Do we have more than our share of knuckleheads, or do we have a system that comparatively, empowers our knuckleheads more than those in e.g. Poland or Germany or Canada or Japan or …?
IMO it’s a bit of each.
Know-nothing-ism is always popular with some percentage of any population of humans. But it seems as if here and now they’ve become highly energized and highly empowered compared to e.g. 1975 or 1915. I assign no great significance to those two particular dates or the current events surrounding them; they’re both just concrete examples of “awhile ago”.
For American purposes, a parliament is too effective. We would have seen abortion banned, then re-permitted, then banned again, then re-permitted again, six to a dozen times since 1973, if our Congress was as “efficient” at lawmaking as a parliamentary model.
We have to understand that regimes are created with stability in mind. Stability isn’t necessarily democratic nor is it necessarily libertarian; it’s simply a matter creating a regime that is likely to endure the elements to which it is subjected. When governments are formed and constitutions are written, they are created with the assumption that there will be corruption and there will be people or factions that will seek to undermine and even destroy the government for their own self-serving purposes. We see these thoughts again and again playing out in the minds of the framers when we read the Federalist Papers or their private letters.
If people want to have the freedom to govern themselves, they have to create a political system that enables that, but the system itself is not enough to sustain it. People have to have the value system that allows for self-governance. There has to be a willingness to accept democratic processes. There has to be more than consideration of policy; there has to be a respect for creating an independent bureaucracy that can carry these policies dutifully into effect, as well as some oversight to make sure they’re truly operating in the public interest. We can and should make space in our discourse for spirited disagreement but there has to be tolerance of differences, yet at the same time, there has to be agreement on a set of basic facts and truth.
I don’t see how it’s too much different, other than a matter of degree, from the current fact that most government officials are shielded from the consequences of their decisions until they face re-election. In a world of term limits, sometimes they will face no consequences at all except perhaps to the fortunes of their political allies. I believe that the threat of civil unrest in general is a much more powerful motivator than the ballot box, especially when there are too many people casting votes such that there is a rational motivation to not do any research into the candidates since the likelihood of your vote mattering is almost infintesimal. It’s much easier to just vote by party line without evaluating the candidates. The hope in my system is that with a restricted pool of electors for each level, each elector takes on more of a responsibility of determining the right person for the job rather than voting straight by party line.
All that said, it’s designed more for a fantasyworld where there has never been any other form of government where the power is derived ultimately from the people. I don’t expect that it will ever actually get implemented everywhere. There are a lot of things that people can debate about in terms of what would happen in such a system, and I’m of the opinion that many of the things that people would think are bad about the system are exactly how I want government to work, as I’ve already indicated. You are free to disagree with me as to whether they are proper ways for the government to work. As mentioned before, I don’t expect that every interaction to be optimal, but the hope is that the system deals with many of the problems of voter lethargy and ignorance that exist today.
I’d like to see voting power adjusted to the age of the voter. An 18 year old should get 100 votes and lose one vote each year after that. A 19 year old gets 99 votes, a 40 year old gets 78 votes, an 80 year old gets 38 votes and so on. This gives those with the most stake in the future a greater say in the planning for that future.
I don’t feel this is true. People are free to keep pushing positions on abortion because they know it’s not a real issue. If politicians had to actually take a side and then act on their stated beliefs, the voters would essentially call their bluffs. If a majority of the voters really wanted abortion banned, it would be banned - and the politicians who tried to legalize it would lose elections and stay out of power. And the reverse is equally true; if the voters really wanted abortions to be legal, then politicians who banned it wouldn’t be able to win elections. As I wrote above, politicians would have the power to enact laws and they would face the consequences for the laws they enacted.
In your very interesting post I wanted to pick out this one graph and say that, with RCV, the goal is to get a majority, not a plurality. Winning by plurality is what RCV is designed to prevent (the Paul LePage theory).
I’m gonna have to think a little more about a pentacameral legislature because that’s a brand new idea to me. Thanks for bringing it into this thread.
I think you’re right, it’s a little bit of both. An entrenched and overly empowered system of no-nothingness all too often leads only to the prevention of positive change (the decades long resistance to scientific discovery and knowledge is having its day in America).
But of course I’m a crazy ass radical lib who would say that.
I actually have thought about this concept, just used different numbers in my head. It’s encouraging to know that I’m not the only crazy person on this board. If we ever decide to use a weighted voting system, something like this is what we should use.
If we were to use age-weighted voting then maybe better to have the max weight be around age 40. Before that age you’re too inexperienced / unwise to be given extra power and after that you’re too entrenched and short-termist.
Of course once you open that can of worms we’re all over the map. Imagine two otherwise identical 50 yos: 1 childless, one with 8 (grown) kids. Who’s got a larger stake in the future? Clearly the latter. More votes for them. Both with 8 kids, but one has 3 grandkids and the other has 15? More votes for who? if not, why not?
In general I have a lot of respect for your political analysis. But I question this part:
As long as we have parties then what gets enacted, even in a parliamentary system, is a grab-bag. e.g. I really love Party A’s stance on gun control but I hate Party A’s stance on abortion. So when they act (or don’t) on one of those issues is that enough to trigger me to defect to party B?
As long as a material fraction of the electorate are single-issue voters, and there are several fundamentally unrelated issues that each attract a significant single-issue bloc, the idea that some sort of marketplace of ideas (where have I heard that before?) will guide the sitting government to wise (or at least broadly acceptable) policies is just bunk. Unfortunately.
It’s a bit like saying a monopsony buyer and a monopoly provider will always arrive at a fair bargain due to the power of the marketplace. Not really.
Ultimately the problem is that two parties and mass elections every few years are far too blunt a tool to guide public policy in a manner responsive to the public will. How to move towards fixing that is a book for another day.
I don’t entirely agree with this. As a childless person, I still have a stake in the future, I have nieces and nephews. I also want to leave a legacy of my own behind. I want to leave a better world than I came into.
I think that the one with children is more inclined to make decisions that are better for their children, while I would make decisions that are better for everyone’s children.
That’s why I advocate a proxy vote as part of the representation.
A house that has direct democracy, but that you can give your vote to someone else to represent you.
They would say how they plan to vote on a particular piece of legislation, and if you disagree, you can retract your proxy from them, and either vote yourself, or give it to someone else.
This is not a structural suggestion, but does relate to supermajorities. While I think using supermajorities to make decisions is infeasible I do think that all legislation should have time limits. No tricky games with the time limits, a law is good until a specific date and then ceases to exist. This requires the legislative body(s) in whatever form to continuously review existing law and hopefully improve it and then pass a new version. There should not be a simple renewal process, no vote to simply repass a law, to keep a law in place it should have to be proposed and passed as if it were completely new. Among other things I hope this process would not leave a legislature with so much time to solicit bribes, and make them cooperate. The part about supermajorities comes into play with the time limit. I would suggest that it would take a supermajority to make the time limit on any law greater than 10 years (for example). Perhaps increasing on a scale up to 100 years based on the percentage of approving votes.
Although it was probably unintentional, you just built a straw man an then blew it down. One on the major reasons I proposed the system is because there is no evidence that “older-is-wiser” is valid in the realm of governance. Also, why should a person with children get a greater say? His children already have that.
And as a member of that demographic I approve of your idea.
A fine idea for an informed and engaged electorate. In essence every bill before the house is a citizen referendum, but citizens can appoint a personal / doctrinal “autopilot” to deal with the sausage-making and the sausage approval. Or to choose to “fly” themselves by withdrawing the proxy & entering a ballot.
As you say, each legislator would be obligated to publicly announce their intended binding vote before the actual vote tally was made. And then allow time for the citizens to reallocate their proxies if they so desired. So Rep A backing side A and Rep B backing side B would each be obligated to announce their vote before knowing exactly how much voting power they would have.
In the real world I suspect that would amount to allocating legislative power by number of TwitFace followers. A Kardashian would be Queen.
But somewhere there is a balance. You can’t have a situation in which 51% of the voters are voting to prohibit abortions and 51% of the voters are voting to legalize abortions; the numbers just don’t work. You can’t have a majority on both sides of the issue and have the laws going back and forth in a cycle.
That applies even if it’s a case where one side feels really strongly about the issue and the other side has an opposing opinion but is willing to compromise on this issue because they have other higher priorities.
The thing you avoid with a unitary government is the lack of accountability. Politicians can’t just say they support an issue and then ignore it after they get elected; they won’t have the options of saying their hands were tied by the other branches of the government. Politicians will have to actually produce on the positions they run on. You can’t tell pro-life voters that you strongly support their position and then turn around and tell pro-choice voters “Don’t worry about my strong pro-life position. It’s meaningless because I can’t actually do anything about it.”
