Constitutional Amendment proposal gathering steam

[hanelyp]

Would you ban campaigning by independent supporters?

As for the poor, they have a controlling share of political power through their numbers. And they have used that power to elect people promising to punish the rich and give them the spoils. We have fallen into idiocracy. Giving the vote to parasites to vote for more benefits just doesn't work. Expecting the government to be more than a referee in our day to day lives is a path to tyranny.

Armed revolution may be unavoidable given the massive divide. A repeat of the French Revolution is in many ways a worst case outcome, leading to the deaths of many who made the country work, in the formation of a new Soviet "Republic". The American colonies 1770s revolution was a unique historical event and a much preferred model.

[ladajo]

If we take the right to vote away from criminals, why not take it for those on the dole, while they are on the dole, and then for a probation period once they get off?

You should not be allowed to decide for yourself how to spend other peoples money on yourself.

[palladin9479]

Wow .. just wow.

No collective entity should be anonymous in their donations, none at all. Citizens united needs to be removed, while at the same time restriction unions and other group contributors. The entire reason for open disclosure of campaign donations and political group memberships is so that influences can be traced, you then at least know who's buying your politicians. A corporate government is even scarier then a progressive one. Progressives are idiots and can't tie their own shoes without screwing it up. Corporations on the other hand tend to be significantly more efficient. Giving them free reign and they'll just find the more efficient way to turn people into slaves to enlarge the net profits of their relatively few shareholders.

[Stubby]

If we take the right to vote away from criminals, why not take it for those on the dole, while they are on the dole, and then for a probation period once they get off?

You should not be allowed to decide for yourself how to spend other peoples money on yourself.

The difference being that criminals have decided not to live within society's rules and those receiving assistance are often just having bad luck. I am not saying give them blank checks however.

if you continue the progression of your thought, you could say government employees and the military should not have the right either. They might vote for the big government party or the big military party.Denying the right to vote to the military would be ironic since they are the ones defending your right to vote in the first place.

I do believe that politicians remuneration should not be decided by politicians or even the people. Tie their remuneration to median income or something.

[ladajo]

Military is a special circumstance. They are under different rules to begin with including a reduction in constitutional rights, as defined by the UCMJ.
Government employees is not a significant issue in my mind. They earn, they pay taxes, (just like the military), and they more so than the average citizen are active participants in government.

Those on the dole may have had a bit of bad luck, and that is fine, but that does not mean they get to define what bad luck is and expand the bubble so to speak.

Allowing them to vote is what keeps the other side of political corruption alive and well. The gross misuse of public funds to literally buy voting blocks.

It is an easy fix in my opinion, and it is not permanent for them. Not like being a convicted felon.

[necoras]

If we take the right to vote away from criminals, why not take it for those on the dole, while they are on the dole, and then for a probation period once they get off?

You should not be allowed to decide for yourself how to spend other peoples money on yourself.

The problem is that you're only looking at this from one direction. You argue that those taking government money via welfare, foodstamps, medicaid, etc. shouldn't be able to vote increased payments to themselves. But you make no argument that those taking government money via tax incentives, research grants, corporate subsidies, beneficial zoning and business regulations, loan guarantees, quantitative easing, etc. etc. should also lose their vote.

The whole point of a democracy is that everyone works together, and everyone gets a voice. It's supposed to be majority rules, but not at the expense of undue persecution of the minorities. That's the system which was ostensibly setup a few hundred years ago. What we have instead is a system where those with the most money buy the rules.


You, and many others, keep using the term "bad luck." Most poor people in the US aren't poor because of bad luck. They're poor because our economy optimizes for profits funneled to the few away from the many. This is deliberate. We increase worker productivity tenfold through the use of mechanization. But mechanization means that it takes less and less skill to do any given job, so we pay the individual worker a fraction of what they were paid a generation ago despite the fact that they are doing the work that took 10 men 10 years ago. The profits are then directed to those at the top of the company. I've had any number of bosses who were far more incompetent than their employees, and yet they made twice as much. This is because the system is designed by those currently at the top to reward others at the top.

We claim that the people simply need more education with one breath, and with the next we decry the costs of schools and the evil teacher's unions. Don't mistake me, there have been plenty of problems with unions in the past and today, but to cut education funding and then deride the poor for being uneducated is hypocritical at best, and outright spiteful at worst.

This trend will only continue. In another generation or two everything will be mechanized. There will be no job a robot cannot do. No code that machine learning cannot produce better, faster, safer than a human. No surgery a robot cannot perform, no disease which a Watson derivative cannot diagnose, no road that cannot be driven by a Google+++ car. There will come a time where there are no high paying jobs, because there will be no need for human skill in production. Moore's Law shows us this future if we're willing to see it.

How we treat those who have already succumb to this massive productivity increase today is indicative of how we will all be treated in the future. Will there be a few dozen trillionaires? Those who, because of the luck of their ancestral line, and some very clever lawyers, are legally entitled to all of the production of their line of robots while the rest of us starve on what scraps they are willing to part with? Or will we see the problems coming and define a new type of economy? One not based on socialism, nor communism, nor captialism, but something new?

I don't have the answer, but pitting the argument as "those greedy poor people" vs "us noble job creators who are having our shirts stolen" is neither productive, nor accurate. Any time an argument is framed as us vs them, you're already starting from a position of weakness. We the people have a society that we need to make work. We need to work together to do that, poor and fabulously wealthy alike. We can't do that when one side buys the vote. We can't do that when neither side is willing to see that there are actual people on the other side.

[hanelyp]

tax incentives, corporate subsidies, loan guarantees, quantitative easing

Money the government should generally not be spending. It warps the economy.

research grants,

Sometimes of benefit, but subject to use as a slush fund and favoritism.

beneficial zoning and business regulations,

Poorly defined, but used by many in reference to unrestrictive regulation of industries they wish to scapegoat. Regulations should not give one group power over another.

[ladajo]

I do not disagree with most of what you have said.

However, consider that my thought can extend to those that seek substantive support to exist from the system. There is a difference between an incentive mechanism and a survival mechanism. Personally I am not a big supporter of government sourced incentive programs. I am demonstrably not a supporter of government sourced subsistance programs. If we need to have subsistance, so be it, but those subsisting on it should not get a say in how it is resourced or employed. They are at the mercy of the system. Fundamentally, I am all for helping my fellow man. But the circumstance must be dire for me to do so at my own peril. Our current system is placing the net contributors at peril.

As for compensation divergence, that is more or less a natural selection process. Those that abuse it, tend not to propagate in the longer term. Many a company has failed due to simple greed at the upper layers. As for value of an employee, be they management or not, I see that as a function of free market.

[necoras]

@hanelyp

I (largely) agree. My point is that these are ways that wealthy people benefit from government programs at the expense of the poor. One cannot say "the poor are money grubbing thieves stealing from the rich! We should do away with all welfare programs for them!" without at the same time getting rid of all services/policies which benefit the wealthy.

Would you be okay with your home mortgage deduction going away? How about getting taxed for your employer paid healthcare (assuming you have it). From a macro economics point of view, I know they should go away and everyone would be better off. From a micro (my bank account) point of view, I want my money. People see such things as entitlements, every bit as much as they do SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. They all cost the government a lot of money. They just generally hit two different groups of people.

[ladajo]

You know, back in the day, taxes were levied for specific purposes. A tax on shipping commerce to pay for the navy for example.

[necoras]

As for value of an employee, be they management or not, I see that as a function of free market.

And that's the point at the end of my post. Eventually (soon) the value of every employee will be 0. A machine will do every job possible better than any human. There will be nothing you (or your children) can do that's worth the amount of resources it takes to keep you alive, because a robot will do it better, cheaper, faster. Either everything becomes free, or everyone starves.

There is a point where the free market breaks down. When prices don't mean anything, you cannot rely on them to govern the economy. We must plan for this, and recognize that it is already happening. People's skills are already becoming obsolete faster than they can obtain new ones. If we are all dependent on the system for our subsistence (and really, we all are already unless you work a farm with hand made tools with locally collected seed and livestock, live in a hand built home, built from local materials, that you built without any manufactured tools), then who will get a say in how it's run?

Either humans work together ensure that everyone is provided for, or we trust the robots do that too. It might work out. It might not. I'd like some say in how it turns out.

[Maui]

I'm not aware of anyone proposing that corporations should have the vote. I and many others are suggesting that corporations should have the freedom to do what any other assembly of people may do as a collective action.

How "collective" are corporate political donations? Out of tens of thousands of employees, how many of them have any kind of say in where "their" money is going? In the case of a union, it may be a little more democratic in terms of where money goes, but there are still plenty of people that don't have their say. And, for example, what about the taxpayers whose tax dollars are partially going to support government unions? Where's their say?

By allowing a corporation or union to make political contribution, you are not "allowing" collective free speech; you are handing out masks and megaphones to a select few so that they may drown out everyone else's free speech in anonymity.

Corporate personhood is a bit of a legal fiction that facilitates the corporation exercising the collective rights of shareholders.

Right; it's a collection of contracts designed to generate income, not, generally, to decide what's best for the country (or even it's employees). Corporations don't have a conscience, nor should we expect them to.

There's nothing wrong with limiting what a collection of contracts should be allowed to do. Should we allow a stack of papers to adopt a child? We already have other limit's on corporate speech... for example we force drug companies to list all the side effects of their drugs.

I'd rather corporations exercise speech in the open and in their own name rather than in back room deals or through shadowy shell group lobbying groups.

But this transparency you are advocating is a bit part of what the Citizens United case threw out the window. Corporations may now give without attaching their name at all, or only having it disclosed one a year (depending on the organization type).

I would be okay if Target wants exercise "free speech" and run an add advocating a particular candidate. But I think Target should have to attach their name to the ad the same way the candidate's themselves have to. ("We are Target, and we approve this message.")

[MSimon]

Maui,

You assume that people don't think for themselves and can't judge a viewpoint based it its merits. If so we have a much bigger problem than corps spending money anonymously on messages.

[ladajo]

As for value of an employee, be they management or not, I see that as a function of free market.

And that's the point at the end of my post. Eventually (soon) the value of every employee will be 0. A machine will do every job possible better than any human. There will be nothing you (or your children) can do that's worth the amount of resources it takes to keep you alive, because a robot will do it better, cheaper, faster. Either everything becomes free, or everyone starves.

There is a point where the free market breaks down. When prices don't mean anything, you cannot rely on them to govern the economy. We must plan for this, and recognize that it is already happening. People's skills are already becoming obsolete faster than they can obtain new ones. If we are all dependent on the system for our subsistence (and really, we all are already unless you work a farm with hand made tools with locally collected seed and livestock, live in a hand built home, built from local materials, that you built without any manufactured tools), then who will get a say in how it's run?

Either humans work together ensure that everyone is provided for, or we trust the robots do that too. It might work out. It might not. I'd like some say in how it turns out.

Here we diverge significantly in opinion. You profer that machines are supplanting humans. I say no. Until there is real AI, that is not going to happen.
And we are a ways from that yet.

Sure, machinery can do repetative non-creative tasks better. That is the definition of a machine. But they do not adapt themselves in the real world, they do not define their own purposes, and they certainly do not maintain themselves. Technology has always outpaced personal skill sets. Those that adapt survive. Those that do not, don't. If you are in doubt, ask the early caveman that brought his fists to a rock fight.

[hanelyp]

And that's the point at the end of my post. Eventually (soon) the value of every employee will be 0.

Neo-luddite thinking. Even if a machine is better than a human at work, the human is still worth what they can produce.

How "collective" are corporate political donations? Out of tens of thousands of employees, how many of them have any kind of say in where "their" money is going.

A corporation is not a collective of the employees but of shareholders, and it is shareholder money the corporation spends. Employees engage with the corporation as suppliers of labor for a mutually agreed to price. The big gripe some of us have with unions is the tyrannical power they have under the law in some states to compel membership.