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You've got bigger problems than that

I work at Harris & Baseview, and have spent the past year and a half working with my team on a new version of our Editorial software. I remember many times in our design meetings worrying about security. We have an explicit permission system, so you have to be authorized to access files, but there were many times when we worried if that was enough. For example, if a task was assigned to a group, do we need to prevent one group member from trashing the work of another?

The answer is no. We have audit logs so that an administrator can go in and determine what happened, and we keep older versions of assets so that you can roll back changes. But at some point, you just can't prevent certain actions. My favorite refrain from those planning meetings was, “If you have to worry about your reporters erasing each others' work, you have bigger problems than that.”

As everyone knows, there's an election coming up. One of the items on the Michigan ballot is Proposal 1. Basically, it's a constitutional amendment saying that any newly-legalized forms of gambling require voter approval, but excepting the three Detroit casinos and Indian tribal gambling.

The advertising started light, but got very vicious very quickly. Supporters are running ads with an “it's for the children” theme, because if the evil legislators are allowed to do their thing, soon legalized gambling will be online where children will undoubtedly run into it. Opponents are running essentially racist ads, ripping on Indian casinos and how they don't pay any taxes.

I'm not too fond of constitutional amendments in general. The problem here, though, is that it's the job of legislators to pass laws. What this proposal does, essentially, is say that issues of gambling are too important to leave to them. That's ridiculous. There are plenty of important issues, like health care and the budget, that are far more important than gambling. Are those too difficult for duly-elected officials to decide, as well? How insignificant does an issue have to be before legislators should be allowed to deal with it?

If you can't trust the officials you sent to Lansing, tasked with passing laws, to pass laws, you have a bigger problem than just regulating gambling.

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