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How can we fix government? (U.S.)
parkint:
Politics (noun) - Poly from Latin, meaning "many" and tics which are small blood-sucking insects.
Tuxman:
Politics (noun) - Poly from Latin, meaning "many"-parkint (June 29, 2010, 08:26 PM)
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Nope, it's Greek.
CWuestefeld:
Fixing the way representation works, or anything else really about the democratic process, will not fix it (although I am partial to doing away with gerrymandering). Improving democracy is a red herring. As long as people can vote themselves a ride on the backs of the minority, a government by the majority is destined to failure.
Although we're taught that America was a brave and innovative experiment in self-government, it ain't true. The Pilgrims ran away from the Netherlands -- which was already a representative democracy. Ages before 1776, even pirate ships were run according to democratic principles. Heck, the ancient Greeks had a pure democracy. Nothing new or interesting on that front.
The *only* reason the USA is still a going concern (and arguably the stongest and most stable in the world) is that its Constitution is constructed based on a philosophy of a limited government built of strictly enumerated powers.
We (the Americans) dig ourselves deeper into trouble every time we cede to the government greater authority. They always tell us that a given power is necessary to fix a given problem, and they may even be sincere. However, in the end, these powers always wind up being subverted. Indeed, there's a whole branch of economics (Public Choice Theory) that deals with this. There's a phenomena called "regulatory capture", manifested in things like rent seeking, that describes how the regulated eventually become the regulators -- not through corruption, but through perfectly natural and rational progression.
If you think that things in America are broken, the way to fix it is not to give the government more power to deal with the issues -- that's just digging a deeper hole. The solution is to strip the government of its power, so all those powers that have been co-opted by interest groups are returned back to the people.
steeladept:
If you think that things in America are broken, the way to fix it is not to give the government more power to deal with the issues -- that's just digging a deeper hole. The solution is to strip the government of its power, so all those powers that have been co-opted by interest groups are returned back to the people.
-CWuestefeld (June 30, 2010, 01:10 PM)
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I can agree with this. My thing is what I think is broken is what someone else thinks is a solved issue. How do we reconcile this? You already implied that choosing via majority is not the answer, so what is? I have no answer here, just a question to provoke thought.
rgdot:
Broadly speaking...I have two words: Third party
More than two words: Being part of the "two" party establishment means you are done. No matter what catchy slogans you have. Junior staffer, senior general, it's all the same in my opinion.
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