Would love to see the overlap between the average anti-Big Tech HN commenter cheering on this regulatory advance, and the average HN commenter who thinks hard drugs should be legalized and that the War on Drugs is bad. Because these are contradictory positions! Either you think people should be free to do things that are addictive or you don't
I'm a bit skeptical that you absorbed these 3 pieces in the time it took you to respond (they are 27, 29, and 63 pages, respectively), but they find a range of effect sizes here- the other two a bit more strongly. I feel comfortable with my original statement, though I suppose there's always room for nitpicking
I don't have time for a longer comment, but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates. The doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, CPA etc. that in past decades would have had his/her income run through a W2 arrangement shifted to becoming a one-person corporation
1. I grew up in a small town, and occasionally ask my parents how mayoral/city council politics is going there. (Or, I check out the latest drama on Facebook about it). My good friend's uncle was our mayor for a long time, etc. People might know personalities, but they're still not following national policy positions. Not to mention that people would be voting purely for personalities/clan/ethnic affiliations, and again not policy- we have a term for that in poly sci, personalism
2. A country of 340 million people with an elected representative from every small town would have an unrealistic number of representatives. 1 for every 5k citizens would be 68,000 reps in the House
I get that you're fetishizing hyper-localism to the exclusion of all else, but it's just a bad basis to run a modern society. This is not a realistic vision
Because the median voter doesn't realistically have that detailed a level of knowledge on legislators/their policies. This is tough for a lot of people to believe- especially the kind of high-information voters who propose these sorts of reforms to begin with. But there's an enormous, multi-decade literature on voter ignorance. They simply don't know much about who's running or what their policies are
1. Due to geographic sorting smaller districts would be more intensely partisan than today, not less. A smaller land mass is going to be more deeply blue or red
2. A gigantic house would be less cacophonous and boisterous, not more so, because you'd need more hands-on party control to get anything done. It's deeply unrealistic that a huge mass of representatives are going to get anything passed on their own. You'd end up even closer to parliamentary-style party leader control of the House, which personally I'd like to avoid.
Combining these two points, you'd have even more ideologically intense & disciplined parties with smaller districts/a larger House- the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve I think
3. 'Objections based on convenience and space, are not serious in terms of the meaning of the House' this would be news to say Germany, which recently ended its famous 70+ year old MMP system precisely because their lower house kept expanding too much. They found the issue logistically too difficult to deal with, and are now moving to a more classic PR setup
Bonus extra point- the UK already has one of the world's largest lower houses, with relatively small districts and lots of local representation. Is the UK particularly well-governed, do you think? Small single member districts are rent-seeking machines- way too easy for a local rep to get captured by Major Local Employer (or NIMBY group)
OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on.
What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?
Has anyone had any luck deleting themselves from the data brokers who sell cell data to political texters and/or survey companies? Those are the ones I really want to opt out of
"From 1999 to 2020, nearly 841,000 people died from drug overdoses,[7] with prescription and illicit opioids responsible for 500,000 of those deaths"
Here's a chart showing overdose deaths from all drugs in the US- yes there's definitely a large spike from 'synthetic opioids' at the end there that's probably all illegal fentanyl. But notice the blue line for 'prescription drugs' was very very steady for the entire length of the chart. That's an enormous number of deaths from completely legal, regulated drugs!
>Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it
Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you.
>The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the problems go away too
I mean, states & countries that have completely state-run liquor stores still have alcoholism and serious alcohol problems though? If 'removing the profit structure' worked magically, more countries would do it. AFAIK rates of alcoholism aren't even different between state-run and private sector models
>The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance
Famously, the US spent about 15-20 years attempting this with opioids. They were widely available to people via a pseudo-medical process, or via secondhand dealing. Opioids were/are manufactured by regulated, publicly traded companies with inspectors who controlled purity and production. The result? A shattering drug addiction crisis that at its height killed more people annually than the entire Vietnam War.
(For people saying 'no, that was illegal heroin or fentanyl that did all that damage'- the Wiki page for the opioid crisis is quite clear that at least 50% of all deaths were due to perfectly legal, regulated opioids).
When you make drugs legal & easy to get, lots & lots of people do them- who develop life-shattering addictions and OD en masse. They also build tolerance and then move on to even harder stuff. AFAIK out of the 300ish countries on the globe, there is not 1 that has decriminalized hard drugs in the modern era. And no don't say Portugal, contrary to widespread myth they forced people under threat of jail to attend drug rehab, and anyways they've recently curtailed even that.
I realize this is not going to get a lot of upvotes on HN, but yes making it difficult to do hard drugs is a reasonable public policy goal. (Which again, is why literally every country on the planet does it). There's room to argue about the exact tactics, but the broad goal is perfectly legitimate
"The key move was Congress’s amendment to INA §214(b), the provision that says every visa applicant is presumed to be an intending immigrant unless they prove otherwise. In 1990, Congress inserted an exception for H(i) and L nonimmigrants — i.e., it carved them out of that presumption. The current codification notes still show that this came from Pub. L. 101-649 §205(b)(1)" https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2009...
Congress also added INA §214(h). In the 1990 Act, that new subsection said, in substance, that being the beneficiary of a preference petition under §204, or otherwise seeking permanent residence, does not count as evidence that the person intends to abandon a foreign residence for H(i)/L purposes. That is the clearest statutory confirmation of dual intent.
"Congress originally intended H-1B to permit temporary work status while also allowing pursuit of permanent residence. The House Judiciary Committee report reinforces that reading. It had a section titled “Dual Intent” and explained that this problem was especially burdensome for H and L beneficiaries, and that the bill treated the filing of an immigrant petition as not, by itself, proof that the person meant to abandon a foreign residence" (attached link is the legislative history) https://niwaplibrary.wcl.american.edu/wp-content/uploads/HR-...
This might not be a fruitful discussion because I get the impression you're a bit ideologically dug in on this. I would like to think my subject matter expertise is reasonably high given that this intersects with my IRL job. But yes:
"Congress enacted INA § 214(b) in 1990, explicitly excluding H-1B visas (under INA § 101(a)(15)(H)(i)) from the presumption that nonimmigrant applicants are intending immigrants. Unlike most nonimmigrant categories requiring proof of no immigrant intent, H-1B omits any foreign residence requirement in its definition, enabling holders to pursue permanent residency without jeopardizing status" https://global.temple.edu/isss/faculty-staff-and-researchers...
"The Immigration Act of 1990 created the modern H-1B program as a "bridge" to green cards, allowing immediate work while navigating permanent residency processes that included labor tests. Senate Judiciary Committee reports emphasized streamlined H-1B procedures without recruitment delays to avoid productivity losses, with senators like Arlen Specter and Slade Gorton highlighting needs for quick access to skilled talent. This dual-intent design responded to prior issues, like the Schwartz case, where immigrant intent prosecutions prompted the 1990 carve-out" https://www.cato.org/blog/why-congress-rejected-h-1b-recruit...
It seems like you already understand what dual intent means- it's both a temporary working visa and a path to a Green Card. Yes, the government issues I-140s to H1-Bs, which are another step on the path to a GC. The government has an entire series of steps laid out for H1-B visa holders to follow to get a Green Card. I think just Googling 'H1-B dual intent' is going to give you more info than I could realistically fit in a comment here
At least even money that an appellate court throws this verdict out entirely. Reminder that the US is the only developed country that uses juries for civil trials- everywhere else, complex issues of business litigation are generally left to a panel of judges. It's not that hard to rile up a bunch of randomly impaneled jurors against Big Bad Corporation. The US is kind of infamous for its very large, very unpredictable civil verdicts. There's an incredibly long history of juries racking up shockingly large verdicts against companies, only for an appellate court to throw the whole case out as unreasonable. Not even close to the final word in the American judicial system.
Edit to include: I mean this is coming the same day as the Supreme Court throwing out the piracy case against Cox Communications 9-0. Remember that this case originated with $1 billion dollar jury verdict against them! Was reversed by an appeals court 5 years later and completely invalidated today. Juries should not handle complex civil litigation, I'm sorry
