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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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I never really cared for politics until very recently, so i always thought its discourse would be grounded in logic and not logical fallacies. So i am quite shocked.
Sorry that the reality is that most humans who are pursuing power are doing it simply for powers' sake because they're self-centered garbage.
Douglas Adams nailed it down in 1980.
IMO the best feature of democracy is not that it results in better selection of who gets to lead, because it doesn't really - the vast majority of the electorate is not educated in the sorts of things they'd need to be educated in to make truly good decisions about this. The best feature is that every few years we "throw the bums out" and put a new batch of people in charge.
I used to be kind of ambivalent about term limits, I figured it was kind of suboptimal to have to get rid of a leader who's doing well at some point. But with the size of the population of most democracies there's really no constraint on the pool of perfectly adequate candidates to draw on. I'm starting to think that "one and done" might be an even better approach, at least for the highest levels. Make it so that there's no motivation whatsoever to cling to power. Do the same with congressmen and senators, perhaps. Let them prove their capabilities with a political career in local politics, where it's less important if someone ends up with some kind of corrupt fiefdom because the higher levels of government can keep them in check.
I absolutely agree, a lot of this can be mitigated by the right kinds of regulations...
Bear with me a minute, this goes pretty far back...
https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/3370
But in 2007, the New Zealand government launched a wiki to allow NZ residents to help define the language of a new police law bill, to ensure there was a more equitable way to get people involved, and it's been kicking around in my head for a long time.
We could reduce congresspeople to figureheads who just vote on bills if we really built a big system like that around every bill that comes to congress, always letting citizens be involved. Of course, it would require rigorous controls, tight security, and likely need you would need to provide photo ID/Social Security number to be able to access the site to prove you're a citizen and not a foreign actor. However, if citizens had more clear access and control to drafting laws, a lot of what incentivizes congresspeople to take bribes from lobbyists would be taken away because now the lobbyists have to lobby involved citizens on changing the language. Lobbyists can't just write corporation friendly bills for congresspeople when the citizens are directly involved in drafting bills to their final form.
Also, fucking Version Control on bills for fucks sake. I want names attached to each sentence in every bill that is put before congress. No more of this "sharing the blame" shit by not attributing who wrote what part of each bill. Fucking own it, the tech has been there to monitor this since the 70's.
Sortition has the same benefit.
At one point it was more grounded, but that was before Rush Limbaugh.
You should try reading actual political theory. You'll find that western politics isn't and has never been grounded in reality. It does not have a material basis and as such it gains support primarily through the people's emotions, especially fear and anger.
Here's some easy reading to get you started
I don't expect to shove books like this in your face and actually have you immediately read all of them. You may not be at the part of your political developement where you have any motivation to do that. So here are some youtube channels that cover the material in them and apply that material to modern reality in a more easily digestable way. These are great resources that can teach you a lot but they are not and should not replace reading actual political theory. In my experience these helped develop my understanding of political economy to the point where I had sufficient motivation to read that theory.
None of these people get everything perfect all the time but they are generally good in my experience. Best of luck learning.
Appreciate the recommendations man. I'll be sure to check em out