What alternative ways can you think of to handle making legislation and passing laws that would negate the increasingly polarized political climate that is happening in more and more countries?
We all upvote or downvote a law
Lol, reddit making laws. I mean at least the names of the laws would be interesting. Lawy McLawFace
Define a set of rules, and someone will figure out how to cheat it.
I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.
Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.
Well polarization can be used to measure how much the nuances affect things. Like the border bill that Biden tried to put up. The nuances were ignored in favor of what was good for the party. Bills that would be passable 20 years ago as bipartisan thanks to those nuances can’t pass now because the parties have driven more people to ignore the nuances and just vote for one party or the other no matter the platform. And thus anyone who crosses the line fears they won’t get reelected. And yes, money drives it as well. But not only directly. The media makes money portraying politicians as extremists to. So they help drive it as well. I don’t think the money can really be controlled, so I think we need a different way to pass legislation that can somehow negate it’s effect. I just don’t know what that is.
This isn’t an ideal solution, but a practical one. A simple hack for the U.S. would be to make congressional votes secret. Yes, this means congress people would be less accountable, but think about where their accountabilites lie. These people are far more worried about their parties’ strongmen and sponsors than their gerrymandered constituents.
Impossible to implement in the present U.S. climate, but more idealistic is to divide the US into 50,000 person districts (greatly expanding an individuals access to their rep), then group those into evenly sized super districts. The reps choose from among themselves a super rep to attend congress, who they can recall at anytime. This should make gerrymandering more difficult, and dilute the effectiveness of corporate donors while increasing the influence of individual voters.
Oh, another thing about secret votes. It transfers blame from individuals to congess itself. If votes are public, and a popular bill fails, then the individuals and parties are blamed, if secret, then the whole of congress gets blamed and you could see incumbents lose reelection not because of how they individually voted but because of how the body as a whole did. That could force cooperation, but it could also introduce a new form of gamemanship.
Randomly drawing citizen. Sure politics require some training, but it can be done on the job
Also, countries with proportional votes tend to force politicians to talk with each other more than countries with single representative per district.
Limiting elected official mandates to one or two. If you couldn’t do something in 10 years no reason to think you’ll do it latter
I’ve toyed with the idea of staffing the House by sortition. Maybe not entirely random, pooling from State and local offices might be more practical, political efficacy is a skill and a little experience is valuable.
Have you worked with people recently? A decent amount can’t learn anything and don’t take personal accountability. I guess that does sound like Congress.
representative government is pretty good
let’s talk dumping the executive branch. those bums are worthless.
A bit is specific, but you can probably adapt them.
- Bring back pork spending, it’s over all cheaper to spend 100 million on some garbage than beating people into submission to pass something.
- Increase number of representatives significantly, makes some things less efficient, but also massively reduces the power of lobbying, and increases the power of localized activism.
- Limit length of allowed legislation per vote. Smaller more focused bills are ultimately better than sweeping legislation that attempts to address everything. More votes also makes working together easier with lower stakes and more opportunities to collaborate.
End FPTP. House of representatives actually representing the people instead of state or party. Senate still representing states but not parties.
Can you elaborate?
The US has an effectively two-party system. These parties make decisions based on the money they are given. In order to win votes, they find the most divisive issue to wedge a divide between their party and the other side. If they resolved these issues, they would have to create new ones so they are actually motivated to not compromise. There are many books and other writings about these problems.
As for the rest of the world, the US was dominant in the 20th century in power and influence. This meant that people who wanted power in other countries would look to the US way of doing politics for inspiration. I am not making all the connections for you, but I do want to mentioned how the parties in UK started hiring US campaign managers in the late 90s to help them gain power in their country. It clearly worked. Other countries have followed suit.
I totally agree. But also the media has the same interest in dividing the people. They get more viewers that way. But how does ending FPTP, which I assume is first past the post voting, going to solve that. I have heard some say it would help move caddies to the center some. But I am not convinced it would move them much in most states.
The media is often owned by the same people buying the partisan politicians. First past the poll consolidates power. It makes it easier to convince voters to vote for the lesser of two evils while party funding overloads media with their preferred candidates. Some states even get away with laws that only allow the two parties to be on their ballots. If you can vote based on candidate approval, you could choose your best candidate and your lesser of evils. When people see this make a difference after one or two cycles, parties will lose power in the polls.
Everyone forms communes that reflect their personal values. I would prefer one with direct democracy, and no representatives.
However big a commune you want, but I’d recommend keeping it at 2000 people or less. Anymore and people start to see each other as strangers, not community members. Plus direct democracy works better with smaller population numbers.
So once you get to 2000 people, how do you determine who to expel? Maybe it would be fairest to expel the people who have the babies, putting them over 2000.
Hm, I do agree that if you have too many people, things go down hill. But what if one commune decides to use all the water heading to another… or decides their personal values are that other commutes should serve them.
What this person is proposing is functionally similar to forms of anarchism and anarchist theory has some answers to these kinds of questions.
For example the communes could have a federation where representatives are sent to settle disputes. Likewise instead of a fixed 2000 people with walls between you could have people in several smaller overlapping communities which act as bridges across a network of communities. Similar to how a person can be a family member and a company employee and a resident of an apartment building etc.
Though I don’t completely buy in to everything it says, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works goes into how anarchist communities can and have worked
Well my good-faith arguments would be direct democracy (i.e. everyone votes on every change) or ranked choice, but that has its own problems. However, you didn’t say it has to be serious. So I suggest a system that locks a chimpanzee on LSD into a room with signs (options) and blinking lights. Chimp starts rolling and points to the blinky light he likes (or hates) either way, your government is operating far more efficiently than hairless apes doing something that is apparently too much work, and most are just as ill-informed as acid-chimp. I honestly think acid chimp accidentally gives you a better (albeit random) set of values than capitalism/democracy ever has.
You, I like you.
Greatly expand congress (like at least 10x), and have it work like jury duty.
Random cost less to buy than congress people.
But you’d have to bribe a lot more to sway legislation, and nobody serves more than like a year or two so you can’t “buy for life”. Also, congress people are already shockingly cheap.
They will have lots of funds from all the savings on ads.
Anyway, I am starting to think random people secestered or something. Maybe it is only a couple of months at a time. They vote on some legislation, then work on new legislation for the next group to vote on.
Soviet Democracy. Workers elect delegates from among themselves, who can then be subject to instant recall elections at any time. Remove the “career politician” aspects from government.
Dunno, we’ve never seen anything go wrong with the Soviet system of representation before have we?
Definitely became overly-beaurocratized after WWII, but was generally far more democratic than Capitalist states
Could work if you remove the democratic centralism part, which is an effect of one of the main reasons the USSR was undemocratic most of the time
Almost every democratic structure practices Democratic Centralism, it just means the group is bound to the democratic results.
Just like many things in the USSR, It was perhaps that way in principle, but nefariously twisted in practice, where it means that everyone must vote whatever the elite thinks, majority requirements be damned. Like the ancient parable of Yu the Great choosing a successor, a dictating elite are bound to self-perpetuate and stray away from the proletariat, even if that’s what they were once.
where it means that everyone must vote whatever the elite thinks
citation needed
Excerpts from a book from a reputed US academic institution, which I’m not sure whether you would favor over a book written by one of your comrades. Just give me the biggest example of when the Supreme Soviet voted against the Presidium starting with Stalin and before Gorbachev.
Is this the sort of thing you’re looking for?
Within a few weeks after the 13th Congress Pravda published Stalin’s report…. Stalin’s report also contained an attack on Zinoviev, though without naming him:
“It is often said that we have the dictatorship of the party. I recall that in one of our resolutions, even, it seems, a resolution of the 12th Congress, such an expression was allowed to pass, through an oversight of course. Apparently some comrades think that we have a dictatorship of the party and not of the working class. But that is nonsense, comrades.”
Of course Stalin knew perfectly well that Zinoviev in his political report to the 12th Congress had put forward the concept of the dictatorship of the party and had sought to substantiate it. It was not at all through an oversight that the phrase was included in the unanimously adopted resolution of the Congress.
Zinoviev and Kamenev, reacting quite sharply to Stalin’s thrust, insisted that a conference of the core leadership of the party be convened. The result was a gathering of 25 Central Committee members, including all members of the Politburo. Stalin’s arguments against the “dictatorship of the party” were rejected by a majority vote, and an article by Zinoviev reaffirming the concept was approved for publication in the Aug. 23, 1924 issue of Pravda as a statement by the editors. At this point Stalin demonstratively offered to resign, but the offer was refused.
-Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 144
This is from an explicitly anti-“Stalinism” book showing Stalin getting outvoted on a basic ideological issue by revisionists.
For the record, I do think that historical texts by “comrades,” as you sneer, can be interesting and insightful, but I mostly concern myself with texts by liberals (or otherwise anti-communist ideologies) because I know those are the only ones that won’t be rejected out of hand.
Thanks. The oblique narrative flow of this text is pretty confusing and I don’t think I understood it. The expression in question is “dictatorship of the party”, right? Was the vote inside the Presidium? From what I gather, the expression was in line with what the party elite wanted, meaning the soviet did not vote against the presidium?
as you sneer
My English level is only near-native, sorry. That’s not what I meant. You answered my question directly with a source that I’d trust.
Nah, it was democratic, moreso than Capitalist countries. You can read This Soviet World if you want a look at it.
Without a specific page or chapter number, I’m assuming you’re pointing to the only paragraph that mentions “centralism”. It just seems to repeat what I already replied to.
I’ll explain further, then: At first, the lower body elects the upper body. The upper body decides everything. Then:
- Why not just skip the waste of time of the lower body voting on stuff? I can’t find any time something like jury nullification of a really awful presidium policy happened.
- Since whoever disagrees with the upper body gets expelled, the lower body will perpetually elect whomever the upper body wants. While this may have enabled a dictatorship of the proletariat for a while, this behavior blocked out a ton of new ideas and became problematic after Stalin’s straight-up purging of opponents and entrenched an oppressive old guard, by whom Khrushchev got ousted trying to get rid of.
I’m referring to the book itself, you have a lot of confused ideas about the USSR itself. Blackshirts and Reds is another great “Myth Debunker.”
I’ll explain further, then: At first, the lower body elects the upper body. The upper body decides everything.
Wrong. The lower bodies also decide things among themselves particular to issues specific to them, and elect delegates for the larger area. Imagine a soviet of a single factory, then a soviet of a city composed of delegates from all of the factories, then a regional soviet, etc. Each rung governs their respective areas with matters exclusive to them. These were workers with instant recall elections if needed.
- Why not just skip the waste of time of the lower body voting on stuff? I can’t find any time something like jury nullification of a really awful presidium policy happened.
Because the lower bodies vote on matters pertaining to themselves that don’t affect others.
- Since whoever disagrees with the upper body gets expelled, the lower body will perpetually elect whomever the upper body wants. While this may have enabled a dictatorship of the proletariat for a while, this behavior blocked out a ton of new ideas and became problematic after Stalin’s straight-up purging of opponents and entrenched an oppressive old guard, by whom Khrushchev got ousted trying to get rid of.
That’s not really accurate. Diverse opinions were held and discussed, what was purged was liberalism and fascism, which were dangerous currents deliberately infiltrating the USSR, as well as wreckers like Trotsky who collaborated with fascists and liberals.
Secondly, Stalin fought against beaurocracy, it wasn’t until WWII where the population was decimated and the USSR needed to be rebuilt that a beaurocratic class of “career politicians” began to take hold.
Again, I suggest reading more on the subject, you seem to be confused on the basic structure itself, causing other confusions to spring forth.
I appreciate that you’re taking the time to politely respond.
Obviously, the lower bodies decide more minutiae and local stuff and can’t go against the upper bodies’ decisions, and that goes for pretty much every democracy, just like you said. I was talking about specifically the Supreme Soviet and its Presidium, which could also be abstracted into the presidiums of every soviet. I think that’s the source of our confusion here. I’m looking at principles in making wide-ranging decisions, which are the things that can cause division. Not sure why I said üpper body".
what was purged was liberalism and fascism
Ah yes, known liberals and fascists such as the other two people who ruled with Stalin and whoever believed in genetics. If diverse opinions were allowed, what was the entire focus on eradicating factionalism?
Could you cite some sources or elaborate on fighting against bureaucracy? Why was bureaucracy established and why did it remain after the war? How wasn’t Stalin before Lenin’s death a career politician?
I have to sign off now until tomorrow.
IMO anything with a direct vote of the people will end up as spending wars between special interests with the funds to advertise.
You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.
Yeah, it’s a hard nut to Crack. Maybe it is just impossible to get the money out of the process.
Seems like campaign finance reform is a more pertinent question then.
Nah, unless you suspend the 1st ammendment, you can’t really fix that enough. People will always be free to pay for an ad supporting thier opinion.
You’ll probably need to think beyond liberal dogma if you want to solve a problem with liberalism. “Paying for something is speech and therefore unimpeachable” is an insane thing to take as a fundamental element of how society is run when the end result is so obviously and demonstrably the rich using that ruling (which was always made for them) to buy elections.
People want to find some policy wonk solution to these fundamental problems (“Oh! Sortition fixes everything! Wait, maybe a parliamentary system. Ooh, ooh, how about . . .”) but they are just red herrings, silly schemes that distract you from critical thought about the assumptions that brought you here.
I hear what you are saying, but that isn’t campaign finance reform. Redefining what is protected speech seems like a prerequisite to campaign finance reform. And that does sound like a good idea. It certainly would help. But can it be leveraged to deal with the media which makes money polarizing the issues? If you don’t fix that too I am not sure the problem will really be solved.
I honestly wonder if sortition is actually the answer.
Not much would stop special interests from influencing the random. IT would probably cost less even.
Isn’t the strongest point of leverage that special interests currently have how expensive political campaigns are in terms of both money and time (and special interests’ ability to provide both)? Sortition would eliminate this.
I think spending on political campaigns is just one way to provide support to a politician. And I don’t think it is the strongest. A promise of a well paying job after thier term is up would sway a lot of randos. Or even cheaper, parties and “speaking” engagements that are really fancy vacations would probably do the trick even while they are in office.
What’s the opposite of congress?
Progress
Came here to make the same joke.
