The system has evolved to extreme complexity and no longer works as intended because people learned to game the system, which keeps the best people for the job out of the system; emasculates the essential checks and balances; and creates a vicious cycle that adds further complexity and races to the bottom.
The (likely) only way to fix things is to treat our history to date as a rough draft and to start over with simple systems that work, evolving only as necessary.
There's no simple system that will work on the scale of half a continent and 300M people, and a simple way to prove this is to look at large corporations. There's many of them, they compete with one another tooth and nail, (so there's real pressure to simplify and streamline) and they all suffer from complex internal systems. And they are all dwarfed by the US government.
I agree that there is no (one) simple system that would work. Many simple systems are required, but should be as few in number as possible to limit complexity.
And it may be (almost certainly is) that a certain level of (high) complexity is required for such a system to work. I believe that some complex system, evolved from simple systems that work, could itself work. That belief coexists with my belief that the current complex system, having evolved, no longer works; and that it can't be made to work without re-evolving something from simpler systems that work.
I agree with this line of thinking, but I also think it's impossible to have a complex system that is universally acknowledged to "work".
In Minsky's Society of Mind, he describes a mind made up of layers of agents. The agents have similar cognitive capacity.
Lower-level agents are close to the detail but can't fit overall picture into their context.
Higher-level ones that can see the overall picture but all the detail has been abstracted from their view.
In such a system, agents on the lower levels will ~always see decisions come down from on high that looks wrong to them given the details that they have access to, even if those decisions are the best the high-level agents can do.
He was describing a hypothetical design for a single artificial mind, but this situation seems strikingly similar to corporate bureaucracy and national politics to me.
It's true: I/we haven't decided what "works" means.
I've been meaning to read that book; I haven't yet, so I'm not in a position to evaluate its argument. But the argument as you describe it makes intuitive sense, and I would agree that the hypothetical mind would be at least analogous to national politics.
Suppose "works" means that the majority of citizens (lower-level agents?) may readily implement its collective will for society's governance and benefit within the bounds of constitutionality. (Take, for example, the will for universal, affordable, high -quality health care.)
I would contend that the federal government was intended (in part) to enable the implementation of such will, and that it no longer works as intended. (Reasons include filibuster and other intra-chamber parliamentary rules; gerrymandering; corporate interference à la Citizens United; etc.)
(Of course one could argue that the Constitution applies pressure against the tyranny of the majority in several ways, but let's leave that aside for now.)
The question of what "works" will probably never be settled since any decision, even a globally optimal one, will probably leave some of the agents worse off than they could have been under some other regime.
But I do expect this question to become less and less emotionally relevant as
prosperity continues to increase exponentially for the bulk of the agents in the system. The rising tide of technology-enabled economic growth lifts all ships, even imperfect systems or unlucky agents.
I think we're in a Gall's Law situation.
The system has evolved to extreme complexity and no longer works as intended because people learned to game the system, which keeps the best people for the job out of the system; emasculates the essential checks and balances; and creates a vicious cycle that adds further complexity and races to the bottom.
The (likely) only way to fix things is to treat our history to date as a rough draft and to start over with simple systems that work, evolving only as necessary.