Anything requiring a supermajority will be bloated and slow. Why do you want to make the government bloated and slow?
The point isn’t necessarily to fire all the workers, but to identify if a state agency is still necessary, and if it’s functioning properly. Or if it can be rolled into another one. It works ok- the big issue as I see it is that the commission makes recommendations when the agency’s time is up, but it’s up to the Legislature to actually enact the changes. They aren’t always too good about doing that on time.
True, but it was given a sunset for fiscal reasons as well procedural ones I would assume.
It (change) would then be ponderously slow I think I agree. I disagree that it follows it would be bloated.
As so often happens, xkcd has a timely tidbit of thought-provoking:
The hover over punchline is especially poignant: “Your point that the world contains multiple problems is a real slam-dunk argument against fixing any of them.”
Ultimately to fix problems (rather than just band-aid ameliorate them) you need to fix causes. But the farther back in the causal chain you make tweaks, the longer it takes for any result to flow into the problem of interest, and the more side effects you’ll generate along the way. See wicked problem.
Lots of folks are advocating for inherently temporary legislation. That’s a very bad idea. It leads to uncertainty. Nobody is going to invest in a new biz based on new Law X when new law X disappears in 10 years unless renewed.
As a practical example, consider the ACA. From the day it passed, the Rs have pledged to repeal it or amend it into unrecognizability. As a result, thousands or millions of late-career people who’d like to quit their corporate job, start a small biz or semi-retire, and switch to ACA-based health plans are afraid to pull the trigger because that rug might get pulled out at any time. Leaving those with pre-existing conditions uninsurable. So they trudge along in corporate world counting the days.
If counterfactually, there was no partisan hostility at all, but instead ACA had been passed with a built-in 10 year drop dead date, people would still be unwilling to run the risk of relying on its provisions.
Business hates legal uncertainty and so do citizens for the stuff that really matters. Consider inventing a new kind of IRA-like account with some tax advantages. But that will disappear in 10 years with no guarantee the benefits promised will continue for the money so invested. I predict damn few takers.
Of course every bit of legislation is potentially changeable in the future by new and different legislation. But deliberately installing time bombs in every product that comes off the assembly line is simply sabotaging your own product. Your only product.
IOW, it amounts to another clandestine plot by the forces of conservatism to prevent actual useful functional legislation from doing the things it promises on the label.
Imagine at a stroke we attached a 20-year sunset date to the entirety of Federal legislation in effect today. COngress would need to pass a dozen bills a day just to renew it all within the next 20 years. To say nothing of having time to consider anything new. It creates the equivalent of Alice in Wonderland having to run to fast just stay in the same place. And nothing more.
Depends on the agency. Some are deemed to be perfectly cromulent, and allowed to continue on their merry way. Others are deemed to be irrelevant, incompetent, giant fiscal black holes, or whatever and then sunset, either entirely, or their tasks/roles are rolled up into another extant state agency. Others are somewhere in the middle and they make recommendations for changes while still keeping the agency around.
This suggestion keeps coming up. I think it’s a really bad idea. Here’s what I posted about it in a similar thread last spring:
You have made a good point. I did mention that supermajorities could be used to for long time limits, but it is difficult to avoid your argument about relying on the government to act responsibility.
I agree with the criticism of expiring laws, I think that people in favor of the idea think only in terms of laws they don’t like having to get reapproved. It’s like a lot of ‘third party’ politics, it sounds good when you think of everyone doing basically what you want, but if you look into how it would work in practice it ends up being a mess. I mean, how do you set up a 30-year mortgage if the laws about mortgages specifically and contracts in general blow up every 10 years and have to be recreated from scratch? How do you handle long-term infrastructure projects (like major highways and airports) if you can’t make a law that will be valid from start to finish on one? Do you want your retirement accounts to suddenly be taxable after 10 years?
Also, one alternative is re-enacting all of the laws might not take a lot of time and effort. The legislature could instead create a blanket ‘reauthorize everything that’s running out’ bill every ten years and vote it into place each time, turning what’s supposed to be a major change to the system into a weird ritual. So you end up with things working just like now most of the time, but you’ve added a bomb waiting anytime there are enough people willing to hold the ‘reauthorization bill’ hostage for their own goals.
Exactly. Who would have thought, for instance, that the federal government would shut down because of games of financial / political chicken between the President and Congress. Unthinkable! Except it isn’t, anymore. Has happened several times. So why add something more to the list that can be held hostage to politics?
You seem to be assuming a parliamentary system that doesn’t have a bill of rights. If there is a bill of rights that is interpreted to protect abortion rights, then there wouldn’t be the flip-flop on the issue that you’re suggesting. Parliament would have to respect the ruling on the bill of rights, just like a congress.
Usually, with parliamentarianism the parliament is the absolute sovereign. Where else does the bill of rights come from? If the parliament should pass a law enslaving a minority of people, nothing but proper procedure (which may mean an act to amend the applicable constitution, if it exists) stands in its way.
For example, in the United Kingdom, I’m pretty sure you only need a bare majority in Parliament (both houses) to legally and literally enslave the population. You would have to repeal certain laws first, but that only needs a bare majority too. On the other hand, it hasn’t happened, and I think that is a great credit to the people of that country.
~Max
That’s not an accurate summary of parliamentary systems in general. Most parliamentary systems are defined through constitutional processes and parliaments are not supreme. The British parliament is very much an outlier.
For example, Canada and Australia both have entrenched federal constitutions, and the federal Parliament cannot unilaterally amend them. They can only be amended by the process set out in the Constitution itself. Canada also has a Charter of Rights which can only be amended through the amending formula, requiring federal and provincial consent.
India has an extremely detailed Constitution, again an entrenched federal system, with constitutional protection for individual rights. By judicial interpretation, the basic human rights are integral to the constitution itself, and cannot be altered even by constitutional amendment.
In the European parliamentary tradition, you have countries like Germany, where the Basic Law establishes a federal system with parliamentary regimes both at the federal level and at the Lander level. The Basic Law can only be amended through its own amending formula, and specifically provides that the individual rights it sets out cannot be amended, even by constitutional amendment.
Norway isn’t a federation, but it has an entrenched constitution, with a parliamentary system. The Storting is the amending power, but only on the terms set out by the Constitution. The Constitution, Chapter E, protects individual rights, and the amending provision states that any amendments have to be consistent with the Constitution, which I believe has been interpreted to mean that the individual rights cannot be repealed.
As for being surprised that the British Parliament hasn’t enslaved everyone in Britain - that’s a very odd take on a liberal democracy with one of the longest traditions of representative, limited government. The best protection for individual liberties are the people themselves, and the British people have been building a society based on the rule of law for centuries.
Doesn’t entrenchment presuppose consensus (or a show of force)? Trinopus’s objection was, here’s an example of where there is no consensus, where society changes its mind every few years on the question of, “is X a basic right?” Can a parliamentary system provide stability of law in such a situation?
With entrenchment, it absolutely can. But the question of getting from A to B remains unresolved… if society can only muster a bare majority in support of declaring X a basic right, how can it require its future self to form a supermajority to declare that X is not a basic right?
~Max
I’m not sure what you’re asking. There may be disagreements in the polity about what to do with a particular issue, but if it’s defined by the entrenched provisions of the constitution, those who disagree with it either have to accept it, or find some way to amend the constitutional provision in issue. A parliamentary system can deal with that situation. I’m not sure why you seem to find that difficult?
@Max_S: what’s a “basic right” in your mind?
If it’s equivalent to “those rights enshrined in our constitution that can only be amended by the following difficult process …”, then the flip-flopping of the populace and the party in power isn’t operational. While in power, neither side can muster the political horsepower to change the status quo. Whether that is to add a new basic right or to remove an existing one. They can talk about it as a logical possibility, but they can’t do it as a practical political possibility.
OTOH, if a “basic right” isn’t so basic, and is instead created merely by legislative (or judicial) fiat, then yes, that can flip-flop with the party in power as you say. But ISTM at that point you’re not looking at a truly “basic” right within the definition of your political system. It’s merely a desirable thing, or maybe called a “right” for salesmanship reasons. IOW, there cannot simultaneously be both a “right to life” and a “right to choose”. One or the other of those is not a right.
So in effect, your question turns on these points: Looking forward, how good of a constitution can your society write? Looking backwards, how good of a constitution did your society write?
The US constitution, as was discussed ad nauseum in the thread that spawned this one, has some very good ideas and some rather poor ones. And, after the original Bill of Rights amendment, has only barely been tinkered with, for good or for ill.
Ref the learned @Northern_Piper’s superb post just above yours, many Western democracies have more enlightened constitutions than the USA does. Their constitution writers settled the question of “basic rights” a couple hundred years after the USA did and in a more expansive manner. And their polities seem happy with that settled standard. Largely IMO as a result of having grown up with it.
One of the big challenges all Americans are wrestling with right now is that our system was not designed against the possibility of nihilist vandals at the helm who are supported by a substantial fraction of the political class and the populace.
Our system (checks and balances, impeachment, and all the rest) was designed to stop a small fraction of “bad apples” who were seen as bad apples by the rest of the political class and the populace.
As I said way upthread, trying to alter the rules of the game while the current rules are already being ignored with not only impunity, but to widespread applause, is a sterile academic exercise at best and a foolish direct route to enshrining tyranny at worst.
Witness countless examples in the history of the last ~1000 years, starting perhaps with Cromwell and leading up to current Duterte & Erdogan & perhaps Trump, I don’t believe a democratic system can be built that withstands simultaneous assault by the leadership and the followership.
I agree, I was writing about the process of forming the entrenched constitution to begin with.
~Max
Ah, I misunderstood. My apologies. Message boards aren’t always the best medium for getting details across.
Of those parliamentary systems I gave you in the earlier post, each one has a different story, but by and large, each of them were the result of an independent consensus. The one that has the largest question mark is Germany, since it resulted from an initiative of the three western occupying powers. Only one of the five, Australia, involved a ratification process by means of referenda.
1814: Norway had been in a personal union for some centuries with the King of Denmark, but during the latter stages of the Napoleonic wars, the French insisted that Denmark divest itself of Norway, which would come under Swedish control. The Norwegians didn’t have much choice about that, given the French military power, but they did have the ability to call a constitutional convention to draft their own constitution. It was signed by the delegates to the constituent assembly and accepted by the Norwegians, who then entered into a loose personal union with the King of Sweden, but keeping their own constitution.
1867: some of the British North American colonies came together in the Confederation process, forming Canada, originally with four provinces. Defence was one of the reasons: the Civil War was winding down, and there was a clear risk that the Union army might come north. There were also trade considerations: with Britain having gone to free trade, the BNA provinces had lost the benefit of the imperial trade protection. There was also a sense that the BNA people were clearly not American, and should enter into union. The British government encouraged the Confederation process, but the initiative and the federal structure came from the BNA colonies. The process was a series of three constitutional conferences, along with resolutions in favour from one of the provinces, an election in another, and a vague parliamentary resolution in favour of union in another. The constituent document was an act of the British Parliament.
1901: The continent of Australia had half a dozen British colonies. Like Canada, they had a growing sense of being more than just colonists and should enter into a union. The process followed was a series of conferences over several years, and finally the drafting of a constitution in the late 19th century. After it was approved by all six colonies in referenda, it was enacted as a statute of the British Parliament, same as Canada.
1949: The West German Basic Law was worked out by a parliamentary assembly of Germans in the three occupation zones of the UK, the US and France. The impetus for the assembly had come from the three occupying powers, as well as input from Germany’s western neighbours, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The six powers had directed that the leaders of the German Länder (provinces) should draw up a constitution which created a federal system with entrenched individual rights. The members of the parliamentary council, appointed by the governments of the Länder drew up the Basic Law for the new Federal Republic of West Germany. After it was approved by the governments of the three western occupying powers, it was approved by the governments of the Länder, and West Germany came into being. Forty years later, with reunification, the Basic Law became the organizing document for all of Germany.
1950: a lengthy drafting process produced the Constitution of India. The original plan had been that all of British India would be under one government, but tensions between the Hindu and Muslim sections resulted in two separate countries under a British statute, the Indian Independence Act. The constituent assembly of what became India acted as both the government of India, and the constitutional drafting body. In that capacity, the members of the Assembly produced the Constitution of India, which came into force by a vote of the Constituent Assembly.
So, five different paths to parliamentary government, with varying degrees of consensus and democratic measures to implement them. (And, apologies to any Norwegian, Australian, German or Indian Dopers if I’ve mangled your history!)
These are wonderful summaries, thank you!
As to our discussion, and where I had jumped in…
Assume that there is a country under a parliamentary system with an entrenched constitution. There is this one hot-button issue, the question of whether X is a basic right. Every couple years, the political majority changes - by a razer thin margin - and so does parliament’s answer to that question. The constitution is silent on this issue, despite having an entrenched bill of rights, because there has never been a strong majority one way or the other.
My question for you is this: will this country find itself constantly flip-flopping on a question of basic human rights, as Trinopus described in post #43?
~Max