[morgan814]

This is why neither party will truly save us. Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo). There are very few politicians who speak to the level of corruption and economic inequality we all see.

The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies. Switzerland has a council of seven members as their executive branch, not a single person. It's brilliant stuff. I worry that the only way to do better is through an incredibly painful collapse of things. Unless politicians start deciding to write laws that force them to give up power. Which seems almost humorous to suggest.

[foolswisdom]

Why is a council of seven better for the executive branch?

> The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies.

Well, a lot of dysfunction in government is the result of later evolution, whether evolution of circumstances or of government.

As an example, the combination of senate filibuster (which was around from the earliest days) with the reconciliation workaround (which is pretty recent) results in omnibus bills, which is a well-known driver of partisanship (because you don't talk to the other party at all in order to pass your bill on the floor), and also has significant consequences to individual responsibility (for the same reason, that omnibus bill must pass for your party to do anything, so you can't be faulted for voting for it, and instead you look for carve outs for your interests. If you do decide to hold up the whole bill like the freedom caucus tried, then you get everyone against you and you will eventually fold).

This also has repercussions that for things that can't go through reconciliations, just because the usual way of doing things involves more party dependence (than it would to pass bills another way). This of course also gives more power to those running the party within the chambers of congress.

My point is that things evolve, and people tend to try to explain the current state of things with reference to the 18th century, and while I definitely believe we should evolve systems to be better, we shouldn't ignore evolution that's already occurred.

[amypetrik8]

>Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo).

The problem with the democrats - indeed why Trump is in office - is they focus on social issues of "the underdog group" at the exclusion of all else. It's simplistic, arbitrary, and fraught with moral hazards and perverse incentives, often with someone getting screwed over.

I don't care what you call "the underdog group" it is what you think it is. Sex, age, race, citizenship status, disability status, etc. There is a fundamental issue with this sort of things - it reduces humans to simplistic labels and groups and pronounces policy based on group means. The black lesbian woman. The white hetero man. Well... is the white hetero man, is he an orphan and also deaf, meanwhile the black lesbian woman grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and is the epitome of health? But then like a social median dark pattern, this becomes a political dark pattern - identity politics, voter blocs, good guy and bad guy - people get swept up in these bizarre sort of human inherited sin ontology structures which don't really capture the true suffering, or true privilege, that simply exists and varies individual to individual, versus subgroup average to subgroup average.

Any data scientist could tell you if you have 300 features and have free reign to choose subgroups - yea it's going to be easy to find a subgroup that's crushing it and a subgroup that's failing