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.
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" ...
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
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.
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"...
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.
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.
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.
The very idea of giving anti-vaxxers a more direct influence over healthcare policy is almost Hitler-level scary.
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.