zlacker

You'd probably want to start by passing a sweeping anti-corruption plan. https://www.vox.com/2019/9/16/20867216/elizabeth-warren-anti...

>>aaronb+(OP)
Larry Lessig also points at treating campaign donations like the illegal bribes they are and reforming the "money in politics" problem first.

>>thephy+l
* Warren believes the flow of money in politics has stalled progress on a number of other issues, including gun violence, climate change, and the rising cost of health care. Stamping money out of politics goes to the root of these issues, she says.*

And Lessig has been a supporter of Warren's for exactly this reason for years.

>>thephy+l
In Australia each vote received by a candidate is worth a $ amount of funding (paid by tax payers). We also have campaign donations. But I wonder how far the tax payer funded model could be taken.

Each vote represents a) the path to election but also b) funding for the next election campaign.

>>RileyJ+Y2
In Australia, are parties a "first-class" part of the system? In the US, the historical animosity toward "factions" by the Federalists left us with a system where individuals are funded and the parties are independent corporate entities with their own rules but only de facto power.

In the US, a proportional representation system would have to be enabled by constitutional amendment, I think.

>>aaronb+(OP)
This is equivalent of a system engineer only reading the reports of one dept, let's say the HR department, and then formulating the rearchitecture.

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.

>>aaronb+w2
I highly recommend watching this video [1] to understand why "progress has stalled".

Believe it or not, it's by design.

1. https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0

>>projek+l6
No, it wouldn't require a constitutional amendment.

https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep

>>splint+68
This was a good video! I'd never seen Scalia speak, and he's very compelling - I think he would have been a good teacher. Unfortunately, while the gridlock between senate and house is good at stopping progress benefitting the vulnerable, it has been less successful in stopping "progress" benefitting moneyed interests. This is perhaps because the jobs of both house and senate representatives depend so much on securing funding for their next campaign. Or maybe it's simply because most legislators personally benefit from such legislation, being moneyed themselves. Whatever the cause, the result resembles an oligarchy.