Redesigning the United States Government from the ground up - What would a "sensible" government structure look like for America?

Great Debates
161

I see. I am familiar with energy units &etc. from some science fiction, and I’m not against incorporating that concept into a model economy. But I’m not in favor of top-down economic regulation such as government allocating individuals a stipend and promulgating prices of various goods by fiat. That’s the sort of totalitarian thing I do associate with Technocracy and (communist) command economies.

I was talking with my father a while back about the value of goods and how to tell if something is a good deal or not. Like if you see five pounds of ground beef for $25, is that a good deal? There are many ways to associate value with a price point. One is to recognize that $5/lb is the cheapest deal available right now, so it is under value and therefore a good deal. A less naive approach is to say, over the past six months or so the average price has been >$5/lb so this is a good deal. Or, as it turned out with my Dad, the average price of beef in ~1976 (when he started grocery shopping and thus his baseline) was about $1, which is about $5.50 today, so $5/lb is a good price. And I agree that is sometimes how I think.

But when I’m buying something I don’t have experience shopping for, I tend to think of value in terms of other things I already have value for. Is a subscription worth a large pizza, for example. Is this worth 1/X of my salary. Is this worth x hours at my wages. &etc.

And I’ve talked with others who take into consideration things like environmental impact or child labor or American manufacture, in their (futile) attempt to be a conscientious consumer.

When I think about redesigning the way the U.S. regulates the economy (and thereafter the design of the federal government to meet this role), I’m very much against trying to force consumers to change how they think about price and value. It’s one thing to say government ought to model and regulate the economy starting from a fixed value for the dollar, and another thing entirely to say government ought to dictate the values of individual goods and services. As I said I would start with a lassaiz fare economy as a base and add regulations where needed.

~Max

162

All shoes? No matter what materials they’re made of? No matter how carefully they’re designed? No matter whether the producer makes them all in one size and shape because it’s easier, or carefully crafts each pair to fit a specific individual’s feet, or somewhere inbetween? No matter how much energy it actually takes to make them? No matter whether that energy is renewable or not?

163

It refers to the cost of one unit of production, as in from a production line of the same product. So perhaps envision a regulatory process where shoe manufacturers submit an energy consumption statement, not unlike an environmental impact statement today. The government then issues a certificate of cost. In the system described, there are no bank accounts but rather the government facilitates transactions by debiting/crediting consumer accounts on its own books. Without a certificate of cost, the transaction won’t be posted, i.e. the product can’t be bought on “credit”.

~Max

164

One of the biggest issues of this election is Project 2025. And its purpose is to weed out government officials that don’t meets its standards.

What makes you think your Science Congress wouldn’t face the same situation? If you have a organization that has political power, people are going to seek to take over that organization and use it for their own purpose.

The president was supposed to be a politically neutral executive who rose above partisan politics. The judicial system was supposed to be a politically neutral body that would ignore partisan politics. But partisan political organizations saw these institutions had political power and took them over. The same thing would happen to your Science Congress.

165

It’s really hard to pick a politically neutral executive through a partisan election.

When selection and oversight is by a political body, politics will creep in.

166

Yes, that’s the central issue. Any political system will succumb to the problem of people putting their own self-interest ahead of the interests of the nation.

You can’t eliminate partisan politics because people will figure out that banding together into organizations makes you stronger than people working as individuals. Inevitably some group of people will form an organization. And once one group does it, everyone else has to either keep working as individuals and accept they will have less power or band together into their own organization so they can compete at an equal level.

The same effect happens with organizations that are intended to be politically neutral. Some partisan political organization will see that it can increase its power by taking over the organization. If other partisan political organizations then choose to not do this, they will simply become weaker than the partisan organization that did.

That’s the problem of politics; cheating the system works. The people who cheat the system will beat the people who play fair.

167

And yet, as I and other Commonwealth posters have said, our systems work with non-partisan actors, such as judges and electoral redistribution systems. It appears to be a fundamental difference in our political systems and culture, compared to the US political system and culture.

As @penultima_thule posted, in our systems we don’t have gerrymandering. Canada and the UK both use first-past-the-post, with electoral maps drawn by independent commissions. It’s not correct to say gerrymandering is implicit in F-P-T-P.

168

Here’s a link to the federal
map for my province. Note the straight lines and generally compact outlines of the ridings.

There will always be some bumps and exceptions to the straight lines, to ensure population is generally proportionate, but nothing like some of the maps of I’ve seen of districts in the US.

When the redistribution occurred last year, there were only a couple of news articles about it. Almost a non-event. And no court challenges.

https://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/map.asp?type=prov&map=SK&lang=e

169

So what are the mechanisms that keep the independent commissions independent?

I ask this because I think there are a lot of countries that can keep things like this independent using softer methods (i.e. technically there’s nothing stopping a partisan takeover, but an element of what keeps them independent is political precedent) that are less feasible in the US. No idea what Canada has in place for that, which is why I ask.

I do think a significant reason a bunch of reforms that rely on people acting in a nonpartisan manner are less feasible in the US is that we made the conventional way of policymaking as hard as possible and as a result normalized using underhanded tactics to get what you want. Parliamentary systems are not going to be as susceptible to this problem because policymaking the normal way is comparatively easier.

170

Quoted for truth. I’ve heard “gridlock” praised by Americans. To me, that seems completely contrary to the goal of good government. You don’t get gridlock in a parliamentary system, which requires the government to have a working majority, either through its own party, or by arrangements with other parties. If the government fails to do so, there are new elections to elect a new Parliament.

But to get back to your question: the independent redistribution commissions are chaired by superior court judges, with one person appointed by the government, and one by the official opposition, and the chair appointed by the Chief Justice of the province. That set-up gives the judge the deciding vote if the two others cannot agree. That’s all set out by statute.

Judges in our system are non-partisan. They are not elected, and cannot participate in any partisan politics. They can’t donate to any political parties, can’t attend anything that is related to party politics, and must cut all ties with any party that they may have had prior to their appointment.

That is backed up with a Code of Conduct, drafted by the judges themselves, which applies to all federally appointed judges. Anyone can lodge a complaint with the Canadian Judicial Council, which is composed of all the federally appointed Chief Justices and Associate Chief Justices. That complaint gets investigated by a non-partisan staff, then potentially a screening hearing, and then finally goes to a panel of two Chief Justices and one layperson, which have a range of disciplinary powers if the case is made out.

Just last month, a judge in Ontario got her wrist slapped for making a couple of donations to the Liberal party after her appointment, totalling $700. They let her off easy, in part because this was the first time that sort of complaint had ever been made, so there’s often a “Listen up, everyone!” aspect to a first case. But for $700 she’s been on the front page of the national papers, and not in a good way.

This discipline process applies equally to the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada. Just last year, a complaint was lodged against an SCC judge for an episode late in the evening in a bar in Arizona.

The SCC judge resigned.

Could things change? Well, in any government, things can change. But changes to this process would need significant statutory changes, in Parliament, and against strong opposition from the opposition parties. The idea that we have a fair and non-partisan system for redistribution is pretty deeply ingrained in our political culture, so I think it would be a hard slog for any government that tried to change the system.

That’s why I commented earlier that the difference between the Commonwealth countries and the US is more than just a matter of statutes; it seems to me that there are significant differences in the political cultures. Those are very difficult to change.

ETA: one other significant difference in our systems, which I mentioned somewhere upthread, is that in the US, there are so many elected positions. By the nature of elections, that means that partisanship creeps into each of those offices, to a greater or lesser degree.

We don’t do that in Canada. We vote for a federal MP, a provincial MLA, the mayor and city council, and the school board. That’s about it. We also don’t have many referendums; I’ve voted in two in my life, one federal and one provincial.

When you don’t have elections for many offices, it’s a lot easier to keep offices non-partisan.

171

So the US could get a districting/electoral commission as nonpartisan as our court system.

I don’t think our court system needs to be as partisan as it is and I also think that is a pretty clear case of the legislative process being too difficult. Making it actively easier to appoint judges than to pass a law was a huge mistake in our constitution (as well as our modern day legislative norms) - it’s just inviting court politicization.

I agree that there are big picture issues of political culture and getting political consensus on what things should be nonpartisan is hard especially in a country like the US where partisanship is already everywhere. Something has to be nonpartisan for democracy to work - at some point you have to count the votes in a nonpartisan manner, but the US has intertwined cultural and structural forces that work against this. But it’s at least easier to think of a structural solution than a cultural one.

172

I don’t know if this is a US issue or just mine - but my problem is that everything mentioned here doesn’t really mean the judge is non-partisan. It might mean the judge is non-partisan in the sense of not being an active member of a political party but even if I don’t donate to any party , don’t belong to any party, and am not active in any party that doesn’t mean I don’t support the positions of one party or another. And I’m too cynical to believe that the judges would never put their thumb on the scale in favor of the party they agree with. It might be very different in Canada, but in the US, I just don’t believe that would be a rare occurrence.

173

Why is organizing with like-minded people cheating?

To take the Earth Healers/Science Congress idea as an example, even if you assume everyone involved (voters and candidates) approaches the matter in good faith (that is, nobody’s trying to infiltrate the system to promote fossil fuels, suburban sprawl, etc.), you’re going to have currents or blocs of thought/policy. Nuclear is/isn’t renewable energy. Electric cars are/aren’t a solution. Etcetera. And like-minded people are going to work with like-minded people to get their policy enshrined and oppose the one they consider wrong-headed.

No policy is or ever has been solely the product of millions of atomized opinions totaled up.

174

I don’t think it is. I’m assuming you don’t either. Nor do most Americans who have grown up with a party system.

But the founding fathers were clear in their belief that political parties were wrong. Their general belief, as I understand it, was that if political parties existed, elected officials would succumb to the pressure to put the interests of their political party ahead of the national interest.

I can agree this is a real problem (we can see it happening right now) but I think the founders were blinding themselves to reality. If you could somehow wave a magic wand and make political parties or other organizations disappear and make every elected official act as an individual, it wouldn’t make those elected officials automatically act in the national interest. Many of them would just put their personal individual self-interest ahead of the national interest.

175

All I can say is when one of our SCC judges retired several years ago, he said that he had no idea how his colleagues voted in elections, or if they voted.

Non-partisanship as a professional standard for judges, police, prosecutors, has deep roots here.

176

I understand that - but that’s not really what I’m talking about. Or maybe it is. Let’s say I’m a judge. I don’t donate to any party , I’m not active in any party. I’m appointed , not elected. No one knows f I vote or for whom. But I stlll have opinions on political issues - and those opinions shouldn’t affect how I’ll do my job , but maybe they do. Maybe I draw the borders of the district in such a way as to give the people I agree with an advantage. I might not be able to get away with making districts salamander-shaped but maybe a slightly smaller or larger rectangle will do.

Maybe it could never happen in Canada , but in the US ,I’m sure it would. Not nearly every time, but it wouldn’t be rare. There’s some Federal judge in Texas who almost invariably rules for Republican policies and against Democratic ones. He’s the only judge in his division so certain groups tend to file in his division if it’s at all possible. He wouldn’t act any differently if he had been appointed by a non-partisan committee rather than a president and was not allowed to join or make donations to any political party. The only thing he might have done differently was hide it better until he was appointed.

177

Yes, I’ve heard of that judge. I don’t think that would happen in Canada, for a few reasons.

First, none of our courts are set up that way, which just invites judge-shopping. Our provincial superior trial courts don’t have districts like that. Generally the province is a single district, with all the judges having jurisdiction throughout the province. The Chief Justice assigns the caseload for each judge, so that neither the judge nor the litigants know who will have the case until it is formally assigned. Same for the Federal Court, which has jurisdiction across the country.

Second, there’s recusal for conflict of interest. There have been a few cases where litigants have raised the question of conflict of interest for particular SCC judges, relating to their work as counsel prior to appointment. In both cases the judge has recused themselves. Hanging in the wings, if they didn’t recuse, was a potential complaint to the Judicial Council. Same applies in the trial courts. For example, in our system, a Judge Merchan who had made a donation to the political party of the opposite stripe to a politician accused of a crime would not be told by an ethics board that there was no conflict, go ahead and run the trial. The judge would be off the case and facing discipline. Just the risk of those sorts of complaints has an in terrorem effect on judges to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Third, a judge who puts his thumb on the scale is breaking their oath of office to render justice impartially. A judge who surreptitiously helps the prosecution is acting against their oath. A judge who surreptitiously helps the accused is acting against their oath. And a judge who surreptitiously helps a particular political party is acting against their oath. Any of those actions could lead to serious discipline. I know of one case where a judge was favouring police testimony, because he said he trusted the cops. He’s no longer a judge.

Different systems.

178

This is where having a strong judicial review for the case and a strong ethical review system for the judge would come in play. People are less apt to do bad acts of they know they can’t get away with it and will face actual consequences.

That’s also something that seems weak in the US. Nobody really holds judges or lawyers accountable. It takes monumental assery for lawyers to face ethical review from the bar association.

179

At some level accountability alone isn’t enough. It needs to be a value that certain things are apolitical. Just trying to fix selfish actors through oversight means that someone needs to watch the watchmen, and then someone needs to watch those watchmen, and so on.

Edited to remove my (crappy) summary of Norther_Piper after reading his very latest post which is fairly different from what I was saying.

180

Yes. That’s what I mean when I refer to different political and professional cultures. The US political and professional culture seems to be much different on this point than in countries like Canada, the UK and Australia, where it is assumed that there are non-political decision-makers. I don’t know how you can change what seems to be a deeply ingrained political culture.