On the political level, the meta problem causing most of other problems is money.
Take money out of politics.
No political advertising allowed, no "donations", no lobbying. 1 official website (or print brochure) as the only means for voters to get political information (or brainwash) from.
No, the meta problem is power. The more power politicians have, the higher the incentive to influence them. The solution is decentralization, which disperses power, thereby automagically reducing lobbyism.
I've often wondered what sort of effect simply passing a law that all representatives must live full-time in their home districts would have. It would certainly make lobbying uneconomical - instead of one lobbyist being able to wine & dine 535 members of Congress, they would only be able to wine & dine one member, or perhaps 2-3 in a densely-packed municipality. It might lead to representatives considering their constituents as their "tribe" rather than the government as a whole. It would probably slow down the pace of regulation, and significantly raise the threshold for what level of support a bill needs to become law.
> instead of one lobbyist being able to wine & dine 535 members of Congress, they would only be able to wine & dine one member, or perhaps 2-3 in a densely-packed municipality.
It wouldn't really affect the ability of rich lobbying organizations to reach all members of Congress, though it might somewhat increase how rich such orgnizations would have to be to even modestly effective, though, really, the effective lobbying organizations are already often the ones that lobby at all of the national, state, and local levels and are connected to grassroots (or at least astroturf) organizations that have broad geographic reach, so, really, it probably doesn't change that much at all.
Unless you eliminate the national capital district entirely and put the entire central administration on a constant cross-country tour (remember that Congress isn't the whole of the government), it probably also creates an imbalance in influence through access with those members physically located close to the capital having more influence. Face-to-face meetings still matter for influence (after all, that's what you are trying to leverage by removing a concentration of lobbying targets), but that also applies to face-to-face meetings between legislators and, e.g., executive branch officials, and legislators exert influence as well as being targets of it.
You mean convince the lawmakers to put themselves under house arrest? Yes, that is going to work. But only until somebody invents some tool or device that would allow people to communicate over large distances.
You could phrase it as "Spend more time with your family and out of the hustle of the beltway! Avoid spending a fortune on private schools, private drivers, and a second apartment in DC." There are several lawmakers who come from modest means, actually grew up in their districts, and have family and community ties there that they need to leave behind for Washington.
It'd probably work best after a significant changeover in Congress, when there are a lot of freshman reps all dealing with navigating capitol hill. Such a change would be a big power shift from people who have established relationships to people who have fresh ideas.
And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow reps. The idea is to build stronger bonds of trust between reps and their constituents than between reps and lobbyist/other reps, so that they actually act like representatives instead of a separate caste.
> And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow reps.
If those were as effective means of full-spectrum communication as face-to-face meetings, then moving them out of the capital to their districts wouldn't effect lobbyists ability to influence them -- lobbyists can use technology to communicate with members, too.
The point is that they convey information without building trust. Research has shown that face-to-face contact is essential for building trust, because there is a lot of subconscious emotional information conveyed in body language. E-mail and other electronic communication conveys the factual, logical information, but not the emotional information. So if you want representatives to collectively decide things based on what is rational and logical but not be subconsciously influenced by lobbyists or other politickers, cut the emotional channel out of their communications.
It's the same reason that Google makes promotion decisions by a committee located on another continent. You want people to judge based on facts and not impressions, so divorce the objective facts from the subjective impressions.
Some of the decisions can not be actually made based on facts, such as decisions about future performance of some person (there are no facts that can guarantee it) or future effect of certain policy (the facts may be lacking or subjective and depend on interpretation). So, unfortunately, in many aspects in the politics "decisions based on facts only" are just not possible.
Only the visible stuff. Any sufficiently well-resourced organisation can simply adjust its tactics to suit this environment (a Global Active Adversary?). For example, just buy up enough media outlets and adjust the reporting to support your worldview. This probably happens to some extent now but it's probably easier to just keep a lobbyist on hand.
Buying up media outlets is already centralization of power if you truly build a system to distribute power you will limit the number of media companies one entity can own.
First of all, there is lobbying and power politics in really, REALLY local politics. Also it costs a lot less to influence a low level guy. If all I have control over is a school district, you might be able to buy my support with a few tens of thousands of dollars put into a football team. If I am a state senator, I'm going to want considerably more, something that helps my whole district. Hundreds of thousands of dollars towards a major fund. If I'm a US Senator, then you're gonna have to get me more again, and it's probably not going to be money so much as other considerations. Maybe I want a bridge built. Maybe I want some naval destroyers built in my state's ironworks rather than the one up in Maine. Whatever it is it will be tricky as hell to outright buy my influence on anything. It may be cheaper and more effective to just buy up all the local town councils in the state by hosting a party for each of them than it is to get ahold of a US Senator.
Meanwhile the local guys also make major policy decisions, in aggregate. For example, if I can get every superintendent in Texas to buy a particular schoolbook for their schools, one that deals with Creationism as a legitimate 'alternative theory' to evolution, then I've actually just made it uneconomical to print other schoolbooks. So now everyone from California and New York and Delaware and Vermont also get a schoolbook pushing creationism, and a whole new generation of blue-state kids are being indoctrinated into my ideology. Boom.
A lot of ordinary people seem to be barred from doing anything by willful ignorance. It seems to be a rational decision too; if they let themselves fall into Stockholm syndrome, they won't be weeded out for 'fighting the system'. Just having an attitude your employer doesn't like is enough to be denied opportunities, or work at all.
^People need relief from this fear, and time to read and become informed.
You might be interested to know that there was an Amendment to the Constitution that was only one state short of being approved that attempted to address this problem early.
According to the text of that Wikipedia article, Article One would have no effect on the present Congress. "nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons" means that each representative must represent at least 50k people; the smallest congressional district (Rhode Island's 1st, at 527,000 people) exceeds that by a factor of ten.
This idea embodies what's wrong with political Ideology especially in the mind of a technically minded person, in my opinion.
The left think the problem is the rich. Rich people inevitably have the resources to buy power and the incentive to do so. Wealth begets power. Look at history. Get rid of the rich.
The right think the problem is power. The powerful inevitably have the incentive to sell their power. Wealth begets power. Look at history. Get rid of the political power.
Both of these positions are trying to tie the political economy in a tidy bow. Set up a few meta rules and all else flows from that. Neither are in any way practical. Both ignore other things like political inevitabilities of a democracy.
So take and ideological libertarian. She believes a government should enforce contracts, arrest criminals and (maybe) build roads. How does having this utopian vision influence her position on this issue in this world?
It translates to some completely irrelevant, theoretical position. "We shouldn't need a law banning money in politics because money should have nothing to gain from being in politics." This is insane!. In this world, politicians do have power and money does have an interest in politics.
We can't get rid of either wealth or power. Or, if you think we can, lets agree that we are not going to in the next couple of years. It is possible make and enforce a law that says bribery is illegal and use an effective common sense definition of bribery. If you want to campaign for you libertarian revolution or a gradual reduction of taxes and government spending, that's fine.
But, it is completely illogical to colour your position on what should be done now by what will or won't be necessary in some unlikely future.
I'll give you a corollary. I think that drugs should be legal worldwide. Good or bad, I think people have a right to ingest whatever they want and it's inappropriate to put them in jail for such decisions. The demand for drugs can't be stopped and criminalizing drugs creates enormous criminal industries.
In some producer and transit countries (eg Mexico), this global prohibition is causing an enormous harm, destabilizing the country with a lot of violence. The solution, in my opinion, is to decriminalize drugs worldwide. This might happen to some extent at some point, but it won't happen in the next few years. Meanwhile, it makes sense for the Mexican government to do whatever they can to reduce the harm being caused now by drugs.
Their domestic policy on marijuana has little or no effect on the level of violence from the cartels. It's not relevant.
Sure. Keep saying that when you are at a barrel of one of their guns.
Remember that well: what gives them power is an unerring force to use deadly force at a whim. "Make pot brownies using hash oil? No knock warrant with potential life sentence"...
What gives them power is the illusion of the ability to unilaterally use deadly force on a whim. No nation has a standing army or security force of sufficient dimension to quash a unilateral uprising through force alone.
Sure, an individual ceasing to believe in the power of a state is a drop in the ocean, and ultimately will not end well for the individual in most cases.
If a mass of individuals, however, cease believing, then the state's power evaporates. Witness every revolution, ever. It's not a question of the people assuming power, rather just the people refusing to grant the state power, en masse.
No, what gives them power is their very real ability to unilaterally use deadly force on a whim. What lets them maintain power is apathy on the part of the proletariat, their desire to be ruled, and individualized fear of authority. The illusion is actually that those in power can't hurt you, and it's something you only get when you unite with others and begin to equate the survival of the movement with your own survival. "I can't die, there's a thousand of us and only one of him."
Also you talk about the state's power evaporating, but a shitload of peasant rebellions have been put down by those in charge. Like, almost all of them ever. Even the USA would have been utterly demolished if the Brits hadn't said "you know what, these colonials don't actually have enough value to fight over this. And they'll come crawling back anyway once they figure out they can't trade because Britannia rules the waves."
This is silly. Yes, the worker holds the means of production and blah blah blah but if you're not united with all the other workers then the local lord can just murder you and now everyone is scared and climbing over one another to argue that he was right to do it.
I'd probably say take out politicans out of politics.
Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating.
Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people.
At the moment, I think the second is more likely. I guess a detailed examination of competency of people to make decision should be made and based on that a new governmental structure should be made.
There might be things that majority wouldn't be able to make good progressive decisions. For example - the LGBT rights are usually against the will of the majority.
> Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating.
> Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people.
AI is not the only possible way to mitigate the problem, here is another one:
That only changes strategy of how money goes into politics. In your scenario, the focus will most likely be on "building a politician" before the actual nominations and office runnings, boosting his popularity before his public announcement to go into politics even comes to table, ending up with a lot more Terminator governers.
The first step is massive deployment of accessible internet stations in public places, such as libraries, and voter chip cards. When someone votes they get two unique numbers with each type of vote (Yes and No). Of these two, one is circled: that is their vote number that they can write down and check on a national register. (e.g. #2359235 : Yes) They can use this number to change their vote at any time within the 72 hour voting period.
Second step, every bill before Congress has a 72 hour delay where it's publicly available to read and vote on by the public. If more than 25% of eligible voters vote, their result overrides the vote of their Representative and Senator.
Third step, banning advertisement for bills except for public notices.
Congress is reduced to turning small bills to law. Anything serious is left to the people. And money in politics dies.
California and Washington are two examples of why I disagree: Both have direct initiative and referendum by the people and both reserve the "power of the purse" to the people, in addition to the legislature, through those methods.
In both states, moreso in California than Washington, popular initiatives that have passed overwhelmingly have shown that We The People are horrible at money. Washington's mandatory-$30-car-registration (that didn't last long, but long enough and with lingering consequences), imposed statewide, flattened the Puget Sound region's public transportation and road systems (ohai, toll roads). California's Proposition 13, well, we know what that did to the state budget.
I happen to be one of the people who thinks that government can be and is a force for good, when used appropriately. Ham-handed direct democracy through "bumper sticker" campaigns--like this would turn into--is no way to govern. "Defund the NSA" could be up there right alongside "abolish the EPA." We elect people to represent us, we need to be more resilient about voting out people who don't represent us at a common level.
Congress' approval rating is around 13%; no one is happy with the system. No one. There are 15 lobbyists for each and every congressperson for the finance industry alone. Each one of those lobbyists is backing a huge amount of money to make sure that they get their way. The result is plutocracy, and the average American is fucked pretty hard.
we need to be more resilient about voting out people
Are you serious? That hasn't worked. Every time they're replaced by people who promise change and don't deliver. Then they're voted out and it goes on and on.
It's like the old joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Then stop doing that." If you want money out of politics, if you want to feel less like the catcher and more like the pitcher, I've just told you how to do it. You're getting fucked. Let's be clear. The question is, do you want to do something about it?
I want to do something about it, but considering your method requires a Constitutional amendment just as much as my method, let's go for the simpler and more compatible one:
- Only a natural person is a "person" for the purposes of influencing elections, voting on questions placed before the people (including, but not limited to, the election of representatives and Electors to the Electoral College), and when determining the applicability of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
- Entities created by force of law are not natural persons and the binding together of multiple natural persons to create, run, manage, or dissolve such an entity does not give said entity the status of a natural person.
- The expenditure, or not, of money or the interaction with our economic system is not speech.
That's great. We're not disagreeing. I just happen to think that covers a few holes on the sieve. You won't, with that, rid politics of money; you won't, with just that, restore real power to people.
You must be unfamiliar with the states where there are popular voter initiatives and with how much money can be spent on them.
Actually, you can't be unfamiliar with Brendan Eich story if you read HN. He was ousted as Mozilla CEO because he contributed money to support Prop 8 campaign in California. Check out what Prop 8 is, check out what California props are in general, then check out how much money is spent on them. It's exactly the opposite of "money in politics dies". Spending would explode, as instead of one decision (elect X vs Y to the Senate) you need to influence 100s of decisions (for each publicly voted proposal) and political campaigns can influence minds. Which means people interested in the outcome will pay for these campaigns. Unless, of course, you propose to ban political speech altogether except by specially designated government officials.
>>> You still have political discourse but you can't spend to get it.
This is a self-contradictory statement. Maintaining efficient political discourse costs money. Writing costs money, printing costs money, meeting with people costs money, making films and posters and t-shirts and bumper stickers costs money. Doing practically everything except most basic meaning of "speech" - i.e. making sounds with your throat - costs money. Unless you ban all this and allow only political discussion conducted in one's own kitchen (without even serving tea - that costs money too) - the money has to come from somewhere. If you ban open collection, it would just move underground. With all the consequences of politicians depending on the underground and the underground types to get elected.
>>> It works quite well.
I notice you didn't name even one country where it works quite well. I know about political systems in a number of democratic countries, in all of them getting elected costs money, and this money has to come from somewhere. Where and how exactly it works without money?
You can discuss it; you just can't pay to advertise on media. Other countries have exactly those restrictions.
Voter turnout is the point: If you never get more than 25% voting then you have exactly the same system you have now. (Again, that's the threshold where it overrides the elected representative.)
You mean, people are not allowed to talk publicly about politics? Sure, that's a great idea, that would bring about the renaissance of democracy. Or you mean they only can talk about politics where not too many people can hear them, like on their kitchen - a-la Brezhnev times in Soviet Union - is OK, but on TV - no-no, it's "political advertisement". And helping to elect a person with ideas which you share is not allowed too - it's "donations". Well, not that you'd know their ideas anyway, because political advertisement is banned, so unless you come and talk to them personally you won't know that.
The problem isn't money, it's the fact that money has such strength in elections.
And that comes down to the electorate and the media. Public schooling doesn't result in adults capable of doing the homework necessary to figure out the issues or the candidates. The media does an incredibly shitty job of providing basic facts about candidates and issues. If you want to know the voting history of a candidate the media isn't going to tell you, for them it's a game, a horse race / popularity contest. They're just there for the story.
Add to that the fact that modern government has its fingers in every aspect of life and thus exerting any control over the government by whatever means is often an extreme necessity for many businesses and organizations, so there's a huge incentive to warp the political process. Folks of good intention need their lobbyists so that the government leaves them alone. Folks of bad intention want to twist the government for reward, either through subsidies, procurement programs, services, or regulations or other activity which preferentially hurts their competitors.
Both of these issues have become more and more important through the mid-20th century to today. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates the format was for one person to speak for a solid hour then the other to respond with an hour and a half speech and then the first person following up with another half hour response, and there were 4 such debates. Newspapers printed transcripts of those debates in full and Lincoln published a book based on them, which was were much of his fame came from initially. How different our system is today, and how utterly imbecilic and superficial it is by comparison. Meanwhile, within the last few decades the wealthiest counties in the US have become those counties around DC.
There's simply no way to squeeze money out of politics directly given the way it works now. There is too much incentive and insufficient countervailing forces to keep money out, no matter the laws, there will always be loopholes and through those loopholes the same corruption of the system will seep in. The problem needs to be fixed at its source. With better media and a more informed electorate as well as, in my opinion, a smaller government and saner laws and regulation.
On the political level, the meta problem causing most of other problems is money.
Take money out of politics.
No political advertising allowed, no "donations", no lobbying. 1 official website (or print brochure) as the only means for voters to get political information (or brainwash) from.