5 ms·
To be fair, the "national level" money would likely have to be split 50 ways anyway, as any national level events worth lobbying for would likely affect all the
by bmelton 8y ago
To be fair, the "national level" money would likely have to be split 50 ways anyway, as any national level events worth lobbying for would likely affect all the states, to varying degrees of reception.
Past that, voter engagement is a tricky thing. It's easy to know what things we want to vote for, but it's hard to know whether or not those things are economically feasible unless we're economists. Trump's tax cuts, for example, had experts saying that through economic growth would pay for itself, while other experts have said there's no way that's possible. Similarly so with Bernie Sanders' health care proposals. See the recent pension crisis affecting Detroit, and may still cause strife in municipalities all over. Employee pensions are exactly the sort of thing I might vote for, only to find out 30 years down the road that it literally destroyed my town's government.
It's harder and harder to be informed without being a multi-doctorate + JD, and we keep voting ourselves favors from the public largesse without knowing if they'll work or not. Tax too little, and infrastructure and services fall off. Tax too much, you experience capital flight, and infrastructure and services fall off.
The wisdom of the masses isn't always, or even usually wise.
- ethbro 8y agoWe're of the same mind on a lot of things. ;) Watching recent history, I have a sneaking suspicion these same issues are why democratic nation-building has been such a failure. Expecting a country to transition from 0 to democracy in one generation is probably impossible. Especially when it becomes apparent that even elder democracies are mostly held together by the strength of their institutions in times of strain. Democracy works if everyone is educated, but as you pointed out, encounters substantial issues when (a) the problems at hand are too complex to be understood or (b) the knowledgeable vote (on both+ sides) is drowned out by an easily-swayed vote (e.g. for passion-arousing issues like free trade or immigration). If I were attempting to build a democracy, I'd instead attempt to compress ~1000 years of European history into ~100 years of gradual government transformation. But probably start with a monarchy...
- bmelton 8y agoThere's a reason that governments created by the imperial English tend to last well after it's been divested as a colony. They put in a government that really, only the government needs to know the mechanics of.