We must elect trustworthy politicians, we must make it harder for big money to interfere, and we must have faith in our government. It's hard for me to say right now, given our current president-elect, but it's true. There truly is no good alternative to democracy.
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1947)
Yes.
What kind of system is that?
Self-government[1] and/or a stateless society[2].
There are no examples of 350 million people being governed WITHOUT a government, and for good reasons.
There never is, until the first time. If nobody tried to do things that haven't been done before, there would be no progress.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~~ George Bernard Shaw
I'm sorry, but that sounds like the kind of thing an edy 18 year old would say.
Please don't do that, this is HN, not Reddit.
Please don't do that. There's no need to smear other sites. Ending the sentence at "Please don't do that." should suffice.
As much as we'd like to believe otherwise, virtually ALL progress is incremental. Technological AND societal.
I'm sorry, why should I feel obligated to give you an example? Like I already said once, there are no examples of something that hasn't been done... yet. So your repeated request for something that isn't required strikes me as kinda pointless.
I certainly think anarchy could work, if the underlying technological stuffs were the enforcers of equality.
*The book is called "Distress", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_(novel)
Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, a jury acquitted the Bundys after they'd occupied a federal building and used threat of lethal force to keep federal authorities from evicting them. If you'll pardon my snark, this is what happens when you turn jurisprudence over to a handful of rednecks.
Along very similar lines, modern-day politicians make decisions affecting (in some cases) millions of lives and trillions of Dollars. The issues they decide on are complex, and ideally we'd want lawmakers to really work at their "trade:" To deeply study the issues and consult competent experts. Our current crop of professional career politicians, some of whom are evolution and warming deniers heading up education and environmental/energy committees are spectacularly failing to live up to this expectation, and there's no good reason to believe a selection of people randomly chosen from the population would do better, on average.
I am of the opinion that politicians corrupted themselves by selling their ability to shape the laws that govern the country and decide who is punished and who is rewarded.