Comment by staticman2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by staticman2 | Hacker News Reader

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My take:

1) On web sites like this I've noticed a rule "Assume good faith". But in real life there are lots of people who say things in bad faith. In the case of PR people and trial lawyers and partisan politicians it seems to be in the job description to say things in bad faith. I have no solutions on how to fix this- I don't believe in God but I can imagine a deity punishing people who choose to exercise their free speech to profit on bad faith lies- but I have no theory of government to stop this behavior on earth.

2) We have a society based around money. People in this site like to whine about what Zuckerberg or whomever is doing but the guiding principle of society seems to be "he who has the money makes the rules". So if Zukerberg wants to weaponize Facebook against society the full power of the financial system will help him do it as long as he has the money/ property to control Facebook. I think in theory we could transition to a society where CEO and board members have their shares and/ or control of companies confiscated if they act in ways which harms society. (Perhaps putting things to a vote, i.e. a universal ballet: should Zuckerberg have his shares of Facebook seized and auctioned off under the theory he is harming society y/n)). Since this has never been tried as far as I know I don't know if my solution could even work.

Hard agree on 1. Don't have an answer other than "superhuman AI ruling humanity", but that is not fun, because at that point we stop being the protagonists of our own story.

About 2:

> Since this has never been tried as far as I know I don't know if my solution could even work.

This was tried, during various revolutions that included the phase of killing the rich people and collectivizing their wealth. I worry your suggestion here would end up being used the same way - with prominent CEOs getting their companies auctioned from under them by angry mobs.

I'm talking about confiscating property in a banal, rule based democracy sort of way, not by mobs.

Humans seem to be wired via evolution to tolerate being controlled by higher status humans otherwise I'd expect confiscation of property to be a popular proposition in a world where high status people own the majority of property and wealth inequality keeps increasing.

We'd have more discussions about where institutiins are serving us well and less about "those poor CEOs, think of their feelings" if we weren't seemingly wired to care about high status people's desires more than our own needs.

The Communist Party of China follows the rules of the government they controlled perfectly well -- and have no problem winning elections. If you actually want property rights to be up for popular vote, it's important to understand that removal of property is going to be backed by the threat of violence by the state (which will occasionally need to be enacted). You will have companies removed for reasons that are "against the public interest" where you disagree with the actual actions.

Democratic rule is simply mob rule by proxy.

China isn't a rights based democracy so that's neither here nor there.

Sure, hypothetically if Mark Zuckerberg refuses to leave the Facebook building after being evicted of his Facebook ownership he could be physically removed by the police.

Why this deserves our sympathy more than a sixteen year old physically arrested for smoking weed is not obvious- or even a tenant physically evicted for being unable to pay rent. Arresting people for drug crimes is treated as normal state violence and happily supported by Americans- but it seems people have evolved to sympathize with a high status billionaire over some kid commiting a victimless crime.

The thing that makes a rights-based democracy "rights-based" is the idea that there are certain lines that are so important to individual liberty that society at large has chosen to not interfere with them. Traditionally, one of these rights is the right to private capital. It's the oldest right recorded in English common law. Giving up this right, even if it's purported to be in the interests of society at large, will remove part of the "rights-based" part of the rights-based democracy above. It's not something that should be done lightly. Civil forfeiture is rife for abuse, even in its current form.

The right to bodily autonomy feels even more important to liberty than the right to capital, at least to me.

I agree there should be a right to private capital- to an extent.

But the fact you think a right to obtain billions of dollars and control the labor of 10 of thousands of workers is a fundemental right- when housing for the poor isn't- I think again goes to my point we've evolved to care more about high status rulers than ourselves. (I mean that literally, tribal humans or proto-humans murdered or outcompeted with less tribal humans at the whims of their tribal leaders and we are the result.)

Anyway I am under no illusions that we are going to have a change in policy and stop caring about aristocrat's feeling more than our own well-being (Donald Trump is sad, let's storm some buildings you guys. Jeff Bezos treats warehouse workers bad- but he needs to be able to do that cause it would hurt his feelings if the workers ran the company instead.) So there's no reason to debate it other than intellectual fun.

> I'm talking about confiscating property in a banal, rule based democracy sort of way, not by mobs.

Banal, rules-based democracies still need a fundamental set of rights if they're to avoid instantly devolving to mob rule. I really don't want a rules-based democracy voting to kill me and my family, so I'm glad that I have the fundamental right not to be subject to that risk (even if it were supported by the majority.)

One of the values that's pretty prevalent in the United States and a lot of other developed nations is a respect for property rights; if you worked for something, you get to keep it, even if other people would want it more.

Both of these rights exist on a spectrum (e.g. the death penalty can override your right to life in the extreme case, and taxes can override your right to your property to a small extent), but by almost any measure putting your right to property to a vote is extremely far on the "not respecting property rights" side of the spectrum.

Also, I have extremely little confidence that the best way to assuage our political divide is to introduce the perpetual threat of "the majority had better think that what you're doing is useful, otherwise we'll take everything you have."

The rule of law means that sometimes things will arise that slip through the cracks in unintended ways. The solution to this is to fix those cracks and make the law more clearly define what's desired. If this makes a given business model non-viable, then so be it; that's the price of progress. I'd imagine that those is favor of the rule of law, though, can see the slippery slope of letting the mob vote on what do with the property of those who were following the law at the time.

I followed a train of thought recently that's somewhat related to this. It appears to me the one branch of government that has stood up reasonably well recently is the court system. Courts require a standard of evidence, and while it's clear that justices will try to interpret things as favorable to their partisan beliefs, for the most part they are not willing to simply accept alternate realities. Some people were worried that Trump's lawsuits would find friendly judges despite the lack of evidence, and that overwhelmingly didn't happen.

So that got me wondering, ironically given your listing of lawyers as one of the named bad-faith groups, could government be made to act more like the legal system, or could the legal system be incorporated more into government. One specific idea I was considering was whether you could have the option of a defamation-style judicial review of statements of fact made by elected officials. Obviously you wouldn't litigate every statement, but what if there were some sort of challenge process - perhaps with a fee to bring a challenge, and/or consequences for spurious challenges, so they wouldn't become overwhelming - by which the opposition could challenge any public statement of fact by an elected official? Critically this challenge would be brought in a court of law, with all of the professional standards and requirements that entails. (As opposed to being litigated by politicians, like an impeachment proceeding.) It wouldn't be a criminal proceeding, and there wouldn't be criminal consequences. Probably the result would simply be made public, and maybe the losing side would need to pay the costs of the winning side. Of course they would also have had the opportunity to retract and correct the untrue statement at the outset.

As things stand, the president and his supporters are able to say whatever BS they want publicly, then they go to court with these lawsuits, and they say different things, because there are actual consequences there. Perhaps if there were consequences for any knowing lie by an elected official, you'd see fewer of them? The idea wouldn't be to use this for everything, just for clear, baseless statements of fact with reprocussions. And it's not like truth is unknowable; we already have this kind of litigation around defamation, and it largely works.

Anyway, not like I see anything like this happening, but if I were designing a system of government it's something I'd want to consider. (I suppose there's also the chance of it backfiring, simply politicizing the judiciary by involving it more in politics. But again, the responses to the election lawsuits give me some hope there.)

It appears to me the one branch of government that has stood up reasonably well recently is the court system.

One of the most serious things the court system does is deprive people of their liberty and life. And it is not stellar. You may argue that the 2% to 10% wrongful conviction rate is good (I think it is unacceptable) but what does seem clear is that many judges are swayed by any old pseudo-scientific rubbish (if they even remain awake during the trial): https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-grisham-wrongful...

I like the idea of people being held accountable for mis-information though.

I definitely wouldn't argue that the court system is perfect, just that it appears to be better at separating fact from fiction than other branches of government (though, again, not perfect).

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