How does she qualify? She died in bed, and her predecessor died in bed. Nobody was forcibly replaced.
I guess you could argue that. What I was asking for was an argument. Scumpup seemed to be saying that electing senators was a bad idea. I’d like to know if it made things demonstrably worse in some way.
Before you get to starry eyed about China, ask yourself this: Who is China most afraid of? The Chinese. Could you imagine America getting to the point where the government was so freaked out by us they’d ban Twitter just so we couldn’t talk about them?
I think a way to view America’s system is that the bureaucracy and the elected officials keep each other in check. We do, in fact, have a large bureaucratic machine of well-paid skilled policy professionals. I work in DC and half of everyone I know works for the government, but I don’t know any elected officials. However, I think the elected officials do serve a purpose in making sure that machine continues to serve the people, and not itself. It’s very, very easy for a machine to start feeding itself. Something has to keep that in check.
Since I am the one who mentioned China, I will state that I am very far from starry-eyed. But China and India are facing a issue never before addressed in human history - how to govern a population of over 1 billion people. China has never had a history of democracy, yet the ruling party knows that if it introduced modern Westminster or Washington-style partisan democracy it would probably destroy the country. China is far from homogeneous and its leaders know it. I think they will eventually (which could be another couple generations for China) introduce a form of democracy, but it will be home-grown, not based on Western traditions. That is why I like to watch it. And comparing our system, I think we will implode long before we ever reached a population equal to theirs. The Constitution was a decent system for a small agrarian population dispersed over a wide geographical area. It is breaking down as it has to adjust to modern urban life.
[QUOTE]
I think this just favorable timing on our part. We have already passed through our civil rights era, but yes, I could easily imagine the government that created the House Committee on Un-American Activities banning Twitter and other communication tools if they were available then. Or rather, this being the US, they would just secretly record copies of everything sent on them.
I don’t know. I have the opposite conclusion. The bureaucracy keeps the elected officials in check. I know my fair share of government and policy professionals myself. The biggest complaint I hear is that they receive just enough funding to stop the bleeding, but not enough to heal the patient. Congress views the defense budget as a jobs program for their constituents, while more fundamental matters like public safety and environmental cleanup simmer on the back burner. How many jobs could be created in cleaning up the Superfund sites? How many communities would finally remove a blight and become economically viable again? Instead we waste a year bitching about ultimately minor health care reform and people complaining about a tax ‘increase’ they bloody well knew about 8 years ago.
Just to reaffirm, I do prefer some form of democracy, but the current form we have in this country is woefully inadequate for governing a modern society. I am convinced that partisan politics is a cure worse than the disease so I am interested in countries and systems that avoid it. What problems crop up instead? Are they more manageable or less? We will always have some form of politics. It is human nature. But I hope we can establish a system that allows constructive dialogue, and not just partisan bickering and gridlock.
I see two problems with our current unqualified democracies.
Any adult no matter how unintelligent or ill informed has a vote that has the same worth as someone who is informed on the subject at hand.
There would be more effective governance if there was some sort of qualifying test open to all, with free education to pass that test, to obtain the vote.
The second failing of our systems that voting is often reduced to little more then a popularity test.
An ugly, uncharismatic person who is an economic genius and an expert in foreign political relations has realistically, little chance of being voted into office when up against a goodlooking, charismatic ignoramus.
Perhaps theres a case for candidates remaining faceless when up for election, then that way they could be judged by what they know rather then by how they look and sound.
I wonder how many potentially great leaders of government we have never had because they had squeaky voices or acne,or a nasal drip.
Generally, folks who post this sentiment estimate themselves to be emminently qualified to have a hand in steering the ship of state.
I have never had any desrire to be a politician, I just don’t believe that that the surgeon who is about to perform the operation should be outvoted on HOW to perform the operation by the patient, the patients relatives, the hospital porters, old uncle tom cobbley and all.
But you believe your vote is one of the ones that has worth?
What do you mean?
Oh, democracy works…until people realize that they can vote themselves the treasury. That’s when it starts failing.
Give us a real world example.
Two questions that should make it obvious:
- What’s the national debt?
- What’s the re-election rate for incumbents?
Yeah, yeah, I know, we don’t have a democracy… the fact remains that the United States Congress, and to a lesser extent our state legislatures, spend money like drunken sailors and they do so largely so that they can hold up their record about how they brought home the bacon come election time.
As long as people vote these guys in it’ll never change. And really, what incentive do they have not to vote these people in? They’re making their constituents good and fat, and isn’t that what politicians are supposed to do?
As I said, people vote themselves the treasury. And to cover this we borrow vast sums of money, and now everybody is concerned about the debt but nobody wants to fix it because that means that they might have to cut some of the fat, which only happens for someone else’s district/state, not theirs.
If (more like when, no country lasts forever) this country fails, it will be an economic failure.
I want an example of a democracy failing due to the populace voting themselves money from the treasury. Even one will do.
How are you measuring efficiency? Profit?
In that case, I’ll take Mom and Pop for a thousand Alex.
The American model was created to be biased against urban areas and gave geographical areas to much emphasis relative to population areas. This is true for most state legislatures as well as Congress. As long as the majority of the population was dispersed it worked well enough, but we are an urban nation now (and have been since the '30s). As it stands, the least populated states have inordinate power over the more populated states. 5% of the population in the 13 smallest states can effectively block any amendment from passing if they wish. Senators who represent less than a quarter of the country can block legislation that the other 75% may be overwhelmingly for. Somehow that does not seem very democratic to me.
Too many states have the same problem where cities decay because rural areas wont give the state the resources to to help the cities mitigate the damage, even though a majority live in the urban areas. We just had a bullshit proposition pass in Missouri that represents that sentiment. Cities are no longer allowed to pass new earning taxes and KC and St Louis have to have theirs re-approved every five years now. What is primarily a local issue - how to raise revenue to provide local services is now hamstrung because of rural and suburban voters (who of course will still expect city services when they commute to work or visit for the weekend.)
So while the American land mass could easily support China’s level of population (well easier than they do I would hope), our system will break down before we ever get there.
I think the problem is more that people vote not to put anything into the treasury.
Except a politician’s job isn’t to come up with worthwhile policy initiatives. It’s to convince other people to support those initiatives. The ugly boring uncharismatic guy can’t do that, so it doesn’t matter how smart he his, no one will listen to him.
If that ugly uncharismatic guy has such good ideas, he calls the politician, sits him down, and explains the problem to him. If ugly dude can’t even persuade that one guy, how the heck could he get his program enacted if he had been elected?
On the national debt, have you looked at a list of how democratic countries rate among highest debt-to-GDP ratio?
Democracies are all over the map. You’ve got Japan and Italy in the top 10, New Zealand and South Korea right in the middle, and Chile and Australia down toward the bottom. You’ve also got authoritarian countries like Zimbabwe at the top, Yemen and Saudi somewhere toward the middle, and Oman and Libya toward the bottom. There is no apparent correlation between democracy and debt.
Second, on re-election rate, that’s a function of our electoral system, not democracy, and not debt. We could implement term limits and maintain democracy and our economic system. We could change to a proportional representation scheme that exaggerates electoral swings and maintain everything else about our country.
Just because some old Scottish dude wrote something about America a long time ago doesn’t mean it is in any way accurate. One might as well trot out quotes saying that everything worth inventing has already been made – it’s just as catchy, and just as false.
This is how a LOT of Asian coutries are run. They are (at least to some exstent) technocracies.
The two differences in cultural attitudes I have noticed between Asia and the US is that Asia has much higher levels of respect for teachers and government bureaucrats/technocrats than we do in the United States. I think the status of teachers in Asia has soemthing to do with their academic achievement and I bet their attitudes towards government bureaucrats has some effect on the efficacy of their government.
Or the faculties of Harvard and Yale. Tip of the hat to Bill Buckley.
More likely it indicates that China and Saudia Arabia are picky about who they’ll accept.