[danielsht]

Very illustrative example. So in this thread, I'm reading the opinion that "it's not the fault of government, it's the fault of the voters". But your point (hope I'm not misrepresenting it), aligns more with "it's actually the voters who are fickle and don't always vote in a way that's aligned with their best interests".

So what are we left with? :(

[DubiousPusher]

It's not so much that it's not aligned with their interests. It's more that voters wish to live free of consequences. But most of public policy is about trade-offs. Republicanism is supposed to help this. For example, the longer terms for senators and having them originally chosen by the legislature was supposed to insulate them from the public a bit so they could make people take their medicine.

Unfortunately, Republicanism broke down fairly quickly in America due to special interests and the separation of powers making it very easy to jam up a bill you didn't like. Basically anyone with a lobbyist has a veto power.

My prescription, we need Republicanism. We probably need to do away with referendums or subject them to a lot more parliamentary rules and rigor. To keep thisall from becoming 18th century guilded age corruption we need to do some other things too. We need to effectively kill the power of lobbying. We need to give state and federal representatives massive budgets so they can afford their own researchers. We probably need much larger legislatures, (hundreds or thousands of seats). And we need a new way to choose some of our representatives. Something that incorporates randomness to ensure regular people who live regular lives are actually participating.

[ratsforhorses]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

I think it's called stockocracy :-)

[DubiousPusher]

That this is a thing makes me feel like way less of a crank. I've been telling anyone who will listen that we need randomness in our politics for like 7 years now. People often do not respond well.

[ratsforhorses]

Yeah afaik it was a thing during ancient Greek democracy, also the Viennese used a version of it....

But to add to these thoughts, coming from a society that people often consider as one of the better democracies (Switzerland) I find it very annoying the system of a majority winning... I mean in this day an age of potential cyber voting, if a suggestion was to get 50% or less of positive votes (such a a vote for free public transport in Geneva which got 27%) it should at least be tried out....

Also the inflation of bureaucracy needs to be addressed.. my suggestion would be that those voting get to share part time (if they want to) in the physical running of government as part of it's bureaucracy and receive payment ( it's often a sinecure... especially in these insecure times....

[michaelt]

Some would say, by supporting great public services today, funded by debt paid for by future generations (i.e. not them) that the voters voted in a way precisely aligned with their own best interests.