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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29559 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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The core problem is that yeah, the general public is stupid. You can’t build your political ideology around asking the voters what they want. For one, they don’t know how things work. Their opinions are not constrained by the laws of reality. For another, the opinions of the public are ephemeral. The average voter cares little about policy qua policy. They only care about whatever thing is going on in their media sphere. Have you ever once pulled up the most recent edition of the Federal Register to see what newly-promulgated regulations the government is issuing? Have you ever once commented upon — or even just read — a notice of proposed rulemaking on Regulations.gov? Probably not, because you don’t actually care about that stuff, and neither does anyone else in the general public. The average voter has no opinion on (checks today’s edition of the FR) what the proper licensing regime for the 6 gigahertz radio frequency band should be. If tomorrow everyone suddenly had an opinion on that for some reason, it wouldn’t be because of any personal reasoning or thought, it would be because someone they trust told them what to think.

Federal overregulation has obliterated ham radio while simulataneously oversaturating the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands to the point of uselessness in urban areas. It's clear that these regulations are written not for the benefit of the general public but to protect the monopolies of telecoms and television broadcast. Electronics have to be sewn up in a lead box to avert the minute chance it might add a bit of static to watching a football game but corporations can sit on empty swaths of frequency for decades because they paid for it and haven't found a use for it yet.

Have you ever once commented upon — or even just read — a notice of proposed rulemaking on Regulations.gov?

I have read a few and commented on one.

Have you ever once commented upon — or even just read — a notice of proposed rulemaking on Regulations.gov? Probably not, because you don’t actually care about that stuff, and neither does anyone else in the general public.

I didn't even know that existed - my impression has always been that "contact your congressman" was the appropriate action if you liked or disliked some proposed regulation, and that you learned about upcoming regulations by being an insider / hoping the media surfaced something relevant to your interests.

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