8 ms·

American Nations: An attempt to hack (i.e., fix) American political gridlock

72 points by tswicegood 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago
Instead of donating $1 to some guy on the Internet who made a cartoon, how about running for local office in your township right now? You might be surprised how easy it is to get involved in government at the level where most real decisions are made (the school board, planning boards, etc). The overwhelming majority of people in your township pay zero attention to local governance. Which "tipping point" is more interesting: the one where Internet cartoon guy gets $67,000 and a long list of names on a web page, or the one where several hundred people from Hacker News end up on school boards? As I get older, I find myself making friends with more and more people who have gotten off their asses and actually done this. I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment.
- canadaduane 16y ago
  Sean Tevis--the "some guy on the internet" I think you're talking about--ran for State Representative (Kansas) in 2008.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Tevis ran for the KS house, and lost, probably in part because he tried to make a national movement out of the KS house (I followed the race somewhat closely and his fundraising was definitely part of the negative package aimed at him). My point is, forget about a national political movement. Engage with local politics, for local reasons. "Move" towards real engagement, not the feel-good merit-badge engagement that this article alludes to, where by giving a buck and signalling your support you might help create some sort of "tipping point" that will fix national politics. Anybody who's telling you that you can fix dysfunctional national politics by giving up your credit card number online is, obviously, selling you something. I bet a lot of people on HN could easily get themselves onto township planning committees, where they can actually make a real difference.
    - kiba 16y ago
      So you're telling HN people to give up their time programming or doing startups to volunteer time for government planning, politicking against adversaries, and the like.
- mcknz 16y ago
  ...and even easier is to learn more about your local issues/candidates and show up to vote. Your single vote can make a big difference on significant local issues in an off-off-election-year nationally.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    That's probably all I'm going to do this year, but the read I'm getting from my friends is that you can actually get directly involved just as easily. One friend of mine was on the online/telecom planning committee; another gave a single speech to get elected to parks commission.
- westbywest 16y ago
  I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment. This, unfortunately, will depend on where you live. Urban cores plagued with massive municipal debt (like where I live) tend to see their local representation rendered quite ineffective by corruption and cronyism. In my city, it's actually considered easier to run for office in the state legislature than to navigate the local political scene, since latter has decayed into rampant trading of favors. Unfortunately, the time commitment for the state legislature makes it such that few people can muster the time and resources to campaign and then serve office.
drx 16y ago
I invoke something similar to Greenspun's Tenth Rule (any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.) This would be an inferior implementation of a concept of 'leave everyone the fuck alone' aka libertarianism/minarchism/what have you.
sp332 16y ago
This loss of common ground has happened before, in the mid-1800's. Some of these issues were resolved at the end of the Civil War (e.g. states' rights [0]). But not all of them: when some state legislatures were unable to choose U.S. senators, the vote had to go to the people (the 17th amendment to the U.S. constitution) [1]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_ri... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
- hga 16y ago
  His contention of "common ground" in the '60s is utterly fatuous as anyone who lived through it or like me came of age just after it and studied it knows. In fact, it bears more than a little resemblance to the current period: what was pretty close to an effective super-majority due to LBJ's political skills that resulted in the enactment of vast swathes of the liberal agenda ("The Great Society"), the first since the time of FDR, and a fierce counter-revolution that started inside the Republican party that resulted in Goldwater, Nixon and finally Reagan (who as I recall did his first big thing on the national political scene in an item he did for Goldwater's campaign). (Not very parallel to today, but also a sign of a serious lack of "common ground" was the foundering of the great Democratic Party crusade to "contain" Communism, which led to the party's smashup in 1968 and its eventual radicalization on many fronts.)
- protomyth 16y ago
  Heck, go back to the 1970's and look at some of the "fix" articles from then. This time is a little different because much of the media is emphasizing the difference for ratings.
msluyter 16y ago
I think it's sort of interesting that the solution for the problem of all of these virtual groups splintering or again becoming polarized against each other is essentially an autocratic one. But what's to stop "First Nation" -- our virtual group philosopher king -- from becoming biased or corrupted by partisanship?
rmc 16y ago
This cartoon is loose on the details, but I think he's just suggesting coalition governments. Lots of countries have coalition governments, and have many problems with their politics. The UK election this year resulted in a coalition government and the large parties badmounthed the idea of a coalition, claiming it was weak and unstable government. Trying to make the same thing in the USA would probably result in the same campaigning against the idea.
- Super_Jambo 16y ago
  Yet so far the UK coalition government has been (in my and most of my friends view) quite alot better than either Conservatives or Labour would have been alone.
  - notahacker 16y ago
    The advantage of a coalition between two parties that have been traditionally opposed is that they have to try to resolve their differences rather than simply using them as a stick to beat each other with. The political system in the UK is somewhat different in that its tending towards three major parties who are converging on the political centre (complicated and fragmented further by the popular regional parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Not sure it works the same when it's a straight fight between the red corner and the blue corner.
kiba 16y ago
So um, what 67,000 dollars actually do?
- sigstoat 16y ago
  i thought he was suggesting that if he had one dollar for everyone involved in tea party politics, he'd have more support than them? (not commenting on the merit of that, just trying to figure out what he's talking about.)
- blahedo 16y ago
  $67K is irrelevant (to his argument). $$$ from 67K supporters is relevant---it would mean he can claim more donors than the tea party, and hence that he is significant. At least, that's his argument. I'm not sure that it would work out that way; as it stands right now, tea party rallies can get media coverage even when they're much smaller than some other kinds of rallies that can't, for a whole bundle of reasons that are mostly not very rational. EDIT to make clearer where I'm restating his argument and where I'm arguing with it.
camiller 16y ago
note, the following is from the curmudgeonly/cynical side of my personality. Gridlock is a feature not a defect. Gridlock is what keeps politicians from running roughshod over the public. Have you really considered how much damage a government unhampered by gridlock could do? I mean yes, they might slip something good in there once in a while but really... ask not what your country can do for you nor ask what can you do for your country ask instead what can you do to keep your country from "doing" to you. vote gridlock!
- euroclydon 16y ago
  I once heard someone say that the last thing people want is an efficient government. Imagine if, as soon as your vehicle registration expired, a state official drove up and put a boot on your car. I heard someone else say, the best relationship you can have with government is one where their attention is not focused on you.
  - blahedo 16y ago
    If the only thing standing between you and a police state is the inefficiency of the police, you've already got big, BIG problems.
  - falien 16y ago
    Imagine if, as soon as someone started robbing a bank, the police showed up and stopped them. The second one I like to an extent. Its true if you have a government whose objective is to protect its citizens and nothing else. Democrats want a government that actively helps people. If implemented correctly I'd want that government's attention. As with most things, ideas are easy, good implementation is hard.
    - euroclydon 16y ago
      Why stop there? Government could monitor all potential bank robber's communications, or hell, even profile them, send in undercover agents to infiltrate their circles and provide them with fake bank-robbing tools, ideal target bank locations, and moral support.
jerf 16y ago
A thing is what it does. What you label it with isn't anywhere near as important as what it does. In practice, these "nations" appear to be nothing more than special interest groups. Special interest groups already tend to expand well beyond their original goals in the political arena. That doesn't work because the active leadership takes over and speaks for the public; why these would avoid that, I don't know. So, the solution to too many special interest groups is more special interest groups. Also, I think he uses "Tea Party" like bogeymen. To the extent the movement involves cutting government down, it will actually increase the scope of agreement within the government by cutting down the number of domains in which there is disagreement. In fact, my personal prescription for where we are right now is for a significant return of power to the states. Some things have to be national-scale policy, but the list is much shorter than you think. We don't need a national-scale health care plan. Many of our states are larger than European countries that manage. State plans already exist. We don't need national agreement on any given social issue. If we weren't centralizing all our power, we wouldn't have to spend so much time arguing what the central policy should be. The other major problem these sort of idealistic ideas have is that it basically promises everybody that it will bring the world closer to their viewpoint, but that can't actually happen. Right now, for better or worse, our government is more liberal than our population, so if your plan is to push our government yet more liberal by empowering the population, err, well, you might want to rethink that plan.
- _pi 16y ago
  Another good point about his strategy is that he derives almost everything from the feel good feeling of "You're on the internet, I'm on the internet You can trust me." This is no different than candidates touting their religious affiliation. We're all on the internet, in fact I don't know a person who isn't, and many of those people that I know don't share my politics, let alone my views on life. And most importantly the people who are in the Tea Party also use the Internet. Here's the problem with his concept of nations, look at the UN. Look at congress, they are all abstracts of general political distributions. All of the deadlock, ALL the time. Why? Because there's going to always be a pro-coffee and an anti-coffee nation/interest group/campaign. Sean Tevis can't fix human nature with any amount of money.
- 16y ago
binaryfinery 16y ago
So far, to fight "Special Interest Groups" we have: The Bulldawg Nation. The No Kill Nation (human treatment of pets) Drunk Nation LGBTQ Nation Netroorts Nation Outdoor Nation A Woman's Nation Elevation Nation Basically Sean has created Facebook, but you give him money for his political campaign fund first. That said, at least he's trying something.
fleitz 16y ago
In general when the gov't passes a bill it tries to maximize spending and minimize taxation. This generally results in a) more gov't and b) higher deficits, as long as that is the direction that congress as a whole is taking I say that gridlock is a good thing. "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." - Gideon J. Tucker
lucraft 16y ago
Yes, it would start with lots of "Nations", each offering different benefits and having different ideas. Sounds great. But then over time, the "First Nation" would start to think that every Nation should provide some obvious basic benefits. Obviously if a Nation doesn't provide healthcare benefits that's a pretty crappy Nation, right? So First Nation would decide that all Nations have to provide healthcare benefits. Then there would be a big fight between the First Nationers and the Nations-rights-ers. Then someone would come up with some crazy idea to end disagreement between the Nation's once and for all and ask everyone to donate a dollar.
Gormo 16y ago
This was on HN a couple of months ago; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101 to read the previous discussion.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Gridlock is fine. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The American political system is designed to make it difficult to get anything done. In theory it works out to a limitation on the power of the government and on slim majorities.
stevis 16y ago
THE ROLE OF FIRST NATION Mancur Olson suggested offering generic benefits to attract people to his large groups. The difficulty in that is where do these benefits come from? Small groups don't have the resources to put that together. So we came up with First Nation - something large and stable enough to put together core packages of benefits for any other Nation to offer to their members. Then there's the problem of what groups should be able to get them? A group of 10 people? 1000? 10,000? First nation would have to set some kind of criteria. It's a non-profit. There are a dozen ways you can set it up to avoid it becoming a king-maker. We realized we could also use First Nation as a Watchdog group. They're not necessary for this part of the system to work, but it could be effective. Congress voted on a financial overhaul bill last week, for example. First Nation would have polled the other Nations to see how they felt about what needs to be done, what they'd like to see. The financial industry had lots of lobbyists involved in the bill, but there were few, if any, representatives from consumer protection groups or similar. In this scenario, I'm pretty sure at least one or two Nations would propose some new ideas or have some comment on what was passed. They'd try to convince other Nations to lend support. This "encompassing coalition" of Nations could sway the direction of financial overhaul to something that's beneficial to the larger public rather than the bank lobby. SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS These aren't special interest groups. I'd join a Science Nation, for example. What's their agenda in financial regulation? None. But I bet some of the people there might have some interesting and good perspective on what should be done. These are "general interest groups". If the bill being discussed were about funding a supercollider, on the other hand, then I think you could say they're biased. And the other Nations would know it. GRIDLOCK That's a terrible argument. If your car can only go 10 mph, then it might help you avoid fatal crashes, but it also makes it difficult to go anywhere. Take Immigration Reform. The system has been broken for 20 years. Did you see the bit in the comic about why negative campaigning works in a winner-take-all system? Immigration hasn't been fixed because right now all a politician needs to do is discredit an idea instead of proposing a new one. There is no "win" for anyone who proposes an idea. WHAT'S THE 67,000 FOR? Fair question. I'm running for office and using the campaign to pitch an idea that might help fix the system a little bit. Even if you don't buy Olson's ideas, the worst that happens is that you end up with groups that offer benefits similar to AARPs. I do need to fund my campaign. I didn't think asking for a dollar was so onerous that it would raise suspicion of impropriety. TEA PARTY Well, they really are bogeymen. :-)
fhars 16y ago
Didn't we have a discussion on the dangers of tribalism just the other day http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607 ? Why should it be a good idea this week just because your tribe comes with a cheap data plan and a fancy credit card? And how big should these nations be? Should each be able to keep modern society running on its own, which according to some numbers cites here recently would put a lower bound of 100 million on them http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795 .
slevcom 16y ago
There is no second place in the current political system. That's where I see the problem. The best ideas in the world don't mean squat if you don't get elected. So if I really believed that I could make a difference I would have to beg, borrow, steal, promise, and backroom deal my way to the finish line or the other guy will. Highlander: There can be only one. If I had a magic political wand, I'd make it so the top two people win with everyone getting to vote for two different people-- double sized districts represented by two people and the Senator races are for both at once. Make primaries be all party inclusive with the top four moving on to battle it out for the two winning spots. More political hubub at once would compel voters to pay more attention. Extremists on both sides would look ugly in comparison to the sensible ones. And third party people with a mix of ideas might actually have a shot of getting a word in because voting for one doesn't mean risking a complete loss to your party of choice. Now where did I put that magic political wand again?
JacobAldridge 16y ago
Can I join more than one group? If not, does that force me to support either a Science Nation or a Business Nation or a Coffee Nation, when all might balance my opinion? If I can join more than one group, does that impact the democratic principle [1] of one person - one vote? And what's to stop this becoming like the 'Like' feature on Facebook, where everyone has 100 pages they clicked to like but never think about again? [1] It's a principle, though it's tough to create a level playing field in practice. For instance, in Presidential elections small states have a minimum of 3 electoral college votes, so a vote in Wyoming is worth more than a vote in Texas or New York.
archangel_one 16y ago
Can someone explain why his early point about having lost common ground has come about? Seems likely to me that a lot of political parties might tend to come closer together over time, because they will always have the support of the extremes (ie. if the Republicans move a bit closer to centre, the hard-right conservatives might grumble a bit but won't ditch them and vote Democrat) but by shifting to more centrist policies they can potentially pick up more middle-of-the-road voters. What is happening in the US that makes the reverse true, that the parties are becoming more polarised?
- sigstoat 16y ago
  they're only polarized from certain viewpoints. over here off to the side, they're basically in lock step about everything except for a tiny handful of issues. the amount of smoke and noise being produced by those issues keeps going up, though.
nazgulnarsil 16y ago
there was already a war about this. non-geographical based governance doesn't work unless respect for property rights is uniform...in which case the motivation to do this will be nonexistant since that is the biggest issue.
anamax 16y ago
Does he really think that getting 67k people to sign up makes his proposal more significant than the tea party? If so, he's too clueless to be allowed to vote. If not, he's another con man.

72 points by tswicegood 16y ago

Instead of donating $1 to some guy on the Internet who made a cartoon, how about running for local office in your township right now? You might be surprised how easy it is to get involved in government at the level where most real decisions are made (the school board, planning boards, etc). The overwhelming majority of people in your township pay zero attention to local governance. Which "tipping point" is more interesting: the one where Internet cartoon guy gets $67,000 and a long list of names on a web page, or the one where several hundred people from Hacker News end up on school boards? As I get older, I find myself making friends with more and more people who have gotten off their asses and actually done this. I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment.

canadaduane 16y ago
Sean Tevis--the "some guy on the internet" I think you're talking about--ran for State Representative (Kansas) in 2008.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Tevis ran for the KS house, and lost, probably in part because he tried to make a national movement out of the KS house (I followed the race somewhat closely and his fundraising was definitely part of the negative package aimed at him). My point is, forget about a national political movement. Engage with local politics, for local reasons. "Move" towards real engagement, not the feel-good merit-badge engagement that this article alludes to, where by giving a buck and signalling your support you might help create some sort of "tipping point" that will fix national politics. Anybody who's telling you that you can fix dysfunctional national politics by giving up your credit card number online is, obviously, selling you something. I bet a lot of people on HN could easily get themselves onto township planning committees, where they can actually make a real difference.
  - kiba 16y ago
    So you're telling HN people to give up their time programming or doing startups to volunteer time for government planning, politicking against adversaries, and the like.
mcknz 16y ago
...and even easier is to learn more about your local issues/candidates and show up to vote. Your single vote can make a big difference on significant local issues in an off-off-election-year nationally.
- tptacek 16y ago
  That's probably all I'm going to do this year, but the read I'm getting from my friends is that you can actually get directly involved just as easily. One friend of mine was on the online/telecom planning committee; another gave a single speech to get elected to parks commission.
westbywest 16y ago
I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment. This, unfortunately, will depend on where you live. Urban cores plagued with massive municipal debt (like where I live) tend to see their local representation rendered quite ineffective by corruption and cronyism. In my city, it's actually considered easier to run for office in the state legislature than to navigate the local political scene, since latter has decayed into rampant trading of favors. Unfortunately, the time commitment for the state legislature makes it such that few people can muster the time and resources to campaign and then serve office.

drx 16y ago

I invoke something similar to Greenspun's Tenth Rule (any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.) This would be an inferior implementation of a concept of 'leave everyone the fuck alone' aka libertarianism/minarchism/what have you.

sp332 16y ago

This loss of common ground has happened before, in the mid-1800's. Some of these issues were resolved at the end of the Civil War (e.g. states' rights [0]). But not all of them: when some state legislatures were unable to choose U.S. senators, the vote had to go to the people (the 17th amendment to the U.S. constitution) [1]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_ri... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

hga 16y ago
His contention of "common ground" in the '60s is utterly fatuous as anyone who lived through it or like me came of age just after it and studied it knows. In fact, it bears more than a little resemblance to the current period: what was pretty close to an effective super-majority due to LBJ's political skills that resulted in the enactment of vast swathes of the liberal agenda ("The Great Society"), the first since the time of FDR, and a fierce counter-revolution that started inside the Republican party that resulted in Goldwater, Nixon and finally Reagan (who as I recall did his first big thing on the national political scene in an item he did for Goldwater's campaign). (Not very parallel to today, but also a sign of a serious lack of "common ground" was the foundering of the great Democratic Party crusade to "contain" Communism, which led to the party's smashup in 1968 and its eventual radicalization on many fronts.)
protomyth 16y ago
Heck, go back to the 1970's and look at some of the "fix" articles from then. This time is a little different because much of the media is emphasizing the difference for ratings.

msluyter 16y ago

I think it's sort of interesting that the solution for the problem of all of these virtual groups splintering or again becoming polarized against each other is essentially an autocratic one. But what's to stop "First Nation" -- our virtual group philosopher king -- from becoming biased or corrupted by partisanship?

rmc 16y ago

This cartoon is loose on the details, but I think he's just suggesting coalition governments. Lots of countries have coalition governments, and have many problems with their politics. The UK election this year resulted in a coalition government and the large parties badmounthed the idea of a coalition, claiming it was weak and unstable government. Trying to make the same thing in the USA would probably result in the same campaigning against the idea.

Super_Jambo 16y ago
Yet so far the UK coalition government has been (in my and most of my friends view) quite alot better than either Conservatives or Labour would have been alone.
- notahacker 16y ago
  The advantage of a coalition between two parties that have been traditionally opposed is that they have to try to resolve their differences rather than simply using them as a stick to beat each other with. The political system in the UK is somewhat different in that its tending towards three major parties who are converging on the political centre (complicated and fragmented further by the popular regional parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Not sure it works the same when it's a straight fight between the red corner and the blue corner.

kiba 16y ago

So um, what 67,000 dollars actually do?

sigstoat 16y ago
i thought he was suggesting that if he had one dollar for everyone involved in tea party politics, he'd have more support than them? (not commenting on the merit of that, just trying to figure out what he's talking about.)
blahedo 16y ago
$67K is irrelevant (to his argument). $$$ from 67K supporters is relevant---it would mean he can claim more donors than the tea party, and hence that he is significant. At least, that's his argument. I'm not sure that it would work out that way; as it stands right now, tea party rallies can get media coverage even when they're much smaller than some other kinds of rallies that can't, for a whole bundle of reasons that are mostly not very rational. EDIT to make clearer where I'm restating his argument and where I'm arguing with it.

camiller 16y ago

note, the following is from the curmudgeonly/cynical side of my personality. Gridlock is a feature not a defect. Gridlock is what keeps politicians from running roughshod over the public. Have you really considered how much damage a government unhampered by gridlock could do? I mean yes, they might slip something good in there once in a while but really... ask not what your country can do for you nor ask what can you do for your country ask instead what can you do to keep your country from "doing" to you. vote gridlock!

euroclydon 16y ago
I once heard someone say that the last thing people want is an efficient government. Imagine if, as soon as your vehicle registration expired, a state official drove up and put a boot on your car. I heard someone else say, the best relationship you can have with government is one where their attention is not focused on you.
- blahedo 16y ago
  If the only thing standing between you and a police state is the inefficiency of the police, you've already got big, BIG problems.
- falien 16y ago
  Imagine if, as soon as someone started robbing a bank, the police showed up and stopped them. The second one I like to an extent. Its true if you have a government whose objective is to protect its citizens and nothing else. Democrats want a government that actively helps people. If implemented correctly I'd want that government's attention. As with most things, ideas are easy, good implementation is hard.
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    Why stop there? Government could monitor all potential bank robber's communications, or hell, even profile them, send in undercover agents to infiltrate their circles and provide them with fake bank-robbing tools, ideal target bank locations, and moral support.

jerf 16y ago

A thing is what it does. What you label it with isn't anywhere near as important as what it does. In practice, these "nations" appear to be nothing more than special interest groups. Special interest groups already tend to expand well beyond their original goals in the political arena. That doesn't work because the active leadership takes over and speaks for the public; why these would avoid that, I don't know. So, the solution to too many special interest groups is more special interest groups. Also, I think he uses "Tea Party" like bogeymen. To the extent the movement involves cutting government down, it will actually increase the scope of agreement within the government by cutting down the number of domains in which there is disagreement. In fact, my personal prescription for where we are right now is for a significant return of power to the states. Some things have to be national-scale policy, but the list is much shorter than you think. We don't need a national-scale health care plan. Many of our states are larger than European countries that manage. State plans already exist. We don't need national agreement on any given social issue. If we weren't centralizing all our power, we wouldn't have to spend so much time arguing what the central policy should be. The other major problem these sort of idealistic ideas have is that it basically promises everybody that it will bring the world closer to their viewpoint, but that can't actually happen. Right now, for better or worse, our government is more liberal than our population, so if your plan is to push our government yet more liberal by empowering the population, err, well, you might want to rethink that plan.

_pi 16y ago
Another good point about his strategy is that he derives almost everything from the feel good feeling of "You're on the internet, I'm on the internet You can trust me." This is no different than candidates touting their religious affiliation. We're all on the internet, in fact I don't know a person who isn't, and many of those people that I know don't share my politics, let alone my views on life. And most importantly the people who are in the Tea Party also use the Internet. Here's the problem with his concept of nations, look at the UN. Look at congress, they are all abstracts of general political distributions. All of the deadlock, ALL the time. Why? Because there's going to always be a pro-coffee and an anti-coffee nation/interest group/campaign. Sean Tevis can't fix human nature with any amount of money.
16y ago

binaryfinery 16y ago

So far, to fight "Special Interest Groups" we have: The Bulldawg Nation. The No Kill Nation (human treatment of pets) Drunk Nation LGBTQ Nation Netroorts Nation Outdoor Nation A Woman's Nation Elevation Nation Basically Sean has created Facebook, but you give him money for his political campaign fund first. That said, at least he's trying something.

fleitz 16y ago

In general when the gov't passes a bill it tries to maximize spending and minimize taxation. This generally results in a) more gov't and b) higher deficits, as long as that is the direction that congress as a whole is taking I say that gridlock is a good thing. "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." - Gideon J. Tucker

lucraft 16y ago

Yes, it would start with lots of "Nations", each offering different benefits and having different ideas. Sounds great. But then over time, the "First Nation" would start to think that every Nation should provide some obvious basic benefits. Obviously if a Nation doesn't provide healthcare benefits that's a pretty crappy Nation, right? So First Nation would decide that all Nations have to provide healthcare benefits. Then there would be a big fight between the First Nationers and the Nations-rights-ers. Then someone would come up with some crazy idea to end disagreement between the Nation's once and for all and ask everyone to donate a dollar.

Gormo 16y ago

This was on HN a couple of months ago; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101 to read the previous discussion.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Gridlock is fine. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The American political system is designed to make it difficult to get anything done. In theory it works out to a limitation on the power of the government and on slim majorities.

stevis 16y ago

THE ROLE OF FIRST NATION Mancur Olson suggested offering generic benefits to attract people to his large groups. The difficulty in that is where do these benefits come from? Small groups don't have the resources to put that together. So we came up with First Nation - something large and stable enough to put together core packages of benefits for any other Nation to offer to their members. Then there's the problem of what groups should be able to get them? A group of 10 people? 1000? 10,000? First nation would have to set some kind of criteria. It's a non-profit. There are a dozen ways you can set it up to avoid it becoming a king-maker. We realized we could also use First Nation as a Watchdog group. They're not necessary for this part of the system to work, but it could be effective. Congress voted on a financial overhaul bill last week, for example. First Nation would have polled the other Nations to see how they felt about what needs to be done, what they'd like to see. The financial industry had lots of lobbyists involved in the bill, but there were few, if any, representatives from consumer protection groups or similar. In this scenario, I'm pretty sure at least one or two Nations would propose some new ideas or have some comment on what was passed. They'd try to convince other Nations to lend support. This "encompassing coalition" of Nations could sway the direction of financial overhaul to something that's beneficial to the larger public rather than the bank lobby. SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS These aren't special interest groups. I'd join a Science Nation, for example. What's their agenda in financial regulation? None. But I bet some of the people there might have some interesting and good perspective on what should be done. These are "general interest groups". If the bill being discussed were about funding a supercollider, on the other hand, then I think you could say they're biased. And the other Nations would know it. GRIDLOCK That's a terrible argument. If your car can only go 10 mph, then it might help you avoid fatal crashes, but it also makes it difficult to go anywhere. Take Immigration Reform. The system has been broken for 20 years. Did you see the bit in the comic about why negative campaigning works in a winner-take-all system? Immigration hasn't been fixed because right now all a politician needs to do is discredit an idea instead of proposing a new one. There is no "win" for anyone who proposes an idea. WHAT'S THE 67,000 FOR? Fair question. I'm running for office and using the campaign to pitch an idea that might help fix the system a little bit. Even if you don't buy Olson's ideas, the worst that happens is that you end up with groups that offer benefits similar to AARPs. I do need to fund my campaign. I didn't think asking for a dollar was so onerous that it would raise suspicion of impropriety. TEA PARTY Well, they really are bogeymen. :-)

fhars 16y ago

Didn't we have a discussion on the dangers of tribalism just the other day http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607 ? Why should it be a good idea this week just because your tribe comes with a cheap data plan and a fancy credit card? And how big should these nations be? Should each be able to keep modern society running on its own, which according to some numbers cites here recently would put a lower bound of 100 million on them http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795 .

slevcom 16y ago

There is no second place in the current political system. That's where I see the problem. The best ideas in the world don't mean squat if you don't get elected. So if I really believed that I could make a difference I would have to beg, borrow, steal, promise, and backroom deal my way to the finish line or the other guy will. Highlander: There can be only one. If I had a magic political wand, I'd make it so the top two people win with everyone getting to vote for two different people-- double sized districts represented by two people and the Senator races are for both at once. Make primaries be all party inclusive with the top four moving on to battle it out for the two winning spots. More political hubub at once would compel voters to pay more attention. Extremists on both sides would look ugly in comparison to the sensible ones. And third party people with a mix of ideas might actually have a shot of getting a word in because voting for one doesn't mean risking a complete loss to your party of choice. Now where did I put that magic political wand again?

JacobAldridge 16y ago

Can I join more than one group? If not, does that force me to support either a Science Nation or a Business Nation or a Coffee Nation, when all might balance my opinion? If I can join more than one group, does that impact the democratic principle [1] of one person - one vote? And what's to stop this becoming like the 'Like' feature on Facebook, where everyone has 100 pages they clicked to like but never think about again? [1] It's a principle, though it's tough to create a level playing field in practice. For instance, in Presidential elections small states have a minimum of 3 electoral college votes, so a vote in Wyoming is worth more than a vote in Texas or New York.

archangel_one 16y ago

Can someone explain why his early point about having lost common ground has come about? Seems likely to me that a lot of political parties might tend to come closer together over time, because they will always have the support of the extremes (ie. if the Republicans move a bit closer to centre, the hard-right conservatives might grumble a bit but won't ditch them and vote Democrat) but by shifting to more centrist policies they can potentially pick up more middle-of-the-road voters. What is happening in the US that makes the reverse true, that the parties are becoming more polarised?

sigstoat 16y ago
they're only polarized from certain viewpoints. over here off to the side, they're basically in lock step about everything except for a tiny handful of issues. the amount of smoke and noise being produced by those issues keeps going up, though.

nazgulnarsil 16y ago

there was already a war about this. non-geographical based governance doesn't work unless respect for property rights is uniform...in which case the motivation to do this will be nonexistant since that is the biggest issue.

anamax 16y ago

Does he really think that getting 67k people to sign up makes his proposal more significant than the tea party? If so, he's too clueless to be allowed to vote. If not, he's another con man.