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Which leads to my next platform, quadruple the size of congress.. We're at something like 750,000 citizens per Rep right now, it was fewer than 200,000 in the

Which leads to my next platform, quadruple the size of congress.. We're at something like 750,000 citizens per Rep right now, it was fewer than 200,000 in the early 1900's. It would become much more expensive to buy a sizable chunk of congress and would become untenable for many companies to set up operations in every district to corrupt politics.

PaulHoule 11y ago
Keep elections for president but draft people for Congress; keep pay and benefits the same as they are. You could certainly corrupt some people randomly sampled from the American population, but you would also get the cops called on you, your face punched, sent to the ER with a cap in their ass, etc. In the current system, you have to be the kind of person who can see the "clothes that belong to the Emperor" that are also "clothes that are invisible". If you pick out random people you will get some who call a spade a spade.
- kej 11y ago
  This was a fundamental part of Athenian democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition We trust it for juries, it's not too outlandish to think it could work for policy-making, too.
kej 11y ago
Especially interesting when you consider that the founders thought 1:30,000 was an appropriate ratio. This was the only issue of the Constitutional Convention where Washington expressed an opinion (lowering it from 1:40,000).
protomyth 11y ago
The size of Congress isn't the main problem with funding infrastructure, the Senate is. Your Senators aren't directly accountable to the people in your state making the budget. I get people stopped trusting their state legislator in picking their Senator, but that has caused a lot of conflict. I would suggest a better fix, given transportation and communication advances, to have the sitting Governor of each state act as the only Senator (thus saving the taxpayers about 1/2 on staff costs).
- Retric 11y ago
  I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    > I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I don't think mixing across levels is a bad thing. I want the Senate to be answerable to the people in the state doing the budget. > I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play. I strongly disagree with this one. You basically make sure no rural area has any representation again. Its like basing a Presidential election on popular vote, you get campaigns that run in 20 cities and tell many demographics to pound sand.
    - nickv 11y ago
      As opposed to now where presidential elections are decided by three-four fairly unimportant states?
      - protomyth 11y ago
        Which states do you feel are "unimportant"?
        sammydavis 11y ago
        Since about 1980, only 10 states have been potential swing states. So those 10 get most of the attention (Ohio, Florida). We'd be far better off with direct vote for the prez. I want to make house of rep elections be fore an entire state too, this is one of the few ways to break gerrymandering.
pnut 11y ago
That will quadruple the uselessness of Congress. I feel fairly confident that the political industry would scale nicely to accommodate all those new puppets.
clarkmoody 11y ago
Why not increase the number of states? That way there is more political autonomy for smaller groups. There already exists a large political divide between, say, West and East Washington; upstate New York and NYC; Bay Area and other parts of California. Instead of those population centers exerting their will upon the rest of the state, it would be better to have more & smaller political units that better represent their people.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  I'll tell you why: Congress would be too big. I know this movie was absolutely horrible in several ways, but remember the Galactic Senate in The Phantom Menace? That's basically what you're proposing: it'll be so ridiculously huge that nothing would get done. You can't have a legislature with thousands and thousands of members. What's needed is first to redraw the state borders. I have a post a little above this point outlining my plan for redrawing the borders in the northeast, which would effectively deal with the NYS-vs-NYC problem. Other state borders should also be redrawn. Metro areas should not span multiple states, ever. For a good thought experiment on this idea, go read about "The 38 States" (google it). Some college kids in the 70s came up with this idea to redraw the borders more sensibly so that state borders reflected the local cultures better, and also to reduce the number of overall states for better administrative efficiency. It's only gotten worse since then, with metro areas getting so large and more urbanization of the population. However, one big problem that would still remain is the urban vs. rural conflict. If we redraw borders so more city-dwellers are concentrated in their own city-states, this will give them less power in the Senate (their power in the House should stay the same as the number of Reps is assigned by population). Honestly, I don't know if that's good or bad. Sometimes I really wonder if we shouldn't just scrap our tricameral Presidential Republic form of government and switch to a Westminster parliament like every other advanced nation has. Those don't have the problem where the executive branch is at odds with the legislative branch resulting in a long government shutdown.
  - sammydavis 11y ago
    Love your ideas. I also had the same idea that a single elected body would serve us better. The existing parties would never go for it. What we need is to break down our existing parties into reasonable pieces, have one house, and have that house elect the president. Another idea, Western oregon, Western Washington, and British Columnia should be combined into one state, or maybe their own country. We are pretty similar.

PaulHoule 11y ago

Keep elections for president but draft people for Congress; keep pay and benefits the same as they are. You could certainly corrupt some people randomly sampled from the American population, but you would also get the cops called on you, your face punched, sent to the ER with a cap in their ass, etc. In the current system, you have to be the kind of person who can see the "clothes that belong to the Emperor" that are also "clothes that are invisible". If you pick out random people you will get some who call a spade a spade.

kej 11y ago
This was a fundamental part of Athenian democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition We trust it for juries, it's not too outlandish to think it could work for policy-making, too.

kej 11y ago

Especially interesting when you consider that the founders thought 1:30,000 was an appropriate ratio. This was the only issue of the Constitutional Convention where Washington expressed an opinion (lowering it from 1:40,000).

protomyth 11y ago

The size of Congress isn't the main problem with funding infrastructure, the Senate is. Your Senators aren't directly accountable to the people in your state making the budget. I get people stopped trusting their state legislator in picking their Senator, but that has caused a lot of conflict. I would suggest a better fix, given transportation and communication advances, to have the sitting Governor of each state act as the only Senator (thus saving the taxpayers about 1/2 on staff costs).

Retric 11y ago
I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play.
- protomyth 11y ago
  > I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I don't think mixing across levels is a bad thing. I want the Senate to be answerable to the people in the state doing the budget. > I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play. I strongly disagree with this one. You basically make sure no rural area has any representation again. Its like basing a Presidential election on popular vote, you get campaigns that run in 20 cities and tell many demographics to pound sand.
  - nickv 11y ago
    As opposed to now where presidential elections are decided by three-four fairly unimportant states?
    - protomyth 11y ago
      Which states do you feel are "unimportant"?
      - sammydavis 11y ago
        Since about 1980, only 10 states have been potential swing states. So those 10 get most of the attention (Ohio, Florida). We'd be far better off with direct vote for the prez. I want to make house of rep elections be fore an entire state too, this is one of the few ways to break gerrymandering.

pnut 11y ago

That will quadruple the uselessness of Congress. I feel fairly confident that the political industry would scale nicely to accommodate all those new puppets.

clarkmoody 11y ago

Why not increase the number of states? That way there is more political autonomy for smaller groups. There already exists a large political divide between, say, West and East Washington; upstate New York and NYC; Bay Area and other parts of California. Instead of those population centers exerting their will upon the rest of the state, it would be better to have more & smaller political units that better represent their people.

Grishnakh 11y ago
I'll tell you why: Congress would be too big. I know this movie was absolutely horrible in several ways, but remember the Galactic Senate in The Phantom Menace? That's basically what you're proposing: it'll be so ridiculously huge that nothing would get done. You can't have a legislature with thousands and thousands of members. What's needed is first to redraw the state borders. I have a post a little above this point outlining my plan for redrawing the borders in the northeast, which would effectively deal with the NYS-vs-NYC problem. Other state borders should also be redrawn. Metro areas should not span multiple states, ever. For a good thought experiment on this idea, go read about "The 38 States" (google it). Some college kids in the 70s came up with this idea to redraw the borders more sensibly so that state borders reflected the local cultures better, and also to reduce the number of overall states for better administrative efficiency. It's only gotten worse since then, with metro areas getting so large and more urbanization of the population. However, one big problem that would still remain is the urban vs. rural conflict. If we redraw borders so more city-dwellers are concentrated in their own city-states, this will give them less power in the Senate (their power in the House should stay the same as the number of Reps is assigned by population). Honestly, I don't know if that's good or bad. Sometimes I really wonder if we shouldn't just scrap our tricameral Presidential Republic form of government and switch to a Westminster parliament like every other advanced nation has. Those don't have the problem where the executive branch is at odds with the legislative branch resulting in a long government shutdown.
- sammydavis 11y ago
  Love your ideas. I also had the same idea that a single elected body would serve us better. The existing parties would never go for it. What we need is to break down our existing parties into reasonable pieces, have one house, and have that house elect the president. Another idea, Western oregon, Western Washington, and British Columnia should be combined into one state, or maybe their own country. We are pretty similar.