If you want representation you need to be able to meet and talk to your rep - more importantly they need to be able to acquire your vote without the need for advertising. Remove the need for advertising and you remove the need for money and the corruption that flows.
Wikipedia also seems to provide a good summary of the issue. [2]
[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...
Other problems are fixable with more attention/funding to law enforcement, and yes using all the AI toys: crime prediction, drones, etc.
More law enforcement is rarely the solution to any long-term problem: that's how you end up with the East German situation where 1/4 of the population was Stasi informers.
I'd say the US is a better example of a police state than the GDR.
Well, unless they went over the wall while trying to leave.
The GDR has been synonymous with "police state" for my entire life, although it's not the place that coined the phrase. The US has colonial policing and people who believe that slavery should not have been abolished.
Apparently there were 139 wall-victims in 29 years, so less than 5 per year, or about 0.03 deaths per 100k people per year. Apparently, twice as many people died of natural causes while crossing the border.
The US seems to have about 1000 shootings by police per year [2], which would be about 0.3 deaths per 100k people per year.
So the US has 10x more police-shootings than the GDR had wall-deaths per person.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todesopfer_an_der_Berliner_Mau... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
Almost certainly. The US was doing fine for most of the 20th century.
Globalism is what has brought wages down. Globalism combines the economies of the richest countries with the economies of the poorest in an attempt to "help" poor countries. As rich countries and poor countries combine economies, they move toward economic-equilibrium, which means the people from the poor country get brought out of poverty at the expense of the people in the rich countries. This is fine for the "1%" on the coasts of the united states, but if you're part of rural America you're getting hit very hard by globalism.
> but if you're part of rural America you're getting hit very hard by globalism.
i.e. if you're part of rural America, you're being out-competed by superior market participants located in poorer countries.
It's not that unfair. It would be much more unfair to apply protectionist policies to subsidise the rural Americans at the expense of the truly-impoverished people in poorer countries.
Same thing Japan did after WWII. Works great if you can pull it off.
For example, the end of Kodak began when Fuji film infringed on their patents and the US government did nothing, still allowing Fuji to sell their film in the US.
You can look at that in two ways. The government broke up a near monopoly on print film that Kodak had, created competition and lowered prices for consumers. But ultimately it started an employer of 200K people on the path toward extinction. Yes it would have been eclipsed by digital anyway, but wouldn't it have been nice if those 200K people had their jobs a little longer?
I am personally torn on issues like this. I see the benefit of competition and globalization, but also the cost to local economies and industries.
It's that poor nations are not exploited by global capitalism.
Then you can look up TED talks by Hans Rosling, and the follow-up reports for UN millennium development goals.
The pleasant, unintended side effects of globalist capitalism and economic liberalism are in fact not that much a surprise. Just look at the track record. Is it bad if good outcomes follow as unintended consequences?
Arbor ex fructu cognoscitur.
Venezuela wasn't a poor nation to start with, but is becoming one in its urge to fight global capitalism.
You could also look at countries in Africa that don't have extensive resource extraction (compared to those that do).
But given that utilising or even tolerating slave labourers on the ground in democratic nations is such a shameful thing, it might be better to actually let DPRK be completely isolated from global economy and not allow any of these arrangements. Even if that results in more misery for the people in DPRK.
If you know of other instances of this that'd be a fascinating topic to read up on.
The stereotypical example of a global economic pattern is a t shirt factory providing goods for a western brand that operates in a third world country because the economic equilibrium is such that raw material acquisition, labor and transport to market costs in total are lower than if the factory was situated for example next to the brand owners head office. I don't see where a will to help someone steps in there.
What has been devastating for the mid-west is that the exporting of jobs was politically and financially supported. Companies would receive subsidies to "globalise".
Edit: I was a Remain voter - but I can completely why so many people were angry and wanted a protest vote. Just that I don't think the EU really caused many of the problems people were complaining about so that coming out of the EU is unlikely to actually resolve this issues.
(And this is ignoring the idea of the judiciary reading into the constitution new rights that weren't there to begin with.)
Then I actually researched it a bit, and it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP. [1] That's interesting, and something to be hopeful about.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Lis...
Yeah, to bring alternative ranked voting to the US, it needs to happen at the local level first, as done in Maine.
One can a imagine a situation where Democrats think the change will be safe for them and Republicans will be cast into chaos and in that same situation Republicans think they will be safe and Democrats will be cast into chaos.
Representatives do spend time in their own states. They also need a central place to meet. No country or system does this differently.
> The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in.
I think rolling back Citizens United, which allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts to candidates' [unaffiliated] campaigns, would be a big practical step in this direction.
In the previous system, if a legislator worked across the aisle on some big project, he might get a relatively small kick-back. A new bridge, funding for a pet project, whatever. At election time, he could point to that and say "hey, I worked across the aisle, and got this thing for you!"
Now, that pet project doesn't get funded. So, at election time, if the legislator goes across the aisle, he gets crucified by more extreme opponents. There is nothing to point to and say "I got you THIS!" The only incentive is to cater to the most extreme constituents to ensure a primary victory.
Reason being that previous periods of American legislative politics were characterized by back room deals unknown to the public. This afforded politicans an opportunity to strike bargains with the opposition without having a spotlight trained on them (and being crucified in the next primary for "working with the enemy").
The check was that every 2/4 years voters still had an opportunity to toss out the incumbent based on his or her track record of results. (Admittedly without knowing how the sausage was made)
While I agree that transparency is a good thing, I'm humble enough to admit that the US legislative / election process is complex and has a lot of feedback. So the article's thesis seems plausible.
Which do you want more: non-partisan cooperation or absolute-transparency?
Except you can have both as long as you ensure factual standards for news reporting.
I don't know how, but lets presume there is some way to fix gerrymandering so that a legislators constituency was a statistically fair representation of their region/state. Then the extreme views would be canceled out and the best way to win a primary would be to win a primary would be to appeal to the moderates.
No amount of fair or unfair reporting will sway the minds of left wing or wing right loyalist entrenched in their view that their team is correct. A mix of opinions is required to get a different result on a given issue in a Democracy.
I don't know of any fair way to do it and I see the potential for abuse, but it makes want a poll test of some kind. No voting without critical thinking and a basic understanding of the issues you are voting on. But that can't work without abuse in anything like our current system. Fixing districts and voting methods is probably the best we can do until we see what problems that raises.
With the American primary election system, legislators are driven to cater to their most extreme constituents. With transparency, they can't work across the aisle AND also win a primary. At least with pork barrel, they get a tangible thing to point to while campaigning to attempt to appease constituents.
Primary elections are by party, so are by definition more extreme than general elections. A candidate must win over an average Democrat OR and average Republican, not an average across all voters.
Further compounding the problem, many states/districts hold closed primaries and/or caucuses, which limits participation to those with a strong interest in elections (either enough interest to join a party and/or enough interest to give up half a day or more of time to join a caucus).
Groups can still endorse candidates in that world, it just doesn't impact the names that show up on the ballot.
Given that I don't think we've ever had those conditions... lesser transparency for more cooperation seems a decent bargain.
Studies have shown that moderate positions need evangelists just as much as extreme positions, as people tend to cluster around the positions with evangelists. Mandating factual standards ensures evangelists at least have justifiable reasons for their positions.
You can't mandate factual reporting and still call it a free press as those enforcing the "fact" standards now control the press. You seem to think that you can't lie with facts, but it's quite easy, watch fox news they do it all day long. Free press and free speech mean just that; free and that includes lying and the supreme court has affirmed this to be true. You're talking about essentially removing the right to a free press.
They're often quite non-factual actually. And you can't call it "press" unless it's factual, free or not. You can't just ignore one factor in favour of the other.
Furthermore, you seem to be assuming quite a bit about what I mean when by factual standards. Anyone can broadcast whatever opinions they like, so free speech remains intact, but to call yourself a news organization requires satisfying stricter criteria on fact checking, data sourcing and biased presentation.
Perhaps one thing that's ignored a lot: equal time/space should be given to retractions due to factual errors. That better aligns the incentives to get things right the first time.
The solution to bad speech isn't to ban it, it's just for others to put out better news. However, people don't seek out real news, they seek out confirmation of their existing beliefs so no amount of fair and accurate fact based reporting is going to change that, they'll still seek out whatever organization offers them confirmation of their biases whether it's called news or not. Fox is popular because it lies. The audience doesn't want real news; they want to believe what they believe and have it confirmed, nothing more.
Solving a problem doesn't always mean requiring something bullet-proof. Good enough can be enough. It won't stop some people from misleading with the truth, but a lot more people will be better informed than they are now, which is an important step.
> However, people don't seek out real news, they seek out confirmation of their existing beliefs so no amount of fair and accurate fact based reporting is going to change that, they'll still seek out whatever organization offers them confirmation of their biases whether it's called news or not.
Exactly, which is why factual standards are important to classify as proper journalism. They can still seek out their confirmation, but it will be more difficult to find it, and more difficult to convince others of their distorted realities.
Not anymore. I'm sure the last 20 years of technological advancement hasn't escaped your notice. I think eliminating colocation is an idea that deserves serious consideration.
I'm glad that our representatives meet to discuss things. If they didn't, I imagine there would be more miscommunication about what's best for America than there already is.
Having a president having to do PMQ's and maintaining the confidence of the house and senate might be a good thing.
The US has an interesting constitution:
- First past the post. Such systems tend to favour fewer parties. The UK (also FPTP) barely has more than two parties. In most of continental western europe, there's considerably more, due to proportional representation. On the continent you end up having a bunch of different opinions, and you don't have to squish every issue onto a liberal/conservative axis. For instance you get socially conservative big state parties. Or socially liberal big state parties. Or socially liberal small state. And there's other axes too.
- A separate executive. In the UK even though they have FPTP, they have a government formed by the leader of one of the parties, and they "whip" the MPs to vote according to the party line, subject to various forms of sanction depending on how important an issue is. In the US, you choose two legislatures and a separate president. If they're not in agreement, it de facto entrenches the existing status quo by making it hard to change the law.
The other issue is which system to change to. There doesn't seem to be a single ideal system. IMO, in terms of the voting itself, ability to resolve an election in one ballot, limiting the usefulness of strategic voting, and getting at least close to a Condorcet winner would be the most useful properties.
I recently started to try to put together something based on five value range voting but I'm not sure it is even possible to derive a system from that which has the above properties. I haven't found any existing methods that seem to fit the above properties well, although some are much closer than others. Another option, easier in a lot of ways but more expensive, would be two ballot elections.
There is also the structural part. IMO, a parallel system has more appeal than mixed member proprotional, but it has some significant disadvantages as well. Anytime a significant change is proposed there will be strategic maneuvering for a system that benefits particular interests.
As someone else mentioned, states need to change first. The west coast in general would be a great place for that and I think Oregon may be taking the lead in political disfunction at this point (well, on the west coast at least, even though California is very innovative in that area)...
exactly. The most disconcerting part about the state of American politics is the focus on a predecided ideology of the other party being wrong.
proving the other party wrong is apparently worth everyone suffering over.
When each party is increasingly controlled by less people, then we now have a country where 300million people are willing to shoot themselves in the foot in the name of their party, with the ruling groups of each party having the interests of neither in mind.
Now youve just created an ideology of sacrificial progress in the name of a party.
There is more loyalty in this country to ones party than there is to the country and the progress of the country. The emotions and irrationality of attachment, and continual degredation of the other party just to be in the right, approaches religion.
The only thing more demoralizing than this is the fact that this conversation is continually broadcast on two news stations each owned by billionaires, who curate the "news" themselves. The biggest progress I've seen in news lately is Bill Oreily being fired for 11 pending and accumulating harrassment lawsuits. Must be nice to get paid $75million to be fired. True journalism shines through again.
It's extremely....disconcerting.
But these things are not realistic with a first-past-the-post system, so there are two large, internally divided, dysfunctional parties that "represent" a lot of people whose voices are ultimately not heard and whose interests are not represented by anyone.
Disagreement is a human condition, not a democratic one. Democracy is just a way to let some ideas win some of the time.
There isn't a system in the world that's freed people from disagreement. Humans like disagreement. We want to be creative, original, and unique at times. That requires setting your own path.
E.g. I disagree with you on that point, but I'm not using my hypothetical army of sock puppets to downvote every single of your comments into oblivion from now to eternity. Sometimes, US politics feels more like the latter.
I have no control over an army. I just have me and my own opinion
Because the beneficiaries of the system get to make the rules, there is also a push to change regulations more and more to favor the two-party system.
There are other parties (e.g. greens) it just doesn't make any practical sense to vote for them.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
It doesn't have anything about parties in it at all, and leaves it up to the states to decide how to choose their electors. If California or any other state wanted a different system, it could decide to use ranked choice voting right now just like Maine chose last election.
For example, the House could decide on the laws, with the Senate only deciding whether this is an issue that belongs on the federal level at all. And maybe double checking whether the law is constitutional and in line with existing treaties.
If they do the same thing, it makes no sense to have them both.
Two senators per state is pretty kick-ass if you live in North Dakota.
It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle.
More seriously, our problem is a metastasised federal government. Very little should actually be a federal issue (read the enumerated powers of the United States in the Constitution!), and yet almost everything now is. As a result, every issue becomes winner-take-all: the entire country must comply with me, or the entire country must comply with you. There's no room to allow Massachusetts to go wrong and right in its ways, and to allow North Dakota to go wrong and right in its ways.
Saying everything is this way is too much. More like, a few issues such as gay rights and abortion pissed off enough church-going folk to the point they began to rally against federal government overreach.
There are plenty of other things that are managed by states. You don't hear about many differences between state and federal because they aren't contentious. States and the fed are happy with plenty of state laws.
My experience with most rural towns is that it's like entering a time machine to 1985. When those places set the agenda, we are going to be "behind" when it comes to the metrics economists use (regardless of how relevant or misleading those metrics may be).
When it comes to letting places go their own way (like sanctuary cities, medical marijuana, gay marriage, etc.), I totally agree with you!
And which laws would those be? I'm curious because the fact is a vote in North Dakota is worth several votes in New York so you're already getting far more power than you deserve in any fair system and the only issues that tend to go federal are issues of civil rights which affects the lifestyle of the oppressed, it isn't oppressing you or anyone else in North Dakota.
The US is not the first democracy or democracy-style entity. The US constitution was certainly something interesting and with new stuff for its day, but democracies had been around in various forms for a while. But yes, a large part of the problem in US politics is the inevitable two-parties, which engenders a 'with us or against us' mindset. I wouldn't lay the blame for 'most of the problems' on that, but it seems to be significant.
Second, actually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
As another comment mentioned, it's arguably greater if you include subsequent amendments.
The US Constitution has its share of flaws, but it ignores quite a bit to call it a first version.
Which rules?
Neoliberal Capitalism.
My point was actually this: In a better democracy the people who believed income inequality was a big problem would vote for the "Bernie Sanders Party" instead of being forced to vote for Clinton. Let's say that just 20% voted for the BSP while 31% voted for the Hillary Party.
They would be forced to govern together, and create the best solutions in order to retain or grow their parties. The constantly changing dynamic between all the different parties would in turn lead to better solutions for the voters instead of the current solution in the US - where people on the left are practically forced to vote democratic and the people on the right are forced to vote republican, no matter the job performance.
Since the US forces people into camps based on ideology instead of the delivered results, the results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced.
America has an aristocracy emerging in it's political/business class, but it still attempts to have every voice heard in elections, and as a result you'll always have people who feel hardly done by attempting to rebel against the status quo.
I'm also going go take the opportunity to share CGP Grey's videos on First Past the Post voting[2] and the electoral college[3], and the issues with those. He also has videos directly the electoral college, without his opinions, if you need some background[4].
[1]http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html
[2]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the...
[3]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-c...
[4]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works....
Are, it's impossible to have that at all points. The point is to strive for it, not achieve perfection.
If we don't strive, then with people like DeVos in charge of federal funding, public schools will be gutted and the problem worsens.
"That means the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 8 percent" - https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
It really makes me wonder what we need the Department of Education for...
According to DeVos, we need it to undermine public schooling by directing tax money to private schools.
And what goals and principles would that aristorcracy govern by? Who is deciding about the goals and who makes sure they are actually enacted?
What if said leaders decide that, in order to combat overpopulation, parts of the "surplus class" need to be removed?
The reason many people migrated to the US centuries ago was to get away from aristorcracy. So how do you avoid repeating the problems?
Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protections built into the republic.
The other answers remind me of my son as a toddler: FURIOUS as he explained: "It is NOT green. It is ROUND!!"
"It is not a democracy, it is a republic" is every bit as mistaken.
Read the rest at: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-a-dem...
Although of course the US is also a relatively fractured country by its nature, so perhaps can't rely on a vague, shared sense of what is good and decent, in the same way as a small European country, with more or less a common ethnic and cultural identity.
That's like saying it's a dog not an animal; our republic is also a democracy, they are not mutually exclusive terms so please stop saying this nonsense.
In a democracy, the public could vote to do something that would be considered wrong such as stripping voting rights from everyone who likes country music. And with majority rule, that would pass and become law of the land.
In a republic like ours, the constitution governs what can and cannot be enacted by the majority. Since such an act would take away guaranteed minority rights, the constitution prevents the majority from doing something like that.
No it's not, and it's really sad and tiring such a simple concept escapes so many people. Please take a course in government and learn the difference between these things you're conflating. Republics don't have to have constitutions and constitutional governments aren't necessarily republics. Republics can be democracies or not, ours is, not all are.
Our minority rights are protected because we're a constitutional government who has protections for those things; that has nothing to do with our being a republic.
The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. [1] [2]
Since the American system forces people into two camps/parties based on ideology instead of the delivered results, the results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law