#the way the group think treats the most outlandish theories with civil respect but as soon as Jonsa is brought up NOOOOOOO

[jadagul]

I've been thinking lately about the difference between good policy and responsive policy.

The news hook for this, of course, is net neutrality. It's a fact that the real feedback the FCC has gotten has been overwhelmingly pro-NN. And it's a fact that Ajit Pai and the other FCC commissioners are basically ignoring that feedback. And in most circles I read, this is being treated as an obviously horrible violation of good governance.

But let's assume, for the moment, that Ajit Pai genuinely believes that net neutrality is bad policy. (This isn't that outlandish. A number of conservative thinkers think that. And even if you want to ascribe some of this to motivated reasoning, we can still assume that he has convinced himself to believe it's a good idea).

Ajit Pai thinks net neutrality is harmful, and that most people are wrong about that. Learning that most people disagree with him isn't actually going to affect that calculus---he already knew that most people don't agree with him. (This is especially true when the messages come from relatively-uninformed citizens responding to an advocacy campaign. He's heard the advocacy campaign's arguments already). Why should the feedback change his mind?

There are actually two good answers to that question I can think of. One is simple political expediency: "Don't pick fights that will get you thrown out of office". "Save your political capital for winnable battles." But Pai isn't directly elected; this battle is eminently winnable, which is why so many people are freaking out; and what bigger issue is he, hypothetically, saving capital for?

The second reason is a belief in something closer to direct democracy, the government-by-poll. In this theory we think politicians should try to enact popular policies, regardless of their personal views; they serve as executors of the popular will.

But this is specifically not how our system is supposed to work. Think about how much crap a politician gets when it looks like they're "cynically responding to polls", and how much praise we heap on them for "being genuine" and "telling it like it is". We have a representative system with multiple layers of insulation on purpose.

And government-by-poll is also a terrible idea. Most poeple do not have the time to become informed on every issue. This is not a criticism of most people. There are vast numbers of issues, and many of them are quite complex. Actual congresspeople have this as their full-time job and they still can't develop informed opinions on more than a small fraction of the issues.

(This is a major reason that aides, lobbyists, and civil servants have so much power. Paul Ryan and Kamala Harris can each become informed on a few issues they, respectively, think are important, but only a few, and everything else is by necessity farmed out to subordinates. On the other hand, "the tax lobby" or "the treasury department" each have a ton of people, and in aggregate they can have definite opinions about all the issues on the table).

So if you do government by poll, then the vast majority of the time you ask the country "what should we do about harmonizing fruit tariffs with Ecuador?" and you get back a giant "meh." And a small fraction of the time, you get back a strong answer---which is generated basically at random. Some issue got a catchy slogan, and now everyone has an opinion for no goddamn reason.

(My favorite example of this is the whole "depreciation schedule for corporate jets" thing that became a big issue during the Obama administration. People had very clear opinions about whether corporations should be able to amortize the deduction of expenses related to corporate jet purchases over a five-year or a seven-year period.

One group wanted to stick it to the rich and fight inequality by keeping the policy as it was; the other wanted to support businesses and stimulate economic growth by changing the policy to be more business-friendly. It was a big deal.

I can't remember for the life of me which side favored five years, and which side favored seven.)

This isn't to say that the populace doesn't sometimes have coherent views on an issue. And these views should be expressed. (And they definitely get expressed, with force, at least every other year). But it seems, on the whole, reasonable for representatives who strongly and genuinely believe that the public is wrong about what makes good policy, to enact the policy they think is good rather than popular.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him....It is his duty to ...prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

You're not convinced. "Net Neutrality is terrible policy, and this is exactly the sort of awful decisions the government makes when it ignores the public will."

Tell me: what do you think about Obamacare?

Here's a graph of the history of opinion polling on the PPACA:

You can see that the public was strongly (though not uniformly) opposed to the bill throughout the writing debate, and implementation; it didn't reach net favorability until some time in the past year.

And Democrats knew that perfectly goddamn well. They knew the polling was against them, and if they hadn't known that, the Scott Brown election would have made it totally clear.

But they thought it was good policy, and an important policy priority. Passing it might lose them a couple elections, but what's the point of winning elections if you can't use them to improve policy? And still they look back and say "we may have lost a bunch of elections but we guaranteed health care to millions of Americans."

And hey. The ones who said that Obamacare would eventually become more popular, and really difficult to repeal, once people got used to it---apparently they were reasonably correct.

You might object that Obamacare was guaranteeing important and fundamental rights, while net neutrality is just a giveaway to big companies. But that's just assuming the conclusion.

I assure you that Ajit Pai can make his case in the language of rights if he wants to. And he doesn't actually think it's just a giveaway to corporations. He thinks it will benefit corporations in a way that will, in the long run, benefit everyone else.

He may be wrong about this. I don't actually know; for all the righteous certitude I've seen in most of the internet, this seems like a fairly complicated issue and I don't have a clear opinion. (If you made me vote right now I'd vote for neutrality; but I'd actually vote for "give me a month and a copule of research assistants to study the issue").

But if he's wrong, he's wrong on the merits. He's wrong because it's actually bad policy. And in that case he'd still be wrong if he were getting thousands of letters in favor of the repeal.

That's the relevant case. Complaining that he's ignoring people he thinks are badly wrong is silly. That's his job.