Well, we’re already trying to change from a “rules” culture to a “principles” culture, so let’s throw that in there for kicks.
I guess I need to look in to that.
Fair observation. Though an oppressive regime will hold on longer than a functional democracy.
That’s true if we can’t get the rest of the world into cooperation to take on those problems.
I heard the sortition bell ring and my mouth started drooling.
A House of Sortition could be comprised only of registered voters who enter the pool voluntarily. Those selected could serve five year terms, with 20% of the House turning over each year.
Its function would be to investigate reforms for the benefit of the populace, hearing testimony from experts and even the elected representatives from the other House.
House of Sortition could not introduce legislation but could veto legislation from the other House. It would depend on its bully pulpit to influence the other House on new legislation. It could also serve the Senate function of confirming Presidential appointments.
The very rough and stumble summary is, it’s a different role for the judge in a trial.
In an adversarial system, a jury decides on facts, the judge is an impartial referee, and the prosecution and defense are the ones who question witnesses and present evidence.
In an inquisitorial system, the judge(s) is (are) the one(s) who makes determinations of facts, and they are often the ones questioning witnesses as well.
Possibly but this is a bit of a disingenuous argument, even if that’s not what you intend.
Market corrections happen periodically and it really seems we’re overdue a big one now, with MAGA trying to do everything wrong amidst a huge AI and crypto bubble.
Whether that happens slowly or quickly, the downstream effects on the working class and lower are going to be pretty much the same.
So better, in my view if it happens quickly and brings down maga ignorance with it.
As an aside, I’m right now out of work, and, as I’ve found it difficult to find a job, my savings have whittled to almost nothing. So I am one of the poor saps likely to be in a world of pain. I would still be happy to see this admin and ideology blow up completely.
But… Why?
I find myself agreeing with @Der_Trihs here. Other than a Populist disdain for expertise, what is the argument for sortition? How is picking someone at random meant to be better than picking the person you think would do the best job?
So when you say you are cheering for the United States to “collapse”, do you mean a financial meltdown like 2008, or even the Great Depression? Or do you mean that the country would collapse and be unable to function, the way that the Roman Empire or Alexander’s conquests collapsed into a bunch of successor states?
Because I thought the topic was about the latter possibility, but it seems like you’re arguing for the former.
I wouldn’t consider 2008, the Great Depression, or even the Civil War to be an example of the United States “collapsing”. It survived all of those events, and as the same country, not a successor state.
The OP asked:
I don’t think any of the above examples (the Depression or even Civil War) would count as a “collapse” for the purpose of the OP since the US was not “replaced” after those events, so they don’t qualify as a “collapse”.
But maybe I’m interpreting this thread/the OP very differently than everyone else?
Your interpretation is pretty much on the mark.
Well the OP has spoken.
But certainly I took it to be the maximum collapse that is actually plausible to happen within, say, the next 50 years.
I’ll change my response now then to seeing this thread as something of a straw man. I don’t think many people at all are envisioning a US that is not even in the category of wealthy nations.
Looking back to what people kept saying about all those things that couldn’t possibly happen before Trump came along, I just don’t see the OP as much of a strawman. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that, if I had posted a thread before the Trump mess got started, guessing that Trump would be elected, then reelected, would pass and try to pass exactly what he then passed and attempted to pass, and put in charge the very people he actually put in charge not only would I have been accused of creating a massive strawman out of whole cloth, but there was a very good chance the whole thread would have been moved to The BBQ Pit as obvious hate speech.
Anyone who thinks they have a good handle on what this country will be like in 50 years because there is supposedly a limit on how bad things can get doesn’t really have any sort of handle on things at all, in my opinion.
I can find a link later, but Hasan Piker said something precisely along those lines - that the sooner the US collapsed the better because other countries with more “revolutionary potential” will be able to take over as leaders of global influence.
Historically the alternative was a system in which the same sovereign government that accused you of a crime was also the same authority that would decide if you were guilty of that crime. Using the criminal justice system against political rivals and various nuisances the authorities wanted to be rid of goes back to Ur. It’s been such a problem that modern jurisprudence had to add the presumption of innocence, a ban on double jeopardy and forbidding punishing juries for not delivering a guilty verdict. That a jury of one’s peers is a protection going back as far as the Magna Carta speaks to the antiquity of how easily systems of “justice” can be abused. Juries may be imbecilic but they’re (usually) not actively out to get you; the same cannot be said of the government.
Why not both? I don’t think much of our current elected representatives’ governance skills. A people’s assembly to curb their worst impulses and pressure them instead to enact policies to benefit the people.
My first exposure to how different the justice system is in some parts of Europe was an Almoldovar movie called Tacones Lejones (High Heels) which portrayed a judge-like character who had an ongoing involvement with the main character’s progress, in a sort of mentoring role.
It would be great if the system in the US actually did that.
Yeah, the present situation would have been laughed off as absurd if somebody wrote a “future history” story where it happened*, much less seriously proposed it as a future likelihood. But it has happened.
And I’m pretty sure that the absolute refusal to believe that anything like this could happen has helped contribute to it actually happening. Too many people refused to even try to stop it back when it could be stopped, because they simply didn’t believe it could happen. So why not vote for Trump over Clinton or Harris “in protest”?
- One somewhat funny side effect of this whole mess; on the forums about fiction I frequent, in discussions about stories there’s much, much complaining these days about how “nobody would be that incompetent”. Suddenly, the strawmen don’t look so much like straw after all.
Well let me put it this way: if the OP is about those who think the US will collapse to the extent that, say, it’s not even a wealthy nation any more…then I have nothing to say in this thread, as that’s too extreme a scenario to me.
But the thread title is posed as “Questions for those that think…” i.e. a point being put to Dopers here. And I am one of the people on this forum that have been at the front of openly hoping for a collapse. If the question is out of scope for me, then who can answer it?
But that *is* compatible with the level of collapse I am talking about.
I am saying the absolute worst I can conceive of in this administration, is a deep depression, of course affecting the whole world but much more centered on the US than covid was. The end of the US as reserve currency of choice. And yes, the US basically losing it’s role as economic global leader, even as it still remains a juggernaut. That would be what I take Hasan to be saying, indeed Hasan might not be thinking something that extreme.
What are you taking “collapse” to mean?
Is it? Did the United States stop being a world power because of the Depression? Did the government collapse and get replaced by a different entity?
That would not be a collapse.
I thought I was pretty clear, but if it isn’t, think of some polities that “collapsed” and see what happened to them:
Alexander’s empire collapsed into a collection of sometimes allying and sometimes feuding successor states.
The Roman Empire collapsed in a much more complicated way and at different times in different places, but again, when we think of it as having collapsed in a given place, be that the West in 476 or the East in 1453, that’s the point at which the policy involved ceased to exist.
The Soviet Union collapsed into a bunch of independent countries that are in some cases enemies.
Nobody says that America “collapsed” in 1929 or 2008.
Maybe if the North had lost the Civil War, America would have collapsed.
Maybe it would be more sensible to talk about a “fall,” as in the fall of Rome. Rome didn’t end when it “fell”: Byzantium kept chugging along for another thousand years. But certainly the country looked a lot different at the end of the fifth century than at the end of the first; the country split, and the West did ultimately collapse.
I can see a similar situation arising, where the power of the central federal government doesn’t really apply in some areas, even though it notionally still does, just like we notionally have the Constitution as the law of the land even though we’re currently ignoring a bunch of stuff from Emoluments on down.
If major parts of the US split off and the federal government is in such a sorry state it can’t stop them, I’d consider that a collapse.
But that’s the thing: they wouldn’t necessarily split off. The government in Washington would still manage foreign trade and currency, etc., it’s just that federal law might not really be enforceable in Guam or Alaska the way it is in Alabama or Virginia. I’d assume this would be in more practical terms of budget and willpower rather than in physical ability, as I don’t see the military collapsing (or falling, for that matter).