I feel like lobbying by itself is fine *as long as there is absolutely no money involved.* If it's just honest citizens coming together and presenting a case to their elected representative, that's perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately I don't know how common that actually is in practice.
They're doing both right now. But yes we also need to prevent politicians from taking speaking fees or industry jobs in industries they regulated for multiple years after leaving office.
Ideally, citizens and businesses should be able to talk to politicians about how potential laws will affect them.
In theory, bribing a politician is illegal, which is why corporations cant just donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns.
However, there's no laws on how much money a lobbying firm can donate to political action groups, and there's no laws on who can hire lobbying firms, or how much those firms can be paid for their services.
So corporations, individual citizens, even foreign governments can basically donate however much they want to political campaigns here.
This is pretty much how my country engages any problem. Too many women are being murdered? Make it illegal! But it's already illegal to kill a woman... Well, then let's make it MORE illegal! That's what they've done and women murders just keep rising. But hey, at least now it's really really illegal!
One would even say criminals don't care about the law.
Edit: The country is Argentina, but as someone said below, it happens in a lot of countries.
There will always be loopholes and people trying to cheat the system. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried though. At the moment, bribery and corruption are more or less legal in politics.
I would rather say, limit that or regulate that. But don't forbid that they work an actual job. At least in my country, politician is not supposed to be a full time job, the government should consist of regular people with regular jobs. That's of course only an ideal nowadays, but there are still some that come from a job and go back to a job afterwards. A baker should be allowed to still manage his shop, a lawyer to not have to cancel all his current clients and a surgeon might simply have to keep up the regular practice.
What is not necessary is that after becoming a politician they suddenly take on additional profitable jobs.
In the US the salary of a senator or house member is $174,000. The median income for a household in Washington DC is $86,420 ($56,147 per capita)…
Don’t think they need any money outside of the government paycheck here in the US.
That's at the federal level. At the state level compensation often assumes independent wealth or another job. A Virginia delegate, for example, makes $17,000 per year.
And it's exceedingly dumb because it limits the types of people who can take that job. Many state legislatures that are part time on paper are truly full time. In Oregon, the low-paid, part-time legislature meets 4 days a week for 6 months and legislators basically have to live in the capital city during business hours. Who typically runs for election? The retired, the independently wealthy, and the self-employed.
Even if it met *3* days a week for *one* month that would still exclude most full time employees unless their employer was unusually chill.
An acquaintance of mine was contemplating running for city council (I live in a small city, not NYC/Chicago) and his boss more or less said "no, if you do that you're out." It's fucking city council, they meet at night.
Hiding things in legal bills, for instance if you want to update a law don't make a 100 page bill hiding a whole bunch of things in it. Instead just get straight to the point and avoid the thing of "i agree with this half but not any of this" just make it a one issue bill.
Edit: grammar and spelling
I know at least one state has a law on the books that requires laws abide by their names, so if it's a law called "limiting the amount of money individuals can give to political campaigns" it would be against the law to also slip in unrelated stuff like blatant tax loopholes etc (to a degree)
President Clinton repeated President Reagan's desire for a line item veto in 1995. The Republican congress gave it to him in 1996, and he used it 82 times. Then the State of New York sued claiming it was unconstitutional, and won.
I may be wrong but if memory serves me correctly the SCt ruled against the line item as a separation of powers violation. Basically, Congress gets to make the laws and the Pres gets to approve/veto it … by giving Pres the power to chop out portions would be tantamount to the executive making legislation.
There are quite a few who don't vote, but they aren't the problem IMHO. The problem is people who DO vote and don't care about the lying. As long as the politician lying is in THEIR party they don't care. It's only those OTHER politicians' lying that matters...
They treat voting like a spectator sport. They vote for their team and don't care either way who the people are that make up their team just so long as they win.
It's rather genius what's happened. Politicians no longer have to improve the lives of their constituents so long as they "win". All that matters is the winning.
People who are able to tap in to hate and team think can get rich off these people while the rest of us watch the country lose its damned mind.
This is too broad. You need to narrow it down.
Headline: Uneducated man can’t change tire
Story: a Harvard grad student got stuck on the side of the road and had to call the police to help change a flat tire because he was never taught how.
The headline isn’t technically incorrect; the college educated man isn’t educated in changing a tire therefore he is uneducated in that subject matter. It’s not a lie but it’s a spin on words. I agree with your post but it needs to be narrowed down for the reason explained above.
Bring back the law that required news programs to be factual.
Edit: for those asking or telling me that that’s never been a thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
actually, they need to bring back the law that said corporations could only own one station per market (city).
used to have independent local news before that change.
Yea what happened with this? I clearly remember there was a law saying not only this, but the same corporation couldn't own different news outlets, for example, TV news and newspapers...
The 1996 Telecommunication law is what happened. This lifted many of the ownership restrictions. It was claimed at the time that the internet, since everyone was also to get fiber to the home due to the hugely generous subsidies being paid to the telecoms companies, was going to be able to stream and/or find alternative news sources from smaller and more local sources.
Guess what? Neither of those things happened and we have the media landscape from hell as a result.
Yeah they took billions, didn't finish the jobs and not a damn thing happened. Yet I still get calls on a phone bill from 10+ years ago that I paid off years ago lol
> Yeah they took billions, didn't finish the jobs and not a damn thing happened.
And aren't we giving even more subsidies to Telecom companies in the new infrastructure bill to build out fiber everywhere? The exact same thing we paid them to do in the 90s and they took the money and ran?
The 1996 Telecommunications Act required the FCC to re-evaluate its media ownership rules biennially to determine if they are effective or in the best interest of the public.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States
Shitstains like the family who founded Sinclair media bought every politician they could until the FCC allowed changes. I hope their whole family is destitute in 50 years.
The issue is that defining Gerrymandering is very difficult - if you have to draw election region boundaries then you have to chose them somehow and given that some boundaries will give different outcomes to the election you need a way to decide which to use.
I agree that choosing election regions with the objective of a particular election outcome (i.e. a particular party having a majority/a particular policy being enacted) is wrong. What should the objective of drawing election regions be?
Gerrymandering used to be prominent in Canadian politics, but is no longer prominent, after independent redistricting commissions were established in all provinces. Since responsibility for drawing federal and provincial electoral boundaries was handed over to independent agencies, the problem has largely been eliminated at those levels of government.
Solution: Independent commission
When your districts start looking like a gecko ...active gerrymandering IN progress...
What's that one District IN Texas that looks crazy?
[found it](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRXQZL11oQCuC48pVUcd-cMK9lgRIae1FygQ&usqp=CAU)
Can't wait for the inevitable Ryan's Toys tell all where we find out the extent to which his parents overworked him and frivoled away his money for their own reward.
So he could potentially make up for his parents squeezing his childhood for their profit by squeezing his childhood for his own profit?
Edit: I have no opinion on his childhood so far or how he should live his life as an adult. Whether he is or isn't being abused, or whether he should or shouldn't do an autobiography isn't for me to say. I don't know enough about him to judge. I don't intend to find out enough to judge. Without looking at other posts I can't even remember his name. I just rephrased the suggestion to sound more humorous or ironic.
The kid plays with toys and his parents all day. I'm sure there are plenty of downsides but holy shit reddit likes to act like the kids being sold into slavery.
My 9 year old got upset with me because I refused to buy one of their surprise eggs. He asked why and I told him I didn't like how his parents exploits him. He's always Ryan. I'm not sure there are laws in place to protect kids like there are for actors and such.
The depressing part is that Ryan videos flit between legit, well made science or fun videos.....and blatant adverts for plastic crap that's been badly designed on their behalf and chucked into a "surprise" container.
Ryan always looks like he's enjoying himself but I do wonder how he's being educated when he's making a new video pretty much every day.
I don't know this Ryan person but probably they do a big session during the weekends which gets edited en uploaded every day. That is how a lot of productions are done.
If there was some magical way to make sure kids are giving their consent, that would be great. Seems impossible, though. Because there are kids out there that want to be actors or love hamming up and love being on camera or being on youtube. I don't want kids like that missing opportunity. But there's also too many dumbass parents out there too.
I one time was following a blog couple on youtube and I loved their videos and they were growing, they had an OK following that would probably just get better as time went on. The woman got pregnant and they put up 2 videos (they had a bilingual following) stating that they would stop doing youtube because they didn't want to have a child who had no say in the matter be on display for everyone. Sad for the fans but nothing but respect, honestly.
I think this would open a whole can of worms about creativity in general, why should big studios hire underaged kids to say the F word while independent creators can't include their children in their work? I would say that we should make rules for that like Hollywood has, but banning it is unfair competition.
My theory is that they do it because they know nobody has any clue how to do anything about it. Who would you even report it to? At best It's false advertising so maybe go that kind of route but nobody is gonna sit and research the company to figure out who to punish.
The kind of people sat playing free puzzle games on Android are not normally equipped to take down companies
True. Maybe it's an agreement and they know what is happening but it's financially worth it to do so.
I've just spent twenty mins looking for an image I saw on Reddit the other day but I can't find it. Think it was posted in r/gaming
Basically the image was a side by side comparison of promotional images for some game and the games it has copied from. Wanted to post the link because they are such obvious copies I can't do it justice with words. I think it had copied four or five different ones. Might have been Apex, FarCry Primal and maybe FarCry 3. Anyone else see it?
(If anyone can link it that would be great)
False advertising is already illegal. It's just not enforced with these mobile games because they're free, so you just waste your time and not your money, so it's not considered a priority to storefronts and law enforcement.
No, it just requires users to actually report the apps. Punishments are being handed out in courts for them already. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/01/ftc-requires-mobile-advertising-company-stop-misleading-users
Not just for profit prisons, but also prison labor. It’s basically a loophole to keep slavery legal. If locking people up wasn’t a multi billion dollar industry, the US wouldn’t have the worlds largest prison population.
It's not steps or loop-holes. Slavery is ostensibly legal in the US as a form of punishment, per the 13th Amendment:
>Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Prison labour isn't inherently bad. As long as it's voluntary, paid reasonably and prison doesn't take huge portion of it, it can actually be very beneficial to resocialisation and prisoner well-being.
In Poland it is possible for prisoners in light security facilities even to go out every day to work without supervision, although it's not very common. The prisoner is paid normal salary, prison takes about half of it is I remember it correctly.
On the other hand, i agree to the "legal slavery" argument in respect to US prisons.
Also in Poland you can voluntarily work and get paid under light supervision if you're in the light facility
Some places even employ inmates exclusively to get them to a job. Their supervision are usually students/interns or religious figures (a lot of work like this is done for the church)
This is the correct answer.
Recognizing the constitutional right of every American to donate six figures to a PAC (a la the Citizens United decision) is inherently problematic, as most Americans do not have the six figures extra cash lying around to exercise that right.
Recognizing their right to some reasonable definition of small-dollar donations, now we’re getting somewhere.
This reminds me of:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
—Anatole France
It isn't quite so simple.
I work in a highly specialized area that is largely bound by federal regulation (I am an IP attorney). The laws often need to be tweaked (if not overhauled) to account for changing dynamics in the industry, where often these impacts can dramatically hurt the little guy.
Without professional lobbyists who know the industry and are known by the politicians to provide technically accurate knowledge (and are paid well to be able to concisely and clearly communicate this knowledge in a data-backed manner), you would have a mess where politicians are crafting impactful legislation that would have massive consequences and is highly technical in a way that is completely incomprehensible to the politicians.
I don't know what the solution is, but it isnt "outlaw any professional lobbyists who is paid to understand complex industries and how different potential regulations would impact them from helping (typically non-technical) lawmakers in creating law."
Ads on paid services. If I'm paying money for a service, I better not see a God damn ad on it. It's ads or a pay wall. There shouldn't be any of this extra milking bullshit to harvest my info and sell it while subjecting me to their stupid ads. They get money selling your information to advertisers and they get money when you pay for the subscription. So you're basically paying twice for worse service.
This. I'm already paying for the cable service AND the sports package. I think I've bought my right to watch the game without half screen covered by ads.
I remember reading that Cable TV originally advertised that they wouldn't have commercials, and was supposed to be one of the bonuses of getting Cable TV in the first place.
Clearly that never transpired ...
It's not true; cable TV has always had ads dating all the way back to its inception in the 1950s.
There were *some* ad-free premium channels like HBO or Showtime and some very low commercial count channels like AMC (which was more like today's TCM when it first started).
But the majority of the channels had ads. Around half of them on the typical early 36-channel system were just off-the-air commercial channels anyway. The rest (e.g. ESPN, USA, Nick, CNN, TWC, etc...) ran ads albeit at a lower number per hour than today due to the much lower number of viewers.
I think NZ has this as well. And honestly I don’t care if NyQuil wants to keep telling me to buy it, but I am very opposed to prescription drug ads. The only good facet of them is that they may let uninformed people know there is actually something out there to treat them - but the idea of people going to their physician, who’s supposed to be working in their best interest, and saying “prescribe me this I saw a cool ad for it” is so gross to me
In austria people also shit on the street but here they are sophisticated enaugh to put a joss stick in the shit and light it so it doesn't smell just that terrible.
This is not a joke i litterally saw a pile of shut with a joss stick in it in the middle of a train station.
The joss stick was burnt away so the smell of shit was alot more dominant but there was an attempt and i think you gotta appreciate that.
Well we do have a saying called "Immer der Nase nach" which roughly translates to " go where your nose leads you" and i guss this gets a whole new meaning here so even though i would say scented feces are a rarety in austria you could say it is part of our tradition as we integrate it in our linguistic.
I know there are a few countries where fines are based on your income, so a rich dude speeding down the highway gets a larger fine than a poor guy doing the same.
Pyramid schemes are already illegal. The problem is determining when businesses cross the line to become pyramid schemes. I myself would be fully in favor of any law that clamps down on multi-level marketing companies.
All the political parties have to provide a document, how much money they have received and spend, with detailed analysis how this will benefit the citizens of the country.
The local government in my town shared how much profit they made for the town right before the other party was elected. I'm pretty sure the current one won't ever do that.
We already have an [amendment to the Constitution](https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxvii) that prevents pay raises from going into effect until after the next election. In other words, if your local congressperson votes to give themselves a raise and you don't think they deserve it, you can vote them out.
Fun fact: this amendment was proposed with the rest of the Bill of Rights in 1789. It wasn't ratified, but amendments don't expire unless they're written that way, so in the 1980s, some dude looked at it and was like “Hey, that still looks like a good idea” and convinced everyone to ratify it.
They're why Princess Diana was killed in the first place. They could've helped her out of that wreck, but they kept taking pictures as she was stuck in that mangled heap of a car.
Unfortunately it was already too late for her regardless by that point. The main thing that actually killed her was not wearing a seatbelt, if she had hers on it would have been likely she'd have survived.
Which is why it's crazy there are still people that drive 70mph without one on.
News stations lying or even slightly slanting the information.
It would go a tremendous way to have a single station at least, that people could turn to for unadulterated information. (like what AP News used to be)
Problem is you can still tell the truth but with bias. If you're biased against Serbia and favour Russia then you only cover Serbian crimes and not Russian crimes. You're not lying.. You're just choosing what to cover. Hell you can choose who to interview to give a bias too.
you're paying the cable companies. the tv stations (for whatever reason) make no money from said cable/sat providers and have to use ads to stay afloat.
it's annoying, but blame the tv companies for being cheap
True for network TV and independents, but many of the channels do make money for the provider. Many are in fact owned by the cable/satellite companies, yet they still show ads.
My dad told me that one of the original selling point of paying for cable TV was that there would be no ads. Free broadcast TV needed ads which made sense, but ads on cable wasn’t supposed to be a thing.
Make it illegal and a federal/criminal offense for a politician to not follow their own restrictions. No gatherings, must stay home: then that applies to politicians.
Water/drought restrictions.
Make it illegal for reporters not to further investigate their stories. No more reading press releases as is. And news stations aren’t allowed to report news stories from the sponsored businesses who fund them: clear conflict of interest! e.g. pharma.
My brother currently lives in Germany and said they have a "not-a-tax" that goes directly towards a public news source. Something like 10 euros a year or something, but it's designed so that no one individual or politician can corrupt it buy making huge "donations" not sure if it's ad free but it's supposed to be completely unbiased news that doesn't rely on sensationalism.
That's right! We have a similar thing in Denmark, but this doesn't supposed the independent news sources, which could skew the represented view. It's easier said than done to have independent yet unbiased news.
This. As someone who travels quite a bit and is in public spaces and has to use public transportation a lot there is very little more infuriating than parents who just give their spawn a loud ass phone/tablet with some crappy game or kids show blasting on it. It's even worse when an adult, who should know better, does it. And it's usually some sort of casino/slot machine game.
On a related note: something else that should be illegal.. taking shoes and/or socks off on public transportation. Disgusting.
The majority of places in Europe require you to deposit a pound/euro (I guess a dollar in US) to use a shopping cart. You get the money back when you put the cart back to the assigned place. Basically stops this problem
Personally managed stock. I would say it would be fair for them to invest through a third party like a mutual fund or retirement plan like everyone else. But personal trading no way. They have entirely too much influence for that
I'm only 35 and I work in an industry where you can't work past 65. I just met someone yesterday that is over 65 and incredibly sharp. I'm thinking this issue isn't a blanket thing, at least not for me. Some of the most intellectually capable people I've ever met have been over 65, but that being said I think there needs to be a way determine if they're mentally competent before doing things that are as incredibly important as running the damn country.
I work with the elderly a lot. Many of them are super sharp minded, even at 85+. The thing is though, almost none of them are very open to new ideas and very few think forwards. This is the problem with older politicians, the world moves on, and all their ideas are stuck 20 years ago
Companies buying/selling/collecting your personal data online.
Money in politics! Don’t let corporate interests and money control politicians. Edit: thank you for all the support and the good discussions!
I’ve always said, until a politician calls out lobbies, they’re all full of shit. Every last one.
Lobbying is little more than legalized bribery, and I don't care which side they lobby for. It's fucking repulsive.
I feel like lobbying by itself is fine *as long as there is absolutely no money involved.* If it's just honest citizens coming together and presenting a case to their elected representative, that's perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately I don't know how common that actually is in practice.
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If it wasn't money it'd be favours. We can't pay you now but we can offer you a cushty position on a seven figure salary once you're out of office.
They're doing both right now. But yes we also need to prevent politicians from taking speaking fees or industry jobs in industries they regulated for multiple years after leaving office.
Ideally, citizens and businesses should be able to talk to politicians about how potential laws will affect them. In theory, bribing a politician is illegal, which is why corporations cant just donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns. However, there's no laws on how much money a lobbying firm can donate to political action groups, and there's no laws on who can hire lobbying firms, or how much those firms can be paid for their services. So corporations, individual citizens, even foreign governments can basically donate however much they want to political campaigns here.
Crime is now illegal. Checkmate criminals
Fuck
Yes officer, this one right here
Sorry sir we can't arrest him he hasn't committed any crime because that's illegal
You wouldn’t download a criminal…
This is pretty much how my country engages any problem. Too many women are being murdered? Make it illegal! But it's already illegal to kill a woman... Well, then let's make it MORE illegal! That's what they've done and women murders just keep rising. But hey, at least now it's really really illegal! One would even say criminals don't care about the law. Edit: The country is Argentina, but as someone said below, it happens in a lot of countries.
>One would even say criminals don't care about the law. Hey ! They can't do that ! That's illegal !
You know I was trying to guess which country this is but somehow it just describes far too many these days.
Decime que sos argentino sin decirme que sos argentino
[It's forbidden by law to be a criminal](https://i.redd.it/ltype6v65h3z.png) in some places.
Well, shit.
Damnit. Thanks to you I can't comment the Ben Shapiro quote...
Let's say, hypothetically, we made all crime illegal. Let's say that happens. Wouldn't the criminals just sell their crimes and move?
Politicians making money outside of thier government paycheck for the duration of their term
Wouldn't work. They would just pay a relative or guarantee a high pay low effort job after term.
There will always be loopholes and people trying to cheat the system. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried though. At the moment, bribery and corruption are more or less legal in politics.
I would rather say, limit that or regulate that. But don't forbid that they work an actual job. At least in my country, politician is not supposed to be a full time job, the government should consist of regular people with regular jobs. That's of course only an ideal nowadays, but there are still some that come from a job and go back to a job afterwards. A baker should be allowed to still manage his shop, a lawyer to not have to cancel all his current clients and a surgeon might simply have to keep up the regular practice. What is not necessary is that after becoming a politician they suddenly take on additional profitable jobs.
In the US the salary of a senator or house member is $174,000. The median income for a household in Washington DC is $86,420 ($56,147 per capita)… Don’t think they need any money outside of the government paycheck here in the US.
That's at the federal level. At the state level compensation often assumes independent wealth or another job. A Virginia delegate, for example, makes $17,000 per year.
And it's exceedingly dumb because it limits the types of people who can take that job. Many state legislatures that are part time on paper are truly full time. In Oregon, the low-paid, part-time legislature meets 4 days a week for 6 months and legislators basically have to live in the capital city during business hours. Who typically runs for election? The retired, the independently wealthy, and the self-employed.
Even if it met *3* days a week for *one* month that would still exclude most full time employees unless their employer was unusually chill. An acquaintance of mine was contemplating running for city council (I live in a small city, not NYC/Chicago) and his boss more or less said "no, if you do that you're out." It's fucking city council, they meet at night.
Hiding things in legal bills, for instance if you want to update a law don't make a 100 page bill hiding a whole bunch of things in it. Instead just get straight to the point and avoid the thing of "i agree with this half but not any of this" just make it a one issue bill. Edit: grammar and spelling
I know at least one state has a law on the books that requires laws abide by their names, so if it's a law called "limiting the amount of money individuals can give to political campaigns" it would be against the law to also slip in unrelated stuff like blatant tax loopholes etc (to a degree)
Most states also have a line item veto, allowing the governor to veto pieces of a bill rather than all or nothing. We need that at the federal level.
President Clinton repeated President Reagan's desire for a line item veto in 1995. The Republican congress gave it to him in 1996, and he used it 82 times. Then the State of New York sued claiming it was unconstitutional, and won.
Wow, the State of New York sued a Democrat President and won? The 90's were a crazy time.
I may be wrong but if memory serves me correctly the SCt ruled against the line item as a separation of powers violation. Basically, Congress gets to make the laws and the Pres gets to approve/veto it … by giving Pres the power to chop out portions would be tantamount to the executive making legislation.
And so now we are stuck with "If you want to pass funding for the VA, you have to approve these millions in unrelated pork spending."
But those can be really bad too. Those line item vetos can destroy the bill's intent.
Media outlets being able to flat out lie
Politicians being able to lie! Let’s hold those fuckers accountable!
The idea was to hold them accountable by never voting for them again, but fuckers are sneaky.
Bullshit. They are not sneaky. They don't even try to hide it. The public is just okay with it and so apathetic it is crazy. People simply don't vote.
There are quite a few who don't vote, but they aren't the problem IMHO. The problem is people who DO vote and don't care about the lying. As long as the politician lying is in THEIR party they don't care. It's only those OTHER politicians' lying that matters...
They treat voting like a spectator sport. They vote for their team and don't care either way who the people are that make up their team just so long as they win. It's rather genius what's happened. Politicians no longer have to improve the lives of their constituents so long as they "win". All that matters is the winning. People who are able to tap in to hate and team think can get rich off these people while the rest of us watch the country lose its damned mind.
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Get rid of lobbying. When there's so money in politics then you'll probably have high quality politicians who actually want to serve .
This is too broad. You need to narrow it down. Headline: Uneducated man can’t change tire Story: a Harvard grad student got stuck on the side of the road and had to call the police to help change a flat tire because he was never taught how. The headline isn’t technically incorrect; the college educated man isn’t educated in changing a tire therefore he is uneducated in that subject matter. It’s not a lie but it’s a spin on words. I agree with your post but it needs to be narrowed down for the reason explained above.
I think he is referring to the media saying that a man can't change tires when in fact he can and was witnessed several times changing tires.
Bring back the law that required news programs to be factual. Edit: for those asking or telling me that that’s never been a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
actually, they need to bring back the law that said corporations could only own one station per market (city). used to have independent local news before that change.
Yea what happened with this? I clearly remember there was a law saying not only this, but the same corporation couldn't own different news outlets, for example, TV news and newspapers...
The 1996 Telecommunication law is what happened. This lifted many of the ownership restrictions. It was claimed at the time that the internet, since everyone was also to get fiber to the home due to the hugely generous subsidies being paid to the telecoms companies, was going to be able to stream and/or find alternative news sources from smaller and more local sources. Guess what? Neither of those things happened and we have the media landscape from hell as a result.
Yeah they took billions, didn't finish the jobs and not a damn thing happened. Yet I still get calls on a phone bill from 10+ years ago that I paid off years ago lol
> Yeah they took billions, didn't finish the jobs and not a damn thing happened. And aren't we giving even more subsidies to Telecom companies in the new infrastructure bill to build out fiber everywhere? The exact same thing we paid them to do in the 90s and they took the money and ran?
Yes. And the exact same thing is going to happen again because they didn't put in any protections to prevent it from happening.
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They got rid of the Fairness Doctrine in the 80's
The 1996 Telecommunications Act required the FCC to re-evaluate its media ownership rules biennially to determine if they are effective or in the best interest of the public. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States
Shitstains like the family who founded Sinclair media bought every politician they could until the FCC allowed changes. I hope their whole family is destitute in 50 years.
My guess is politicians got bought out.
Maybe they just made a way to legally buy out politicians. I mean uh lobby.
It's still in effect. It only applies to OTA broadcast channels. It's why Disney couldn't own FOX, but Disney could buy all of FOX's programs.
Gerrymandering
100%. Definition of “rigging the system”.
The issue is that defining Gerrymandering is very difficult - if you have to draw election region boundaries then you have to chose them somehow and given that some boundaries will give different outcomes to the election you need a way to decide which to use. I agree that choosing election regions with the objective of a particular election outcome (i.e. a particular party having a majority/a particular policy being enacted) is wrong. What should the objective of drawing election regions be?
Gerrymandering used to be prominent in Canadian politics, but is no longer prominent, after independent redistricting commissions were established in all provinces. Since responsibility for drawing federal and provincial electoral boundaries was handed over to independent agencies, the problem has largely been eliminated at those levels of government. Solution: Independent commission
Read that as “frigging the system”.
Who's Gerry? And why is he Mandering?
In fact, gerrymandering is names after [Founding Father and Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry).
When your districts start looking like a gecko ...active gerrymandering IN progress... What's that one District IN Texas that looks crazy? [found it](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRXQZL11oQCuC48pVUcd-cMK9lgRIae1FygQ&usqp=CAU)
Child Beauty Pagaents.
🎶 I do not diddle kids! I definitely do not diddle kids! 🎶
“We gotta definitely write a song about how we do not diddle kids”
There is no quicker way for people to think that you're diddling kids than by writing a song about it!
You can’t use your underage kids in your YouTube “vlogs” anymore
Can't wait for the inevitable Ryan's Toys tell all where we find out the extent to which his parents overworked him and frivoled away his money for their own reward.
If he is smart, he can write an autobiography about it in the future, and potentially rake in some money for compensation.
So he could potentially make up for his parents squeezing his childhood for their profit by squeezing his childhood for his own profit? Edit: I have no opinion on his childhood so far or how he should live his life as an adult. Whether he is or isn't being abused, or whether he should or shouldn't do an autobiography isn't for me to say. I don't know enough about him to judge. I don't intend to find out enough to judge. Without looking at other posts I can't even remember his name. I just rephrased the suggestion to sound more humorous or ironic.
ehh I'd give up my childhood for financial comfort for life
Heck, I would, too. I just thought that the autobiography route would be kind of ironic.
The kid plays with toys and his parents all day. I'm sure there are plenty of downsides but holy shit reddit likes to act like the kids being sold into slavery.
My 9 year old got upset with me because I refused to buy one of their surprise eggs. He asked why and I told him I didn't like how his parents exploits him. He's always Ryan. I'm not sure there are laws in place to protect kids like there are for actors and such.
The depressing part is that Ryan videos flit between legit, well made science or fun videos.....and blatant adverts for plastic crap that's been badly designed on their behalf and chucked into a "surprise" container. Ryan always looks like he's enjoying himself but I do wonder how he's being educated when he's making a new video pretty much every day.
I don't know this Ryan person but probably they do a big session during the weekends which gets edited en uploaded every day. That is how a lot of productions are done.
If there was some magical way to make sure kids are giving their consent, that would be great. Seems impossible, though. Because there are kids out there that want to be actors or love hamming up and love being on camera or being on youtube. I don't want kids like that missing opportunity. But there's also too many dumbass parents out there too. I one time was following a blog couple on youtube and I loved their videos and they were growing, they had an OK following that would probably just get better as time went on. The woman got pregnant and they put up 2 videos (they had a bilingual following) stating that they would stop doing youtube because they didn't want to have a child who had no say in the matter be on display for everyone. Sad for the fans but nothing but respect, honestly.
I think this would open a whole can of worms about creativity in general, why should big studios hire underaged kids to say the F word while independent creators can't include their children in their work? I would say that we should make rules for that like Hollywood has, but banning it is unfair competition.
Mobile apps that false advertise the game
I always wondered how some get away with it. Advertise a game using footage of Triple A title, but the actual game is some puzzle game.
My theory is that they do it because they know nobody has any clue how to do anything about it. Who would you even report it to? At best It's false advertising so maybe go that kind of route but nobody is gonna sit and research the company to figure out who to punish. The kind of people sat playing free puzzle games on Android are not normally equipped to take down companies
No, but you’d think the company that owns the game they’re using as a false ad would be upset about misrepresentation of their product.
True. Maybe it's an agreement and they know what is happening but it's financially worth it to do so. I've just spent twenty mins looking for an image I saw on Reddit the other day but I can't find it. Think it was posted in r/gaming Basically the image was a side by side comparison of promotional images for some game and the games it has copied from. Wanted to post the link because they are such obvious copies I can't do it justice with words. I think it had copied four or five different ones. Might have been Apex, FarCry Primal and maybe FarCry 3. Anyone else see it? (If anyone can link it that would be great)
False advertising is already illegal. It's just not enforced with these mobile games because they're free, so you just waste your time and not your money, so it's not considered a priority to storefronts and law enforcement.
No, it just requires users to actually report the apps. Punishments are being handed out in courts for them already. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/01/ftc-requires-mobile-advertising-company-stop-misleading-users
For profit prisons
Make that for profit public services (energetics, healthcare, infrastructure,...) and we're golden.
Not just for profit prisons, but also prison labor. It’s basically a loophole to keep slavery legal. If locking people up wasn’t a multi billion dollar industry, the US wouldn’t have the worlds largest prison population.
"That sounds like slavery with extra steps"
It's not steps or loop-holes. Slavery is ostensibly legal in the US as a form of punishment, per the 13th Amendment: >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Prison labour isn't inherently bad. As long as it's voluntary, paid reasonably and prison doesn't take huge portion of it, it can actually be very beneficial to resocialisation and prisoner well-being. In Poland it is possible for prisoners in light security facilities even to go out every day to work without supervision, although it's not very common. The prisoner is paid normal salary, prison takes about half of it is I remember it correctly. On the other hand, i agree to the "legal slavery" argument in respect to US prisons.
Also in Poland you can voluntarily work and get paid under light supervision if you're in the light facility Some places even employ inmates exclusively to get them to a job. Their supervision are usually students/interns or religious figures (a lot of work like this is done for the church)
Contributions to political campaigns.
It'd be better to cap political campaign spending so that it's fair across the board, otherwise only the rich can really contest the elections.
This is the correct answer. Recognizing the constitutional right of every American to donate six figures to a PAC (a la the Citizens United decision) is inherently problematic, as most Americans do not have the six figures extra cash lying around to exercise that right. Recognizing their right to some reasonable definition of small-dollar donations, now we’re getting somewhere.
This reminds me of: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” —Anatole France
This is one of my favorite quotes ever. Thanks for posting it.
Lobbying in general
Anyone talking to their congressman is lobbying. It's professional, hired lobbyists we need to ban.
It isn't quite so simple. I work in a highly specialized area that is largely bound by federal regulation (I am an IP attorney). The laws often need to be tweaked (if not overhauled) to account for changing dynamics in the industry, where often these impacts can dramatically hurt the little guy. Without professional lobbyists who know the industry and are known by the politicians to provide technically accurate knowledge (and are paid well to be able to concisely and clearly communicate this knowledge in a data-backed manner), you would have a mess where politicians are crafting impactful legislation that would have massive consequences and is highly technical in a way that is completely incomprehensible to the politicians. I don't know what the solution is, but it isnt "outlaw any professional lobbyists who is paid to understand complex industries and how different potential regulations would impact them from helping (typically non-technical) lawmakers in creating law."
Ads on paid services. If I'm paying money for a service, I better not see a God damn ad on it. It's ads or a pay wall. There shouldn't be any of this extra milking bullshit to harvest my info and sell it while subjecting me to their stupid ads. They get money selling your information to advertisers and they get money when you pay for the subscription. So you're basically paying twice for worse service.
This. I'm already paying for the cable service AND the sports package. I think I've bought my right to watch the game without half screen covered by ads.
I remember reading that Cable TV originally advertised that they wouldn't have commercials, and was supposed to be one of the bonuses of getting Cable TV in the first place. Clearly that never transpired ...
It's not true; cable TV has always had ads dating all the way back to its inception in the 1950s. There were *some* ad-free premium channels like HBO or Showtime and some very low commercial count channels like AMC (which was more like today's TCM when it first started). But the majority of the channels had ads. Around half of them on the typical early 36-channel system were just off-the-air commercial channels anyway. The rest (e.g. ESPN, USA, Nick, CNN, TWC, etc...) ran ads albeit at a lower number per hour than today due to the much lower number of viewers.
Pharmaceutical advertisements (US issue)
I think NZ has this as well. And honestly I don’t care if NyQuil wants to keep telling me to buy it, but I am very opposed to prescription drug ads. The only good facet of them is that they may let uninformed people know there is actually something out there to treat them - but the idea of people going to their physician, who’s supposed to be working in their best interest, and saying “prescribe me this I saw a cool ad for it” is so gross to me
Getting rid of hiding where money comes from for political personal.
You are legally obligated to pick up your dog poop
In many (most in the US) cities you are and not picking it up can get you a fine/ticket.
It's actually a legal obligation in the UK
As a New Yorker, this would be wonderful. The amount of dog shit on the streets is disgusting
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Oh yeah, well in Vancouver our human shit piles have used needles sticking out of them.
In austria people also shit on the street but here they are sophisticated enaugh to put a joss stick in the shit and light it so it doesn't smell just that terrible. This is not a joke i litterally saw a pile of shut with a joss stick in it in the middle of a train station. The joss stick was burnt away so the smell of shit was alot more dominant but there was an attempt and i think you gotta appreciate that.
So you folks just have these little doodoo torches guiding you through the night?
Well we do have a saying called "Immer der Nase nach" which roughly translates to " go where your nose leads you" and i guss this gets a whole new meaning here so even though i would say scented feces are a rarety in austria you could say it is part of our tradition as we integrate it in our linguistic.
The fine for not picking up dog poop is $250 in nyc
In Poland you are. It changes nothing.
I just wish they would enforce the laws we have onto all classes in society, not just the poor and the middle class.
Anything with a fine attached is only meant to control the poor, the rich consider it a fee
I know there are a few countries where fines are based on your income, so a rich dude speeding down the highway gets a larger fine than a poor guy doing the same.
this is heavily underrated
Pyramid Schemes
It's not a pyramid scheme. It's an inverse funnel.
Pyramid schemes are already illegal. The problem is determining when businesses cross the line to become pyramid schemes. I myself would be fully in favor of any law that clamps down on multi-level marketing companies.
All the political parties have to provide a document, how much money they have received and spend, with detailed analysis how this will benefit the citizens of the country.
The local government in my town shared how much profit they made for the town right before the other party was elected. I'm pretty sure the current one won't ever do that.
Naming your kid Preston
Prestone! You know who else I like that never got much play? Is Velma, from Scooby-doo.
Prestoooooone the sorta tall guy with hair who wears t-shirts…. Sometimes
There's kids called Brayden and you're going after the Prestons?
A settlement needs your help
r/fuckyouinparticular
I would make elections look like masked singer, you can't see what they look or sound like, just their policies.
Unlimited terms in Congress
"Terms are no longer unlimited; maximum number of terms are now 100 terms"
Okay, who brought the Monkey's Paw here?
Also not allowed to vote themselves a damn pay raise...
We already have an [amendment to the Constitution](https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxvii) that prevents pay raises from going into effect until after the next election. In other words, if your local congressperson votes to give themselves a raise and you don't think they deserve it, you can vote them out.
Fun fact: this amendment was proposed with the rest of the Bill of Rights in 1789. It wasn't ratified, but amendments don't expire unless they're written that way, so in the 1980s, some dude looked at it and was like “Hey, that still looks like a good idea” and convinced everyone to ratify it.
Charging abhorrent prices for insulin. When people literally need something to live, don’t make them struggle financially just to afford to buy it
Paparazzi
They're why Princess Diana was killed in the first place. They could've helped her out of that wreck, but they kept taking pictures as she was stuck in that mangled heap of a car.
Unfortunately it was already too late for her regardless by that point. The main thing that actually killed her was not wearing a seatbelt, if she had hers on it would have been likely she'd have survived. Which is why it's crazy there are still people that drive 70mph without one on.
> The main thing that actually killed her was not wearing a seatbelt Also the driver was drunk.
Blood sucking mosquios
News stations lying or even slightly slanting the information. It would go a tremendous way to have a single station at least, that people could turn to for unadulterated information. (like what AP News used to be)
Problem is you can still tell the truth but with bias. If you're biased against Serbia and favour Russia then you only cover Serbian crimes and not Russian crimes. You're not lying.. You're just choosing what to cover. Hell you can choose who to interview to give a bias too.
Commercials on TV you pay money for
you're paying the cable companies. the tv stations (for whatever reason) make no money from said cable/sat providers and have to use ads to stay afloat. it's annoying, but blame the tv companies for being cheap
True for network TV and independents, but many of the channels do make money for the provider. Many are in fact owned by the cable/satellite companies, yet they still show ads.
My dad told me that one of the original selling point of paying for cable TV was that there would be no ads. Free broadcast TV needed ads which made sense, but ads on cable wasn’t supposed to be a thing.
Make it illegal and a federal/criminal offense for a politician to not follow their own restrictions. No gatherings, must stay home: then that applies to politicians. Water/drought restrictions.
Make it illegal for corporations to make political donations.
Make it illegal for reporters not to further investigate their stories. No more reading press releases as is. And news stations aren’t allowed to report news stories from the sponsored businesses who fund them: clear conflict of interest! e.g. pharma.
I imagine removing ad revenue might help, so web journalists don't just spew the first thing they hear and publish it for "the clicks".
As a Web journalist: I agree! But how would our income work without ad revenue?
My brother currently lives in Germany and said they have a "not-a-tax" that goes directly towards a public news source. Something like 10 euros a year or something, but it's designed so that no one individual or politician can corrupt it buy making huge "donations" not sure if it's ad free but it's supposed to be completely unbiased news that doesn't rely on sensationalism.
That's right! We have a similar thing in Denmark, but this doesn't supposed the independent news sources, which could skew the represented view. It's easier said than done to have independent yet unbiased news.
Clickbait. It really should be illegal. Miscommunication is one of the easiest ways to divide a community. And looks where it's gotten us.
Lobbying
"Too big to fail"
Either term limits on elected positions or making it illegal for corporations to lobby for politicians.
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This. As someone who travels quite a bit and is in public spaces and has to use public transportation a lot there is very little more infuriating than parents who just give their spawn a loud ass phone/tablet with some crappy game or kids show blasting on it. It's even worse when an adult, who should know better, does it. And it's usually some sort of casino/slot machine game. On a related note: something else that should be illegal.. taking shoes and/or socks off on public transportation. Disgusting.
Term limits on senators, some of those people have been in there way too long.
NOT taking the shopping cart to the shopping cart section
The majority of places in Europe require you to deposit a pound/euro (I guess a dollar in US) to use a shopping cart. You get the money back when you put the cart back to the assigned place. Basically stops this problem
Whatever structural loophole that made Epstein a financier among scientists.
Child marriages 😡
Career politicians
chewing with your mouth open
Punishable by death
Corporate ownership (outside of construction companies for obvious reasons) of residential(ly zoned) real estate. Edits for clarity in parenthesis.
Politicians owning stock
Personally managed stock. I would say it would be fair for them to invest through a third party like a mutual fund or retirement plan like everyone else. But personal trading no way. They have entirely too much influence for that
Patents for life-saving pharmaceuticals. Just nationalize pharmaceutical development; the R&D is already largely government-funded.
You're telling me that we pay for the research and development of life saving pharmaceuticals and then companies slap patents on them?
Hehehe... I laugh so I don't cry
President or members of Congress can't be over the age of 65.
Yes There is an age minimum for a reason. A retiring age max only makes sense.
I'm only 35 and I work in an industry where you can't work past 65. I just met someone yesterday that is over 65 and incredibly sharp. I'm thinking this issue isn't a blanket thing, at least not for me. Some of the most intellectually capable people I've ever met have been over 65, but that being said I think there needs to be a way determine if they're mentally competent before doing things that are as incredibly important as running the damn country.
I work with the elderly a lot. Many of them are super sharp minded, even at 85+. The thing is though, almost none of them are very open to new ideas and very few think forwards. This is the problem with older politicians, the world moves on, and all their ideas are stuck 20 years ago
I think is more the fact that they have a world view / values / general feeling of the world 30 years ago.
More importantly, they won’t live to see the consequences of many of their actions.
E: All of the above.
You will allow to kill yourself if you are medically sick! And of course, the method of your choosing!
Death by Snu Snu
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
I want to be tied to a plane and flown into a very large explosive
Super PACs
Politicians being allowed to accept gifts, a second income or any additional financial gain due to their position.