[alexfromapex]

People don't realize that all of our problems lately are stemming from lack of truly representative government. Until we find a way to ensure political candidates aren't corrupt and bought off, there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack of accountability from them.

[tankenmate]

Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth isn't concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work.

And before everyone gets upset, tax serves two purposes; 1) control inflation (it in effect burns money that was issued when the govt previously paid for things), 2) disincentivises selected behaviours. and one side effect, when the govt runs a tax deficit it increases inflation, and of course the contrapositive is also true.

[jlhawn]

> control inflation

I think you are confusing cost inflation with an increase in the money supply. The way the US government funds deficit spending is not by increasing money supply (though it could) but by issuing debt in the form of US Treasury bonds. That is a transfer of money from bond investors to the government. No new money is made. This is distinct from the way that banks issue loans which is by creating new money in the form of credit (but that credit money gets "burned" as loan principal is paid back). So federal taxes do not actually control inflation in the way you are describing. Since federal deficit spending is not financed by increasing the money supply, it can only cause price inflation if it increases aggregate demand over the current productive capacity of the economy. An example would be paying more for healthcare subsidies when there's a shortage of doctors. Or subsidizing demand for housing with more mortgage subsidies when there's a housing shortage. Taxes could also increase inflation if they have the effect of reducing supply of some goods or services (like tariffs do).

Edit: I want to mention that the Federal Reserve can and does increase money supply by buying US Treasury Bonds from banks (converting the asset into cash reserves). There are various reasons why they do this but overall it's done with their dual mandate in mind: control inflation and minimize unemployment.

[titzer]

> That is a transfer of money from bond investors to the government. No new money is made.

All forms of debt are money creation. All loans are money creation. Fractional reserve banking is money creation. It doesn't have to be "oh now we are making dollar bills" to count.

[state_less]

> The way the US government funds deficit spending is not by increasing money supply (though it could) but by issuing debt in the form of US Treasury bonds.

Sure it does. That Treasury debt is often bought up by the FED in huge tranches by increasing the money supply, they call it things like "unlimited QE (quantative easing)". For example, the FED announced unlimited QE on March 23rd, 2020 causing the stock market and real estate market to bounce. Trillions of new dollars were created in these last 5-6 years, and that's why everything costs more. The USG continues to overspend, and too often on dumb shit too (e.g. tax breaks for the ultra wealthy).

[adventured]

> I want to mention that the Federal Reserve can and does increase money supply by buying US Treasury Bonds from banks (converting the asset into cash reserves).

Fun small print. As though that's not the exact mechanism of the brutal inflation the US has suffered the past 5-6 years. The US money supply says it all. There are no other serious buyers for $20 trillion in new garbage paper debt every ten years. It's inflation by currency destruction plain and simple and there are no other paths. It's also why gold is $5,000 instead of $500.

[direwolf20]

Taxation reduces the money supply. Government spending increases the money supply.

[derf_]

In particular, the central bank, charged with controlling inflation, cannot use taxation to reduce the money supply, because banks do not get to set tax policy. That leaves raising interest rates as its only policy tool.

As the political arm of the government chooses to run deficits in excess of growth plus inflation, then (a) that causes more inflation, and (b) the central bank raises rates, increasing the cost of government borrowing, causing bigger deficits.

This escalates as a result of the central bank trying to control the effects of high government spending by applying a mis-matched policy tool (interest rates) in place of the politicians who have abdicated their responsibility to use a matched policy tool (taxation). Either it spirals out of control, or more and more of the government budget is devoted to interest expense (direct government transfers of wealth paid exclusively to the debt holders) and less of it is spent on providing actual government services (that benefit all taxpayers).

If the central bank does not raise rates, of course, things go even more badly.

[carshodev]

The debt cycle causes short term upward and downward inflation spirals, but overall the inflation is caused by total money supply multiplied by the ratio that the debt is allowed to be compounded to. the ratio is determined by both current regulations regarding loaning practices and the interest rate.

Given that these were constant then then inflation is just a ratio of Productivity(how much things cost) to total money supply (money printing).

So if the government just prints a similar amount of cash relative to the supply as the percentage productivity increase then we get a constant value of for the dollar.

In practice though a small amount of inflation is good in a currency as it encourages spending, if you have deflation this can cause people to speculate on holding cash and not engage in commerce which lowers productivity and thus can cause even more inflation itself.

The real problem is that wages are not growing at the same rate as inflation meaning wealth is being transferred from the working class to the owing class as their businesses get more efficient from the cheapened relative labor costs.

[Terr_]

> Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth isn't concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work.

1. No, it's not "easier" because it's hard-if-not-impossible to accurately and objectively judge the present-value of many types of assets. Even the case most-familiar to working-class folks, property taxes, nobody really likes/trusts the outcome.

2. We don't tax work, we tax income, because actual transactions between people with "skin in the game" are harder to fake. The extent to which wages are preferred as a subset of income is separate from the wealth-vs-income split.

[cogman10]

> No, it's not "easier" because it's hard-if-not-impossible to accurately and objectively judge the present-value of many types of assets. Even the case most-familiar to working-class folks, property taxes, nobody really likes/trusts the outcome.

You can easily get within 10% of the "real" value on most assets. And, in particular, assets like stock have a built in ticker to tell you their exact current value.

This sort of evaluation happens all the time privately. For example, car insurance companies have gotten extremely good at evaluating the value of a car to determine when to simply total it.

The only thing that really makes it tricky is hidden assets or assets with no market value.

The likes of the richest people, who I think most of the "tax wealth" people are thinking of, have the majority of their wealth in equity. It's easy to tax the majority of their wealth.

This does not need to be a perfect system to be very effective at generating revenue and redistributing wealth.

[cj]

The main counterargument:

You buy 1 BTC at $60k in 2024. In 2025 it’s valued at $100k, so you pay taxes on $40k gain.

Now it’s 2026 and you finally decide to sell the BTC for the original price of $60k.

Except you’ve paid taxes on $40k in paper gains that disappeared before you sold the asset.

How do we solve that?

(Replace “bitcoin” with “startup stock option” if you really want to illustrate the problem - imagine having to pay taxes on stock options you decide to never exercise)

[cogman10]

That's capital gains, which we currently recognize on realization events (selling the asset or trading it). With current capital gains, if you sold in 2025 you'd pay the taxes on 40k at ~15% (depending) so 6k. If you repurchased it at $100k and then sold at $60k, you can claim the losses.

People advocating for a wealth tax aren't pushing for a tax on gains and losses but rather the total asset value. I've seen 1% and 2% bandied about.

So in 2024, you'd pay $1.2k in taxes (at 2%). In 2025, you'd pay $2k. And in 2026 you'd pay $1.2k

Though, usually, there's also a minimum wealth paired with the tax. Again, I usually only see it for things like individuals with over $100M in assets.

For options, it'd still be the same thing. If the strike price is $1 and the actual price is $60 and the option is vested then you'd be taxed on the $59 per option you hold.

This only gets difficult if you are talking about options in a privately held company. But, again, that's not really the case for a lot of the most wealthy who the wealth tax is targeting.

[cj]

okay, another example:

You hold Enron stock. You’ve been taxed 5% annually on the holdings for the past 5 years. To pay the tax, you decided to take out a loan instead of selling shares to pay the tax (you want to stay invested).

Someone discovers Enron is a fraud, the stock goes to $0 and you go bankrupt because you can’t repay the loans you took out to pay the tax on a (now worthless) asset.

[Kon5ole]

>You buy 1 BTC at $60k in 2024. In 2025 it’s valued at $100k, so you pay taxes on $40k gain.

Right, and at this point in the argument it’s also worth asking ”pay taxes with what?” which also quickly makes the idea of taxing valuations obviously absurd.

It would force any value creator to sell his creation, which basically destroys the mechanism from which all welfare for anyone in our societies currently originates.

[Scoundreller]

In Canada you can carry back capital losses up to (I think) 3 years. Of course you lose the time-value of that loss. Can carry forward losses too.

Similar things happen with (on the way to) "bankrupt" corporations that have large tax losses that can be applied to future profits.

[jhasse]

A wealth tax would be like 5% of the $100k, nothing to do with the gains.

[cj]

Yikes. So even if I store my wealth in cash, you want it to deflate by 5% annually?

How do you handle your neighbor who discovers he has a $2m Pokémon card in his closet? Is he forced to sell it to pay the 5% if he doesn’t have the cash on hand to pay the tax?

It’s a messy proposition. I’ve yet to hear a clear proposal that doesn’t have sticky edge cases.

[astrange]

> 2. We don't tax work, we tax income, because actual transactions between people with "skin in the game" are harder to fake.

Also because taxing income (or other cash) is disinflationary. Taxing assets is inflationary because it forces sales.

[usefulcat]

> Taxing assets is inflationary because it forces sales.

I can see how taxing assets could result in more selling than would have occurred otherwise.

But all else being equal, an increase in selling tends to put downward pressure on prices. So I don't see why an asset tax would be expected to cause inflation.

[jhasse]

Shouldn't sales reduce inflation because they increase supply?

[astrange]

Selling things increases money velocity.

[redleader55]

It would be so nice of that tax was actually "burned"(similar to proof of stake), instead of being used to fund even greater inflation. This comes in the form of a huge administration, which gets payed for providing, many times, negative value. Alternatively, it is used to pay social benefits for the sole purpose of keeping the current political party in power.

[swiftcoder]

> Alternatively, it is used to pay social benefits for the sole purpose of keeping the current political party in power

This sounds like a 2-party government problem, not a tax problem. Plenty of countries do just fine spending that money to provide healthcare, unemployment, etc to their citizenry. Only really seems to be the US that views this as a negative

[malfist]

Oh we spend that money, just on weapons or handouts to the welfare class known as the ultrawealthy.

[WillPostForFood]

Us does spend the money on healthcare, it is just very inefficient. US government spends much more per capita than any other country. 50% than the #2 country, Germany.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health...

[malfist]

But that's mostly people/companies spending on health care, not as much the government (because that'd be socialism, apparently)

[astrange]

The welfare classes that the government hands money to are elderly people and children.

[Saline9515]

This can be a problem, especially for the elderly. In France the retired (pensions are publicly funded) save 25% of their income on average, and earn more than the workers. France is also the most taxed country in the OECD and most voters are either retired or will retire next decade. It's just another clientelism.

[worik]

I am amazed. What an incredible statement!

The USA is very corrupt, true. But getting rid of the "huge administration" and burning tax receipts is not going to solve that. How could it?

One of the roles of the state in a modern society should be to ensure no one is left behind to starve, wither and freeze amongst the incredible resources we (as a society) have accumulated.

That takes administration. That takes resources. That is what your taxes should be used for.

I agree that far too much is used to give aid to the powerful, but the solution to that should not be to condemn the weak.

Burning taxes and de-funding the administration is exactly that: condemning the weak.

[redleader55]

It will be a cold day in hell before Americans stop assuming everyone on the internet is American or talks about the US government.

The government's role is whatever the people voting for it decide it to be - maybe to defend the borders, maybe to educate everyone, maybe keep everyone fed, clothed and sheltered.

The issue is, again I don't really care about the US or your government, some governments come to power on a platform of welfare. As long as they keep giving people "welfare" they will continue to be voted in power. As such, they will distribute wealth created in that country towards the goals of staying in power.

Myself, without being special, I never found myself having the same needs as this majority. Unfortunately, since I'm a minority (middle class), without the means to avoid being coerced into contributing to this plan (not super-rich), I'm left without recourse.

The weak are intentionally condemned through poor education and by voting idiots that promise them bullshit to get elected, not because the government doesn't have enough tax money. This cycle will never break by allocating more money, and the last 100 years have plenty of examples in that sense.

[flir]

I think OP is talking about decoupling tax and government spending, Modern Monetary Theory-style.

In this model government just prints all the money it needs in order to function. Taxation isn't used to fund government, it's used to give your currency value, and to stop inflation running out of control. Metaphorically, you might as well pile all that tax take up and burn it, because once you've collected it it's performed its function.

This is a very simplistic take on MMR, and I don't think it would work in the real world, but spending does precede taxation.

[nine_k]

With wealth concentrated in so few hands, it's already not that easy to walk it back :-/

[ghurtado]

> Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth isn't concentrated in so few hands?

Except for the fact that, without first solving the problem you responded to, yours is impossible to solve

[AlexandrB]

This is overly simplistic. Most economic activity is not related to the government at all. Taxation can slow economic growth and inflation, but the government running at a deficit or surplus is neither a cause or a solution for inflation but rather a byproduct of multiple aspects of government policy.

[chongli]

Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth isn't concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work.

Those tax dollars just go back to the wealthy in the form of interest payments on government bonds, which they own.

[mcnnowak]

Wealth tax will just create an industry around hiding wealth for the rich

[PlatoIsADisease]

This wouldn't stop the AMA from controlling medicine.

[fud3748]

Sure, it’s easy to tax “wealth”. Except most wealth today is of the type where Alice owns 10 million Y and Bob decided to pay $1000 for one Y. Alice cannot possibly sell her Y for near that price, but now she will be taxed on “wealth” of $10 billion.

[AaronM]

If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain, that should immediately trigger a tax event.

The real solution though is for the legislative branch to not be beholden to those same people and be able to quickly and effectively close tax loopholes as they are discovered.

[cluckindan]

That would instantly wipe out most leverage from the stock market, and from a casual bystander perspective, it would be a great thing.

[pembrook]

It wouldn't do that. But even if it did do that, this would not be a good thing.

The majority of leverage (debt) in the stock market is not people making wild bets, its just basic functions from institutions.

But even if we narrow the definition to the boogeyman image you have in your head about "leverage," if you remove it you've just made the market radically less responsive to information and arbitraging prices nearly impossible, and ultimately the economy less efficient in broad strokes.

You'll say "fine, who cares cause it'll stop [insert historical bubble example], and also I saw a reddit comment that said all economists are dumb!"

But most people have no idea how big a role leverage (aka debt) plays in just the basic functioning of the capital markets.

Putting a brake on the market might also sound good to you in theory. But the stock market is how the most important capital flows through the private economy, slowing this down is defacto slowing down the economy. Most people don't understand what slower economic growth means for your quality of life over the long term. Just 1-2% slower growth than the average, and the US's entire system collapses in 15 years (France is currently dealing with this reality in slow motion, their debt is now rated worse than Greek debt).

An easier example to understand: a pie that isn't growing is a zero sum pie. Ambition in a zero-sum world requires violence.

[Terr_]

> If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain, that should immediately trigger a tax event.

How does that work when a house is used as collateral on a loan? Or artwork?

The loans are just a symptom, the problem is in the Estate Tax, and those loans are being used as a tool to wait out the clock and then dodge dynastic taxes entirely.

Remove the final loophole, and they'll stop playing weird games to get there all on their own. Plus it'll be way less-disruptive to everyone involves in regular loans for regular reasons.

[charcircuit]

There is not a loophole. When you die your loans get paid off first. The money to pay off these loans would be taxed. It could delay paying taxes until you die, but you can't escape it.

[Terr_]

> There is not a loophole. When you die your loans get paid off first. The money to pay off these loans would be taxed.

You're missing the loophole, it's the the "step-up basis" rule, which dramatically affects the amount of tax on that liquidate-to-repay event.

1. Repaying 1 day before the owner dies: Liquidate $X, of stock, which 90% of it are capital-gains, heavily taxed.

2. Repaying 1 day after the owner dies: Liquidate $X of stock, which is now considered ZERO gains, almost no tax.

This massive discontinuity also applies when it comes to the transfer of stock to inheritors, and any taxes they might pay for liquidating it. A day before, they get a stock that "has grown X% in Y years." A day later, they get a stock that "has grown 0% in 0 days."

> It could delay paying taxes until you die, but you can't escape it.

But they did escape the taxes, or at least the "gains" portion of them! For decades, the unrealized gains in growing assets were "eventually" going to happen someday... Until, poof, all gains have been forgotten.

[direwolf20]

The taxable value is exactly how much you borrowed against it!

[Terr_]

> The taxable value is exactly how much you borrowed against it!

I'm not sure what you mean by that term, since we're not talking about property taxes. With respect to capital-gains tax, the amount you liquidate is not the same as the gains being taxed.

> is exactly how much you borrowed

You're mistaken, the tax depends on the history of the item being liquidated. Suppose you need to repay a loan, and you have two options:

1. Sell 1 share of Acme stock for $20, that you originally bought for $20. Your $0 gain leads to $0 tax. Net cash: $20.

2. Sell 1 share of Acme stock for $20, that you originally bought for $5. Your $15 gain leads to $3 tax. Net cash: $17.

It's obvious you'd prefer the first one, right? Even though they're stocks from the same company being sold on the same day for the same market-price to service the same debt.

[njarboe]

Agreed. This would get rid of borrow against gains to spend tax free. But also just get rid of the income tax, it is the worst way to tax, and do a land value tax.

[vintermann]

There's a very simple solution to that problem. Tax Alice in Y rather than in $.

[AlexandrB]

How would this work with real-estate? Probably the Y that should be taxed the most when we're talking about wealth.

[vintermann]

Rich people are very good at coming up with ways of financializing assets to their advantage. That creativity goes away when it comes to paying taxes, for some reason.

Real estate mostly isn't subject to the "I sold one for a huge sum, but the price would tank if I sold them all" effect, unless you own immensely much real estate.

But either way, just a lien on sale of the properties. We can still give the option of paying wealth tax according to valuation directly (in $) instead of in natura (in Y), then there's less to complain about - and as a bonus, we get revealed preferences on how inflated people think the prices of their assets are.

[curtisf]

A lien on the property? Although almost all jurisdictions already have property taxes, so it hasn't been an insurmountable problem so far

[flir]

So it would fix false valuation shenanigans too? I see that as a win/win.

[LadyCailin]

Many countries have figured out a wealth tax, so this isn't an impossible problem.

[Saline9515]

France had it for a very long time, it was very costly to recover, incentivized a lot of tax-evading behaviors, and mainly benefited tax specialists. Overall it was another useless, populist measure that did more harm than good.

[croes]

Who says you need to tax the whole wealth if it in form of Ys?

We all know that 10 million Ys maybe not sold for $10 billion dollars but it gives you enough leverage to buy a social network and name it Y

[wat10000]

Oh well. Maybe if Alice doesn't want that problem she shouldn't accumulate so much of one asset that she'd crash the price trying to pay the taxes on it.

[__MatrixMan__]

Maybe we need a debt jubilee then.

[PunchyHamster]

you can tax stock without taxing inventory.

Also the term "asset" exists and is used in accounting

[worik]

> you can tax stock without taxing inventory.

How? What is the difference between "stock" and "inventory"?

[antonyh]

Only in a system where the buyer sets the price.

[Saline9515]

Wealthy people own assets, not money. Stealing their assets doesn't reduce the money supply. Elon Musk is "rich" mainly in paper wealth.

Taxes raise inflation as they increase the production costs. If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave, and take their capital away to invest it elsewhere. This as a result will lead to inflation due to lack of available capital for production.

[ghurtado]

> If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave

Are we not tired yet of the various versions of the Reaganomics boogieman? When are we going to grow out of trickle down economics mentality?

[Saline9515]

The problem is black-and-white thinking that ignores reality.

There are different kinds of wealthy people. Some built their wealth through talent and luck. Some inherited it. Some gained it through state cronyism and clientelism.

Some own scarce assets (like real estate). Others created new assets (e.g., startup founders).

You can dislike Elon Musk, but his owning a large stake in Tesla doesn’t make others poorer. That’s not true of a landlord who corners housing supply in a city.

Wealth taxes are essentially revenge taxes without a clear objective. France tried one for years. It was costly to administer, riddled with exemptions, encouraged avoidance instead of productivity, and sustained an industry of tax specialists. The revenue was largely recycled into clientelist spending, sometimes increasing the wealth of the same elites (e.g., via housing subsidies).

If the goal is to curb land hoarding, implement a land value tax. If it’s to reduce dynastic concentration, tax large single-heir inheritances more heavily and lower the rate when estates are widely divided. If it’s to reduce cronyism, cut state spending, simplify regulation, and strengthen competition.

[mulmen]

> If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave

You say this like it’s a bad thing.

[simplify]

Since when has raising taxes actually solved any major problem? We have enough taxes, the issue is the corrupt politicians swindling it to themselves and their cronies.

[direwolf20]

You pay enough. Musk doesn't. Does he even pay any at all?

[fennecbutt]

>People don't realize that all of our problems lately are stemming from lack of truly representative government.

Hard disagree.

I fully believe that we are collectively responsible for all of our problems because we are a shitfuck tragically tribal species who, in a world of ever expanding tribe sizes, desperately cling onto tribe sizes that our tiny brains can handle, hence becoming tribal about a myriad of trivial and pointless things like sports, racism, which bathroom someone uses or which policy on immigrants one supports. Dunbar's number.

And we're so tied up in these micro tribal problems that we completely ignore the macro tribal problems that affect every single one of us. We're shit out of luck we literally evolved to act like this and there's nothing we can do to stop the behaviour; it's innate.

Global temperatures are still rising and will continue to do so. We can try to stop it but we won't be able to.

[cucumber3732842]

I don't even think it's the tribalism. Society used to be racist AF and it worked ok. Heck, you could play a pretty amusing "guess the race/nationality" game with spicy quotes from 1880-1920.

I think the problem is that by making everything objective, systemic, numerically tracked, quantified, etc, etc. we've actively selected for evil people. The people who get ahead in those systems, the groups who's interests get served, are not the good ones. They are the evil ones who have no qualms about exploiting the vulnerabilities and oversights of the system. In our quest to optimized everything, we have optimized for the prioritization of dishonest people and bad causes that attract dishonest people and it shows at every level.

Ted K would probably have something to say about this.

[fennecbutt]

If it wasn't numbers showing finance it was previously unrealised numbers showing muscle, bone density and height.

Imo, if we took tribe numbers now and went back to old world cave and stick we would see similar problems as we do today.

And yes agree about participation within one or more tribes, very similar to prisoner's dillema but with n>2 participants this time, and defection therefore has more of a payoff for every n.

[deaux]

There is, it's eugenics. We can absolutely select against psychopath traits and select for altruistic, greater good, communal self-sacrificial traits. We have the science.

[undeveloper]

how would you implement this without going into nazi-like levels of control on the individual? assuming "we have the science".

[deaux]

> how would you implement this without going into nazi-like levels of control on the individual?

I wasn't really talking about the practicality of it, especially because it's the furthest thing from the Overton Window imaginable. Literally everything else is closer to it. Even marrying toddlers, as shown by recent events. Slavery's half-inside the window.

It was just about the fact that it's possible.

> assuming "we have the science".

This isn't really disputable, given how much bigger nature is than nurture. See e.g. POTUS and his dad. Obviously it's not 100%, nothing is, but denying that "we have the science" to massively influence things would be purely out of ideological dislike.

Humans have practiced eugenics on animals on an absurdly huge scale. See domestication and its effects. Humans are animals, the idea that it would somehow be completely different for them has no basis in science.

[mcmcmc]

Lmao you can’t. Eugenics is evil and denies reproductive rights, bodily autonomy at the most basic animal level. It is literally the idea of creating a master race and culling off anyone who doesn’t conform.

If you find yourself in a situation where you want to do something Nazis did — just not that way — you are halfway there.

[undeveloper]

yea, it's very suspect. regardless, every idiot who claims to have "found the science" has failed to produce anything beyond studies of n=10 (10 is PUSHING IT).

[WillAdams]

My solution for this is to rate-limit political contributions --- they may only be made in an amount equal to what a minimum-wage worker might reasonably be expected to donate from a week's wages (say 10% of hourly min. wage * 40), as a physically written out check or money order physically signed by hand (at least an "X" mark) and mailed in a first-class envelope with at least a similarly signed cover letter explaining the reason for the donation.

If this causes the extinction of the political lobbyist, I'm fine with that.

[malfist]

Most of the money in politics isn't direct contribution to candidates, it's PACs.

PACs are just groups that do advocacy of some sort. Some do things like advise congress people on legislation they'd like passed, some run ads to campaign for positions or candidates, some advocate for movements.

What they're not supposed to be doing is directly coordinating with a candidate, or running ads just for a candidate. But that's a line that has been continually fuzzed.

An example of a good PAC might be something like the HRC (human rights commission) that campaigns for LGBTQ rights.

[WillAdams]

It should apply to the checks which they issue as well --- either they are popular and will have lots of work to put volunteers to, or they will have to hire lots of min. wage folks to make marks on letters and checks --- think of it as a job creation program.

[ashleyn]

This is the central problem with Citizens United. The supreme court tends to be unusually deferential with 1A cases and ruled that infinite money can go into formally unaffiliated PACs. Undoing this would require activist judges or a constitutional amendment.

[uncletscollie]

Activist judges?

The supreme court is majority activist judges. Why cant new judges undo the old activist judges wrongly decided law? Why are the other new judges suddenly activists?

[parineum]

In the case of Citizens United, it's actually a pretty straightforward case. Without a constitutional amendment, it would take a very unorthodox reading of the first amendment.

The "problem" with Citizens United is that it's a very clear case.

[WillAdams]

Corporations are amoral immortals who cannot be placed behind bars. Therefore they should never be given the rights of human beings.

[parineum]

They don't have the rights of human beings. Humans don't lose their rights because they are in a corporation, that is the outcome of Citizens United.

"A corporation is people" is the singular of "corporations are people". Anyone saying anything different is lying or misinformed.

Think about all the times someone who definitely knew better implied that it meant a corporation is a person and trust them less.

[jmcgough]

PACs and dark money have been a disaster for this country

[reddozen]

must be pretty upsetting that sitting president Trump has tens of billions in 2 dark money shitcoins and owns a majority stake in crypto company World Liberty Financial. Just 0.001% of the total sum Hunter Biden was allegedly corrupt over (no evidence).

who could have seen this coming.. twice.

[Gigachad]

These days instead of paying out politicians you just buy social media bots or even the whole platform to push propaganda to the general public so they start agreeing with you.

[Ray20]

Private money in politics is one of the counterbalances to the emergence of a totalitarian state. The government gains a huge advantage over the opposition due to the fact that it is the government and receives free media coverage.

[root_axis]

What's to prevent them from just ignoring those restrictions?

[CGMthrowaway]

Bundling would get around that to some extent

[WillAdams]

1 check would require 2 x marks and 1 envelope and 1 stamp (or other indicia) --- just paying minimum-wage folks for stuffing envelopes and making "X"s would probably result in this being equivalent to a job creation program, and it would probably save the USPS.

[psychoslave]

You can't find that because any concentration of power means the corruption forces have only very limited surface to pressure, and all the more that surface is actually easy to swap with one molded for even more corruption convenience.

People ever rule through direct decisions or are enslaved into alien agendas on which they have no agency.

[nicoburns]

In countries like the US and UK with FPTP voting systems, proportional representation would help a lot. As it would make it a lot more viable for candidates outside of the main two parties to stand (and actually have a chance of winning).

(although in a UK context, it's looking highly likely that we'll have a "changing of the guard" in the next election with both Reform and Green party making significant inroads at the expense of the more established Conservative and Labour parties)

[kypro]

FPTP will just guarantee that nothing meaningful can be done. Too much compromise in decision making is bad.

Personally I think ideal set up is a system which grants quite a of power to a small handful of people, but makes it very easy for those people to be removed. This is typically the model that works best in business and other cooperative pursuits anyway.

Throwing more people in the room with different opinions will ensure significant decisions can almost never made. Any policy too far to the right or too far to left will be watered down. The result is that you'll be led by centrists who can't really change anything and anything they do change will be disliked by everyone.

[sally_glance]

Great idea, except that I don't think it's easy to make sure we don't grant too much power. Basically this idea is the core of representative democracy. Problem is, the people who have been granted a lot of power are very good at finding loopholes to avoid or remove the safeguards we put in place...

[kypro]

There is a trade-off here for sure... I don't agree so much that the goal is to limit power though, but to ensure any power given to leaders is conditional.

I think ideally you want a CEO type leader of a country who has a lot of executive power, but that leader has a board who provides oversight, then ultimately the public are all shareholders who collectively hold the company and it's leaders to account.

I'd argue generally speaking we want to grant more power to our leaders than we do today, but make them much easier to remove and have a well design constitution so certain things are legally impossible in the same way a CEO can't just decide they now have 100% voting rights and no longer need to listen to share holders.

The solution to a bad CEO isn't to have 10 CEOs. The solution is for the shareholders to boot them for a better CEO.

[sally_glance]

Yeah, for companies this works because there are external (government) entities providing and enforcing a framework. For countries, there is nothing like that. The traditional solution is separation of powers inside of the country I guess, but this requires limiting individual power. Also it's quite complicated in practice and requires a complex legal framework which is sadly often weak to "workarounds" again.

[krupan]

Government is doing stuff that's awful and whenever people propose solutions to this someone always complains that government "won't be able to get anything done." That's the point! What are you worried about?

[watwut]

> FPTP will just guarantee that nothing meaningful can be done.

Because congress and senate in America are soooo active ...

[drdaeman]

It’s easy to solve concentration of power, just distribute it more. Nowadays we can have quite large distributed systems.

It’s nigh impossible to invent a system that truly formalizes collective will with the goal of optimizing for everyone’s best long-term interests, minimizing unhappiness.

[rapind]

100% agree, and I think that's sort of what was intended with a lot of democratic government setups. What we fail to realize though (or maybe just remember) is that these systems will ALWAYS be under attack by those who want more power always looking for attack surfaces. (We seem to be under attack by almost all, if not all, current billionaires!)

For example in the US, the executive order is a massive problem. Citizens united as well. And for all democracies the natural appeal of strongman politics is a huge problem.

Every attempt at government overreach really needs to be questioned. I don't say rejected, just questioned. How will it be used by future powers? Is the tradeoff worth it? Can it be temporary? Do we even have a way to claw it back if it turns out to be detrimental? Is it too subtle and nuanced that the majority will miss seeing it? etc.

[ranger_danger]

> these systems will ALWAYS be under attack by those who want more power

I think this is an inherent human problem that prevents us from overcoming it... history has proven that the more equal everyone is, and the less individual ownership they have, the lazier and more bored they get.

Look at the previous attempts at socialism... people stop caring when there's no goal to work towards, they can't all be doing the same thing and just be happy, because humans are naturally competitive. We desire things other people don't have, like possessions, money, or power.

[Ray20]

> the lazier and more bored they get

People don't become "lazy". They're lazy from the beginning. Laziness is something they overcome for personal gain. And if the system promises fewer personal gains for overcoming laziness, then why bother?

[ranger_danger]

There can be other valid perspectives than your own

[psychoslave]

Well we can look at attempts at socialism and see that some failed, some were successful: https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/successful-sociali...

But of course success is relative to some cultural values. We could just as well wonder about success and failure in implementation of any political system.

The most remarkable trait of humans is cognitive plasticity, so determining any natural tendency that would be more inate than acquired is just a game of pretending there are hypothetical humans living out of any cultural influence that would still exhibit predominent behavioral traits.

Competition is a social construct. There are people out there whose biggest concern is keeping focus on enjoying what they are, freeing their attention from the illusion of possession, avoiding any financial/material bounds they can and staying away of contingent hierarchical servitudes.

They are also many people who holds desires for both of these perspectives, or any interpolation/extrapolation that they can suggest.

[drdaeman]

We aren’t inherently competitive, we just want nice things. It takes a very special mindset to want others to have less, and society should actively discourage such lines of thought by countering them with examples of how things never end well.

This said, I wasn’t suggesting socialism or equality or anything like that - only minimizing long-term unhappiness. That’s the only thing that I could not think an argument against - like why would anyone rational ever want others to be long-term unhappy?

[rapind]

Is there a way to accept but also limit greed that is reliable and durable?

Like a pragmatic meritocracy. We accept that there will be cheaters, and we won't catch or stop them all, but we have some hard limits. Do we care if you stop working so hard once you hit $1b? Maybe we'd even prefer that you did stop working (against societies interest!)?

This wouldn't even remotely resemble the communism bugaboo. It's basically saying, yes greed can be good, but at some point it gets ridiculous.

[quantummagic]

Except it's very easy to "sell" government overreach. Whenever a plane flies into a tower, or flu season is extra scary, people will clamor for strict government authority. With every such event, the government gains capabilities and tendencies that always end up with a few people having outsized power over the masses.

[rapind]

Yes, but I don't think it's so straightforward. I think there are bad actors marketing this overreach. Like the surveillance industry for the Patriot Act (tech, defence, telcom, maybe compliance vendors?). I don't think their goal is to create a distopia, but we should always be looking at incentives for large government programs.

[quantummagic]

It is straightforward, and very predictable. Bad actors, aren't an anomaly.

[9dev]

Which is exactly why we need a strong federation, and broad participation in democratic process across the bank. Many people can't even be bothered to vote, much less participate in their local, municipal governments. That must change.

[psychoslave]

Voting is meaningless if it's not for a program with people charged to implement it being on revokable mandat if they go out of the rails of the planned destination.

Instead general elections are theaters were all that is voted is which clown is going to have a blank check.

[riddlemethat]

In capitalism, the rich get powerful; in socialism, the powerful get rich.

[direwolf20]

In enlightenment, you realise rich and powerful are synonyms.

[root_axis]

The issue isn't representation, it's division. The party that won is being well represented with respect to the values of their constituents, whereas the opposition views it as a daily nightmare. These two visions of the world cannot be reconciled.

[anon7000]

Representation needs to be less about black/white political ideology and more about the specific needs of various people. Farmers need representation, white color workers need representation, small business owners need representation, but their needs are all different, and don’t really boil down to left/right politics. The government isn’t treated as a forum to collaborate on solving problems, but as a playground for the powerful to create boogeymen that get people riled up.

[root_axis]

That makes sense, but for most voters the left/right politics matters more than the economic identities you mentioned.

Most people don't care that much about the economy, they make up their minds based on other issues, then find a way to rationalize the state of the economy with that choice after the fact.

[lunarboy]

But the thing is your local gov & economic policies (tax codes, bonds, projects, trade) matter to your actual daily life and retirement far more than left v right. They just play that game to keep you enraged and baited. And people do actually care about gas, groceries, and inflation; they just don't vote in their own objective interest

[overfeed]

> white color workers need representation [...]

Don't worry - it's still there under the orange makeup. jk; I think you may have misspelled "collar"

[antonymoose]

I agree while also disagreeing. It feels to me like the Democrats seemingly always get their way while in power while Republican presidents with a congressional majority get little to nothing done.

To me they have the classic problem as with non-profits: “If we solve the problem we cease to have a cause to exist.”

Taking a look at what’s been accomplished this past year, it’s a lot of token Executive Orders on renaming things, a token deportation effort, no material change on mass legal immigration, nothing happening on the voter ID front.

It’s just theater until they lose out in the midterms and they to rally their base again in 2028 to “Save America” or “Keep It Great” or whatever hokum.

Democrats will undo it all when the pendulum shifts.

[watwut]

First, republicans blocked everything including formarly own proposals when Obama adopted it ... ever since Obama. It is other way round, the republican party is getting what it worked for, because democrats are weak opposition.

> Democrats will undo it all when the pendulum shifts.

It is impossible. Will they give reparations to blue cities? From what money?

Likewise institutions - it is easier to corrupt and destroy them then to build them anew.

Amd crutially, the right wing supreme court needs ro be enlarged or new constitution written for the bad precedents to be changed.

> token deportation effort,

The whole thing is bigger size then most militaries.

> no material change on mass legal immigration,

The whole classes of legal immigrants were suddenly ruled illegal and are violently mistreated.

> nothing happening on the voter ID front.

Republicans are trying to make voting for blie places harder.

[Saline9515]

On the immigration front, please note that Obama deported more or about-as-much migrants per year than Trump in 2025. I don't really get why democrats oppose this, while they cheered the same policy a decade ago.

[wat10000]

The problem isn't deporting illegal immigrants, the problem is revoking legal status, abusing detainees, hurting people on the street, and the occasional murder.

[Saline9515]

Obama years had also the same kind of abuse and killings by the border patrol. At least 56 recorded deaths of immigrants caused by ICE and custody[0]. Some murders were settled to avoid a trial.

Protests against ICE were much smaller then (billionaires didn't fund NGOs to organise them either), so it was easier for the agency to operate as well, and it was quickly memory-holed.

[0] https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/re...

[efnx]

Because it is not the same deportation policy.

[Saline9515]

Trump has to deal with the aftermath of the Biden years, where unauthorized immigrant population reached 14 million in 2023. It is also harder to expel them if they are inside the US rather than at the border.

[direwolf20]

Democrats always get their way because their way is to do nothing. They rarely roll back all the stuff the republicans do in the term before.

[efnx]

The Republicans this term have gotten plenty done, it's just nothing that helps average people. Their wins can't be widely celebrated and so they aren't, as much.

https://www.project2025.observer/

[conception]

I would say one side is being told that they should believe it a daily nightmare, e.g. people on the right really disliking obamacare but loving the aca.

[reddozen]

The problem in America is that more than half the country does not live in a shared factual reality. Like:

* Jan 6 was a fedsurrection, and also simultaneously all innocent people that needed pardoning (Pardoning the feds?)

* World Liberty Financial receiving billions selling out American interests worldwide? Never heard of this but Burisma was worse!

* The Raffensperger call was no big deal there were attorneys on that call. Trump's personal (now disbarred) attorneys, of course, not there to represent America's interests but how's that the big deal?

* Also who's Raffensperger? But did you see those boxes under the table! What do you mean the clip is longer than 6 seconds that's all I saw on the infinity scrolling apps.

[rchaud]

There is one reality that's undeniable: that political donations by individuals are strictly monitored and can land you in jail if violated, but PAC money is untraceable and unlimited. That fact alone has led to stacking the deck in favor of lobbyists and monied interests at the expense of the electorate and national institutions.

[reddozen]

I assume you mean Citizens United v FEC. Should they not have been allowed to release their documentary? Its not an easy question and there's a reason none of the dissents directly address Roberts' opinion.

[5ykh]

I’m not a lawyer and won’t address the merits or lack thereof of the ruling on the particulars of the case. The effect of the ruling was a sweeping change in money in politics. It effectively legalized an oligarchic take over of governance. It’s a fact that money and advertising largely determine outcomes in battleground races. Tipping those races, along with the structural power imbalance in federal politics, means that control of the government is relatively easy and cheap.

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/15-years-after-c...

[reddozen]

I don't know if you read your own source but it's incredibly unconvincing "research" slop. In their "case study" they just point to a particular race and the money the candidates received and infer it's bad.

No analysis if the politician was acting against their constituents interests... Pretty embarrassing paper to put their name on. I can see why there's no coauthors.

Also they conflate political ad spending with issue awareness ad spending, which is a borderline malicious.

[runjake]

This comment is not well-formatted and a bit "zomg", but an important mention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...

This is the infamous call where Trump, according to the recorded tapes, tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by demanding that Raffensperger "find 11,780 votes".

[patrickmay]

Power will always attract the corrupt and corruptible. The problem is the power. Reducing the size and scope of the federal government and devolving power to the states, communities, and individuals is the only way to minimize the negative effects of humans with too much authority.

[simplify]

Power is not the problem, because power exists regardless of who owns it.

We the people actually have a relatively high amount of power in our states and communities. We just don't use it. The real solution is to convince the masses to pay attention, which is harder today than it ever was.

[AppleAtCha]

This assumes that govt and individual families are the only players in the game. Now as in other historical periods large corporations hold arguably more power than either of those groups and reining in govt leaves little obstacle to them consolidating even more power and wielding it globally.

[ranger_danger]

Reducing the size of the government just makes it where billionaires and corporations control everything instead, which we're already seeing now. You'd need a way to reign in their power/wealth as well.

[eikenberry]

+1... Reducing government is part of power reduction, not the sum total. To reduce the size of government you need to reduce the size of things it manages. So, for instance, anti-trust would need a huge buf in enforcement to eliminate concentrations of power in business. I'd think strongly progressive inheritance tax would cover the rest.

[worik]

Abolishing private property is another way of defanging power

[eikenberry]

Has this been tried successfully anywhere? Seems like mostly a dead end as long as we have resource scarcity.

[837263292029]

Let's start with your private property.

[mackeye]

95% of the commenters on this post own no private property.

[colechristensen]

You can't have truly representative government if the people voting don't understand or care that they're not being represented particularly well.

It is apparently not much of a risk to your seat if you don't represent the interests of your people because the people have become tribal and it is only their tribe they vote for with very little effective criticism of the leaders in their tribe. (it's not that complaints are nonexistent, they just don't result in anything)

[recroad]

It's a representative government, it just represents Israel via AIPAC.

[johnnyanmac]

That's a lot of work to do. It ultimately works off the issue that most voters are disengaged, while the most interested parties are very engaged.

Corruption is happening out in the open and there's still so many people shrugging in response. One good push back from everyone all at once would fix a lot of things quickly. But that implies the people are united and not instead driven into manufactured conflict by said interested parties. It's basically enough that we're in a post truth era as of now. I don't know how we come back from that

Anyways, repealing Citizens United would be a good first step.

[0_____0]

[warning/apology - this comment regards USpol specifically]

Our media landscape has people focusing on basically everything except what we need to be. I am not sure that liberal democracy will survive the information age. So much effort goes into the process of argument, we aren't as a whole really thinking about how to solve our very real problems.

China's technocratic rule, after some, shall we say, growing pains (hunger pains? Is it fair to say that when millions of people starved to death?), seems a lot better at creating a coherent strategy for economic growth and international soft power.

One of my great fears is that democracy was the right model in the past decades and centuries, but that it won't keep up with the laser focused technocratic rule that a competent bureaucracy can potentially muster.

[vharuck]

Authoritarian governments are always more efficient than democracies. Their flaw is that citizens have no say in what goal will be efficiently pursued. When a technocratic authoritarian is in power, things improve overall (but there are still many "inefficient" people left behind or crushed). But when a cruel or incompetent authoritarian takes control, things hit lows that sound democracies wouldn't allow. Lows that take generations to recover from.

[0_____0]

While I like your message here, I don't think authoritarianism is actually more efficient (efficient at what?) usually. Because often it goes hand in hand with economic and social extraction, which is inherently inefficient.

But I take and am a bit heartened by your main point - while the best case authoritarian regime can plan and execute more quickly and with greater efficiency than representative government, the worst case authoritarian govt is much much worse than the worst case possible with a functional democracy.

[watwut]

They are not more effective. They basically always end up as highly currupt ineffective mess.

[thwarted]

> China's technocratic rule…seems a lot better at creating a coherent strategy for economic growth and international soft power.

This requires that those in/with the power actually have altruistic, or at least not solely selfish, concerns. How rampant is government/bureaucratic corruption in China?

I elided the population starving part in order to not distract from the possibility of truly selfless governance strategy. It may very well be the case that millions starving is considered "acceptable losses" ("the needs of the billions outweigh the needs of the millions") in executing on that strategy. Which, make no mistake, would be truly tragic and should be undesirable. But that not everyone sees it that way is really what we're fighting against.

"I have a machine that feeds everyone, no one shall go hungry."

"But mah profits!"

"You only need profits so you yourself can eat, but that's now a solved problem"

"But mah profits. How will we know who's winning?"

[0_____0]

Corruption definitely happens in China but even as a US person I can think of at least one major case where there were very real consequences for that. How many US govt officials have been executed for corruption? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Zaiyong

Millions starving during the Great Leap forward was very much NOT part of the plan, it was the result of some very misguided agricultural practices.

My point is that in the same period, China has gone from "oops we accidentally caused the 2nd largest mass starvation event in history" to "we have the largest high speed rail network and manufacturing base in the world and nobody is even close."

While the US went from "what's a postwar superpower to do? How bout some megaprojects?" To "I'm drowning in entitlements and houses now cost the same as the average lifetime GDP per capita".

[Saline9515]

China is so technocratic and efficient that it has been faking growth and population statistics for the last decade, hides youth unemployment numbers, and raids due diligences companies who may provide external investors more realistic data about the economy or local companies.

Also, China has its own real estate bubble, so it is not immune to those issues. At least in the US people have some recourse at the individual level.

[michaelt]

> It ultimately works off the issue that most voters are disengaged, while the most interested parties are very engaged.

That, and the fact winning a senate seat costs on average $26.53 million [1]

You can't self-fund, that's 152 years of your $174,000 salary.

Where do you suppose the money comes from, and what do you suppose motivates the donors?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United...

[yieldcrv]

The US should have direct referendums at the national level, just like most of us have at the state level

Most - maybe all - hot button issues have much more moderate takes than any party national committee positions, in the bluest of blue states and reddest of red states the actual individuals have much more consensus on every issue

Whatever the founder’s initial reasoning or lack of inspiration for national referendums for federal law passage doesn’t seem to be relevant today

[wwweston]

You either win big enough under the current system, with its system problems, or you never win to improve it.

Imagining better systems before doing that is just a form of xkcd’s nerd sniping.

And the biggest challenge to representative government might well be that most people are terrible at engaging it productively. Voting is the bare minimum and most people don’t vote (let alone organize and lobby effectively). Some significant portion of those that do vote can’t correctly draw a line between policies they’d like and candidates who intend to work on delivering, and that’s before we get to the portion of the population that may not correctly anticipate policy outcomes or even really understand policy as a concept.

The system has actually been functioning surprisingly well considering, and as catastrophic as recent elections could be seen as, the outcome arguably represents a reasonable degree of fidelity to the input from the electorate.

If we still hold free and fair elections, the task of those who want representative government is to change enough of the electorate first.

[titzer]

The only thing that changes behavior is consequences.

If there is no justice system enforcing the law and its requisite consequences, then there is no justice. I don't think those in power understand the anarchy that their intentional dismantling of the justice system has and will cause, and how the blowback from that anarchy will be visited upon them.

[jfengel]

If that were true, people would be unhappy with their representatives. For the most part they seem pleased with them. They think everyone else's representatives are corrupt, but in fact they are also doing what their constituents have told them to do.

The corrupt ones are us, the voters. We hate each other and send our Congresspeople to do as much damage as they can to the others.

[jimbokun]

Post Citizens United, that’s going to require a Constitutional amendment.

And the corrupt, bought politicians are the ones who would need to ratify it.

[asdff]

Let's not act like they weren't corrupt and bought before Citizens United

[parasubvert]

This is unhelpful fatalism and actively dissuades reform. Not all politicians are "corrupt and bought". And further, there is an enormous difference before and after this Supreme Court decision.

It costs money to run for office. Before Citizens United, it was hard, limited, traceable donations, from individuals. No corporations, no soft money, no legal dark money. Now money has flooded in, with far less accountability.

[Affric]

What is interesting is that, as demonstrated by mass media and social media’s influences over our politics in the last century we can be motivated, but we have let power become too concentrated in the wrong hands.

China’s qualifications for influencers thing is interesting by fundamentally doesn't address the power of social media publishers.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I think this is entirely the wrong way to think about this. While better elected representatives and officials would always be a nice thing, what we need is to ensure that we design systems around them that mitigate their corruption and double standards. We were even (collectively, across humanity) doing better and better at that until not that long ago.

[bsenftner]

We need regulations on the politicians because, clearly, their "public good use" far exceeds their contribution back.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I didn't really mean "regulations" but more a political (and civic) system in which a given individual's corruption etc. gets caught quickly and/or there are too many disincentives for them to to do much based on it.

[leptons]

>Until we find a way to ensure political candidates aren't corrupt and bought off

The US elected a convicted fellon, the corruption is a feature.

[mcmcmc]

Sometimes I wish we’d bring back tarring and feathering. “People should not be afraid of their governments …” and all that

[asdff]

>there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack of accountability from them

The hard part is this has been true going all the way back to the stone age ever since we elevated the first person arbitrarily to chief. There has been no model of government developed since that is immune to this. I really don't know how to get around this and it depresses me that we will always be held back by the slimiest who abuse systems.

[einpoklum]

> lack of truly representative government.

There is no such thing as (truly) representative government. To the limited extent that groups of people can at all be represented (which is a whole other questions) - governments are generally not about doing that. Yes, many world states have electoral systems where people can vote for one of several (lists of) candidates or parties, but the claim that in the normal and uncorrupted scenario, the elected properly represent the populace/citizenry - does not, I believe, stand scrutiny.

Which is to say, don't try to "find a way in which candidates aren't corrupt and bought off"; that is in the core of democracies in money/capital-based economies. At best, the elected will act according to some balance of influences by different social forces, some being more popular and some being powerful and moneyed elites or individuals. If you want that to change, the change needs to be structural and quite deep, undermining state sovereignty and exchange-based economy.

[beloch]

Implement campaign spending limits, regulate or ban PAC's, and commit to an ongoing effort to stomp whatever new methods big-money comes up with to influence politics.

We do most of this in Canada and our leaders seem to be less influenced by big money. (Nevermind that we recently elected a billionaire PM...) The vast expense of running a U.S. style election campaign virtually guarantees that U.S. politicians are all bought and paid for.

[willhslade]

Carney isn't a billionaire, right? He's been a bureaucrat, not a plutocrat.

[chr15m]

Bring back sortition, within elected parties.

[netbioserror]

Colossally awful take. Corruption is an intractable problem in human history. Power is a magnet for the worst people, and every system we invent can be exploited in innumerable ways. The only variable is how long the people of any individual society can remain free and prosperous before their decline. Temporary recoveries have only happened by lopping off massive chunks of empire, implementing extreme monetary reforms, and/or a switch to full autocracy. Every other outcome is terminal decline.

[octoberfranklin]

Term limits for congress.

[vunderba]

Same for the Supreme Court. 20 years. A lifetime appointment is no different than a king.

[octoberfranklin]

That's not an elected office.

[vunderba]

I never said it was.

[tremon]

And age limits for congress.

[dyauspitr]

No, our problems are much bigger in that we have a populace easily led by tribal sensibilities. Theses scumbags aren’t coming from nowhere, we’re electing them to these positions.

[dbspin]

Sortation.

[RealityVoid]

Sortition?