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The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 year ago by spaceghoti@lemmy.one to c/politics@lemmy.world

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...Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.

Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.

And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.

Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?

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[-] variaatio@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Doesn't matter that parties aren't mentioned. Political parties are inevitable predictable outcome of the ruleset.

Also actually one of the biggest fixes USA could have is getting rid of single winner elections districts. Well President has to be single winner (though again why the heck electors should be single winner or even better why have electors in first place). However there is no reason to have single winner legislative body elections, since there is large number of members anyway. Only reason it is that way is, because Congress decided to make law about it.

Since one key truth is: there is only so much one can do with the ruleset to make things fairer while having just single winner. All the other votes get wasted by default, except the winner. The only amount of power one can win is 100% or 0%.

To have better proportionality one has to use multiple winners (or mixed member proportional, which is still multiple winners just indirectly via the party quotients). Since it allows dividing political power in more granular amounts than 0% and 100%. Like say 33%, 25% or 20%.

After that one can start talking, we'll how should we allocate the winner of each for example 25% share of power in the district.

This would also increase political activity, since previously apathetic voters would know "my candidate doesn't have to carry the whole district, we are just aiming to get 1 of the 5 seats. That is much more achievable. Yeah the big two probably grab say 2 each, but hey with good luck there is realistic change we get that 1/5".

Where as there was snowballs chance smaller player could take a single winner district as whole.

this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023

101 points (89.1% liked)

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