I’ve heard many complaints about the way the United States govern themselves . Of the top of my head, here are a few of the most reasonables I remember:
Uneducated voters, too easily swayed by soundbites and base propaganda, who don’t even know the names of their representatives.
The electoral college system that makes some votes carry more weight than others.
The money spent by powerful lobbies to influence lawmakers (you gave 50k to my electoral campaign? Sure, I’ll introduce your bill and vote for it.)
The incredibly important role money plays in getting people elected. TV time in particular. (as an aside, I think the hundred multi-candidates “debates” we’ve had have at least allowed poorer candidates to get some more exposure)
Inefficient pork barrel politics (Here are $450M, build a ship you didn’t want in my home district to help the economy there).
The inertia that allows candidates already in office to have such ridiculously high re-election rates.
The corruption and lies of people in power at every level (well, what’s the point of being powerful if you can’t help yourself and your good friends?) that are the main cause of disillusionment about politicians and politics by a wary population.
The thing is, Corruption, ignorant masses, coziness between the rich and the powerful, officials clinging to their posts seem to have been present in any complex human society that we know of. Perhaps pork barrel politics do more good than harm if they allow deals to be made and compromises to be struck, perhaps it is best for a senator to remain in office 24 years to gain expertise at the job, etc.
My question to you is:
Is this the best we can rule ourselves?
Which problems have solutions and which would require us to change human nature?
And, globally speaking, how do you think humanity (not just the U.S) is performing?
I mean, we are doing pretty well, right? Few people are eaten by wolves, starvation happens less and less frequently, there are more democracies than dictatorships in the world, there has been not World War for 60 years, Only a couple nuclear bombs dropped on people and barely a handful of attempted genocides.
I understand that the quest for perfection is necessary and inescapable, but realistically speaking, how much more can we expect?
On the scale of the US, the problems will exist as long as the country does. There is no solution, but congressional term limits and a severe restriction of government power would go a long way in mitigating the symptoms.
Basically, yes. I am fairly strongly antidemocracy, mostly for the OP problem #1. Still, the US gets top marks (from ignorant me, at least) for separation of powers and limits imposed on the government. It is a bit os a shame that the best defense for the US government I can come up with is that it has good damage control mechanisms, but hey, at least they are there.
We are getting close to the point where a direct democracy is technically possible for a country as large as the US. That doesn’t mean it will happen, but it would solve a good part of the issues the OP raises.
What system would you pick then? Would it be feasible here?
What makes it technically possible? I’m not sure why the size of the country would be an issue. I can fly from Miami to LA in 5 hours. I can transfer 13.5 GB (5.4 million pages worth of text or 18,000 books) in the same amount of time from LA to Miami. And I’m just a regular joe renter with $300 for a plane ticket and $60/month for broadband internet.
Surely, direct democracy has been technically possible for centuries?
By direct democracy, I mean one where every citizen votes on every issue, as opposed to our current representative system where you elect someone to represent you for a period of time.
I am not sure you could do this right now and ensure that everyone has the right to vote. This would probably mean at least quarterly votes on many complex issues. That the voters will be able to comprehend the issues and not be herded to vote one way or another, is an issue of human nature that is beyond our ability to resolve, I think.
But the issue of every voter having access to the info on the issue and having access, on a timely manner, to the tools to vote is a solvable one. Is it true that every American has access to a compuyer and has the skills needed to milk the info from it and cast her vote? Well, maybe with some effort and some considerations, one could argue that yes, it is possible.
I believe that installing such system right now would leave many on the margins, though. Probably the same ones who don’t vote as of now, but I don’t think a proposal to switch to such system without consideration of those people would fly. Especially not under the noses of legislators who stand to lose all under such system.
Heh, I think an even more indirect democracy is the answer. People vote on their local representatives and the local representatives vote amongst themselves about who is elected to higher office, with a tiered system, that is regulated by the possibility of a Referendum. Any lower body can call for a referendum on the next body up. So you have politics at the extreme local level, by neighborhood, like a City Council. The body that elected you can recall you at any time. So an individual can recall his local rep by petition. If they can get a verifiable majority they can recall their local rep. That local rep is then directly answerable to them at all times. So the local reps appoint a regional representative, this is like state level government. At the state level you have higher and lower house just as now, but they are still elected in this tier system. Do this so on up until the Emperor whose power is derived from his appointment by the Federal bodies made up of the member states. Draw up a strict line of seperation of powers between each tier. Define what the jurisdiction of each tier is. Leave moral laws the purview of local governments. Interstate commerce can be regulated by the state and federal bodies. Make an interstate judiciary that is elected by the local and state levels. A professional judiciary class where at the local levels they are required to serve in a district where they have the least political connection, so say 4 months in one place to be randomly transferred every trimester. Do away with civilian juries completely. This way every single person in the hierarchy will have had to start at the very bottom. You are not even eligible to campaign at the next level unless you’ve done every intervening level. Make it so ranks are equal, a 2nd level state judge is of equal rank to a 2nd level in the executive and legislative branch, in terms of translating them into higher positions so that a Judge has the possibility to become Governor, and it won’t be dominated by any particular branch. Measure votes equally, 1 vote per person. None of this rural vs cosmopolitan vote weighting crap.
Under this system, when Joe Shmo votes, he won’t be voting for someone he doesn’t know to inhabit an office he can’t comprehend.
And where will people get the time to properly educate themselves on the details of every single issue the federal, state, and local government has to handle ? Even professional politicians use a staff to do that, and very few people are going to be able to hire a staff just to handle their vote. And even politicians don’t normally concern themselves with all levels of government, just the one they are on. Expecting me to do the work of a mayor, board of supervisors, governer, and President all at once, without their resources and with a life outside of politics is a bit much.
Were you contradicting me or agreeing? Because I see no conflict with our statements here. Both have to deal with information flow. Even today, with information available cheaply and easily, I can’t know about every issue. And moreover, I just plain don’t care about every issue. Jimmy Burrito across town may have a veyr different idea of “important” than I do.
Going back to mswas’s post, I disagree that all government should be even more indirect, but I would rather have a more variable federal government. The Senate was once elected by state legislatures. This seems workable; they will still serve their state but will not need earmarks and donations, since they aren’t running a public campaign. In the olden days, even foreign visitors (Alexis de Toqueville) saw that this system tended to favor the most articulate, personable, and interested men, even if they did not have the wherewithal to run a public campaign. There was therefore a place for thinkers, doers, men of influence, and socialites (a downside, I admit) in politics; not everyone had to be a campaigner themselves. They tended to take the long view of the political system.
IMHO, the best way to guarrantee a good government is to make it diverse. No profession (including lawyers) or personality should dominate.
Adding to it. I wanted to point out that not only will people not vote on matters that don’t gain their attention, but even if they tried to vote on everything important they couldn’t do a good job.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with this statement, but don’t we have this problem even with our current setup (e.g., it’s not uncommon for Congresscritters to be absent during a vote)?
LilShieste
Maybe somebody has a solution to this, but in a direct democracy, who would decide what bills are to be voted on? If any voter could submit a bill, we might be faced with voting on 23 million bills a year, many of which contradict each other. As it is, congressmen don’t have the time to read most of the bills they pass. It seems like direct democracy would be complete chaos.
While at any given time a handful will be absent, legislators are almost always around during sesion. I don’t believe their absentee rate is all that high, given that they must maintain two residences and commute over long distances to keep in touch with their home states and districts.
A worse problem is that they have a bad habit of writing bad legislation. Or rather, they make a ridiculously complex code (say, tax law). Then any further bills must take into account the previous bill’s complexity. And any further bills take into account that bill’s complexity, etc. Add that to the fact that they often haven’t the slightest clue about the bills they submit, having had someone else write it, and we have a problem. But there’s room for improvement all around.
Other legislators don’t bother to read the 400 page laws they’re passing or voting against. Which suggests two things to me: they are almost certainly including a lot of useless crap in the bill (cough earmarks cough) and they should never have lawyers write it.**
I personally suggest that any and all bills must be submitted in the personal handwriting of the legislator along with a printed copy. This will encourage them to keep it to the point and discourage omnibus bills with ten thousand minor things in it (this also helps avoid the tactic of bundling unpopular measures with popular ones). A bullet-point version with the key ideas of the law should also be included. Congressional servants must verify the seperate editions match.
** I have a reason for this. Lawyers are probably the worst people to write laws. First off, they have a legalistic mindset. But in the “real world” outside the courtoom, law is often an imprecise blunt object, with numerous unforeseen consequences. Lawyers rarely consider them, because they’re not responsible for dealing with the problems - if they even have the relevant knowledge to comprehend the issue. Secondly, they seem to think people will follow the law however complex or unwieldy or impractical or impossible - or just plain undesirable. Third, they tend to write in a rather useless form of legalese. There are times and places for making convoluted sentences brimming with “I went to law school”-ness (though not many). A law being passed for the entire United States of America is NOT one them. Laws must be kept as simply and clearly written as possible so as to be comprehensible to the public. Aside from which, I generally dislike judicial activism, but I can hardly blame judges when legislators foist their troubles or laziness on others by writing vague bills.
Fourth, it’s conflict of interest. Lawyers writing tax codes is like giving doctors the ability to walk around and declare people sick - and then charge them on the spot for the medicine.
A-Ok. We so rarely agree that I was momentarily stunned.
I think lawyers, generally, would be better at writing laws than non-lawyers.
IAAL and have been and am a member of a number of volunteer groups. Every time I get a hold of these groups’ bylaws, which should be fairly simple, I cringe at how poor, sloppy, vague, conflicted, redundant, and inadequate they are. Then I remember that they were written, approved, and amended by people with no legal background whatsoever.
They often write and approve amendments without any consideration of how amending one section might affect the operation of another section. The bylaws started out poorly and, over time, became worse, ending up in a horribly tangled mess.
One of first things I often do as a volunteer is revise their entire set of bylaws for them. They all love the revisions because the result is a clear, concise, and comprehensive set of rules… thanks to a lawyer.
There are a lot of dictatorships and inherited thrones out there that we support.
The key is not the system of government, but how benign the rulers are.
Our rulers at the moment are less benign than in the past, and hopefully the future.
The term limits thing is a silly idea. We have term limits any time we want. Just don’t reelect the guy! We like having our incredibly old and toothless Senators! They make us feel important.
The electoral college is meant to be a safeguard against this.
Which was based on compromises between state-worth and population-worth. If you want to view the country as fifty states with a central link then you need to take into account the simple specialness of being a state, while as if you want to view it as a single nation of people and state lines are unimportant then no vote should carry any more weight.
Neither answer is particularly right nor wrong, so you’re not seeing a flaw, you’re just seeing something that disagrees with you personally.
As I’ve said in other threads, there is no other way currently in place for special interests to fight against the majority besides lobbying. Politicians are dependent on being voted in to take any value from the lobbyists–and so it balances out.
I agree that this is a problem. Given as there are minimums of a following size by which one can be an official presidential nominee, there’s little argument that taxes funding the campaign would be funding just anyone. (Though of course this would cut down on lobbyists influence which isn’t necessarily a good thing.)
Line item veto has often been touted but no one has ever been able to push it through.
I don’t see that as bad. If you think someone is doing a fine job, why risk it?
Which is meant to be challenged by the mass media and rival parties. I suspect that very little of underhanded deals don’t end up getting trotted out by somebody for the populace to see. But given as the people never see any real effect of this on themselves, it just isn’t that big of an issue if the guy seems to be doing a good job otherwise.
So the issue isn’t the corruption and lies so much as popular apathy.
Though I do think that this could be helped by moving everything law-guarding to the judicial branch. For instance, it’s unclear why the president would be in control of the attorney general.
Of course not. A benevolent dictator with a swarm of highly knowledgable advisors could always do better. The point of a government likes ours is specifically to be unable to do anything great–and by corollary nothing particular awful either. The system is set up to make everything a compromise.
I would say that Representative Democracy paired with Capitalism has been the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity. It’s brought us everything from the 40 hour work week and enfranchisement of people of all races and sexes over 18 to internet-orderable delivery pizza in under 30 minutes or your money back.
Things I’d like to see would be, for instance, more independence of specialist bodies within the government. For instance, it would be nice if the Surgeon General was a sort of president of medicine and medical law within the US and the power to reform the FDA, propose drug law, etc. Similar for the army, it would be nice if the army could say, “Heck with you, we’re not going to go attacking Zimbabwe!” And again for the head of the Federal reserve to be able to propose economic laws and oversee tariffs, minimum wage, etc. Given that the president would still have the power to appoint the heads of these bodies, and congress to approve funding, you’ve already got the checks and balances in, and they’d have better idea of what they were doing.
But something I definitely wouldn’t want to see, as others in this thread have suggested, is direct democracy. Representative government was specifically set up to protect against the tyranny of the masses. If you were to institute direct democracy, the country would veer right like all get out. The Democratic Party’s voter base is essentially comprised of intelligentsia and poor people. But if you didn’t shackle the values of the intelligentsia like same-sex marriage and secular government to the things that the poor want like social welfare and affirmative action, all of those voters would drop the values segment for just the financial. Same-sex marriage would be out on it’s head in two seconds flat, and frankly without the added numbers of the intelligentsia population all the financial stuff would lose out as well. Political partys having to maneuver to keep 50% of the population in their voter base is the only thing that allows minority views to even be considered since pretty much otherwise everything would boil down to “What’s best for me” when it came to the voting booths–which means principally financial matters.
And frankly, without an understanding in economics, medicine, international trade, war capabilities, etc. no one is able to make any reasoned decision on anything. Politicians hire advisors to stay up on this and explain it to them at voting time. But if you tried to keep the public “advised” it would end up that whichever side had the louder and more convincing mouth organ would always win. Most probably this would be the side that had greater funding. So again, you’d probably see a big veer to the right.
