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Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by nostrademons on Thursday May 22, 2014 @04:46AM (#7782779)
I've often wondered what sort of effect simply passing a law that all representatives must live full-time in their home districts would have. It would certainly make lobbying uneconomical - instead of one lobbyist being able to wine & dine 535 members of Congress, they would only be able to wine & dine one member, or perhaps 2-3 in a densely-packed municipality. It might lead to representatives considering their constituents as their "tribe" rather than the government as a whole. It would probably slow down the pace of regulation, and significantly raise the threshold for what level of support a bill needs to become law.
Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by dragonwriter on Thursday May 22, 2014 @01:58PM (#7785192)
> instead of one lobbyist being able to wine & dine 535 members of Congress, they would only be able to wine & dine one member, or perhaps 2-3 in a densely-packed municipality.

It wouldn't really affect the ability of rich lobbying organizations to reach all members of Congress, though it might somewhat increase how rich such orgnizations would have to be to even modestly effective, though, really, the effective lobbying organizations are already often the ones that lobby at all of the national, state, and local levels and are connected to grassroots (or at least astroturf) organizations that have broad geographic reach, so, really, it probably doesn't change that much at all.

Unless you eliminate the national capital district entirely and put the entire central administration on a constant cross-country tour (remember that Congress isn't the whole of the government), it probably also creates an imbalance in influence through access with those members physically located close to the capital having more influence. Face-to-face meetings still matter for influence (after all, that's what you are trying to leverage by removing a concentration of lobbying targets), but that also applies to face-to-face meetings between legislators and, e.g., executive branch officials, and legislators exert influence as well as being targets of it.

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by smsm42 on Thursday May 22, 2014 @05:27AM (#7782910)
You mean convince the lawmakers to put themselves under house arrest? Yes, that is going to work. But only until somebody invents some tool or device that would allow people to communicate over large distances.
Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by nostrademons on Thursday May 22, 2014 @01:46PM (#7785111)
You could phrase it as "Spend more time with your family and out of the hustle of the beltway! Avoid spending a fortune on private schools, private drivers, and a second apartment in DC." There are several lawmakers who come from modest means, actually grew up in their districts, and have family and community ties there that they need to leave behind for Washington.

It'd probably work best after a significant changeover in Congress, when there are a lot of freshman reps all dealing with navigating capitol hill. Such a change would be a big power shift from people who have established relationships to people who have fresh ideas.

And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow reps. The idea is to build stronger bonds of trust between reps and their constituents than between reps and lobbyist/other reps, so that they actually act like representatives instead of a separate caste.

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by dragonwriter on Thursday May 22, 2014 @01:59PM (#7785201)
> And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow reps.

If those were as effective means of full-spectrum communication as face-to-face meetings, then moving them out of the capital to their districts wouldn't effect lobbyists ability to influence them -- lobbyists can use technology to communicate with members, too.

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by nostrademons on Thursday May 22, 2014 @03:44PM (#7785989)
The point is that they convey information without building trust. Research has shown that face-to-face contact is essential for building trust, because there is a lot of subconscious emotional information conveyed in body language. E-mail and other electronic communication conveys the factual, logical information, but not the emotional information. So if you want representatives to collectively decide things based on what is rational and logical but not be subconsciously influenced by lobbyists or other politickers, cut the emotional channel out of their communications.

It's the same reason that Google makes promotion decisions by a committee located on another continent. You want people to judge based on facts and not impressions, so divorce the objective facts from the subjective impressions.

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by smsm42 on Tuesday May 27, 2014 @04:57PM (#7806817)
Some of the decisions can not be actually made based on facts, such as decisions about future performance of some person (there are no facts that can guarantee it) or future effect of certain policy (the facts may be lacking or subjective and depend on interpretation). So, unfortunately, in many aspects in the politics "decisions based on facts only" are just not possible.