> Not sure how Sunlight and EFF spending staff time on something validates or dis-validates a market.
They were previously customers of that market. They found it suited their needs better to replace the thing they were purchasing from.
> You can call this elitist or patriarchal. But my suggestion is that the EFF and Sunlight do exactly what you are doing at 18F (which I suggested to you 2 years before you took the job, scoffed at, and as I recall were quite argumentative about it. So...): go on the inside and work on problems from there...
I didn't scoff at working on the inside. I scoffed at the notion that working on the inside is required in order to have a valid opinion about what government should do. And that's something I continue to scoff at.
> because if you're connecting firehoses to drinking straws, you're doing more harm than good.
It's not zero sum. I'm glad for the companies that tackle the inside game here too. It's not the only game worth playing, and if democracy.io increases the pressure further for more people to work on the inside sector, then everyone wins.
> Finally if you want to make it so Congress is well represented by its constituents, make it as easy and delightful to hear from your constituents as it is from a lobbyist. Until then, the lobbyists will always win.
That's a pretty fluffy notion. Lobbyists can show up in person, and can get special access to events and meetings that ordinary constituents can't.
Sometimes that's earned by virtue of subject matter expertise, and a lot of the time it's just people who know each other. You can't make it more delightful to hear from a constituent than it is to get a call from a friend.
You can certainly argue democracy.io doesn't help with that particular problem, and that's fine. Arguing that it actually hurts democracy to help people send emails to Congress without having to go through a for-profit vendor is what gets into the territory of elitism.
They were previously customers of that market. They found it suited their needs better to replace the thing they were purchasing from.
> You can call this elitist or patriarchal. But my suggestion is that the EFF and Sunlight do exactly what you are doing at 18F (which I suggested to you 2 years before you took the job, scoffed at, and as I recall were quite argumentative about it. So...): go on the inside and work on problems from there...
I didn't scoff at working on the inside. I scoffed at the notion that working on the inside is required in order to have a valid opinion about what government should do. And that's something I continue to scoff at.
> because if you're connecting firehoses to drinking straws, you're doing more harm than good.
It's not zero sum. I'm glad for the companies that tackle the inside game here too. It's not the only game worth playing, and if democracy.io increases the pressure further for more people to work on the inside sector, then everyone wins.
> Finally if you want to make it so Congress is well represented by its constituents, make it as easy and delightful to hear from your constituents as it is from a lobbyist. Until then, the lobbyists will always win.
That's a pretty fluffy notion. Lobbyists can show up in person, and can get special access to events and meetings that ordinary constituents can't.
Sometimes that's earned by virtue of subject matter expertise, and a lot of the time it's just people who know each other. You can't make it more delightful to hear from a constituent than it is to get a call from a friend.
You can certainly argue democracy.io doesn't help with that particular problem, and that's fine. Arguing that it actually hurts democracy to help people send emails to Congress without having to go through a for-profit vendor is what gets into the territory of elitism.