5 ms·

>That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to

>That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the course of their everyday life should have an expiry date, forcing a debate every x decades as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism would be fantastic for forcibly clearing out a lot of society's "technical debt". This mechanism in my opinion would have stopped the lingering damage from moronic wars on abstract concepts. There would have to be some exceptions of course, things like fundamental liberties and human rights for example can't ever be negotiable in a civilised society. There's also an awful lot of very sector-specific legislation which probably doesn't need to be directly re-written every couple of decades too, although society at large won't be coming into contact with it much either so it's not really in the scope of the goal which is to stop yesterday's issues leaving nasty remants for today's societies.

throaway46546 5y ago
I think that would just cause issues like with the debt ceiling, but instead of a "government shutdown" we could have critical laws expiring and their renewal being held hostage.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  This would fit quite nicely into another fairly radical idea which is to reform our countries as "zero party democracies". It strikes me that a lot of political ills come from within parties rather than governments due to the gulf between "party" and "country" and all the conflicting loyalty it causes. We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect all our representatives directly as independents, who would in turn appoint the executive branch from among themselves for a fixed period of time. We could even deprive the media of their ridiculous circus around general elections by abolishing them too and instead just having rotating by-elections in each seat which gives you the same amount of democracy but far less artificial conflict. Admittedly, this would work a lot better in parliamentary systems and would need to be adapted for presidential ones. There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just "us". This approach immediately takes the poison out of the barb and makes politics far less adversarial. Politicians would be forced to rely on the strength of their arguments and the quality of their local representation rather than the colour of their rosette to get re-elected, and it also makes corruption more difficult as it's far easier to bribe a few members of the party top brass than it is to bribe 50% + 1 of a parliament. Of course informal alliances will form between politicians but that's fine as long as it happens transparently and within the public institutions which are accountable to all, this is very different to a party which is only accountable to its members.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect all our representatives directly as independents No, we couldn't. I mean, we could eliminate formal parties, but making factionalism less transparent doesn't eliminate it, it just makes it harder for voters to know what they are getting. There's plenty of research about both better proportionality of results and more supported parties improves most measures of health of democracies, including popular satisfaction with government. > There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just "us". Just because the labels associated with “us” and “them” don't appear on formal organizations or besides names on the ballot doesn't mean they don't exist. (You can see that within parties now—the harsh divisions between the progressive and neoliberal wings of the Democratic Party don't need separate formal parties, or even entities of any kind, to exist; further, the well-defined factions that became the original US parties existed and were widely recognized before formal parties did. Parties are a product, not the source, of factionalism.)
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous improvement. I just think it's insanity to let essentially private and unaccountable organisations have this much power over ordinary people's lives. Laws should be made as part of an authentically democratic process that at least tries to involve the whole socio-economic makeup of the country, not as a result of private intrigues in the party's membership and leadership which represents a much smaller fraction of the population and obfuscates everything to the point that the vast majority of us won't hear about what actually happened until years after the fact when memoirs are published. Would there not be far more democracy if it were exercised directly rather than through the distorting lens of a party? I'll be honest, I've followed politics in my country since the age I could vote and I'm struggling to think of anything positive other than perhaps improved decisiveness in a crisis that parties bring to the table that couldn't be achieved more transparently and efficiently in a non-partisan system. What they do bring to the table is an enormous attack surface for egotism, corruption, and intrigue.
      - 5y ago
nostromo 5y ago
This worked perfectly with the Patriot Act in the US. In each re-authorization things were removed. And finally it expired completely.

throaway46546 5y ago

I think that would just cause issues like with the debt ceiling, but instead of a "government shutdown" we could have critical laws expiring and their renewal being held hostage.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
This would fit quite nicely into another fairly radical idea which is to reform our countries as "zero party democracies". It strikes me that a lot of political ills come from within parties rather than governments due to the gulf between "party" and "country" and all the conflicting loyalty it causes. We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect all our representatives directly as independents, who would in turn appoint the executive branch from among themselves for a fixed period of time. We could even deprive the media of their ridiculous circus around general elections by abolishing them too and instead just having rotating by-elections in each seat which gives you the same amount of democracy but far less artificial conflict. Admittedly, this would work a lot better in parliamentary systems and would need to be adapted for presidential ones. There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just "us". This approach immediately takes the poison out of the barb and makes politics far less adversarial. Politicians would be forced to rely on the strength of their arguments and the quality of their local representation rather than the colour of their rosette to get re-elected, and it also makes corruption more difficult as it's far easier to bribe a few members of the party top brass than it is to bribe 50% + 1 of a parliament. Of course informal alliances will form between politicians but that's fine as long as it happens transparently and within the public institutions which are accountable to all, this is very different to a party which is only accountable to its members.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect all our representatives directly as independents No, we couldn't. I mean, we could eliminate formal parties, but making factionalism less transparent doesn't eliminate it, it just makes it harder for voters to know what they are getting. There's plenty of research about both better proportionality of results and more supported parties improves most measures of health of democracies, including popular satisfaction with government. > There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just "us". Just because the labels associated with “us” and “them” don't appear on formal organizations or besides names on the ballot doesn't mean they don't exist. (You can see that within parties now—the harsh divisions between the progressive and neoliberal wings of the Democratic Party don't need separate formal parties, or even entities of any kind, to exist; further, the well-defined factions that became the original US parties existed and were widely recognized before formal parties did. Parties are a product, not the source, of factionalism.)
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous improvement. I just think it's insanity to let essentially private and unaccountable organisations have this much power over ordinary people's lives. Laws should be made as part of an authentically democratic process that at least tries to involve the whole socio-economic makeup of the country, not as a result of private intrigues in the party's membership and leadership which represents a much smaller fraction of the population and obfuscates everything to the point that the vast majority of us won't hear about what actually happened until years after the fact when memoirs are published. Would there not be far more democracy if it were exercised directly rather than through the distorting lens of a party? I'll be honest, I've followed politics in my country since the age I could vote and I'm struggling to think of anything positive other than perhaps improved decisiveness in a crisis that parties bring to the table that couldn't be achieved more transparently and efficiently in a non-partisan system. What they do bring to the table is an enormous attack surface for egotism, corruption, and intrigue.
    - 5y ago

nostromo 5y ago

This worked perfectly with the Patriot Act in the US. In each re-authorization things were removed. And finally it expired completely.