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I just realized that the USA does not have civil services. Like your elected officials can appoint random people for random things. Anyway, a good election com

by z3phyr 7y ago

I just realized that the USA does not have civil services. Like your elected officials can appoint random people for random things. Anyway, a good election commision can be formed by pooling career civil servants, equal representatives from each political party, a bench of retired judges elected by the Senate for a unit time. The commision can not make any policy decision. All they can do is ensure that the elections happen in a clean way. Also banning is one of the extreme decisions, but if they do ban the candidate, the party has to provide someone else to contest. A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian democracy where there are no candidates

smsm42 7y ago
> A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian democracy where there are no candidates In every democracy "all candidates are liars", if you call a liar anybody whose views can be contradicted by somebody else. Most of what candidates talk about aren't scientific facts, they are opinions and projections and moral judgements. Even about scientific facts there is considerable disagreement - what was considered a healthy diet a decade ago, is seen as a nutritional disaster now, so would a candidate that advocates old diet be called a liar? What about advocating current one - would such a candidate be a liar in a couple of years? Some economists think rent control and minimal wage are a disaster, others think they are a very reasonable and beneficial measures. If a politician agrees with some of them but not others - is she a liar? There's not a lot in what politicians say that can be scientifically and robustly verified as true or false - and those things that really can are largely inconsequential - even if some politician decides to proclaim pi equals 4, it's unlikely any actual policy would be influenced by that. So it would devolve into partisan bickering and gotcha hunting. Which you can amply witness on multitude of "factchecking" sites, which devolved very quickly from objective observers into presenting opinions as facts on one side into "factchecking" internet memes and obvious marked satire on the other.
- z3phyr 7y ago
  > Views contradict from each other That's a good thing. The views on governance policy can differ. I have no problem with those things. I am talking about objective truths like Earth being flat, incorrect dates, misinformation in speech etc There are grey areas here too, example being religion, and I concede that area becomes needlessly murky. Having said that, it needs to be discussed

by z3phyr 7y ago

smsm42 7y ago

> A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian democracy where there are no candidates In every democracy "all candidates are liars", if you call a liar anybody whose views can be contradicted by somebody else. Most of what candidates talk about aren't scientific facts, they are opinions and projections and moral judgements. Even about scientific facts there is considerable disagreement - what was considered a healthy diet a decade ago, is seen as a nutritional disaster now, so would a candidate that advocates old diet be called a liar? What about advocating current one - would such a candidate be a liar in a couple of years? Some economists think rent control and minimal wage are a disaster, others think they are a very reasonable and beneficial measures. If a politician agrees with some of them but not others - is she a liar? There's not a lot in what politicians say that can be scientifically and robustly verified as true or false - and those things that really can are largely inconsequential - even if some politician decides to proclaim pi equals 4, it's unlikely any actual policy would be influenced by that. So it would devolve into partisan bickering and gotcha hunting. Which you can amply witness on multitude of "factchecking" sites, which devolved very quickly from objective observers into presenting opinions as facts on one side into "factchecking" internet memes and obvious marked satire on the other.

z3phyr 7y ago
> Views contradict from each other That's a good thing. The views on governance policy can differ. I have no problem with those things. I am talking about objective truths like Earth being flat, incorrect dates, misinformation in speech etc There are grey areas here too, example being religion, and I concede that area becomes needlessly murky. Having said that, it needs to be discussed