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Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? The first version of something is rarely the bes

Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. [1] [2] Since the American system forces people into two camps/parties based on ideology instead of the delivered results, the results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. Disagreement is a human condition, not a democratic one. Democracy is just a way to let some ideas win some of the time. There isn't a system in the world that's freed people from disagreement. Humans like disagreement. We want to be creative, original, and unique at times. That requires setting your own path.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Disagreement != divisiveness. E.g. I disagree with you on that point, but I'm not using my hypothetical army of sock puppets to downvote every single of your comments into oblivion from now to eternity. Sometimes, US politics feels more like the latter.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    You're splitting hairs. They're related terms I have no control over an army. I just have me and my own opinion
MichaelBurge 9y ago
> it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. It doesn't have anything about parties in it at all, and leaves it up to the states to decide how to choose their electors. If California or any other state wanted a different system, it could decide to use ranked choice voting right now just like Maine chose last election.
- lyschoening 9y ago
  That could make a difference in the House, but not in the Senate.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Still, pretty nice though?
  - mcv 9y ago
    I think it could be reasonable to have system where the House represents the people (making proportional representation necessary) while the Senate represents the states. As long as the role of the Senate is sufficiently limited and not the core of the legislative process, that could be very reasonable. But it's vital that the people are more important than the states. For example, the House could decide on the laws, with the Senate only deciding whether this is an issue that belongs on the federal level at all. And maybe double checking whether the law is constitutional and in line with existing treaties. If they do the same thing, it makes no sense to have them both.
324343245 9y ago
> Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? Almost certainly. The US was doing fine for most of the 20th century. Globalism is what has brought wages down. Globalism combines the economies of the richest countries with the economies of the poorest in an attempt to "help" poor countries. As rich countries and poor countries combine economies, they move toward economic-equilibrium, which means the people from the poor country get brought out of poverty at the expense of the people in the rich countries. This is fine for the "1%" on the coasts of the united states, but if you're part of rural America you're getting hit very hard by globalism.
- jameshart 9y ago
  The idea that globalism is an attempt to 'help' poor countries needs evidence to support it - I think there are plenty of ways in which globalism has benefitted wealthy countries at the expense of poor ones. In fact, the idea that globalism is 'an attempt' to do something, i.e. a conscious agenda to change the world, rather than just something which just emerged out of commercial activity, also seems a bit of a leap.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    I think that we can once again be reminded that there is only one thing that is worse for poor nations than being exploited by global capitalism. It's that poor nations are not exploited by global capitalism. Then you can look up TED talks by Hans Rosling, and the follow-up reports for UN millennium development goals.
    - Karellen 9y ago
      Can you give a few examples of poor nations that are not being exploited by global capitalism?
      - flerchin 9y ago
        Zimbabwe, Venezuela, North Korea.
phkahler 9y ago
I think most of the division in US politics comes from the way representatives are influenced. By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent. The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in. These issues will not be addressed by the people in power though because they are part of the structures that need to be eliminated.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent Representatives do spend time in their own states. They also need a central place to meet. No country or system does this differently. > The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in. I think rolling back Citizens United, which allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts to candidates' [unaffiliated] campaigns, would be a big practical step in this direction.
  - alistairSH 9y ago
    In addition to rolling back Citizens United would be to re-introduce pork-barrel spending. With changes to the legislative process in the 90s, Congressional leaders lost a strong carrot to keep the rank-and-file members playing along. In the current system, with no carrot, legislators are more inclined to follow the wishes of their constituents. And with extreme gerrymandering, those constituents can be very extreme.
    - unityByFreedom 9y ago
      Pork barrel spending is special interest funding. It's not viewed as a good thing
      - 9y ago
jasonlfunk 9y ago
The constitution we have now isn't the first version. It was created with the ability to be changed with the process of amendments. We have 27 of them so far. More could be added to change the voting system or whatever else, if there was political will to do so; but currently there isn't. (And this is ignoring the idea of the judiciary reading into the constitution new rights that weren't there to begin with.)
- kristofferR 9y ago
  My initial instinct were to agree that while changing the voting system is obviously theoretically possible, it would never happen. Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy? Then I actually researched it a bit, and it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP. [1] That's interesting, and something to be hopeful about. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#List_of_former_FPTP_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Lis...
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP Yeah, to bring alternative ranked voting to the US, it needs to happen at the local level first, as done in Maine.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    > Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy? One can a imagine a situation where Democrats think the change will be safe for them and Republicans will be cast into chaos and in that same situation Republicans think they will be safe and Democrats will be cast into chaos.
xg15 9y ago
Not a US citizen, but my understanding is that the two-party system is not mandated by the constitution, or even encouraged. It's something that developed on top of it, as a consequence of some bad rules (first-past-the-post as you say) but also other factors (campaign financing) Because the beneficiaries of the system get to make the rules, there is also a push to change regulations more and more to favor the two-party system. There are other parties (e.g. greens) it just doesn't make any practical sense to vote for them.
- kristofferR 9y ago
  Your first and your last sentence contradicts each other, in my view. The reason why it doesn't make sense to vote for the greens is the system laid out in the constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
H4CK3RM4N 9y ago
I feel like this is a more general symptom of attempting to apply a democracy where every citizen's is valued equally in a very large population. At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion. This line of reasoning is a large part of the reason that Rousseau suggested that societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy[1]. America has an aristocracy emerging in it's political/business class, but it still attempts to have every voice heard in elections, and as a result you'll always have people who feel hardly done by attempting to rebel against the status quo. I'm also going go take the opportunity to share CGP Grey's videos on First Past the Post voting[2] and the electoral college[3], and the issues with those. He also has videos directly the electoral college, without his opinions, if you need some background[4]. [1]http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html [2]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the-post-voting-explained.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the... [3]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-college.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-c... [4]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works....
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion Are, it's impossible to have that at all points. The point is to strive for it, not achieve perfection. If we don't strive, then with people like DeVos in charge of federal funding, public schools will be gutted and the problem worsens.
  - makosdv 9y ago
    The vast majority of education funding comes from the states, so cutting federal funding won't really have much impact. "That means the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 8 percent" - https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html It really makes me wonder what we need the Department of Education for...
vorotato 9y ago
Ah but you're assuming that the problem is not enough wealth when actually America is incredibly wealthy. The problem isn't the democratic system, it's income inequality.
- kristofferR 9y ago
  How did I even imply that the problem is the America doesn't have enough wealth? My comment didn't touch on anything of the sort. My point was actually this: In a better democracy the people who believed income inequality was a big problem would vote for the "Bernie Sanders Party" instead of being forced to vote for Clinton. Let's say that just 20% voted for the BSP while 31% voted for the Hillary Party. They would be forced to govern together, and create the best solutions in order to retain or grow their parties. The constantly changing dynamic between all the different parties would in turn lead to better solutions for the voters instead of the current solution in the US - where people on the left are practically forced to vote democratic and the people on the right are forced to vote republican, no matter the job performance. Since the US forces people into camps based on ideology instead of the delivered results, the results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced.
vacri 9y ago
> The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution The US is not the first democracy or democracy-style entity. The US constitution was certainly something interesting and with new stuff for its day, but democracies had been around in various forms for a while. But yes, a large part of the problem in US politics is the inevitable two-parties, which engenders a 'with us or against us' mindset. I wouldn't lay the blame for 'most of the problems' on that, but it seems to be significant.
jhbadger 9y ago
There's nothing in the Constitution about political parties, two or otherwise. In fact, the initial idea at the time was that the US wasn't going to have political parties and that voters would focus on individuals instead.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Given the "rules of the game" set in US Constitution, a two-party system is a natural outcome, all other situations and fluctuations converge back to that - as shown both by game theory and practical historical evidence. Intent doesn't matter here - if you want different systemic outcomes, you have to change the rules.
- stult 9y ago
  The parent comment was referring to mathematical properties of the voting system itself which tend to give rise to a two party system almost automatically (specifically, the combination of a first past the post voting system and single-representative districts)[1]. The Founders were not aware of these effects and could not compensate for them, so their vision of a party-free democracy did not prove relevant to how the system actually functions in practice. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  Whether or not the Constitution says anything about political parties, it establishes a "winner takes it all" voting system that has the effect described above. The Republican party should long ago have split into a loony Tea Party fraction and a conservative fraction, and half of the Democrats would politically be more at home in the Green party. But these things are not realistic with a first-past-the-post system, so there are two large, internally divided, dysfunctional parties that "represent" a lot of people whose voices are ultimately not heard and whose interests are not represented by anyone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
arethuza 9y ago
The UK seems to having similar problems - so I don't think it is related to the specifics of the constitution/democratic system.
- s_kilk 9y ago
  And what's the common denominator? Neoliberal Capitalism.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Indeed, and a slavish adherence to Neoliberal Capitalism as the ideological answer to all questions.
- kristofferR 9y ago
  The UK also has first-past-the-post though.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  But the UK also has a first past the post system.
danieltillett 9y ago
This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but the reason is the number of elected representatives has not kept pace with the population growth. When the USA was founded there were about 20,000 electors per representatives and now in some seats there are over a million. If you want representation you need to be able to meet and talk to your rep - more importantly they need to be able to acquire your vote without the need for advertising. Remove the need for advertising and you remove the need for money and the corruption that flows.
- anovikov 9y ago
  How about starting from the other side? Decreasing the number of electors to be more the way it was when USA was founded? So people with no income earning property ('passive income' as it is called here), do not vote? Before 1820s, they didn't.
  - nkohari 9y ago
    If you're interested in fixing the problem the article discusses, this is pretty much exactly the wrong approach. You would actually be hard-pressed to find a solution more diametrically opposed to fixing the problem.
    - anovikov 9y ago
      My belief is that post-scarcity society with very high technological unemployment and universal democracy are fundamentally incompatible. People who are net recipients from the government, should not vote, or they will vote the society into collapse. Can they ever vote for anything but more free stuff? Other problems are fixable with more attention/funding to law enforcement, and yes using all the AI toys: crime prediction, drones, etc.
      - noxToken 9y ago
        Never mind that most people who have to use welfare for cash assistance actually hate it, and they would rather earn their own living wages via work. Welfare queens are very few and far in between.
adrianN 9y ago
I agree that first past the post is stupid, but the strong divide between Repulicans and Democrats seems to be fairly recent.[1] They used to vote less along party lines. So maybe the rise of mass media is to blame? http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123507 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
- rbanffy 9y ago
  At some point someone discovered that reporting on a fictional version of reality that confirms the audience's biases was more profitable than reporting on actual facts.
pmorici 9y ago
Two party system isn't in the constitution. If you go back and look at us history politics have always had periods that look nutty and disfunctional.
adamnemecek 9y ago
There's also a cultural aspect. E.g. Note how people in the us don't protest much, much to their detriment.
- bcook 9y ago
  Aren't there better ways than protesting to affect change?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    There actually aren't. Not as immediate and direct. Occupy Wall Street made a lot of people in power really uncomfortable. Also see the recent president Park protests in South Korea.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Our problem is the rural/urban split, and how the rural areas have a much more powerful per-person sway over policy and election outcomes. Two senators per state is pretty kick-ass if you live in North Dakota.
- wtbob 9y ago
  Our problem is the cities, and how they have many more people. Representation in proportion to population is pretty kick-ass if you live in New York. It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle. More seriously, our problem is a metastasised federal government. Very little should actually be a federal issue (read the enumerated powers of the United States in the Constitution!), and yet almost everything now is. As a result, every issue becomes winner-take-all: the entire country must comply with me, or the entire country must comply with you. There's no room to allow Massachusetts to go wrong and right in its ways, and to allow North Dakota to go wrong and right in its ways.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > Very little should actually be a federal issue (read the enumerated powers of the United States in the Constitution!), and yet almost everything now is. As a result, every issue becomes winner-take-all: the entire country must comply with me, or the entire country must comply with you. There's no room to allow Massachusetts to go wrong and right in its ways, and to allow North Dakota to go wrong and right in its ways Saying everything is this way is too much. More like, a few issues such as gay rights and abortion pissed off enough church-going folk to the point they began to rally against federal government overreach. There are plenty of other things that are managed by states. You don't hear about many differences between state and federal because they aren't contentious. States and the fed are happy with plenty of state laws.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    > It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle. And which laws would those be? I'm curious because the fact is a vote in North Dakota is worth several votes in New York so you're already getting far more power than you deserve in any fair system and the only issues that tend to go federal are issues of civil rights which affects the lifestyle of the oppressed, it isn't oppressing you or anyone else in North Dakota.
Kaizyn 9y ago
First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. The difference is quite important. Secondly, to attribute the problems to the constitution is mistaken. That founding document is the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total disaster for the country. Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protections built into the republic.
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  On the other hand, the US has a legalistic style of politics which you could blame on people relying too much on the constitution. The US is like an oppositional court room, with each side tearing at each other to get as much benefit as they can. It does diminish the shared duty to do what is right and good for the country and the democracy. Although of course the US is also a relatively fractured country by its nature, so perhaps can't rely on a vague, shared sense of what is good and decent, in the same way as a small European country, with more or less a common ethnic and cultural identity.
  - Kaizyn 9y ago
    The purpose of the constitution is to protect the public from the tyranny of the government. And within the public, to protect the minorities from the majority.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  First of all, a republic is a type of democracy...
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    No, ours is, but not all republics are democracies. Republic just means we don't have a monarchy and leaders are chosen by some other means. It doesn't mean that means is a democracy.
    - Kaizyn 9y ago
lordnacho 9y ago
It's a big piece of it, seemingly. The US has an interesting constitution: - First past the post. Such systems tend to favour fewer parties. The UK (also FPTP) barely has more than two parties. In most of continental western europe, there's considerably more, due to proportional representation. On the continent you end up having a bunch of different opinions, and you don't have to squish every issue onto a liberal/conservative axis. For instance you get socially conservative big state parties. Or socially liberal big state parties. Or socially liberal small state. And there's other axes too. - A separate executive. In the UK even though they have FPTP, they have a government formed by the leader of one of the parties, and they "whip" the MPs to vote according to the party line, subject to various forms of sanction depending on how important an issue is. In the US, you choose two legislatures and a separate president. If they're not in agreement, it de facto entrenches the existing status quo by making it hard to change the law.
- joveian 9y ago
  I think the seperate executive could be more a strength than a weakness in that it could allow a congressional system where stable coalitions are unnecessary and different issues could result in different coalitions. Possibly this happens more than I would think in systems that require coalitions, but it seems to me like not needing them would be more likely to change the simplistic us vs them narrative. The other issue is which system to change to. There doesn't seem to be a single ideal system. IMO, in terms of the voting itself, ability to resolve an election in one ballot, limiting the usefulness of strategic voting, and getting at least close to a Condorcet winner would be the most useful properties. I recently started to try to put together something based on five value range voting but I'm not sure it is even possible to derive a system from that which has the above properties. I haven't found any existing methods that seem to fit the above properties well, although some are much closer than others. Another option, easier in a lot of ways but more expensive, would be two ballot elections. There is also the structural part. IMO, a parallel system has more appeal than mixed member proprotional, but it has some significant disadvantages as well. Anytime a significant change is proposed there will be strategic maneuvering for a system that benefits particular interests. As someone else mentioned, states need to change first. The west coast in general would be a great place for that and I think Oregon may be taking the lead in political disfunction at this point (well, on the west coast at least, even though California is very innovative in that area)...
vowelless 9y ago
I generally agree with your point but it is worth pointing out that almost any democratic system will have flaws which can lead to unexpected results. See Arrows impossibility theorem.
pjc50 9y ago
Don't forget the racism. Some of the weird structural elements date from the "three-fifths compromise", like the electoral college.
9090local 9y ago
The problem is not the constitution or the existing system. The problem is there is a privileged class that don't follow the rules of the law. And privilege is one of most inefficient thing in a system!
- mac01021 9y ago
  Who is not following the rules of the law? Which rules?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
usmeteora 9y ago
"results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced" exactly. The most disconcerting part about the state of American politics is the focus on a predecided ideology of the other party being wrong. proving the other party wrong is apparently worth everyone suffering over. When each party is increasingly controlled by less people, then we now have a country where 300million people are willing to shoot themselves in the foot in the name of their party, with the ruling groups of each party having the interests of neither in mind. Now youve just created an ideology of sacrificial progress in the name of a party. There is more loyalty in this country to ones party than there is to the country and the progress of the country. The emotions and irrationality of attachment, and continual degredation of the other party just to be in the right, approaches religion. The only thing more demoralizing than this is the fact that this conversation is continually broadcast on two news stations each owned by billionaires, who curate the "news" themselves. The biggest progress I've seen in news lately is Bill Oreily being fired for 11 pending and accumulating harrassment lawsuits. Must be nice to get paid $75million to be fired. True journalism shines through again. It's extremely....disconcerting.
TorKlingberg 9y ago
It's not something we like to hear, but I think most people prefer to keep first past the post elections. The U.K. had a referendum to change it and 68% voted "no".
JediWing 9y ago
> The first version of something is rarely the best version Second, actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation As another comment mentioned, it's arguably greater if you include subsequent amendments. The US Constitution has its share of flaws, but it ignores quite a bit to call it a first version.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

> while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. Disagreement is a human condition, not a democratic one. Democracy is just a way to let some ideas win some of the time. There isn't a system in the world that's freed people from disagreement. Humans like disagreement. We want to be creative, original, and unique at times. That requires setting your own path.

yorwba 9y ago
Disagreement != divisiveness. E.g. I disagree with you on that point, but I'm not using my hypothetical army of sock puppets to downvote every single of your comments into oblivion from now to eternity. Sometimes, US politics feels more like the latter.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  You're splitting hairs. They're related terms I have no control over an army. I just have me and my own opinion

MichaelBurge 9y ago

> it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness. It doesn't have anything about parties in it at all, and leaves it up to the states to decide how to choose their electors. If California or any other state wanted a different system, it could decide to use ranked choice voting right now just like Maine chose last election.

lyschoening 9y ago
That could make a difference in the House, but not in the Senate.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Still, pretty nice though?
- mcv 9y ago
  I think it could be reasonable to have system where the House represents the people (making proportional representation necessary) while the Senate represents the states. As long as the role of the Senate is sufficiently limited and not the core of the legislative process, that could be very reasonable. But it's vital that the people are more important than the states. For example, the House could decide on the laws, with the Senate only deciding whether this is an issue that belongs on the federal level at all. And maybe double checking whether the law is constitutional and in line with existing treaties. If they do the same thing, it makes no sense to have them both.

324343245 9y ago

> Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? Almost certainly. The US was doing fine for most of the 20th century. Globalism is what has brought wages down. Globalism combines the economies of the richest countries with the economies of the poorest in an attempt to "help" poor countries. As rich countries and poor countries combine economies, they move toward economic-equilibrium, which means the people from the poor country get brought out of poverty at the expense of the people in the rich countries. This is fine for the "1%" on the coasts of the united states, but if you're part of rural America you're getting hit very hard by globalism.

jameshart 9y ago
The idea that globalism is an attempt to 'help' poor countries needs evidence to support it - I think there are plenty of ways in which globalism has benefitted wealthy countries at the expense of poor ones. In fact, the idea that globalism is 'an attempt' to do something, i.e. a conscious agenda to change the world, rather than just something which just emerged out of commercial activity, also seems a bit of a leap.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  I think that we can once again be reminded that there is only one thing that is worse for poor nations than being exploited by global capitalism. It's that poor nations are not exploited by global capitalism. Then you can look up TED talks by Hans Rosling, and the follow-up reports for UN millennium development goals.
  - Karellen 9y ago
    Can you give a few examples of poor nations that are not being exploited by global capitalism?
    - flerchin 9y ago
      Zimbabwe, Venezuela, North Korea.

phkahler 9y ago

I think most of the division in US politics comes from the way representatives are influenced. By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent. The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in. These issues will not be addressed by the people in power though because they are part of the structures that need to be eliminated.

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent Representatives do spend time in their own states. They also need a central place to meet. No country or system does this differently. > The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in. I think rolling back Citizens United, which allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts to candidates' [unaffiliated] campaigns, would be a big practical step in this direction.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  In addition to rolling back Citizens United would be to re-introduce pork-barrel spending. With changes to the legislative process in the 90s, Congressional leaders lost a strong carrot to keep the rank-and-file members playing along. In the current system, with no carrot, legislators are more inclined to follow the wishes of their constituents. And with extreme gerrymandering, those constituents can be very extreme.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    Pork barrel spending is special interest funding. It's not viewed as a good thing
    - 9y ago

jasonlfunk 9y ago

The constitution we have now isn't the first version. It was created with the ability to be changed with the process of amendments. We have 27 of them so far. More could be added to change the voting system or whatever else, if there was political will to do so; but currently there isn't. (And this is ignoring the idea of the judiciary reading into the constitution new rights that weren't there to begin with.)

kristofferR 9y ago
My initial instinct were to agree that while changing the voting system is obviously theoretically possible, it would never happen. Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy? Then I actually researched it a bit, and it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP. [1] That's interesting, and something to be hopeful about. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#List_of_former_FPTP_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Lis...
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP Yeah, to bring alternative ranked voting to the US, it needs to happen at the local level first, as done in Maine.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  > Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy? One can a imagine a situation where Democrats think the change will be safe for them and Republicans will be cast into chaos and in that same situation Republicans think they will be safe and Democrats will be cast into chaos.

xg15 9y ago

Not a US citizen, but my understanding is that the two-party system is not mandated by the constitution, or even encouraged. It's something that developed on top of it, as a consequence of some bad rules (first-past-the-post as you say) but also other factors (campaign financing) Because the beneficiaries of the system get to make the rules, there is also a push to change regulations more and more to favor the two-party system. There are other parties (e.g. greens) it just doesn't make any practical sense to vote for them.

kristofferR 9y ago
Your first and your last sentence contradicts each other, in my view. The reason why it doesn't make sense to vote for the greens is the system laid out in the constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

H4CK3RM4N 9y ago

I feel like this is a more general symptom of attempting to apply a democracy where every citizen's is valued equally in a very large population. At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion. This line of reasoning is a large part of the reason that Rousseau suggested that societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy[1]. America has an aristocracy emerging in it's political/business class, but it still attempts to have every voice heard in elections, and as a result you'll always have people who feel hardly done by attempting to rebel against the status quo. I'm also going go take the opportunity to share CGP Grey's videos on First Past the Post voting[2] and the electoral college[3], and the issues with those. He also has videos directly the electoral college, without his opinions, if you need some background[4]. [1]http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html [2]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the-post-voting-explained.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the... [3]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-college.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-c... [4]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works.html http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works....

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion Are, it's impossible to have that at all points. The point is to strive for it, not achieve perfection. If we don't strive, then with people like DeVos in charge of federal funding, public schools will be gutted and the problem worsens.
- makosdv 9y ago
  The vast majority of education funding comes from the states, so cutting federal funding won't really have much impact. "That means the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 8 percent" - https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html It really makes me wonder what we need the Department of Education for...

vorotato 9y ago

Ah but you're assuming that the problem is not enough wealth when actually America is incredibly wealthy. The problem isn't the democratic system, it's income inequality.

kristofferR 9y ago
How did I even imply that the problem is the America doesn't have enough wealth? My comment didn't touch on anything of the sort. My point was actually this: In a better democracy the people who believed income inequality was a big problem would vote for the "Bernie Sanders Party" instead of being forced to vote for Clinton. Let's say that just 20% voted for the BSP while 31% voted for the Hillary Party. They would be forced to govern together, and create the best solutions in order to retain or grow their parties. The constantly changing dynamic between all the different parties would in turn lead to better solutions for the voters instead of the current solution in the US - where people on the left are practically forced to vote democratic and the people on the right are forced to vote republican, no matter the job performance. Since the US forces people into camps based on ideology instead of the delivered results, the results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced.

vacri 9y ago

> The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution The US is not the first democracy or democracy-style entity. The US constitution was certainly something interesting and with new stuff for its day, but democracies had been around in various forms for a while. But yes, a large part of the problem in US politics is the inevitable two-parties, which engenders a 'with us or against us' mindset. I wouldn't lay the blame for 'most of the problems' on that, but it seems to be significant.

jhbadger 9y ago

There's nothing in the Constitution about political parties, two or otherwise. In fact, the initial idea at the time was that the US wasn't going to have political parties and that voters would focus on individuals instead.

PeterisP 9y ago
Given the "rules of the game" set in US Constitution, a two-party system is a natural outcome, all other situations and fluctuations converge back to that - as shown both by game theory and practical historical evidence. Intent doesn't matter here - if you want different systemic outcomes, you have to change the rules.
stult 9y ago
The parent comment was referring to mathematical properties of the voting system itself which tend to give rise to a two party system almost automatically (specifically, the combination of a first past the post voting system and single-representative districts)[1]. The Founders were not aware of these effects and could not compensate for them, so their vision of a party-free democracy did not prove relevant to how the system actually functions in practice. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
tom_mellior 9y ago
Whether or not the Constitution says anything about political parties, it establishes a "winner takes it all" voting system that has the effect described above. The Republican party should long ago have split into a loony Tea Party fraction and a conservative fraction, and half of the Democrats would politically be more at home in the Green party. But these things are not realistic with a first-past-the-post system, so there are two large, internally divided, dysfunctional parties that "represent" a lot of people whose voices are ultimately not heard and whose interests are not represented by anyone.
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arethuza 9y ago

The UK seems to having similar problems - so I don't think it is related to the specifics of the constitution/democratic system.

s_kilk 9y ago
And what's the common denominator? Neoliberal Capitalism.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Indeed, and a slavish adherence to Neoliberal Capitalism as the ideological answer to all questions.
kristofferR 9y ago
The UK also has first-past-the-post though.
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
But the UK also has a first past the post system.

danieltillett 9y ago

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but the reason is the number of elected representatives has not kept pace with the population growth. When the USA was founded there were about 20,000 electors per representatives and now in some seats there are over a million. If you want representation you need to be able to meet and talk to your rep - more importantly they need to be able to acquire your vote without the need for advertising. Remove the need for advertising and you remove the need for money and the corruption that flows.

anovikov 9y ago
How about starting from the other side? Decreasing the number of electors to be more the way it was when USA was founded? So people with no income earning property ('passive income' as it is called here), do not vote? Before 1820s, they didn't.
- nkohari 9y ago
  If you're interested in fixing the problem the article discusses, this is pretty much exactly the wrong approach. You would actually be hard-pressed to find a solution more diametrically opposed to fixing the problem.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    My belief is that post-scarcity society with very high technological unemployment and universal democracy are fundamentally incompatible. People who are net recipients from the government, should not vote, or they will vote the society into collapse. Can they ever vote for anything but more free stuff? Other problems are fixable with more attention/funding to law enforcement, and yes using all the AI toys: crime prediction, drones, etc.
    - noxToken 9y ago
      Never mind that most people who have to use welfare for cash assistance actually hate it, and they would rather earn their own living wages via work. Welfare queens are very few and far in between.

adrianN 9y ago

I agree that first past the post is stupid, but the strong divide between Repulicans and Democrats seems to be fairly recent.[1] They used to vote less along party lines. So maybe the rise of mass media is to blame? http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123507 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

rbanffy 9y ago
At some point someone discovered that reporting on a fictional version of reality that confirms the audience's biases was more profitable than reporting on actual facts.

pmorici 9y ago

Two party system isn't in the constitution. If you go back and look at us history politics have always had periods that look nutty and disfunctional.

adamnemecek 9y ago

There's also a cultural aspect. E.g. Note how people in the us don't protest much, much to their detriment.

bcook 9y ago
Aren't there better ways than protesting to affect change?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  There actually aren't. Not as immediate and direct. Occupy Wall Street made a lot of people in power really uncomfortable. Also see the recent president Park protests in South Korea.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Our problem is the rural/urban split, and how the rural areas have a much more powerful per-person sway over policy and election outcomes. Two senators per state is pretty kick-ass if you live in North Dakota.

wtbob 9y ago
Our problem is the cities, and how they have many more people. Representation in proportion to population is pretty kick-ass if you live in New York. It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle. More seriously, our problem is a metastasised federal government. Very little should actually be a federal issue (read the enumerated powers of the United States in the Constitution!), and yet almost everything now is. As a result, every issue becomes winner-take-all: the entire country must comply with me, or the entire country must comply with you. There's no room to allow Massachusetts to go wrong and right in its ways, and to allow North Dakota to go wrong and right in its ways.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > Very little should actually be a federal issue (read the enumerated powers of the United States in the Constitution!), and yet almost everything now is. As a result, every issue becomes winner-take-all: the entire country must comply with me, or the entire country must comply with you. There's no room to allow Massachusetts to go wrong and right in its ways, and to allow North Dakota to go wrong and right in its ways Saying everything is this way is too much. More like, a few issues such as gay rights and abortion pissed off enough church-going folk to the point they began to rally against federal government overreach. There are plenty of other things that are managed by states. You don't hear about many differences between state and federal because they aren't contentious. States and the fed are happy with plenty of state laws.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  > It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle. And which laws would those be? I'm curious because the fact is a vote in North Dakota is worth several votes in New York so you're already getting far more power than you deserve in any fair system and the only issues that tend to go federal are issues of civil rights which affects the lifestyle of the oppressed, it isn't oppressing you or anyone else in North Dakota.

Kaizyn 9y ago

First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. The difference is quite important. Secondly, to attribute the problems to the constitution is mistaken. That founding document is the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total disaster for the country. Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protections built into the republic.

Brakenshire 9y ago
On the other hand, the US has a legalistic style of politics which you could blame on people relying too much on the constitution. The US is like an oppositional court room, with each side tearing at each other to get as much benefit as they can. It does diminish the shared duty to do what is right and good for the country and the democracy. Although of course the US is also a relatively fractured country by its nature, so perhaps can't rely on a vague, shared sense of what is good and decent, in the same way as a small European country, with more or less a common ethnic and cultural identity.
- Kaizyn 9y ago
  The purpose of the constitution is to protect the public from the tyranny of the government. And within the public, to protect the minorities from the majority.
Pulcinella 9y ago
First of all, a republic is a type of democracy...
- gnaritas 9y ago
  No, ours is, but not all republics are democracies. Republic just means we don't have a monarchy and leaders are chosen by some other means. It doesn't mean that means is a democracy.
  - Kaizyn 9y ago

lordnacho 9y ago

It's a big piece of it, seemingly. The US has an interesting constitution: - First past the post. Such systems tend to favour fewer parties. The UK (also FPTP) barely has more than two parties. In most of continental western europe, there's considerably more, due to proportional representation. On the continent you end up having a bunch of different opinions, and you don't have to squish every issue onto a liberal/conservative axis. For instance you get socially conservative big state parties. Or socially liberal big state parties. Or socially liberal small state. And there's other axes too. - A separate executive. In the UK even though they have FPTP, they have a government formed by the leader of one of the parties, and they "whip" the MPs to vote according to the party line, subject to various forms of sanction depending on how important an issue is. In the US, you choose two legislatures and a separate president. If they're not in agreement, it de facto entrenches the existing status quo by making it hard to change the law.

joveian 9y ago
I think the seperate executive could be more a strength than a weakness in that it could allow a congressional system where stable coalitions are unnecessary and different issues could result in different coalitions. Possibly this happens more than I would think in systems that require coalitions, but it seems to me like not needing them would be more likely to change the simplistic us vs them narrative. The other issue is which system to change to. There doesn't seem to be a single ideal system. IMO, in terms of the voting itself, ability to resolve an election in one ballot, limiting the usefulness of strategic voting, and getting at least close to a Condorcet winner would be the most useful properties. I recently started to try to put together something based on five value range voting but I'm not sure it is even possible to derive a system from that which has the above properties. I haven't found any existing methods that seem to fit the above properties well, although some are much closer than others. Another option, easier in a lot of ways but more expensive, would be two ballot elections. There is also the structural part. IMO, a parallel system has more appeal than mixed member proprotional, but it has some significant disadvantages as well. Anytime a significant change is proposed there will be strategic maneuvering for a system that benefits particular interests. As someone else mentioned, states need to change first. The west coast in general would be a great place for that and I think Oregon may be taking the lead in political disfunction at this point (well, on the west coast at least, even though California is very innovative in that area)...

vowelless 9y ago

I generally agree with your point but it is worth pointing out that almost any democratic system will have flaws which can lead to unexpected results. See Arrows impossibility theorem.

pjc50 9y ago

Don't forget the racism. Some of the weird structural elements date from the "three-fifths compromise", like the electoral college.

9090local 9y ago

The problem is not the constitution or the existing system. The problem is there is a privileged class that don't follow the rules of the law. And privilege is one of most inefficient thing in a system!

mac01021 9y ago
Who is not following the rules of the law? Which rules?

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usmeteora 9y ago

"results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced" exactly. The most disconcerting part about the state of American politics is the focus on a predecided ideology of the other party being wrong. proving the other party wrong is apparently worth everyone suffering over. When each party is increasingly controlled by less people, then we now have a country where 300million people are willing to shoot themselves in the foot in the name of their party, with the ruling groups of each party having the interests of neither in mind. Now youve just created an ideology of sacrificial progress in the name of a party. There is more loyalty in this country to ones party than there is to the country and the progress of the country. The emotions and irrationality of attachment, and continual degredation of the other party just to be in the right, approaches religion. The only thing more demoralizing than this is the fact that this conversation is continually broadcast on two news stations each owned by billionaires, who curate the "news" themselves. The biggest progress I've seen in news lately is Bill Oreily being fired for 11 pending and accumulating harrassment lawsuits. Must be nice to get paid $75million to be fired. True journalism shines through again. It's extremely....disconcerting.

TorKlingberg 9y ago

It's not something we like to hear, but I think most people prefer to keep first past the post elections. The U.K. had a referendum to change it and 68% voted "no".

JediWing 9y ago

> The first version of something is rarely the best version Second, actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation As another comment mentioned, it's arguably greater if you include subsequent amendments. The US Constitution has its share of flaws, but it ignores quite a bit to call it a first version.