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Governments have always used their power to try to further special interests.

The US as a constitutional republic was designed to frustrate that tendency. Recent calls for the repeal of the 17th amendment (senators used to be selected by state legislatures; that amendment made it popular vote instead) are based on that argument.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/252825/repeal-sevente...

   Under the original arrangement, senators had strong    
   incentives to protect federalism. They recognized that 
   their reelection depended on pleasing state legislators 
   who preferred that power be kept close to home. Whereas 
   House members were considered representatives of the 
   people, senators were considered ambassadors of their 
   state governments to the federal government and, like 
   national ambassadors to foreign countries, were subject 
   to instruction by the parties they represented (although 
   not to recall if they refused to follow instructions). 
   And they tended to act accordingly, ceding to the 
   national government only the power necessary to perform 
   its enumerated functions, such as fighting wars and 
   building interstate infrastructure. Moreover, when the 
   federal government expanded to address a crisis (such as 
   war), it quickly retreated to its intended modest level 
   after the crisis had passed. Today, as historian Robert 
   Higgs has observed, federal expansion creates a “ratchet 
   effect.”

   Just as important as its role in securing federalism, the 
   Senate as originally conceived was essential to the 
   system of separation of powers. Bicameralism — the 
   division of the legislature into two houses elected by 
   different constituencies — was designed to frustrate 
   special-interest factions. Madison noted in Federalist 62 
   that basing the House and Senate on different constituent 
   foundations would provide an “additional impediment . . . 
   against improper acts of legislation” by requiring the 
   concurrence of a majority of the people with a majority 
   of the state governments before a law could enacted. By 
   resting both houses of Congress on the same constituency 
   base — the people — the Seventeenth Amendment 
   substantially watered down bicameralism as a check on 
   interest-group rent-seeking, laying the foundation for 
   the modern special-interest state.

This is pretty interesting. Do you know what the argument was for passing the 17th amendment? What's the downside trade-off?

It was passed because corporations easily bought off state legislatures and therefore the senate.

In Canada, our upper house (also called the Senate), is not directly elected. The members are selected by the Prime Minister (formally the Governor General, but this is done on "advice" of the PM, meaning in practice the PM makes the call). These positions are usually filled with party cronies or other such favoured individuals.

The current government, when they were the opposition, had called for Senate reforms, including direct elections. Once they got into power, they continued the status quo once they saw how beneficial it would be to them to do so. Funny how that works.

There's no clear argument for why direct-election became so popular. There were mostly vague arguments given such as direct-election would somehow fight against the cozy relationships between industry and the Senate, or end bribery in Senatorial politics.[1]

It seems that what was behind the movement to the popular vote was a strong populist sentiment without clear reason; or at least without a reason that made sense.[1]

Last I checked, bribery and cozy industry relationships in the Senate were not stopped by the 17th amendment. I doubt they will ever stop. Power and money tend to mingle, and that part of human nature will probably never go away.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

There are some strong arguments that a senate operating behind closed doors would be more effective at ignoring special interests and working together than otherwise. The writers of the constitution did just this (they swore secrecy of anything they talked about in the convention to avoid voter backlash) [1] This is why they initially wanted health care debates behind closed doors - the lobbyists can make much more use of transparency than the uninterested voter can. Fareed Zakaria wrote a lot about this in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.

[A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin]

This shouldn't be downvoted just because it's disagreed with: it's a cogent and well-sourced argument, which should be met with a rebuttal rather than silent disapproval.

I'm no expert on the history (or the topic), though I did find the article I linked persuasive. The author did get into an argument over the history, though. You can read what he had to say about it here:

http://volokh.com/2010/11/15/on-the-true-story-of-the-histor...

If the Congress is corrupt, than the state legislatures are a corpulent sewer of corruption and graft. Anything that takes power from them is generally a good thing.

The upside of direct election is that at least there's a chance that good Senators, not subject to the petty whims of the state houses might make better policy. State legislatures were/are generally the products of political machines and tended to appoint Senators who would advance their aims.

In the 21st century, the power of the corporations, unions and trade associations to manipulate the electorate via mass media is at least as powerful as the political machinery that the 17th amendment attempted to fight.

While this "repeal the 17th amendment" stuff is a pet cause among some on the right, there is very little evidence that it would have the effects its proponents claim. Here is one rebuttal: http://volokh.com/2010/06/11/would-repealing-the-seventeenth...

When people argue for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, they're really arguing for doing away with the direct election of senators. The only solid arguments in that article assert that the former wouldn't lead to the latter, which is beside the point.

Also, this is more about federalism than conservatism or libertarianism. There's a strong progressive case for allowing states to be "laboratories of democracy".

Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave.

There actually is some value to showing one's emotion's here. It seems clear that a lot of this does involve ICE 'testing the waters' to see much people will push back. It's good indicate an "irrational" need to fight this, it will give them pause (I'd imagine evolutionary game theory would say that this is a kind of situation where anger serves an important strategic purpose - premature commitment is an important strategy for making an opponent back down).

If you'd like a startup/technology angle to this, then my advice is not to go into business in any area that one of these interests might be involved -- unless you have strong political connections (or are willing to develop them). If you're able to develop those connections, however, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Investment advice simply becomes mute, really. There is no limit to what could conceivably fall under the rubric "intellectual property".

Totally agreed. A couple more things that complicate it are that most of the people in power don't have a good understanding of the technology and its implications -- and that the media is one of the special interests here, and so is very selective in its coverage.

And as somebody who's thinking of doing social network startup, this kind of discussion is very very relevant to my technology and entrepreneurial worlds. Do I need to plan from the beginning to host outside the US -- and if so what countries make sense? what level of business risk are investors willing to tolerate, and is that changing? and so on.

That's true for the short tail of big issues, but for the vast majority of smaller issues it's completely false. There are many issues where the government is willing to listen to grassroots activists, but there just aren't enough of them. A good example of this is drug law reform. State politicians have been generally willing to implement well written medical marijuana laws from grass roots organizations, but the problem is that there are probably less than 100 competent people working on this full time. Over 60% of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, but all of the drug law reform organizations combined get only 10k or so donations per year, and the vast majority of these donations are for only five dollars. (Despite the fact that roughly 85% of Americans under age 55 have smoked weed.) And this is an issue that's harder than most because of all the interference from the federal government. Anyway my point is that for most issues you actually can get the law rewritten in your state if you're actually willing to go out and put in the effort.

This was such a good thread, I wrote an entire blog entry as a followup:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945814

Governments have always used their power to try to further special interests.

One might as easily argue special interests have always used their power to try to corrupt governments. After all, government is not in the content-production-for-profit business, and legislation like the DMCA is designed to benefit established publishers and manufacturers whose business model is threatened by unlicensed distribution.

So we might as well ask what is the fundamental problem with business, that makes it preferable to enlist law enforcement in defense of its interests than to do well by offering consumers a value they can't get from content piracy? I think there is some merit to the argument that leaders in the content industry have bought off political interests, but if they were somehow restricted from doing so, wouldn't that be a violation of free speech too? That whole Citizens United case in front of the Supreme Court last year was based on the idea that spending $$$ to influence an election is just as much free speech as any other kind of political activity.

Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave.

No offense meant here Daniel, but that's exactly what you do. On almost any thread involving regulation or government intervention, it's become very predictable to see a mini-essay from you at the top of the thread, and it's almost always general in nature rather than addressing any specific of the story itself. You always aim to be non-partisan by mentioning both aprties, but in practice it's very obvious you're conservative: in the blog post you mentioned elsewhere (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/11/im-done-here....) you spent 5 paragraphs castigating the left for their dislike of big corporations, before going on to say: 'Of course, the same can be said of the right and the "long war". Both sides -- in fact all sides -- have plans that are not working.[...]'

Now, I have no problem with your holding and expressing conservative views - indeed, I quite enjoy reading your posts. But this pretense of being above the fray and speaking from a position of neutrality just insults my intelligence.