Gerrymandering, Net Neutrality, and Mass Shootings

Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing boundaries to districts to give a party a better chance of getting more candidates elected. The practice is technically legal right now, since no supreme court ruling has outlawed it. The constitution does give the right to draw these boundaries to the elected officials in power, but it did not foresee that the level of partisan politics today would lead to such discriminatory practices. The end result is that groups that are against the party in power are stuffed into fewer districts to limit their voting power, violating our system for equal representation.

  • Law: This is the most obvious way to fix this change. The supreme court has not yet passed down an overarching ruling on gerrymandering, partly because sometimes the line between a politically motivated redrawing of district lines vs. a legitimate one is blurred. Alternatively, a ruling party could fall on the sword and pass laws to relinquish this power state by state, preventing gerrymandering in future generations.
  • Market: Speaking with your dollar could very well work in this case. Supporting or opposing incumbents based on what they’ve done with gerrymandering in their state is always a strong rebuke of the practice. In addition, boycotting businesses that support candidates with a history of gerrymandering can also help quell this tide.
  • Norms: Public perception is the greatest tool that’s been utilized thus far towards the issue. Over the past decade, the effects of gerrymandering especially in House elections have come to the forefront, as it becomes clear that the collective stance of the representatives from a gerrymandered state do not represent the collective stance of the people. Journalists and political activists have started publicizing the nonsensical district maps that have been created for political gain, and voters in those districts are taking notice that their voting power has been diminished. However, the “next step” from this is much tougher as people have to make the connection from the lack of local representation to the fact that the only way to change it is to vote against gerrymandering in senatorial and gubernatorial elections.
  • Code: Pushing out information to support the norms, market, and law discussions is critical here. Code can really help make it very clear what the effect of gerrymandering is on a voter’s power depending on where they live, and help push out that information in effective ways.

 

Net Neutrality

Companies have long been trying to control the internet for their own gain. Broadband providers want the ability to charge certain companies more for their traffic or use the capitalistic markets to take away all consumer surplus by having companies bid for how much they will pay for their traffic to be sped up (or just not slowed down). On the flip side, large companies are also open to this since they may want to pay extra to beat out that new entrant or the smaller company on the block. Either way, the American consumer loses. In June 2018, the FCC removed Obama-era regulations on prohibiting either of these scenarios to happen, opening the floodgates for Net Neutrality to be broken down over the coming years.

  • Law: Again, the most obvious of the potential paths were this is very much a governmental decision on whether to allow companies to do this. Congress could pass a law to supersede the FCC and make it iron-clad that net neutrality is here to stay.
  • Market: the one part of the original regulations that has stayed is that broadband companies are still required to disclose their business models and whether any of these practices are taking place. The market could easily make this a negative factor for the company, driving their dollars to broadband providers who provide an open internet.
  • Norms: Playing along with the Market piece, social norms could dictate moving away from providers that discriminate traffic based on how much the company pays or whether the consumer is willing to pay more for equal internet. As long as there is an option for a provider with free internet, public pressure to move to that provider can be a deterrent for providers to move in this direction.
  • Code: Although I don’t understand much of this on the technical side, some have discussed moving the underlying infrastructure of the internet over a period of time to something that can’t be controlled by a provider. While a provider may lay down the infrastructure, traffic could be hidden or encrypted in a way that they are unable to see and therefore stifle certain types of traffic.

 

Mass Shootings in the US

The US has more mass shootings than any other developed country in the world. While we may refuse to investigate the root causes of this further from an institutional level, it’s clear that this is a huge problem that we as a country must address.

  • Law: The second amendment guarantees the “right to keep and bear arms” to all Americans. However, when that amendment was written guns were long muskets that took up to 30 seconds to reload and had very limited accuracy. A long shot from today’s assault rifles, at a minimum passing laws to restrict how easy it is for someone dangerous to procure a gun should be in our pipeline.
  • Market: In many ways, the market is the problem here. The firearms and ammunition market in the US is tens of billions of dollars, and those companies have no reason to slow down their own growth. However, there’s an opportunity here for a company to emerge as a leader to promote changes to our society, both in norms and law, that help us move towards less shootings. The vast majority of the US supports initiatives like this, and I imagine it would help the company’s image and actually increase sales for them.
  • Norms: The vast majority of gun owners in the US say that their reasoning for owning a gun is either self defense or sport. There is no reason that automatic weapons should be this prevalent in the civilian space of our society, and pushing this as a norm is critical. If nobody is buying these guns, stores and gun shows will be less inclined to stock them and make them much tougher to procure.
  • Code: I’m not sure if this is actually possible, but with today’s technology we could integrate additional safety mechanisms into the guns itself. For example, Geolocation in the gun that locks them if they’re within a radius of major public areas (schools, malls, etc.).

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