[vjulian]

Revolution, not election. We need a new governance framework in the US. I believe it’s genuinely silly to think this type of activity is limited to one party or one administration or that it is new.

I believe the Constitution and related artefacts should be stored in the British Museum with other historical documents. Civic religion needs to be done away with.

[bushbaba]

That assumes the new system will be better. History tells us otherwise

[embedding-shape]

Well, local history in the US, judged by most current Americans, would probably say the current system is better than the previous one, and the current one spawned from a revolution. Maybe the second (third?) time it'll incrementally improve at least.

[umanwizard]

The current system is the result of hundreds of years of gradual democratization and economic development, not the revolution. For an example of the US without the American Revolution, look at Canada. They’re doing fine. Here in the US, the Revolution didn’t cause life to change at all for the vast majority of people.

Whether the majority of people believe that or not has more to do with the place of the Revolution in our national mythology than with what actually happened in reality.

[AftHurrahWinch]

The Revolution allowed a new system to be built, but it is a teleological fallacy to point to the current system as the result. Centuries of trial, error, and institutional hardening led to the system current Americans would judge.

The first post-revolution organizational system of the US, described in the Articles of Confederation, is very different than the difficult and contingent pivot to a federal system. Almost a million US citizens died in the transition.

[vkou]

If revolutions inevitably make government worse, humanity collectively must be in the worst form of government in human history.

[d1sxeyes]

Almost every new system of governance has been better than what came before.

[intended]

This... is a very selective remembering of history, no?

[johngossman]

"Almost every" is a very strong statement. But even granted that, the interregnum periods (civil wars and revolutions) tend to be so horrific that they are wise to avoid. In fact, people like Plato, Machiavelli, and Hobbes who lived through revolutions tended to come to the cynical conclusion that any system of government was better than a civil war. I don't agree with that conclusion, but I'd rather see the system reform itself than jump immediately to "tear up the constitution and start over"

[MSFT_Edging]

No matter how much you hate Communists, you must admit the fall of the USSR was catastrophic in terms of quality of life and life expectancy. All the public goods and services were sold off en masse and children were driven to prostitution to avoid starvation.

~30 years later all the quick investors of the privatization run the country and have been sending all their able bodied men into a drone-based meat grinder with no end in sight.

[surgical_fire]

Which is why we are still living in nomadic tribes following chieftains.

No wait

[johngossman]

It just feels that way sometimes

[stackghost]

>We need a new governance framework in the US.

And what does that new framework look like to you?

[0xffff2]

Not GP, but I think there are a few things that could be done either through a complete re-write of the constitution or through amendments if that process somehow becomes tenable again.

1. Massively increase the size of congress. Modern technology makes this feasible in a way that it wasn't when the size was capped. More congress critters means it's harder to buy off a majority of them.

2. Re-write the first amendment to significantly limit political speech. The specifics of this are obviously very thorny, but reversing Citizens United and drastically limiting the amount of money that is spent on elections is necessary to have _any_ chance of saving the country.

[underlipton]

1 is something I've been saying for a while. One rep for every 35k residents was the count at one point, right? I hear it's something like one for every 800k now. And constituency shouldn't be based on geography; if the most important issue to me is whatever, I should be able to fill my ranked-choice ballot with candidates that support Whatever. We can work out the mechanics, but the point would be to have a legislative body where each rep had 35k distinct names behind them.

2 is dicey and I would like to try campaign finance reform first.

I don't want to throw everything out because that's how you get slavery and The Handmaid's Tale. At the same time, I'll gladly acknowledge that a lot of our institutions were rotten from the founding and to their core, and their dismantling maybe not necessary but certainly suitable for a reborn America that leaves much of its baggage behind.

[0xffff2]

2 is campaign finance reform. The only meaningful campaign finance reform is going to come with limits on political speech. Otherwise you just get the same amount of spend with even more of it being funneled through PACs.

[underlipton]

Campaign finance reform gets rid of private financing of PACs and Super PACS altogether. You might call that limiting speech, and I guess it is, in a way, but it's not a restriction for its own sake, but rather to emphasize that actual main reform: public financing (and necessarily limited).

[wellthisisgreat]

> 1. Massively increase the size of congress. Modern technology makes this feasible in a way that it wasn't when the size was capped. More congress critters means it's harder to buy off a majority of them.

Passionately agree with this!

[tastyfreeze]

I agree with 1. 2 is more of a reform of current law rather than an amendment. I would like to see the 17th amendment repealed also. Capping representatives greatly skewed the distribution of power in congress. The balance of congressional power was harmed equally by making senators popularly elected instead of appointed by state legislatures to represent the state government.

[metabagel]

> I believe it’s genuinely silly to think this type of activity is limited to one party

No, it is mostly just the one party.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Mass immigration from all other parts of the world would seem to completely disagree with you.

[saltyoldman]

Reason - communication with millions of people became free.

Hacks were found in the US that distribute free money, and that was communicated to millions of people.

People showed up for said free money.