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GrinningFoolyesterday at 10:19 PM3 repliesview on HN

Seems to me public review is a failsafe - an acknowledgement that laws and regs can't always keep up with real life harms.


Replies

tptacekyesterday at 11:06 PM

Public review in practice is a mechanism for concentrated local interest groups that don't have enough democratic legitimacy to win at the ballot box to instead win via a series of Tuesday night meetings normal people don't go to. There's literature on this: public comment overwhelmingly trends negative. People show up to prevent change. They rarely show up to support it, even if they do support it; normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning.

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ip26yesterday at 10:28 PM

You can't give all citizens effective veto power and then expect it will only be used for good in cases where the law is behind.

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