Obviously such a system would be way more complicated than I can describe in a single HN comment, but I do think we have the technology to build a much more public, accessible, and directly democratic method of writing laws.
As an aside, did you know no one even knows how many federal laws exist?[1].
[1] https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-questio...
I could even imagine a voting system that lets you name your favorite politician as your proxy. So politicians could collect the votes of their base into a block. Maybe even a mechanism of saying I want this expert to cast my vote on x topic, and this other thought leader on y topic. Independents might retain their vote on every issue if they care to.
I'd probably go with a system with tiers of votes as an issue gains more public attention. Say a minor change is proposed on a niche law and those who are passionate about fishing rights in the Colorado River get involved and vote. Say 5k people vote. Then there's a cooling off period before implementation but all of a sudden the issue ends up in the news and 5m people are now interested so there's another vote with another cooling off period. Only this time 10m people would need to express interest to hold another vote.
I don't know the perfect system but I'm confident we can come up with a more democratic process than what was possible 250 years ago. One in which the public more directly decides what issues get voted on.
Congress has limited capacity and can't focus on everything but the work can be distributed if it were more open. A system in which experts could make proposals directly instead of being forced to educate and convince a politician the issue is even worth spending political capital on. And a system in which citizens can see all the changes being made publicly. It seems every time a major bill is passed it tends to be this huge amalgamation of new laws that often aren't even related. And then news articles follow pointing out how x, y, and z things got slipped into the 800 page bill no one in Congress actually bothered to read.
And a single official repository of all laws that can be edited directly and kept up to date. The United States Code is actually a pretty good place to start, here I’m just suggesting modernizing it.
What will USA 2.0 look like? Is there a way to work on this without it being a bloody revolution? If we got 2/3rds of the population to green light a refactor of the constitution could it happen? Who would do it? Who are the right people?
Importantly, if we want to preserve the spirit of the USA's founding documents, they need to evolve more formally and officially than supreme court case law and bloated regulatory agencies tied to deeply industry integrated lobbyists. I really wish writing laws was more like the RFC process.
I don't think the solution is to "just run more stuff at home" as much as that tickles my technocratic jimmies.