9 ms·

How about we actually participate in this one first.

by ztjio 9y ago

TausAmmer 9y ago
You can voice your opinion, write a blog, write a petition, complain on twitter, create thread on reddit. There is hundreds of platforms where you can participate in political erm, participation. And you will find plenty of people that are in same boat, all of them will participate in participation. And day will be great!
brndnmtthws 9y ago
There are only 100 seats in the US senate. How can 'we' participate in that? There are somewhere around 330 million people in the US, represented by just 100 people, who mostly act in their own self interest. How can one person properly represent on average ~3.3 million people? What a sham.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  You aren't being fair to the Senators of large states that represent tens of millions of people. I think your thesis is not correct though, the senate is less dysfunctional than the house, at least partly because they each answer to a broad constituency.
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    The senate has an excellent track record for protecting the corporate elite, not the broad constituency.
    - 8note 9y ago
      the Senate was included in the legislative branch to avoid the government serving the broad consituency too well.
  - thatcat 9y ago
    The thesis seems to be that represenative democracy doesn't scale past a certain ratio. 10E7 : 1 is an extremely centralized system. Potential amounts for corrupt pay offs increases with the number of people you represent and ease of coordinating corruption increases as the number of represenatives decrease.
- Aaargh20318 9y ago
  Maybe we could let people decide for themselves who represents them, that way they can choose someone they trust to do the job correctly.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  It's funny you're being downvoted. How is it not in everyone's (except those currently exploiting the system) best interest to increase their share of representation?
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    I think a lot of people in the US still have a strong sense of patriotism/nationalism. Nationalism is a trick dictators/tyrants/corrupt govs have used for decades to control people.
  - mondoshawan 9y ago
    The problem with their statement is that Senate does not represent the people. The House does.
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      The senate represents the people of their state. >The Senate is composed of senators, each of whom represents a single state in its entirety, with each state being equally represented by two senators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  The Senate isn't supposed to represent the people. They were originally supposed to be the bulwark against the "rapid" (2-year) change of the House of Representatives to prevent mob rule. That is, until we amended the Constitution to make them elected by popular vote. There are far more representatives in Congress than Senators, to the tune of almost 3:1, which is still too low. The way we fix this is by fixing our local governments first. The States determine the number of Representatives based upon their districting and constitutions. The answer is to fight to fix the districting and run as a representative.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The number of representatives in the house is set by the Federal government. States create the districts they run in.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > There are far more representatives in Congress than Senators, to the tune of almost 3:1 It's very odd to describe exactly 4.35:1 (or 4.35:1.01, depending.on how you treat the VP) as “almost 3:1”.
awalton 9y ago
Doesn't work when Russians manipulate our elections (as eye-witnessed by the Dutch: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-dutch-spies-caught-russian-hackers-video-52625529 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-dutch-spie...) and receive zero punishment for doing so (as almost unanimously sanctioned by both houses of Congress which the President has actively refused to enact sanctions on, defeating the rule of law in this country: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-refuses-impose-new-sanctions-russia-because-threats-are-enough-794831 http://www.newsweek.com/trump-refuses-impose-new-sanctions-r...). Also doesn't work when the ruling party does everything in its power to dismantle fair elections like gerrymandering, disenrolling voters and passing anti-voter laws. System's broken, agents at the helm don't want it fixed. And people refusing to act on the actual facts in front of them are what continues to break the system down.
- shepardrtc 9y ago
  Our culture is what's broken. No longer do we think about doing the right thing or helping others, we think about winning. We no longer consider debate and discourse signs of humanity and intelligence and civilization.
  - RankingMember 9y ago
    What are your thoughts with regard to how we would go about fixing that? (serious question, because I honestly don't know)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - doubt_me 9y ago
      Not sure why my last comment was flagged. All I said was that in order to fix this problem we are going to have to kill Vladimir Putin.
  - bo1024 9y ago
    It is important to remember that culture can be influenced by incentives due to design of the system. It's a loop: both are causes, both are effects. Example: The U.S. has a culture of "horse-race" politics and "winning". This may be traced to the two-party political system, which may be traced to "first past the post" voting rather than proportional representation. If we had started with a different political system, likely the current culture would be totally different. To change the system, we have to change the culture and values. But to change the culture and values, we need a system that encourages us to do so.
FilterSweep 9y ago
We haven't had a say in this one for a very long time. We sound like broken records.
- ztjio 9y ago
  We have all of the say. We just aren't talking in the way that matters. Huge portions of the public fail to vote. While the presidential election brought out ~55%, that's hardly the important step. The primaries are way, way more important. Did you know that in many states you can participate in primaries of multiple parties? Did you know that most primaries get a pittance of voter participation? "We" are not participating. Period. That is why we can't condemn this form of government. We're not even doing it.
neolefty 9y ago
We are. And we'll continue to. But it's not working.
craftyguy 9y ago
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- sethgecko 9y ago
  This statement makes no sense unless you consider every action in the world to be deterministic
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    If you expect a major component of government to be completely indeterminate, then maybe we should just scrap the whole thing and flip coins instead. It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, even after accounting for the coins.

How about we actually participate in this one first.

by ztjio 9y ago

How about we actually participate in this one first.

You can voice your opinion, write a blog, write a petition, complain on twitter, create thread on reddit. There is hundreds of platforms where you can participate in political erm, participation. And you will find plenty of people that are in same boat, all of them will participate in participation. And day will be great!

brndnmtthws 9y ago

There are only 100 seats in the US senate. How can 'we' participate in that? There are somewhere around 330 million people in the US, represented by just 100 people, who mostly act in their own self interest. How can one person properly represent on average ~3.3 million people? What a sham.

maxerickson 9y ago
You aren't being fair to the Senators of large states that represent tens of millions of people. I think your thesis is not correct though, the senate is less dysfunctional than the house, at least partly because they each answer to a broad constituency.
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  The senate has an excellent track record for protecting the corporate elite, not the broad constituency.
  - 8note 9y ago
    the Senate was included in the legislative branch to avoid the government serving the broad consituency too well.
- thatcat 9y ago
  The thesis seems to be that represenative democracy doesn't scale past a certain ratio. 10E7 : 1 is an extremely centralized system. Potential amounts for corrupt pay offs increases with the number of people you represent and ease of coordinating corruption increases as the number of represenatives decrease.
Aaargh20318 9y ago
Maybe we could let people decide for themselves who represents them, that way they can choose someone they trust to do the job correctly.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
It's funny you're being downvoted. How is it not in everyone's (except those currently exploiting the system) best interest to increase their share of representation?
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  I think a lot of people in the US still have a strong sense of patriotism/nationalism. Nationalism is a trick dictators/tyrants/corrupt govs have used for decades to control people.
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  The problem with their statement is that Senate does not represent the people. The House does.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    The senate represents the people of their state. >The Senate is composed of senators, each of whom represents a single state in its entirety, with each state being equally represented by two senators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate
mondoshawan 9y ago
The Senate isn't supposed to represent the people. They were originally supposed to be the bulwark against the "rapid" (2-year) change of the House of Representatives to prevent mob rule. That is, until we amended the Constitution to make them elected by popular vote. There are far more representatives in Congress than Senators, to the tune of almost 3:1, which is still too low. The way we fix this is by fixing our local governments first. The States determine the number of Representatives based upon their districting and constitutions. The answer is to fight to fix the districting and run as a representative.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The number of representatives in the house is set by the Federal government. States create the districts they run in.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > There are far more representatives in Congress than Senators, to the tune of almost 3:1 It's very odd to describe exactly 4.35:1 (or 4.35:1.01, depending.on how you treat the VP) as “almost 3:1”.

awalton 9y ago

Doesn't work when Russians manipulate our elections (as eye-witnessed by the Dutch: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-dutch-spies-caught-russian-hackers-video-52625529 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-dutch-spie...) and receive zero punishment for doing so (as almost unanimously sanctioned by both houses of Congress which the President has actively refused to enact sanctions on, defeating the rule of law in this country: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-refuses-impose-new-sanctions-russia-because-threats-are-enough-794831 http://www.newsweek.com/trump-refuses-impose-new-sanctions-r...). Also doesn't work when the ruling party does everything in its power to dismantle fair elections like gerrymandering, disenrolling voters and passing anti-voter laws. System's broken, agents at the helm don't want it fixed. And people refusing to act on the actual facts in front of them are what continues to break the system down.

shepardrtc 9y ago
Our culture is what's broken. No longer do we think about doing the right thing or helping others, we think about winning. We no longer consider debate and discourse signs of humanity and intelligence and civilization.
- RankingMember 9y ago
  What are your thoughts with regard to how we would go about fixing that? (serious question, because I honestly don't know)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - doubt_me 9y ago
    Not sure why my last comment was flagged. All I said was that in order to fix this problem we are going to have to kill Vladimir Putin.
- bo1024 9y ago
  It is important to remember that culture can be influenced by incentives due to design of the system. It's a loop: both are causes, both are effects. Example: The U.S. has a culture of "horse-race" politics and "winning". This may be traced to the two-party political system, which may be traced to "first past the post" voting rather than proportional representation. If we had started with a different political system, likely the current culture would be totally different. To change the system, we have to change the culture and values. But to change the culture and values, we need a system that encourages us to do so.

FilterSweep 9y ago

We haven't had a say in this one for a very long time. We sound like broken records.

ztjio 9y ago
We have all of the say. We just aren't talking in the way that matters. Huge portions of the public fail to vote. While the presidential election brought out ~55%, that's hardly the important step. The primaries are way, way more important. Did you know that in many states you can participate in primaries of multiple parties? Did you know that most primaries get a pittance of voter participation? "We" are not participating. Period. That is why we can't condemn this form of government. We're not even doing it.

neolefty 9y ago

We are. And we'll continue to. But it's not working.

craftyguy 9y ago

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

sethgecko 9y ago
This statement makes no sense unless you consider every action in the world to be deterministic
- craftyguy 9y ago
  If you expect a major component of government to be completely indeterminate, then maybe we should just scrap the whole thing and flip coins instead. It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, even after accounting for the coins.