To a large extent, the broken parts of US politics stem from the lack of actual written rules. Many things that should be codified are actually "gentlemen's agreements", where people agree to act in good faith. Today's show on the Senate floor was the logical conclusion of an entire political party deciding to break every aspect of that unstated agreement,

US politics is broken because the majority is being under represented both in Congress and in presidential election.

We should work together on getting rid of the ancient and manipulated election system and revamp it with a modern proportional representative system.

AFAICT, this is the same in most of the world, a lot of the political and government process is based on people acting "properly" beyond the minimal requirements of the law.

There is often a difference between "legal" and "moral", so to say.

Oh right and Obamacare didn’t do the exact same thing? What goes around..

Please stop repeating that obvious canard. It's insulting to your fellow HNers to repeat known counterfactual claims.

Following your logic, China is better off because instead of having one party protesting but failing to reject a law promoted by the elections-winning other party, it's just better to have one single party control everything.

Sorry but I find this just mindblowing.

The parent comment is saying that the economic success of China should be encouraging America to step it's game up, not that it should become a single party system.

I'd argue that berating economic success as the main metric for measuring a country's success is precisely what is slowly but surely eroding the West's precious institutions.

Since when people just want to live comfortable lives and leave their collective fate to be decided by a minority whose interests do not necessarily align with the people's interests (otherwise, they would just allow fair elections).

Small example: of course, country-wide surveillance à la China would lead to "economic success", do you think it's criticized because it would lead to mass poverty ?

It would lead to a perfectly stable future for the population, with ever improving quality of life and security. The problem, as you may guess, lies elsewhere.

The person you replied to does not say that China's political system is better in any way, simply that if such a system (single party authoritarian government) can out develop the US then there must be some serious improvements to be had for the US's democratic system.

In other words, if China can give their people what they want without fair elections or due process or freedom from corruption then our democratic system which ostensibly includes those things must be seriously broken. That does not mean authoritarianism is better. At least that's how I read the comment.

I have to admit I slightly misread the parent comment, but still: as long it's not a democracy, how can you consider that China "can give their people what they want".

The "they" cannot be referring the people of China, or the majority because China is just not a democracy.

This is the main difference between a country which holds free elections every 4 years, and a single-party country.

Chinese middle class is booming. US is going through the opposite.

I’d be the first to say there are a bunch of serious problems posed by the one-party system in China, but getting important projects done quickly is not one of them.