100 day plans are nothing new. [0] It's a way of saying that the new administration will hit the ground running.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_hundred_days

Cool - they do similar things in this country too. Strangely I've never heard it worded as a 'contract' though. 'Plan' and 'Contract' have entirely different connotations.

It is an homage to a 1994 "Contract with America" offered by the Republican Party's campaign for Congress. At that time they had been out of power for 40 years. They knew voters didn't like them, so instead of saying "Like us!", they said, "here, in writing, is what we'll do if you give us your vote". It was a good idea, and they won a major election which permanently changed the balance of power.

Trump similarly faced an electorate that didn't like him or his opponent. She said "Like me!" and he said "Here's what I'll do for you." It was a smart thing to do. A much lower hurdle to have to jump.

Our politicians like to use stupid language that projects confidence beyond what any reasonable person would possess. For example, presidential candidates are constantly referred to as "the next president of the United States," as if the outcome of the election were somehow predetermined.

> And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days?

He will claim that he did indeed achieve them despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you manage to corner him on the argument, he will blame you for the failure.

* edit. Not sure what the downvote is for. Trump has used both tactics outlined above. He was always against the Iraq war despite evidence to the contrary. When he was under the impression that he would lose the election he cast blame elsewhere (election rigging).

This is probably my biggest frustration with Trump. Based on his campaign, I don't anticipate him being receptive to any form of accountability.

In France Hollande have been moving goal posts every time these 'N days' plans failed. He's now thinking about a second mandate.

Out of curiosity, in this era of disruption (for better or worse) where are the plans to disrupt politicians ? So many flaws yet we keep believing in the same democratic design every election.

> So many flaws yet we keep believing in the same democratic design every election.

There are two ways of changing the fundamental issues in a constitution: 1) violent revolution, 2) changes getting done in democratic process.

1) obviously works, but rarely (you need a LOT of support in the population in order to stage a coup).

2) I am afraid to say doesn't really work in America (or for that matter any major nation) any more. You have too many people who need the system to be "stable" for personal gain (reelections, in some cases continuing a supply of corruption money like with the private prison scandal, ...). You simply cannot fix issues like gerrymandering because it's too entrenched.

What if some of the super rich elites leveraged their economic might to counteract the effect of gerrymandering -- perhaps an endowment that explicitly offered a geographically sensitive housing subsidy based on a normalized model for how precincts _should_ be shaped could have significant effects if backed by the capital of a Gates or a Zuckerberg foundation?

I believe that mathematically fair models for precinct shape have been described[1] -- such model could provide the basis for estimating the gerrymander induced vote-reflects-voter-will-error -- and the subsidy system could encourage population shift to try and approximate the results that would occur if the precincts had actually been drawn "fairly" ...

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8796

You mean like soros or the Koch brothers?

Yeah no.

Be involved and be informed, locally If not at a state or higher level.

- do note, that politicians (humans) have long since "hacked" the human cortex. They program you, and other humans by finding authority escalations, buffer overruns, Trojans and privileged executions all the time.

Right now, malware itself has become the OS.

To fix this, people need to be aware of how politics and cognition works.

I was thinking about this as well. I just learned about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact[0], which would at least cover situations (like this election) where electoral vote results that don't jive with the popular vote.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

True, very true, too many high tension relationships between agents to evolve deeply and softly. But this is why I asked about weird yet new ideas about politics. For the sake of thought experiments. Should we have complexity dampening sub structure to ensure a form of fluid stability. Limiting group sizes, enforcing a structural clarity that can be communicated to the public in clearer and faster ways so we don't rely in behind the curtain representatives.

Today's politics are black boxes, form people to deal with it, elect some of them, let them do what they want, suffer the consequences. I don't think it's an adequate form of democracy for this century, it was alright before, with different economic structures, pace and technological basis; but today .. maybe it's my CS cursus speaking, maybe a more peer to peer system is needed.

> maybe it's my CS cursus speaking, maybe a more peer to peer system is needed.

Direct democracy can go badly wrong. Very badly wrong, and I don't neccessarily mean Hitler-level wrong. Just look at Switzerland, they are still struggling to implement a referendum from 2014 against freedom of movement in a way that doesn't kick them out of the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...).

Given the election results, I wonder what 'd happen if there was a US-wide referendum with the simple question "Deport all undocumented persons"...

I'm torn but I kinda see where you're headed. Indirect democracy ensure a certain amount of resistance to the people's will in case they decide to sink the ship. Do I understand you correctly ?

ps: I misread your answer and went into a monologue, I'm rewriting this previous answer.

> Sorry, I should have been clearer. I didn't mean digital. I meant p2p in the abstract sense. Where the system interactions are simpler, less hierarchical and everybody is almost a peer. Right now people, the blood and roots of a nation are, pardon the pun, second class citizen that have to follow representatives out of trust without any direct power beside a vote. I say this democratic design isn't enough anymore. We need more educated people (better education is easily possible) that can organize more, understand and decide more, even if it means move their ass more, but at least they'll have real power, not just a ballot.

> Indirect democracy ensure a certain amount of resistance to the people's will in case they decide to sink the ship. Do I understand you correctly ?

Yep. But, as it can be seen with Trump (with the fact that Republicans control the legislative (Senate, Congress), the judicial (because they have at least one open Supreme Court post to fill, with potential for three more, and they're life-long!) and executive by way of "elected sheriffs, who came up with that nonsense anyway?!) and before with the Obama deadlock!, even a carefully crafted system of checks-and-balances cannot ensure that the ship "democracy" won't sink.

> We need more educated people (better education is easily possible) that can organize more, understand and decide more,

I fully agree with you, however from an outside POV the US education system looks totally broken (homeschooling?! 7-figure-levels of debt upon graduation?! segregated schools?! vastly different quality of education depending on if the public school district has money or not?!). Germany isn't that much better, and a load of other countries also have massive problems in education. When I look at what happened to people in the "poor-ish" hood I grew up, all I can say is that I was fucking lucky. A tiny bit less luck and I'd probably doing drugs now instead of working in IT.

> even if it means move their ass more, but at least they'll have real power, not just a ballot.

That's yet another can of worms. Back when I was young and went to school, we had MASSIVE school strikes to protest an "education reform" (aka clueless politicians listening to elitist "concerned parents"). Fascist marches/demonstrations were met with massive opposition of all kinds - from peaceful demonstrations to open riots in the streets. Most of the opposition were young(ish) people. Today, I'm happy when I'm out on the streets if there are 50 people on the road to oppose fascists. The youth has gone lethargic, and the "middle-aged" mostly spend their time and energy in internal debates instead of progressing society.

1) understood, I'm just realizing that there's a need for balance outside people's will too, not too much, but still. As you said, if possible it has to be crafted in order to avoid too much power into the already existing state, yet stability nonetheless.

2) the education paragraph was mostly daydreaming, I know how crazy it is, but people rarely talk about it as a premium need. So I mentioned it.

3) I have nothing to say here. Maybe the tides will have to be since the people aren't ready to divert them.

I've never heard about 7 figure level of debt. 6 figure,yes.

> Direct democracy can go badly wrong. Very badly wrong, and I don't neccessarily mean Hitler-level wrong.

The very idea of giving anti-vaxxers a more direct influence over healthcare policy is almost Hitler-level scary.

Switzerland it not and has never been an EU member

They are not an EU member in the strict sense, but they participate in a lot of EU treaties (e.g. Schengen) in order to have access to European markets and labor force - the problem is that these treaties are interlocked, i.e. you can't only pick the parts you want, it's all of the rules or nothing at all.

> And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days? Will he step down? Come up with yet another plan?

He will delete it from his website and claim it never existed.

He's gonna say "so sue me"