Businesses, private citizens, and representives all come together to define our public policy.

You're right. Technically the fault lies in the voters for voting in those politicians. In practice, it's the politicians that fail the voters though. That's literally what the politicians are voted to do, but they obviously operate under their own incentives, which is to get reelected.

If I had a penny for every time a politician came into office and broke campaign promises...

If you are counting the elections that you have participated in you'd probably have a few dollars.

Paul Allen fully funded Ref 48, spending ~$5m to convince the taxpayers to buy him a stadium.

I don’t like the notion that it is morally just to always act in your own self interest and that it is the job of regulations to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. That framework doesn’t extend to the nuance of life.

I can choose to find fault with tech companies and sports owners while still holding politicians accountable as well.

They also put out a lot of propaganda and false information out to get their way. It's not like they just take advantage of an opportunity. They create that opportunity with a lot of questionable practices.

And in addition voters are stupid. Spending a million on a swimming pool for kids is waste but half a billion for a sports stadium is a must.

>They also put out a lot of propaganda and false information out to get their way. It's not like they just take advantage of an opportunity. They create that opportunity with a lot of questionable practices.

If a politician believes a single report prepared by a sports team over the literally dozens of peer reviewed academic studies that say the exact opposite, I blame the politician.

>And in addition voters are stupid. Spending a million on a swimming pool for kids is waste but half a billion for a sports stadium is a must.

That is democracy in action. More people want the sports stadium than the swimming pool. You might disagree with them, but that doesn't make them wrong.

> More people want the sports stadium than the swimming pool. You might disagree with them, but that doesn't make them wrong.

Is this true? Was there a vote on this?

The politicians make the decisions and if people don't like it they can vote for someone else but I would bet in some deeply partisan districts they'd vote for anyone on their side. There's a lot of things the majority of the public want but the power that be say no.

In many jurisdictions a referendum is required to spend that type of money. That is one of the reasons that a sibling thread is discussing the Chargers move from San Diego to Los Angeles. A vote was required in San Diego and the Chargers knew it would not go in their way. You are free to lobby your own local government to make a similar requirement for a referendum.

You can't blame the politician, they were the voter's choice!

You can't blame the voters, they are free to choose whoever they want!

You can't blame the lobbyists or the PACs, they just try to persuade voters!

You can't blame corporations for contributing to campaigns, they are just trying to create the most politically favorable environment to maximize profits!

You can't blame the shareholders, they just want a return on their investment!

The system is to blame. It ulimately is the public's responsibility. The voters can't change the system without leaders within their ranks forming special interest groups that help elect politicians who will push forward this cause above all other causes.

It's no wonder that the entire concept of a modern democracy is a shame. You never really had control as a voter.

I like to think of it as going out to eat. In a modern democracy you get a choice of ketchup or mustard. Some may choose not to pick (not vote) or some may be able to even get a third choice like hot pepper added at one location.

During pre-election everyone is shouting back why ketchup is better than mustard. News anchors going on and on about how important you making a choice because your life will be better or worse with or without mustard. Money that could be better spent goes into advertising that blankets the air putting down ketchup by carefully leaking a photoshopped ketchup bottle at a murder scene.

No one asks why are we eating a hotdog in the first place.

Even in countries that haven't devolved into a two party system you have the same problem. The political parties are trying to appeal to a similar voter base and they simply go off on just a few issues during campaigns. When they actually get into power they tend to have to make decisions about things that are completely different than what was talked about during the campaign.

If none of the political parties talk about increasing internet connectivity, but that's a very important issue for me, then I'm basically picking at random.

You can't blame the voters because they are the products of a shitty education system and misled by biased media.

You can't blame the media because they're just giving the voters what they want.

You can't blame the education system because it was put in place by the politicians.

It's crazy to automatically indemnify people for acting in their own best interest. If I could steal a million dollars today and get away with it, it's in my best interest to do so rather than spend however many years working for it.

By this logic, as long as a politician makes such a deal in order to garner public support or votes, with no concern for the wellbeing of their constituents, we can't blame them either. They're not doing anything wrong, just responding to political incentives!

Are politicians and appointed elected officials - that is those with power and influence - required to publish their investiment holdings?

The companies, by definition, act in the best interest of their shareholders. What if those also happen to be shareholders of a given company looking for a good deal?

Washington has a use tax, buying large items out of state doesn't change the tax due on them.

Those Business Owners are ALSO the ones setting up this perverse game of incentive.

While I understand the gist of your post, the people residing in WA are violating their state's tax law by not paying sales tax on their purchased in OR, whereas subsidies offered to businesses are legal(ized).

That is fair and actually goes to further support my point. I would bet almost everyone reading this has at some point failed to pay sales tax on a purchase in which the retailer didn't collect the tax. We were all committing a crime to save a few dollars here and there. That was the whole motivation behind the fight to get internet retailers to start collecting taxes. Don't blame business for responding to economic incentives the same way you personally would.

> Don't blame business for responding to economic incentives the same way you personally would.

On the other hand, the modal business has much more economic power and leverage than the modal individual. There's a reasonable argument that they should be held to a higher standard of responsibility and compliance because their contribution to the problem is magnified.

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