You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people who do it would be called not "lobbyists" but "educators" and would be only allowed to say what agrees with some opinions, but not the others? Or allowing anybody explaining things to congressmen and just not calling it "lobbying" because it's a dirty word?
> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance?
I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider:
1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists with deep pockets? Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad (and this applies to any issue, not just NN).
2. To further the above point, the wisdom of the crowd is a robust phenomenon whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter, probably for exactly the reasons I explained above. However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent. Lobbying destroys this property. If you look up the "wisdom of the crowds", lobbying encourages homogeneity, centralization, imitation, and emotionality.
> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average.
Why?
> However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly
By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right? This does not require any technical knowledge.
> so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour.
You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.
> What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists
Depends on how biased it is. If it's biased in favor of NN, the ratio would be something different than if it's biased against NN.
> Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad
Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. The point of representative government is that it is a focus point of an effort to figure out the right thing to do, and that all participants at least kinda trying to do it. If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.
> whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter,
I agree, having elections makes more sense than having a King.
> However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent.
Nobody is truly independent in a modern society. Not even a King - historically, there were lots of weak monarchs manipulated by their courts and seconds in command. Neither a person living in a modern society. Of course people influence other people. And this can produce negative effects like groupthink and mass panics. So what's your suggestion - ban talking about politics? Mind-wiping congressmen before voting?
> By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right?
I mean in the interests of their constituents.
> You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.
I imply nothing of the sort, but the majority of people certainly favour NN.
> Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. [...] If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.
Constituents have different interests. Sometimes diametrically different.
> but the majority of people certainly favour NN.
The majority of the people favor a vague description of NN in the form of "do you want to access sites for free". The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018. It's fine to favor this specific regulation, but claiming "the majority supports it" as an argument is bullshit, the majority has no idea what it is about. It's like asking people "would you like to be murdered?" and presenting the results as support for specific crime reform or gun control proposal. This can't be taken seriously.
> Except it's not random, as I explained.
You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN, if only those pesky lobbyists didn't meddle. It is an unsupported statement based on fallacious premises and so far the only factual support is the abovementioned unserious polls. Not enough by far.
> The majority of the people favor a vague description of NN in the form of "do you want to access sites for free".
Please point to all the polls or surveys that framed the question this way.
> The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018.
And the same can be said for our elected representatives who, on the whole, are just as technologically illiterate as these other citizens you seem to disdain so much.
> You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN
Really? Please quote the exact text where I made that claim.
Furthermore, that explanation is completely immaterial to the point I was responding to, which was about your claim of randomized bill voting. I suggest you reread this thread.
> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average
I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).
> I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes
Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall.
Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests.
The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.
>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance?
So the options are either
1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast
2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcast's lobbyist only. A person elected into one of the highest positions in the US is too incompetent to do their own research.
What constitutes a lobbyist? Must a congressman record every discussion he has with every person he meets, just in case the topic of conversation turns to public policy?
All human sources of information are biased. That's why we have democracy - to duke it out in a market of ideas and find some common denominator that somehow summarizes people's opinions. True, this system is not perfect. But removing inputs would not make it more perfect - unless by some magic you imagine that the only inputs left are optimal ones. But finding the optimal ones is the problem with started with! If we knew that, there would be no need for the rest - it's because there's no definite obvious way to know what is right is that we have democracy, otherwise we'd just have one law: "always do what's right" and that's it, no need for congress, elections, etc.
