The big rewrite is always appealing but almost always doomed to failure. There is 200+ years of painfully learned lessons in the US legal code. If we throw it all out and start over, we'll have to re-learn all of those lessons one tragedy at a time.
This reminds me of the discussion about terraforming Mars. It’s deemed to be too hard and expensive to reduce our greenhouse emissions on a perfectly fine planet like earth so people think it’s easier to terraform a barren planet.
Ranked choice voting and vote out everyone with a party affiliation on either side, the end goal being to take away the majority from both parties at both the state and federal level (and county etc also). After you get that you can start doing things like term limits, reining in K-street, etc.
That's the start to taking back both congress and eventually potus/scotus etc.
Unfortunately many people identify with their party as a tribe and fail to acknowledge the oligarchs own them both. As Chris Hedges says, it's the quiet bipartisanship you don't hear about that's the most dangerous.
Slowly, over several years or quickly with high body count and/or slim odds of lasting success depending on the nature of the proposed changes.
History is littered with attempts to move fast and break things but lasting change takes time because people's attitudes have to change. At the end of the day even unpopular dictators require some amount of consent of the governed in order to rule. You can try to play politics and then use the power gained to push whatever it faster with propaganda, indoctrination, legislation (which is somewhere between an appeal to authority and coercion when used in this manner) but if you push faster than the population actually wants they might push back.
It takes time but a mess like this can be corrected. You first isolate/segment,then you determine scope and source of the compromise/failure as well as external communication channels. The cleaning up part starts when you first disable the communication channels, get forensics imaging as needed,surgically remove threats on critical systems and slowly rebuild systems that are less than critical.
Think of america as a network instead of a system, the hackers have seized control of the domain controller and other critical systems but they haven't compromised all systems or prevented admins from kicking them out.
The problem is not actually fixing America but convincing anyone how deep and widespread the problem is. You can fix it but the bad guys will just get back in, it's not just a cleanup but a systemic change on how security(national security,public security,etc..)is done. In american politics we're talking about changes to the constitution, perhaps even a rewrite. You can convince people a new president that will magically fix things is needed but you can't convince them the very foundation of the country has been cracked due to changes that happened over time and will cause a structural collapse.
The government is a PAAS business. They have various customers, both direct B2C, like you and me, and B2B relationships with other companies that run business on their platform. Either way the customers pay quarterly or yearly for the services through a system called taxes.
Political activists and are a type of white /gray hat hacker who seeks to demonstrate exploitable flaws in the platform and may benefit through bug bounties from backers or through getting advantageous features implemented. Lobbyists are a kind of social engineer that also wishes to influence feature decisions.
Legislators are a type of software developer. Their job is complicated by the lack of adequate test and simulation environments, and the presence of competing interests who frequently oppose the suggested features or implementation decisions but whose approval is often needed for the PR to garnish approval.
And Lessig has been a supporter of Warren's for exactly this reason for years.
Each vote represents a) the path to election but also b) funding for the next election campaign.
It's not the fault of the "system". The "system" wrote a law that says what the DEA is allowed to do (not this). It's not the "system" deciding to ignore that law, it's people. Hell, it's literally people with names. There are senior administration officials named all over that article.
You fix people by electing better people.
There's a Churchill quote that's similar. Something like: The problem isn't winning the war, it's convincing others that it needs to be fought.
We no longer have the time for a slow approach where we make small changes and test and see. The system we have is not functioning, period, and end-users are protesting in the tens of thousands across all major cities in the country.
In the US, a proportional representation system would have to be enabled by constitutional amendment, I think.
Of course the current US constitution is V2.
Have to be careful with this as these protest are about things that are indeed working as designed.
People used to talk about the "Microsoft tax"... well this system already has Federal, State, and local taxes...
When founding fathers designed the system, they intentionally did not choose to design a democracy because their firm believe was that democracies don't work. This is why they opted for a democratic republic.
One of the reasons why American republic works so well because any small minority can throw a wrench, people can vote with their feet (by moving across states, this is why American federal govt was designed to be so weak, at first it was even weaker but then they had to give it more powers, and today we end up with world's most powerful govt on an absolute scale, but on a relative scale, it can't even shutdown states for a pandemic), and people can vote with their wallets.
Rich people vote with their money directly, but make no mistake, just like disenfranchisement would any minority group will have severe negative consequences, disenfranchisement of the rich and powerful by taking their pretty open medium of participation would also have severe consequences.
American system doesn't just have rich and powerful buying the outcomes, it's just that it's the most open system where anyone can see what they're doing, this makes people comparing it to the rest of the world think that this is a corrupt system, when it is opposite of that.
Believe it or not, it's by design.
Maybe, oh maybe, look at yourself in the mirror and at least use the system, before rebuilding it from absolute 0 ? It's not like Trump grabbed the power from the feeble hands of the poor masses. The masses chanted his name for christ's sake... on a platform to revoke everything the previous guy did...
Sorry but this time, the system worked perfectly.
We only got the right to vote for men in a republic after we patriotically enlisted in 1875 to fight Prussia, and women when they patriotically replaced men in factories during WWII. Notice a pattern ? Like it would be handled like a carrot to a population so exhausted the only thing they vote for is the people already at the top ?
People who bullshit that beheading privilege-born people leads to great success is a lunatic and will be beheaded like Robespierre eventually. Even the second revolution in 1848 lead to the election of ... Napoleon III as president, before he created the "second empire"... Another violent fiasco.
Not saying it should be that way, but tired of hearing the french revolution disaster quoted as a miracle of democracy by all pseudo-anarchists to justify their blind violence. It's not taught that way to children in France. We call part of it the Terror...
-Allow for voting for null. If null wins, position goes unfulfilled. Belgium did it for the longest time. Nothing broke in thr meantime.
-Make it costly to bribe. All voting positions are subject to a random swap. For example the winner of a senate seat in FL is forced to swap for state assemblyman. If declined, the runner up takes the spot. And this is true for all elections including president.
-Get people to fight about insignificant topics. In switzerland, people argue at the canton level about the size of the local roads. No oxygen left to argue national, topdown issues. This can be achieved by bringing direct democracy rules (similar to suisse) into USA.
I think all 3 could pass on a nationwide referendum with a powerful enough executive.
There are many potential improvements, from algorithmic redistricting to mail-in voting, but the big one IMO is Ranked Choice Voting (Maine has already achieved this successfully, and it's stood up against court challenges [0]). This allows us to break the R/D duopoly, and shift the incentives towards big-tent consensus-building rather than demonization and "lesser evilism", and giving independents and third parties a real path to victory.
[0] https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rankedchoicefaq....
For example, the police is very much controlled locally. Do you have real civilian oversight? There are a host of policies that are mostly enacted locally that are recommended by this org: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/
(And we could ask the same question about other presidents, of course.)
It is just like the Republic. Does Palpadine magically corrupt it in just years? No the Republic has been corrupted long before. It is a systemic corruption and such thing takes a long time to happen.
The U.S. is more a tale of peacefully handing power between two separate systems that both constantly evolve.
From time to time, these two systems lead to a state of cognitive dissonance which threatens their existence until a time in which the rubber band violently snaps back to an equilibrium.
It’s hard to judge because most nations as we know them were built on blood, however unjust. One is rarely handed a country, or in many cases, handed back a country.
Doesn’t sound too terrible, we’d have proportional representation at least.
Sticking with the software analogy, it’s like our system has these environment variables that only administrators get to set.
We don’t know how to make a simple change to those variables, so we’re coming up with all kinds of wonky workarounds.
I agree with you, it’s as simple as changing the environment variables. What’s complex is that it’s impossible.
That’s kind of the underlying frustration if we were to zoom out a bit. We need to make some simple changes in the config, and no one wants to give us admin rights or make the changes for us. It’s frustrating stuff, and has caused paralysis in our political system on every issue imaginable.
That's not to say there aren't serious problems or the system couldn't be improved, nor to say the system functions well for everyone at all times because it doesn't. It obviously favors some people over others. But taken as a whole, it functions and we have a pretty good life.
You know what life has been like for most people in most places and times? What the system was in those places? The strong nakedly rape and abuse the weak. Hunger. No recourse. Zero justice except might and whatever charity came along. Gulags. Genocide. No say whatsoever and constant want and fear.
It's manifest this system functions fairly well all things considered. It allows you to sit here in comfort and say that for instance. To say any differently is either very naive or very disingenuous.
There are problems. There is injustice. There is corruption. We need to work on those things. But anyone out to overturn the system should do a little deep thinking first.
I'll check out CES, thanks.
What's worse, it's not really like you're a consultant, because then you might be able to leave it behind. It's more like you all work for that company, and it's a revolving set of promotions and demotions, and you're forced to watch people abandon your work for some other goal that you think is at best less important, but have no real ability to influence.
We already know how states being able to run their own elections worked out in the South before the Voting Rights Act.....
https://www.inforum.com/news/government-and-politics/6492174...
Maybe this "electing better people" thing could be a challenge.
From what I am learning, if you are black and encounter the police, then you life is in their hands, and depending upon your luck, things have a real chance of going badly for you. Black people are telling of how they avoid at all cost dealing with law enforcement.
How is that "pretty good"?
It's easy when you are in a position of privilege, easy to assume that everybody has the opportunity you have, easy to think that everybody is treated as you are. What the events of the last week have show is that this is not the case. If you are black, then your world is very different.
https://anacyclosis.org/2020/05/25/how-do-we-save-democracy/
TL;DR;
Re-align the interest of the rich so they have a strong financial interest in the middle class doing better. By having a progressive tax pegged to the median income of Americans.
The main point is: while there's no mechanism for citizens to pass a federal law without the existing parties and representative, most states do have such a mechanism, which puts the power to reform our electoral processes directly in the hands of We The People (while still subject to court oversight under state and federal Constitutions).
Compare this to France, which went like this (not counting the smaller regimes):
* Absolute monarchy (ancien regime)
* Constitutional monarchy (until Louis XVII flees)
* First Republic
* First Empire (Napoleon seizes power)
* Constitutional monarchy
* Constitutional monarchy #2 (July Monarchy)
* Second Republic
* Second Empire (different Napoleon seizes power)
* Third Republic (only because the monarchists couldn't decide on which branch to restore, and agreed to a republic until one of the contenders died... who took an awfully long time to do so)
* Vichy France (after the Fall of France)
* Free French government-in-exile
* Fourth Republic
* Fifth Republic (the one we're on today)
Quite a stark contrast.
We've been moving slow and pulling up the ladders behind us for hundreds of years. Things only trickle down when there's profit. That needs to change. These protests are exposing that game.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
A larger than should be expected percentage of them are black. And this of course doesn't include harassment or other indignities inflicted on black people because of race. Also not those abuses by non police because of race.
It should be noted some number of these killings were entirely appropriate to protect life.
The point is, even though we have problems, and as this points out, we clearly do, the chance of being killed by the police for being black is very very small.
So rhetoric about "privilege" aside, ya, there is a lot of opportunity for people. Very few people go hungry in the US. There is general freedom of movement, freedom to vote, freedom to own property, some semblance of legal protection. Contrast that to say for example Boco Haram or Europe in 900AD or Baghdad during the Mongol invasions or so many other times and places, past and present in human history.
So I'm going to stick with my original thesis because it's true. We have problems. We also have ways to correct them. We also have a general understanding we should correct them. But claiming the "system doesn't work period" in hopes of <what?> is complete bollocks and in fact is usually something spoiled rich white kids say.
That said, if all you see are the problems, it's easy to think there's no downside. It's entirely possible for other aspects of our society to get worse as we focus on those items. It's also possible for those aspects to get worse as we fail to make any meaningful change on the items we focus on, and eventually fail.
Assuming only positives can come from change is very dangerous. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt things anyways, but we should do so with eyes wide open, and not delusional as to the possible outcomes.