No it doesn’t. There are plenty of possible reasons for him to stay here that could over-ride his dislike of our gov’t system. Maybe he’s got an Aunt in Yonkers he likes to see on a regular basis.
Democracy ain’t the problem. Class society is the monkey wrench here. You get a minority running society in its own interests, at the expense of the interests of the rest of the world, things get fucked up - regardless of the level of democracy any particular society enjoys. Like any other political vehicle, how democracy functions depends on who’s at the wheel and where they think everyone riding along should be going.
Well, you’re assuming that all people have had equal opportunities within the educational system to overcome this ignorance. What say we stop throwing trillions at Wall Street and Iraq and Afghanistan, pour it into education, and see where we end up?
That is the whole problem with California.
One year, there’s a referendum that 40% of the budget must be earmarked for education. Voters think that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way, so they pass it.
Next year, there’s a referendum earmarking 40% of the budget for law enforcement. Voters think that story about the girl who was kidnapped and held for 20 years in a lawnmower shed is just heart wrenching, so they pass it.
A year later, there’s a referendum earmarking 40% of the budget for rebuilding roads. Voters are tired of the stupid potholes making them drop their cell phones while speeding down Ventura Boulevard, so they approve it.
After that, there’s a referendum to drop tax rates by 40%. Voters are tired of being nickel and dimed for all those fat-cat teachers, corrupt cops, and lazy Caltrans workers, so they approve it.
And what do you know, suddenly the state is all fucked up. Why won’t the politicians do something to fix it? Maybe a ballot proposition on term limits is a good idea…
In any case, I prefer the Mencken view of democracy over the Churchill quote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
I have to admit I am thinking there must be a better model of governance than partisan representative democracy. I am convinced the American model is completely dysfunctional -and worse, that it was designed to be that way. That may not have been a bad thing in pre-industrial society and as a reaction to feudal aristocracy, but it does not cut it today and the founders made it to difficult to make necessary reforms as society changes.
I keep leaning toward a modified mandarin or bureaucratic model. The better cities seem to be run with a non-partisan city-manager style. The mayor is just a ‘head of state’ with the city run by a hired professional.
China seems to be an interesting example of a new mandarin model. I see it changing from a one party state to a zero party state - the Communist party these days just seems like a grooming tool for the actual leaders, i.e. prospects are assigned some party-level function and if they succeed there then they are considered for real government positions. Granted they still have an obscene amount of cronyism and no independent source of criticism, but it is interesting to watch the new generation of leaders in the post-Mao CINO (Communist-in-name-only) party. But it seems that ideologues are being cast aside for more professional leadership and management (granted who make sure they are well-compensated for their efforts) - I see more than few shades of the corporate governance model there, though penalties for failure may be slightly more severe. (Cf. Zheng Xiaoyu
That said, I think the keys to good government and governance are not necessarily the particular system of government, but having a strong independent civil sector to keep a critical eye on the government. Traditionally this was the mainstream media and part of the role of the judiciary, but the MSM has been splintered by the Internet and Wall Street. There are dozens of great think tanks and NGOs that provide critical analysis, but the MSM ignores all but the sensational reports, ignoring the meat and potatoes that citizens need to stay healthily informed. Instead the general public grows fat and lazy on its saccharine-coated placebos.
We need to reform the media as much as, if not more than the government. Toward that end, I am leaning toward community-supported journalism such as the BBC model.
I’m not as down on democracy as the OP, but I do think the US suffers from too much of it. On the ballot this year, I was asked to choose, amongst a host of other minor officals, who I thought the best Mosquito Control Officer for the county would be.
There’s no way in hell the best way to choose the best guy to monitor mosquito population is to ask a bunch of residents what their opinion is. I doubt one person in a thousand has a meaninful opinion, or cares enough to research the issue.
This seems to be a pretty common phenomenon in the States. Voters are asked their opinion on a raft of low-level offices, and its extremely unlikely they do a better job then simply letting other higher up elected officials who actually pay attention to such things appoint people for the posts
The problem is, as I see it, that government hasn’t kept up with technology. When the US government was formed, the manner of representation made a lot of sense because the problems facing a geographic area were largely homogenous, states were relatively more powerful, and the central government was less powerful. Today, technology has made information readily available, and the interconnectedness makes the problems we face much more difficult to narrow down and we have more people more interested in the government. However, completely ditching the system we have isn’t the answer, instead, we should evaluate what parts work and what parts don’t.
For example, a pure democracy just doesn’t work on any large scale. Representation is good because it’s supposed to be the job of our representatives to understand what the needs and desires are of the people he represents, like whether they’re urban or rural, blue collar or white collar, independent or dependent or whatever. Then he can take his time to study proposals and try to do the best job representing the people. The problem is, so many districts are gerrymandered, politicians are worried about losing their jobs rather than doing what’s right, and so many people are half-educated about the issues and getting over involved. Worse, because of our winner-take-all approach to offices, if a person wins a seat with 51% of the vote, now essentially 49% of the people are unrepresented.
As such, representation by geographical location is an antiquated idea, that made a lot of sense 220 years ago when the constitution was written, but it no longer necessary or practical. Rather with modern technology, there’s no reason we can’t find a better way to get more people better represented so people who do a good job representing some set of people can actually worry about doing his job and not focus on what will get them re-elected.
Worse, the two party system, which is also enforced by a winner-take-all approach, as many people would rather vote for the lesser of two evils that has a chance of winning than for someone they might actually agree with but has no chance of winning. If we could remove the winner-take-all approach to representation, people would no longer have a reason not to vote for someone they really agreed with.
With modern technology, I don’t see any reason why we can’t revaluate how representation is done so that it isn’t necessarily tied to geographical location and doesn’t require a winner-take-all approach. For instance, one simple approach, though obviously in need of some fine tuning (particularly maximum and minimum representations), would simply be to assign each state a percentage of vote based upon their population rather than a set number of representatives, and then they have statewide elections where you vote for whichever candidate you like and their respective voting power is proportional to the votes they receive (with some minimum threshold, of course).
Major parties would still have the most votes of course, but their power would be lessened, and third parties would absolutely receive representation, providing more perspectives and more compromised approaches. No one is ever forced for vote for the lesser of two evils because you’ll have tons of options that will all likely end up in office and your vote will always mean something (since it will necessarily provide more weight to their votes). And a given candidate’s power will continue to rise if they maintain the approval of their constituents and continue to fall if they do a crappy job.
And, obviously, the senate could be modified much the same way, except each state would get an equal 2% vote to split up rather than a percentage based on their population.
Well you’ll see that by explaining how we shouldn’t have democracy, your also explaining why we shouldn’t be listening to you.
Democracy is seriously flawed and problamatic. It, contrary to popular beliefs, makes for horrible neighbors, and in fact has been one of the greatest causes of destruction thorughout history, even moreso in the past century.
With that said, however, its core principle is essentially the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Now I’m not saying thats what it has always done, or that is the goal that it is constantly striving to achieve in every regard, but, again, it still remains the core principle. Now if your able to come up with a much better system that brings all of the benefits of democracy–the greatest possible good for the greatest number of people, greater senses of justness, individual and political freedom–that is also able to negate the bad–greater possible evil for greater numbers of people, vastly dispersed sense of injustice, and self-justified wars–than you just tell me where to sign up.
However, such a system has really not been conceived. The type of democracy which has seemed to evolve in America has, as you have seemed to infer, given alot of power to alot of, well, idiots. Yet I in almost every regard would rather have us giving this power to the general citizen body who in the end can accomplish very little, then to give the power to the government; in which case though they could run our system more efficently perhaps, it would also allow them to run it in the most corrupt of ways if anyone of such a nature came to power.
The system is fucked up, but I don’t know what would be better to be honest.
Putting competent professionals in charge of bureaucracies nobody knows about or cares about, then leaving politics to celebrities, sound bites, ideological pandering and wishful math (I propose tax cuts combined with spending increases, this will balance the budget) might work. But that is what the OP suggested.
Either way, those bureaucracies will soon be staffed by the same rabid ideologues who are running for office.
Of course, that applies whether the ruling minority is a social class or an institution, such as the Communist Party or the Catholic Church.
Democracy is certainly flawed, but making it better in the US will be difficult. We desperately need reform in terms of streamlining procedural nonsense in congress; and I would also like to see some sort of punitive powers granted to the executive branch to help give it some teeth in reigning in the idiocy. That would be a good start to creating a congress that functions at least. I also agree that some district and party reform is badly needed.
Laws and regulations are vastly over bloated now, and I think that the time of rules-lawyering needs to be brought to a close. We could do well with simple, clear regulation that is enforced with a little more “spirit of the law” and a LOT less “letter of the law”.
Let me guess, your side lost the most recent election. This is unfair and society should reshape itself to give your side a better political outcome.
I’d be more receptive to these complaints if complainers ever pushed for a system in which “their team” happens to end up with less status and political power, rather than more. I’ve yet to see this in action; hence I conclude that this elaborate argumentation is fundamentally about status/power seeking, not ideal governance.
Remove (most) of the monetary (mostly secondary) benefits from being a lifetime politician and you might get people doing the job who actually care about the constituents.
Kinda like teachers, grossly underpaid but you do get some good apples who do it ‘for the kids’
The notion that democracy won’t work, therefore the answer is to find some competent technocrats to actually run the country, glosses over the reason the proposed solution won’t work.
How do you choose the competent technocrats? Do they chose themselves? Then you’ve created a self-perpetuating oligarchy accountable only to itself.
It is abundantly clear that a ruling class runs a country for the benefit of the ruling class. You can point to a few cases where competent dictators ruled wisely. Singapore, Augustinian Rome, and so on. The problem comes, how do you chose your dictator? Well, you can’t. Maybe the guy who sweeps away all his rivals and obtains absolute power and crushes those who object will be a decent guy. Trouble is, to do the things needed to gain and maintain absolute power, he almost certainly ain’t no nice guy. And after a couple years of sycophants and bootlickers telling him that he’s history’s chosen one, he’s going to be even worse.
And then what happens when the old bastard finally dies, or becomes weakened enough that some other lean and hungry young bastard takes over?
How’s the next bastard going to be? Is he going to be as selfless and civic-minded as the old guy? How is he going to enforce his rule? How many of the old bastard’s supporters will have to be purged before the new guy’s rule is secure?
And lastly, the notion that at long last, America is going to shit. Really? America is at a low point? We’re worse off than during the Depression and WWII? Worse off than during the Civil War? Worse off than during the 70s?
America is better off now than at any time in the past. Whining about how people are too stupid to know what’s good for them is all very well, but guess what, you’ve got to live with them. And the people who claim that we just need to give power to a special class of anointed ones somehow always imagine that the anointed ones will be just like them.
I myself am for olivegarchy. Kalamatas, tapenade and muffulettas for all! 
Giving people who disagree with you equal political power is a scary thing for many people. When it becomes too scary they often resort to calling for its end.
Democracy was working pretty well until TV took over. Once all the actors and used car salesmen got in the game, it was bound to go downhill.
And if we stopped paying doctors, the doctors we had left would be really committed to patients.
Also, if we cut garbagemen’s salaries, we might have people doing the job who really cared about keeping our communities clean.
How do we choose competent professionals in general? How do we ‘select’ doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc? We don’t. We create a system where those who wish to be so can try to achieve the required training and credentials. And that only gets them in the door. They actually have to produce or they will be unemployed, and if they fuck up, they can be censured or barred from practice. Who hires the professional technocrats? That would be the primary purpose of administrative positions. I would say democratic elections can be useful as a referendum similar to how some judicial elections work. Judges are appointed initially, but then have to run for re-election.
I would also say the largest problem is not the administration of government, but too many competing interests passing legislation that creates conflicts of interest that the government cannot resolve - such as tax cuts and spending increases. How to address the legislative side? That is where the major dysfunction lies in my opinion. And I dont know if it can be resolved when society does have so many competing and opposing interests. Compromise does not seem possible.
I cant speak for the OP, but the only side I have is ideal governance. What that might be is the real question at hand.I have my own ideals that I would like to see a political system accomplish, but that is the political battle once the system has been established. And a system that would foster better and more competent government - regardless of what tasks may be assigned to it, I would hope would be a non-partisan issue, and mainly just civics. I focus on the American model because that is where I live, its actions tend to have the greatest consequences on the world (a fistfight in Taiwan makes page four if its a slow news day - a fistfight in Congress would be the headline for every major newspaper/blog across the globe), and any progress America has made over the last generation has been in spite of our government, not because of it, regardless of which party was in power. The last mostly effective legislation I can remember was the American Disabilities Act of 1990 and its companion act of 2008. Which speaks to how messed up the system is when it takes 18 years to address issues with a fairly bi-partisan piece of legislation.
Where do I sign up?
Yep.
Did you miss the ‘secondary’ earnings statement?