No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would they ever vote for such a bill?
It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world, but most people aren't out to con everyone else when they get the chance and, if a spotlight is shone on the problem, will respond that actions should be taken to make things more just.
Here's an article calling out the stock trading specifically around Covid treatment drugs with some congressmen and politicians calling out the behavior:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/aoc-calls-senate-i...
While not entirely related, I remember a study by the U.S. military during the Vietnam war that said the worst performing soldiers were the ones who were patriotic and served due to a sense of duty. I'm simplifying here but the idea was that those were often the first people to feel a sense of entitlement and feel as if because they had good intentions that they were "owed" something.
Belief in governance is cheap and doesn't do much to solve anything. Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that result in change... having a good heart and believing in or trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is basically a loser's game.
We should expect elected officials to have both. It's not like it's impossible.
I'm also not advocating that blindly loyal idiots should be in charge - a good comparison to make is to look at more local governance. On a local level the stakes are much lower so the money being thrown around is far less - this lets people get into politics because they want to make change which is an anomaly at the national level - most of those politicians are there because it's a career and they value preserving that over everything else.
Another decent idea in this direction is term limits but I'm a bit concerned that that might deprive us of competency.
If you are competent, skilled, and a leader, but are not altruistic, you will end up being a very competent, very skilled leader of a burglary operation. ;)
> It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world...
Thanks to politicians it's never been easier!
Welcome to the system. This is pervasive in many other aspects as well (court, police, DA, etc).
Maybe an executive order could also prohibit this? I'm not sure.
I don't think this will help. I feel that executive orders are misused and abused today. They are really only only supposed to be executive guidance on how to enforce or implement a law. Instead they are being used as redefining law or even ignoring them.
I'm frankly disturbed that this kind of specific trading by people in power is going on at all. Salaried federal employees above a certain level are strongly encouraged to invest only in generic mutual funds to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. When I look at the above trades I'm not sure whether anything technically illegal occurred but I'd support making all specific trading illegal to avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior. Higher powers deserve to be held higher standards.
That sounds like an excellent idea to me. While in office, can only trade TSP funds, or their rough equivalents outside of TSP. If you wanna sell something that isn't a giant index fund? Do it before you take office.
Then I'd further support that all trading would have to be done via a 10b5-1 plan, with a blackout window of at least 6 months.
No system can prevent humans from exercising their basic instincts, emotions, urges, needs, and wants.
But then the initial question arises: how to prove that there was a broken law in gaining more wealth/power (by chance vs intentionally).
It feels like this question was asked for thousands of years.
There is no reason to believe paying them 2-3x as much so they can be really wealthy would lead to electing better leaders.
Our lawmakers make 175k directly in salary and aprox 1 million dollars for staff and 143k for office expenses. This is not including the cost of the lifetime pension they will qualify after only 5 years and lifetime health plan for themselves and spouse after 10 years in the house or 8 in the senate. Hint I know they pay I think 28% of the cost of their gold plan.
Lifetime a 2 term senator will cost the tax payers near 18 million dollars in total.
Some people, of course, are infinitely greedy. But most people aren't. E.g., most developers I know aren't maximizing their income fully, and they definitely aren't criming to make even more money.
BUT - In exchange, you'd have to agree to some very restrictive governance while in office. Example:
- No trading of specific investment vehicles, you may invest a maximum of ($x) per year in the following options (ETF, Treasuries, etc.). This goes for any immediate family members.
- Congressperson's income can only consist of the US Government salaries. Any income from previous book deals, consulting, etc, must go into a blind trust that can only invest in the aforementioned investment options.
I wonder if that is enough of an incentive to still attract sharp minds while perhaps incentivizing them to work more for the people and less for themselves.
The people running our country should not be making less than any typical c-staff or high level executive. They should be making lawyer/doctor/c-staff level money.
Well, those people profiting off of it would have to vote against each other's interests.
Money wins elections. Not issues, which are just window dressing. The media cartels own your attention for all your waking ours and, as MiB said, while individuals are rational and sensible, people (that is, the voting electorate) are easily scared, easily duped, and increasingly easily controlled.
So it's not just "vote against being rich", it's also "vote to lose the next election".
Liquid democracy is something that can be built from the ground up, and has the potential to deprecate our modern system.
It's a form of representative democracy, so it should be able to avoid the issues of oligarchy (being centralized and easy to corrupt) as well as the issues of full democracy (where every idiot has a say worth any experts)
The OP is correct...spending in mass media on the various issues would almost surely allow the purchasing of voter mindshare just exactly as advertising today drives sales of almost identical branded products for inflated prices.
Don't get me wrong...in general I like the idea of "liquid democracy" (I remember it being called "Superdemocracy" back in the 80's when MajorBBS creator Tim Striker very much lobbied for its creation)...but it would be foolish to believe that the same forces that corrupt modern politics wouldn't be able to corrupt it as well.
Let's take two scenarios:
1. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an extremist channel, it'll likely get locked in and come out even more extreme than it started. extremists tend to look up to people who are even more extreme. when this happens, there's a good chance the person who's vote it originally was will be upset with where it ends up
2. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an intellectual/thoughtful person, it'll likely get locked into the academic/altruist channel and come out with an extreme subject expert. this is the ideal outcome.
Basically, at any point where the vote is being passed up it can hit one of these channels and get locked in. There's massive (and immediate) drawbacks to letting your vote hit an extremist, and massive gains to passing to someone who's more intelligent and thoughtful.
While you're totally right about peoples first vote being super manipulable, each successive pass off has an opportunity for escaping that mind control. And once it does, it'll stay out.
Note that the house majority leader is also one of the biggest winner of these rules not existing.
If you're more comfortable behind an IDE, gotta get comfortable calling representatives and pounding the pavement. That leads to where the decisions are made.
If only there were more Ron Wydens and AOCs. But you see red states electing nutjobs who barely have high school degrees (Boeber) because they shout the loudest.
The same goes for Republican representatives in highly red states.
AOC would not represent Texas or Florida because they are not progressive enough to support her in a landslide, twice, the way her district did.
Manchin mealy-mouthed his way into a slight win and has to be a slimy politician with no backbone because he craves power.
The funniest part of your post is that you claim AOC "would not be bold." Do you even know who she is? She's the definition of bold. She is doing what she said she would do and pissing off centrist dems all over the place every day.
But call me when AOC & Wyden are involved in a scandal, which is what this entire thread is about. If so, I'll change my tune, but until then, my original point stands.
That is what average means.
(Looks like we two are keeping it balanced!)
> That is what average means.
That is what median means.
Also, one person’s “shouting nutjob with barely a highschool degree” is someone else’s “passionate populist who represents the common people.”
But you're right: flat earth society is real, so I guess they could elect a nutjob.
After 4 years of Trump, your "both sides are the same" bullshit is DOA.
But also, please refrain from calling other commenters’ thoughts “your bullshit” because that’s not nice or productive discourse.
I have family who just love to complain about what legislators are doing and how they're voting but have not once, ever, actually contacted their representative about these issues. Not once have they actually read the bills and tried to understand them. It's all based purely on whatever news channel they're watching. Yet, they somehow think that through all that complaining they're actually accomplishing something.
I know my family isn't unique in this. I was just talking to a contractor who is doing work on my house that started in on this nonsense.
It got too easy to see who’s flying their private jets and where.
Meanwhile if you travel by car, get bent.
I think we need to acknowledge that, in the same way that the people with the power to stop this are profiting, they are also the people with the power to change who is in power or how they get in power. Elections are not effective ways of changing systemic power structures anymore. Society pretty much needs an overhaul, especially in the face of serious existential risks like climate change or looming military conflicts.
They are neither left nor right. There is a middle elite group that exploits politics on either side of the aisle to maintain power. And that's all it is. And they get filthy rich, but so too does the CCP which is left-wing. Taking advantage of power for personal gain is not an exclusive domain of one wing or the other. At any rate these oversimplified analogies break down among many lines upon closer inspection. There are elite insiders and then there's the rest of us.
> An amendment may be proposed and sent to the states for ratification by either:
> The U.S. Congress, whenever a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives deem it necessary; or
> A national convention, called by Congress for this purpose, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (34 since 1959). The convention option has never been used.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Un...
"Infringed"
"Papers and effects"
"not delegated to the United States by the Constitution"
And many others....
No matter how clear you are they just ignore it like it's not there.
Who watches the watchmen?
And Democratic party believes that bigger gov't is the solution to many of our problems.
Also, I'd point to a place like India for "big" government: the government tries to run too many things and does a bad job on average.
The recent Black Lives Matter protests have taken a far more aggressive turn against systemic issues. Systemic issues such as the economy, the stock market, policing as a whole, and capitalism in its essence. Donating to bail-out funds, joining the protests, increasing awareness in the problems our economic system has created for us without proper good-faith regulations is all helpful.
You can't reform corruption to this level. You need to cut it out and start over.
When I hear that, I’m like, great. Don’t bail out corporations, give people money directly and let them decide if they want to acquire a stake or not.
I haven't thought of it like that, but it makes a lot more sense than "trickle-down" economics. (Quotes because of the disgust it triggers)
My first instinct was to give it all to a large tech company in exchange for some marvelous electronic bauble from China, but that seemed counter-productive after some deep thought.
Further - it will not be reduced to zero. The goal is to move towards zero.