One often hears the complaint that Congressmen do not vote as their constituents wish. I think the problem is often the exact opposite: Congress tends to follow voter wishes no matter how stupid and ignorant those voter wishes are.
Yes.
The long recession that started then was less severe in the US than many other countries. While I’m not going to link that to any particular bailout, Congress and the two presidents involved were right to ramp up deficit spending to combat it, and to limit the scope of big corporate collapses. Fearful voters, in a direct democracy scenario, would have been scared away from counter-cyclical policies, and then would face no individual consequences for turning an American-scale recession into an Italian-scale depression.
Feinstein knew that voters would hold her party responsible not for defying their momentary whims, but for the outcome. So she, and GW Bush, and Barack Obama, properly pushed good counter-cyclical policies that were unpopular in the short run, and left deficit fighting for a more appropriate time (like recent years, when deficits have come way down).
How, under your plan, do we vote the deciders out of office when they muck things up? We don’t, and that’s why direct democracy would be a mistake.
I assume you’re referring to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989. I can find no indication that Ms. Feinstein said any such thing in front of the Senate. It would have been difficult for her to do so; she was not elected to the Senate until 1992.
Leaving aside your inaccuracies: Yes, that is exactly my idea of representative government. I elect someone to serve as my representative and I trust to their knowledge and judgement to do what they think best. Should I dislike what they do, I vote for someone else next time.
And how would you do that without violating the constitutional right of freedom of association, protected by the First Amendment?
Politicians and individuals have a constitutional right to form political parties to express their views and to work towards political goals. That sort of activity is at the core of constitutional protections for the political process in a free and democratic country.
I’d rather not have the US government run like American Idol, thanks just the same.
Regards,
Shodan
A little bit tangent to the OP, but my own view is that the next big change for democracy will getting rid of first-past-the-post electoral mechanisms. They will be replaced with some kind of proportional representation (there are many schemes for this). I really support this as studies (mainly from New Zealand) have shown that feelings of involvement and legitimacy are increased under proportional representation systems. And ultimately, to a large degree that is the point of having an election, to create a sense of legitimacy.
With respect to the OP, as a Canadian, the US system looks completely FUBAR to me. The two party system has crippled the US gov’t’s ability to govern and has allowed it to be held hostage by extreme thinking. But that’s just my perspective.
What really needs to change in politics, US and Canada, is to get the big money out of it. Politicians, like most people, will be self-serving, and right now that means doing what big money says. That’s not good or right. I would like to see mandatory, heavily enforced spending caps and campaign length limits. It might not solve the problem entirely but it would be a step in the right direction.
And concur with Frank and Philly Guy: I want my representatives to elect sound judgment, as their full-time job. Not to make a few clicks on the computer and then start playing Minecraft.
A bettter system is staring you in the face but outside te US - pretty well anywhere outside the US. Take a hint from the fact 140 odd countries have been created since the USA and none - none - copied the US model.
That would be okay - do your own thing, right - but the US system has proven to be seriously susceptible to amoral capitalism. many would say the so-called ‘elected’ politicians represent capitalism first and their voters a distant second.
So yes, tear up that out-dated piece of paper that’s held in some bizarre Bill and Ted’s Big Adventure awe and chop in any old Parliamentary system off the shelf.
Do you have any basis for this prediction, other than wishful thinking? Because when that type of change in the balloting system has been put to the voters in BC, Ontario and the UK, the voters have rejected it.
You do realise that’s what the election law is in Canada already, at the federal level?
Only individuals can donate to political parties, not groups like corporations or unions.
And there are strict limits on how much an individual can donate to a political party, and to individual candidates.
If you’re talking about direct democracy enabled by our technology, while technically feasible today and the security holes could probably be worked out, it’s infeasible in that the majority of the people do not, and cannot, understand what they would be voting on sufficiently to make informed decisions.
Many bills in government today consist of hundreds of pages of legal jargon which the vast majority of people find inscrutable, incomprehensible babble. Although some of this could be simplified if it was in the best interests of those writing the bills, it could not be simplified enough, while still also closing all loopholes and providing an actual foundation for the law rather than leaving much of the law up to be interpreted in court depending on what the judges feel a particular clause means. Language is an imperfect tool that cannot fully encapsulate all meaning, therefore it is impossible to actually say what you mean without the capability of being misunderstood - especially when considering the possibility that some people want to misunderstand, so that they get to do what they want.
In order for the average person to participate directly in this system, they would need to be educated on the legal language. Furthermore, they would have to both have, and be willing to expend sufficient time on this endeavor to read every bill that they vote on. People will not do that - there’s no way to educate them, there’s definitely no way to force them to read the bills. If they are required to vote, they’ll take a single glance at the name of the bill, decide whether that sounds good to them or not, and vote yes/no based on such basic non-information. This already happens to some degree even within our representative system! Many representatives do not fully read bills. Names like ‘the PATRIOT act’ are invented specifically to influence people because that’s about all they will ever actually know about the bill.
Our system of government could certainly use improvement. It could certainly stand to take advantage of modern technology more than it does now, to provide more convenience to everyone involved. But although technology allows direct democracy in theory, it would never work in practice. The only way for direct democracy to work would be if we were all mentally linked in such a way as to have full understanding and comprehension of every matter that is brought before us, and sufficient processing power and information available that we could be fully informed. Only a world in which the voters have complete and near-perfect information beamed directly into their minds would permit direct democracy to be anything other than a colossal failure.
That said, technology might allow representatives to represent smaller numbers of voters. The house of representatives, for instance, might be allowed to increase beyond 435 members, so that each representative could go back to representing tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands of people. I am not sure if this would be a good idea, but it is at least a practical idea that could be studied and considered, which would not be as ridiculous as trying to implement direct democracy.
Only that internationally (Europe and New Zealand) it is becoming increasingly popular and there is a growing grass roots community for it in several countries (including Canada). I don’t think it necessarily going to be here any moment now, but I think it will be the next big evolutionary step in democracy.
You’re correct, but it sure doesn’t feel like it sometimes. In that it feels like our politicians cater to big corporations none-the-less. And no that isn’t an Anti-Harper jab. Every elected party seems to favour the corporations regardless of party. Again, this just be my bias talking.
When the damn holding back said ocean of red ink finally bursts, no one no matter how far away from this country they are will be able to escape its awful effect.
Obviously you’re not considering that I never said or implied that past presidents weren’t guilty also; the point being that humans are a waste in some capacities as my computer form of government wouldn’t take so much as a bathroom break, much less hit the road to go out and have fun and take one break after another.
I do not understand OP’s plan. Is he speaking of direct democracy? Dismantle Congress, let people Internet-vote on every bill? Even if people were smart enough to evaluate detailed CIA reports from the Middle East and the detailed financial analyses made to cope with our next financial crisis, where do they get their information? Reuters does a fair job of presenting the top news bites, but analysis and commentary is needed for decision-making. Will OP pick the qualified commentators personally? Give equal time to the 500 “most qualified” commentators? How do we pick those 500? A show like “Dancing with the Stars”? If scientists are allowed to present comments, do we give equal time to the liars at FauxNews?
These questions and remarks are loaded with the toughest stuff to figure out. But as a general reply I still say that brilliant philosophers and political scholars and computer techs could sort through it all and come out with something super sweet that people would for the most part get onboard with and regard it as something being far superior to this water-logged ship we’re sinking on now. I would like to see a brilliant college kid run with this idea and get the ball rolling by doing a thesis on it, getting an A-plus for the effort, then taking copies of it and sending them out to helpers at voting outlets around the country and let folks at the grass roots level mull it over. Some people ask why? I ask why not?
Let’s try - it’s extremely hard, but we’re up to it - try to ignore the facts that you can’t spell either of Dianne Feinstein’s names and couldn’t be bothered to look them up and that she wasn’t in office during Bush One. Let’s try to ignore that that the savings and loan crisis that did take place in 1989, under Bush One, resulted in the closing of over 1000 small banks rather than the rescue of huge banks. Let’s try to use our actual knowledge of history and ability to use Google to determine that you are talking about the year 2008 and Bush Two and a different banking crisis and see what Sen. Feinstein said in realityand not in the dim recesses of misunderstood memory.
And here is the text of the actual email she sent in response to those constituents.
So. In the real world of 2008, Dianne Feinstein got onto the floor of the Senate to proclaim her **agreement **with her constituents and announce that she was **against ** the proposal as it then stood. In short, she did exactly the opposite of what you said she did to proceed along the path you apparently would cheer for. Except that she looked at the small details of the plan and determined whether those would be good in practice, the role that a representative is supposed to play and not the thumb up/thumbs down simplicity of liking the headline which you seem to favor.
A batting average of exactly .000 is impressive in any league.
And what was the outcome in recent history that amazing mountain of heaped wrongness that you rail against?
The bailout is now thought to have saved the economic system, prevented a Depression-level depression, brought down the annual deficit by over a trillion dollars, and returned large chucks of bailout money to the taxpayers. The issue which you refuse to face - the dodging and weaving is practically balletic - is what happens when the public demands a simple and utterly wrong solution to a complex problem they do not understand?
Here’s a quote that is actually real and correctly stated. H. L. Mencken, *A Little Book in C major *(1916): “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
Don’t pat yourself too hard on the back for stumbling over one.
Like the other person that I replied to a moment ago, your comments and questions are too tough for my simple mind to give you detailed answers to. But like I said in my opening post, there are SUPER BRILLIANT people in the fields of which could figure all these things out as long as they’re of good minds and hearts and can at least see that the current system is broken beyond repair and has us all on the road to perdition.
Emphasis added. You are the OP.
While the idea certainly is a tad on the chilly side, I don’t think it would be too tough to go through a process to find the right person. Start with a national TV search show
asking everyone in the country that’s interested in the job to go to local screening outlets and display their wisdom by answering LOTS of questions … and those that pass move on to regionals … and ultimately to a national show of say 100 contestants and then let the American public decide who their man or woman ultimately is. It could be great fun!!
To my way of thinking, the folks that would create the computer system I have in mind would have it set up so that with respect to national issues, like the debt, the ones that would be the most hotly debated, via forums, would rise to the top of the list and from there those folks that make the strongest arguments in saying how to go about fixing the problem would be heard out. From there a sensible time frame would be given for voters to do whatever more research they need and then it would be voted on and the will of the majority would be carried out, and by force if necessary.
Btw, do you honestly think the debt is something to sneeze at?
I belong to the school of thought that says let the chips must fall where they may, including putting people in prison … and that out of the ruins would come a better and more responsible banking system. I’m not saying pain can be avoided.
Under my system one couldn’t vote a fellow voter out … and the collective will of the millions of voters would run the show. When you stop and think about it, it’s rather beautiful.