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Gantolandon posted:You still haven't proven they are significantly more competent. It might be worthwhile to consider that, in the case of career politicians, the competence of the individual in terms of deciding on votes doesn't really matter. For a lot of issues, the party organization has a line that the individual is expected to follow. The politician also has an organization beneath him, the people mostly in charge of getting him re-elected, that will advise him on whether he should stand with his party or not. The only real competency a politician needs is to take the right advice to get re-elected, cause his vote is more a representation of his loyalties and ambitions than any actual individual expertise. In other words, it doesn't really matter if the politician is a genius virtuoso. If he wants to continue getting elected, he's going to vote in the way that gets him the most support from his party and constituency. Anybody can potentially reach this point, but a direct democracy won't necessarily have the stability that more organized structures provide. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 21:13
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Gantolandon posted:I don't necessarily disagree - but the entire argument happened because a lot of people in this thread were against more democratic institutions because the public is not competent enough to make major decisions. Whether something close to the perfect direct democracy is actually possible to implement is an another issue. Dude, the public isn't competent enough to make major political decisions, and shouldn't be put in charge of doing so when we can put a smaller representative sample of the same people into organizations that make sure they're informed by experts, whether current representative democracies function like that or not. That isn't to say the general population can't be competent. Competence isn't an inherent trait, and could be taught as a part of general education. That ultimately becomes an issue of implementation, though. Can we make sure that every person of voting age has the competence to evaluate important issues without an organizational structure to coach them via expertise as individual topics come up for vote? Alternatively, can we make an effective organization to coach every voting individual on complex issues as they come up for vote? Can we have a direct democracy that does that while not getting bogged down in ideological differences in the same way that modern representative democracies have?
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Aug 1, 2014 21:42
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Gantolandon posted:I'm trying to argue that competence is a non-issue in general politics. You can't ensure your elected representative is actually competent, or that their knowledge and skills are actually used for the benefit of their voters, instead of just bullshitting their way through the term. Instead of pretending we get the best of the best at the top, we should concentrate on the issue that actually can be improved - accountability of decision-makers to the public. Well, I mostly agree with you. Individual competence of a politician is mostly a non-issue, although I will say that proposing legislation and actually trying to change things usually comes from individual efforts and ideologies, which then get cultivated or shot down in committees. A literal idiot can vote based on party line or expert advice, but that guy isn't likely to propose useful legislation unless it's pushed to them by experts or lobbies. Actually, in a not completely corrupt system, political competence would involve resisting corrupting elements like corporate lobbies and poo poo, and would be quite important. Unfortunately, in the US, saying no to money for re-election is probably more of a mistake than a competency. Hey! There you go. Political competence matters because, if a legislator's job is to represent their constituency, they need to be able to tell whether or not a proposal will actually benefit their constituency, or whether it's a pile of bullshit gussied up to look like something beneficial, which I would say the general populace isn't equipped to do without a significant investment in education. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 22:56
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Gantolandon posted:Not sure what observation do you mean - in most countries, the public can't do much about a corrupt politician who doesn't ostensibly break the law, except voting for someone else in the next elections. Well, mass media has pretty well demonstrated that you can get away with a lot of poo poo if you can control the messaging. This is the biggest problem I can see with direct democracy. Information control would be even more of a big market in gaining political control. Being not from the US, you probably don't get to witness the year and a half of stupid media bullshit that covers our televisions leading up to the Presidential election every four years. The 2012 election had this ridiculous Republican meme about polls being lies and everything being wrong and "Just you wait, despite everybody else reporting that we're losing, FOX News says we're winning, and we trust them more!" It was a really weird way of trying to cultivate support by undermining the other guy's obvious lead in polling. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 23:11
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asdf32 posted:I see you're talking from the perspective of what you think we'd need to be a more democratic society, but I was intending to ask "If society was perfectly democratic today, what differences do you think there would be". I think it's safe to say that in the U.S. anyway, a perfect implementation of public will today wouldn't result in a move towards the types of reforms you're describing. Well, if you take his conception of democracy, as in a government where political power is distributed as close to equally as possible among individuals, you couldn't really have a perfect democracy without having those policies in place. I'd argue that Americans who are better off altogether as a result of better social policies wouldn't want them gone. Also, really, do you think that the public will supports poo poo like our lovely tax brackets or the results of the Citizens United case? There's nothing stopping the government from trying to resolve these issues except the wealthy interests influencing them and keeping Americans distracted and ignorant with other issues.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:43
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Holding politicians accountable to the public will is why we have elections in the first place, and trying to come up with other ways to make sure politicians are doing what their constituents want on a case by case basis sounds incredibly strange to the point of marginalizing politicians themselves. Why have a dude there, if his only responsibility is to translate public opinion into votes and legislation? Rather than trying to eliminate political judgement from their decision making, I think it's perhaps more important to make sure that politicians are accountable primarily to their constituents, and don't have loyalties to special interests that overshadow that responsibility as they do in the US. In other words, crafting policy to make it more difficult and/or illegal for groups outside of their constituents and party to try and influence individual politicians. This doesn't completely invalidate outside influence, as there can be political organizations with platforms that could very well speak to the entire Congress or try to influence the public will at the source, but it would make backroom deals unacceptable and perhaps punishable in court. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Aug 10, 2014 |
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Aug 10, 2014 22:44
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Nessus posted:Yeah I think it's sort of telling that like, people don't seem to even think or seriously consider "various known ways in which politicians are bought by special interests are outlawed, with various other adjustments to remove perverse incentives in the system, if necessary by Constitutional amendment." Instead it's like race hatred against politicians (not that a lot of them aren't scumbags, but so are a lot of people in general) which would do nothing to address the underlying causes. Well, the issue with any of this stuff is that ultimately it's a pipe dream. You'd have to convince a majority of our politicians to vote outside their own interests, and I don't think anything short of actual revolution will pull out the oligarchic rot. I can totally understand people simply not trusting a traditional political system and trying to theorize more radical solutions.
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Aug 10, 2014 23:11
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Restricting backroom politics as much as possible is a good place to start, either by making basically everything congresspeople do public (Worth noting: Part of military service is essentially sacrificing particular rights. No reason why other government officials can't be subject to similar standards), or by restricting access. It might be possible to make it so individual lobbying is essentially illegal, so anybody wanting to influence congress needs to go before a committee or the entire congress, making any statements publicly available. That along with aggressive bribery enforcement, to the point that political favors in exchange for monetary benefit (even if that just means a cushy job) is punishable. This is a little heavy-handed, and it would probably be more effective to enable participation by regular folks to counter wealthy interests, which is best done by diminishing poverty and restricting the influence of wealth on the political scene. Campaign finance reform is certainly something that would help smaller and poorer groups participate on a more equal playing field with the big boys. Also, I'm pretty sure the biggest difference between UK campaigning and the US is that the UK has pretty severe restrictions on WHEN you can campaign. It's something like six weeks out, whereas the US typically starts national campaigning in earnest about two years out. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 20:51
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computer parts posted:The issue is that "writing a letter to your congressman" is what individual lobbying is. Hmm... that's true. Perhaps simply disallowing private correspondence would be better? Nobody is restricted from talking to them, but anything that happens in their office is made publicly available. Alternatively, make in person lobbying illegal. Letters and phone calls and e-mails are fine, and those are made public, but having random hired lackeys having private meetings with congress members is a no go. Again, this doesn't stop lobbies from existing, it just stops them from making private deals.
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Aug 12, 2014 21:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:If I'm a lobbying agency, my response to this would be to have friendly talks with Bob Senator's wife Barbara and his college age son Jim and maybe they'll just happen to bring up my discussions with them to their husband/father. And their husband/dad will just happen to tell them things they tell back to me. I kind of get your point, that these things will happen, but I do think the legislature actually trying to, I don't know, police itself, would be a valuable gesture in creating a more legitimate government, and putting layers between legislators and lobbyists would probably help, anyways. Also, forcing clandestine folks to pass loving notes like that is much more publicly shady and more likely to lead to actual scandal. Personally, I don't think public officials in charge of making laws effecting literally millions of people deserve a private life anymore than a soldier in the field deserves to be able to quit whenever they want to. Private dealings on public matters fundamentally undermine effective government.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:03
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Nessus posted:At a certain point in this system, the actual government will probably be whatever party or parties are charged with the enforcement of the regulations on politicians. Like, the department of Justice? The FBI? Wouldn't they already be secretly in charge of the government?
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Aug 12, 2014 23:12
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Nintendo Kid posted:We've had those gestures for over a century, what have they got us? Can't we just admit that putting up with gestures isn't solving problems? I don't think we do. The only accountability our lawmakers have is, well, if they commit an actual crime, they maybe will go to jail for it. Oh, and assuming you have an informed populace, you could vote the guy out of office. Putting an active barrier in place between politicians and lobbyists and making their actions more public helps create a political culture where backroom deals are unacceptable, rather than the norm, and I think that would be a valuable change. Also, if we're having to prioritize things, I've mentioned earlier that I'd be more for essential changes like campaign finance reform and improving the lot of the poor, thus limiting the effect of raw wealth on politics and enabling the poor to participate more effectively, creating a more democratic state than we have right now. Kalman posted:How do you deal with it? Make it public, such that whatever they talk about or try to bargain over is subject to media and public scrutiny. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 23:27
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Nintendo Kid posted:You want to let the poor participate? Make it so people can vote for a full month or other things like that that actually allow the poor to participate. Get them things like guaranteed minimum incomes so they don't have to work 5 jobs or things like that just to get by, with no time to do politics. They don't have the money to buy in whether campaign donations are limited to $100 or $100000000000 because they can't really afford even $1. The point is that grinding poverty makes you indifferent to much other than being loving poor. Not being poor means you can start caring about poo poo and voting and participating. Also, the stuff you're talking about is what I meant by improving the lot of the poor. I didn't really mean to say that the poor should be giving their money to campaigns. Nintendo Kid posted:How. How are you going to do this? I don't know, man. We've been in pipe dream territory for a while here, since we're talking about trying to turn something like the US into a functional democracy without redoing the whole drat thing. That said, seems like we're moving more and more towards a society of ubiquitous surveillance anyways, so I don't think this is necessarily impossible.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:41
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Nintendo Kid posted:You mentioned campaign finance reform as one of the things necessary - generally that deals with setting monetary limits. Okay. Forget the other stuff. We should do campaign finance reform, right? It would allow smaller, less well funded groups, to contribute meaningfully to political campaigns, weakening wealthy interests. We should ALSO help poor people not be so poor, so they can give a poo poo about politics without risking their livelihood in the process. Work both angles to maybe help things be more equal. These things are not necessarily related outside of their potential effect on relative political power. As for the legislator stuff. Ultimately, I don't think government officials deserve a right to privacy or personal freedom. I think that should be the cost of public office, in the same sense that you have to sacrifice your personal freedom if you want to serve in the military. I don't really have all the answers about what the limits should be or how to implement that sort of stuff. Sorry for entertaining an idea.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:58
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Nintendo Kid posted:We already did campaign finance reform, multiple times in multiple ways. It turns out it doesn't accomplish anything? Surely you've paid attention to politics at least from 1970 to now? Do you not understand that wealthy groups are able to organize smaller groups to agree and pay for them? Do you think no one tried campaign finance reform before? We also just rolled back on it in the last couple years. We should at least fix that, right? Just because people murder despite it being illegal, doesn't mean we should give up and make it legal, right? Or theft, or any other lovely poo poo our society decided was wrong? Nintendo Kid posted:Look the thing is that you can't just say "oh I was just entertaining an idea". The maximal loss of privacy you could come up with for officeholders still allows them to be easily influenced before taking office or even winning a primary, with no way to prevent that save removing all privacy for all people at all times. You ever been wrong before? That's what I was. Maybe get less pissed about it.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:07
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Nintendo Kid posted:We "rolled it back" and nothing changed in politics from it, what does that tell you? Because see, people with money already knew how to fully get around all of it, using perfectly legal and even reasonable means. How did nothing change? I'm pretty sure campaigning has turned into a god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things. I'd argue that without finance reform, there is simply no hope of not having both parties subjugated by wealthy interests. Just because wealthy people have a way around it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to limit their influence. What would you propose instead? What can actually be done to fix this, since I'm apparently to stupid to actually have good ideas? Please keep in mind that I'm not saying finance reform will simply fix everything itself, I just don't see why we shouldn't do it. Nintendo Kid posted:You came up with a dumb idea and tried to deflect criticism by "I was just coming up with dumb ideas". That doesn't really work. How would you have me respond to being incorrect in a debate forum, other than to say I was incorrect? How is conceding the point deflecting criticism? bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 00:33
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Kalman posted:It's more that the "god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things" isn't meaningfully different from the prior state of things in practice, I think. Yeah, lots of super PAC money out there, but it doesn't actually do very much except make the Koch brothers feel better about themselves and fund broadcast tv stations. I'm pretty sure it means more money is being spent than before, which means a higher barrier of entry in that market, which means people with an actual interest in helping the poor that presumably get less money to throw around will have even less ability to influence things.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:41
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Yeah. You guys are right there too. Oh well. Can't even get a minimum wage increase through congress, so we're probably screwed there as well.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:07
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