Policymakers should use git \ stacker news ~Politics_And

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1671 sats \ 16 comments \ @SimpleStacker 21 May Politics_And_Law

I was reading the bill on No Tax on Tips (#985728) and I came across this paragraph:

Section 67(b) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by striking "and" at the end of paragraph (11), by striking the period at the end of paragraph (12) and inserting ", and", and by adding at the end of the following new paragraph: "(13) the deduction under section 224 (relating to qualified tips.".

And I was thinking to myself, "Dude, just use Git!"

Code should be code, and bills should be pull requests.

So sayeth @SimpleStacker

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758 sats \ 1 reply \ @Murch 21 May

Would be pretty awesome, if people worked on bills in public in a git repository just like an opensource project, wouldn’t it? And why not, they’re public servants.

Taiwan has adopted a few such ideas in the past years. I listened to this podcast a while back: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-source-beats-authoritarianism

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 21 May

Nice! I'm gonna have to watch the linked video.

80 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 21 May

Thinking about it, diff must be among the oldest productivity tools I still use every day - for over 30 years now, and I was 20 years late to the party!

The paper is nice to read too.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @rblb 23h

Imagine if everyone could just read, understand and keep track of every law, you’d have a whole population of lawyers ready to fight back.

I don't think governments want that, they get away with illegal things all the time, and sometimes they’re only caught much later.

30 sats \ 6 replies \ @kepford 21 May

You aren't the first to say this. Back in the days of Obama's run to the Whitehouse it was being said by many devs into politics. He promised that every bill would be posted before they went up for debate. I know a few devs that were huge Obama fans that now are completely disenfranchised by his failures / lies.

I was skeptical of course but I liked many of his ideas. I just never believed he'd do them. After a while I realized that the incentives are not aligned for politicians to ACTUALLY solve many problems. They run on promises and the public sucks at keeping them accountable.

58 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 21 May

Maybe if Starbase, TX is successful, and they use these kind of tools for governance, then others can catch on.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 21 May

Honestly, I don't care. Its not like people actually want the truth most of the time. The masses I mean. Most just want to confirm their team's position is correct. The people that are fair minded don't even need this stuff. But they are so few, most of them are just disengaged for their own sanity.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 21 May

The people that are fair minded don't even need this stuff

What do you mean by that? I want politicians to use git so that fair minded people can see the changes more easily.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 21 May

I think the fair minded people mostly tune this stuff out. I get what you are saying. Maybe I'm to negative. I just mean I don't think you need version control on bills to see how the grift works. If you wanna see it... you can today. But, this would make it easier.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker OP 21 May

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think I'm a little more hopeful that if the right tools are available, that well-meaning people would be able to rein in some of the excesses. But maybe not.

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151 sats \ 0 replies \ @kevkevin 21 May

I agree imagine being a policy maker and your constituents create the bill for you and open a PR for you to review

30 sats \ 2 replies \ @zapsammy 21 May

not a bad idea! that wud turn Git into sh!t quickly, and a nostr-bitcoin repository shall finally be built;

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Murch 22 May

I think the suggestion was to use git, not GitHub.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @zapsammy 22 May

thank you for clarification! looks like i need to do some reading %)

nevertheless, crypto-governance will surely come with its own special obscure rules that no one understands yet readily lives by... just like today

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 21 May

imagine how much time could be saved if you didn't have to write a whole paragraph just to remove a period, add a comma, and modify a few words.