Thought experiment: What is wrong with representative democracy by SIGNYM

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Thought experiment: What is wrong with representative democracy

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, November 24, 2019 23:47
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Sunday, November 24, 2019 7:00 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Tom Luongo said it best and briefest:

Quote:
Because it’s a lot easier to bribe a dozen or so candidates than it is to bribe the hundreds of thousands they could represent. This is the fundamental reason why representative governments don’t work.

I've alluded to this in thread after thread after thread. It's why Dems are now just as beholden to TPTB as Repubs. And the higher you go - and the more expensive it is to run for office- the more likely it is that you'll wind up voting for a slate that owes A LOT to some very wealthy people. Money doesn't act like a bribe, it's more like a filter: Your candidacy will have to pass thru the sieve of how successful you are on collecting money, and those that are the most successful will mostly win.

We can either tackle the problem indirectly by requiring the broadcast media to make time available on an equal basis to all candidates who pass a 1% threshold(or something like that) or we can think about direct democracy.

I like thinking about direct democracy. It would be like handing loaded guns to kindergarteners, but those that survived would be a lot smarter.

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 7:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I think one thing that needs to be done immediately is to absolutely prohibit any person or PAC or business entity to give campaign donations to representatives that are outside of their state (and even outside of districts for those on lower levels).

This is a HUGE problem on both sides, and nobody on either side EVER talks about it at all. I wasn't even aware of the practice until Tim Pool brought it up about AOC around 6 months ago.

And, sure enough, if you look at campaign receipts for any candidate that the FEC provides, EVERYBODY does it.

The amount of money coming from DC and influencing state elections in particular is gross.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:18 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

One of the biggest problems I think we have is that in our democracy, we elect Kings/Queens and their courtiers. Once elected, aside from impeachments, there's not much you can do to boot them out of office for non-performance.

If we had the option of being able to vote the legislative and executive branches out of office at any time, I think they'd be a lot more careful about what promises they make, and then actually try to keep them. And people would be a lot more attentive about what promises were made, and if they were kept.

As it is, we're all playing a pretty cynical game. The parties run the best actors (sometimes literally) who can convince enough people to hope that THIS TIME things are really going change and be different. Though enough people have gotten tired of this so that turnout is really low. Voting is an act of dogged optimism in the face of all experience.

Once in office, 'the elect ones' get plugged into the Deep State and serve as its tentacles. And nobody can be held to account for failure to keep promises, or worse, doing the exact opposite. And we've all seen that nothing really changes.

And on schedule, in a few years, we do it all over again.

But if 'the elect ones' could be held to account for what they promise and what they actually do, I'm not sure even election money would be enough to make that big of a difference.

If you look at systems that do run that way, generally, they're far more representative than what we have here. Yes, they can be unstable, like Italy which has had roughly as many governments as years since WWII, or it can become captive to a very weak opposition, which is how Tony "Bush's Poodle" Blair stayed in office. Or it can become the face of popular dementia, like Israelis equating the Palestinians with German Nazis. But we're never going to get perfection, just better, or worse.

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On the flip side, they must really, REALLY fear the power of the vote, given that it's the last illusion we have of actually having a choice. Otherwise, they wouldn't spend do MUCH time propagandizing us, so that we'll all march along like little droids.

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I see the biggest threat to democracy in general as that vast unelected entity called the Deep State, which makes the decisions, runs the government, and endlessly speaks its chant to us.

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:28 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Imagine living in the EU where they don't even bother hiding the fact that there is an un-elected Deep State.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:35 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

my bad

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:36 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Which is why Germany, Hungary, and other places with EU-centric parties are losing regional and national elections to nationalistic newly-minted parties.

European national parliaments with representatives from right-wing populist parties in November 2019:
Right-wing populists represented in the parliament/ bright blue
Right-wing populists providing external support for government/ light medium blue
Right-wing populists involved in the government/ dark medium blue
Right-wing populists appoint prime minister/ dark navy blue

Speaking of which ... I wonder how Brexit is going. I haven't been tracking it.

And ETA: it boggles my mind that the EU was originally advertised as a common trading bloc. And now it's a behemoth that runs its members trademarks, standards, currencies, government budgets, trade policies, environmental regulations, immigration policy, border control policy ...

OH YEAH! kind of like what Signy criticizes when it comes to US trade agreements.

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Sunday, November 24, 2019 11:47 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Yup. I know.

It's as if we already have a roadmap to failure for all of the things that the Democrats want to do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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