3 ms·

The election cycle forces politicians to only care 4 years ahead, let alone 100 years, and so impossibly 500 years into the future.

Apocryphon 5y ago
In Mexico, as in the Confederate States constitution for some reason, there are six year presidential terms, without reelection prospects. Does it greatly alter governance? Xi in China recently abolished presidential term limits.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > In Mexico, as in the Confederate States constitution for some reason, there are six year presidential terms, without reelection prospects. Does it greatly alter governance? It's kind of hard to tell; Mexico has only had a few Presidential terms as something other than a fig-leaf democracy over a one-party corporatist state which freely used the power of the State to assure the dominance of the Party.
kristopolous 5y ago
Does the supreme court, currently the closest we have to monarchs, generate better outcomes? Arguably not. I believe it's the institutions of selection that matter more. Who and what are they constituents of and where have we manufactured their incentives to be. For instance let's say you have unborn generations rights such as say the right to a tamer climate, just as a theoretical example. Then you could take people into courts for violating those rights. You could have some kind of trust that can fund candidates based on long term ROIs so if they say, support early childhood education, a great ROI, they can access funds as an instrument of debt (really an issued bond) which will be covered by the yield of their investments into our children's futures. So for instance, there's some agreed upon metric that ever dollar invested in preschool will generate an extra say $100 in lifetime earnings, taxed at ~30%, that dollar will yield a 30x return. So a debt instrument of say $1 funding per dollar invested up to some cap is issued by a trust to future generations to finance candidates who will allocate funds accordingly. The bond will be paid in the future through the increased tax revenue. It can be a convertible note so if the politician fails to act, it can become debt on the books. This makes the pool of money more secure the more candidates dip into it, creating a virtuous cycle and thus institutionalizing it. Candidates who successfully diligently invest in far future payoffs, perhaps well after they're dead, will have access to a large pool of money to win election today. If corporations and other legal fictions have rights, there's really no reason they can't be granted to other concepts as well.

Apocryphon 5y ago

In Mexico, as in the Confederate States constitution for some reason, there are six year presidential terms, without reelection prospects. Does it greatly alter governance? Xi in China recently abolished presidential term limits.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> In Mexico, as in the Confederate States constitution for some reason, there are six year presidential terms, without reelection prospects. Does it greatly alter governance? It's kind of hard to tell; Mexico has only had a few Presidential terms as something other than a fig-leaf democracy over a one-party corporatist state which freely used the power of the State to assure the dominance of the Party.

kristopolous 5y ago

Does the supreme court, currently the closest we have to monarchs, generate better outcomes? Arguably not. I believe it's the institutions of selection that matter more. Who and what are they constituents of and where have we manufactured their incentives to be. For instance let's say you have unborn generations rights such as say the right to a tamer climate, just as a theoretical example. Then you could take people into courts for violating those rights. You could have some kind of trust that can fund candidates based on long term ROIs so if they say, support early childhood education, a great ROI, they can access funds as an instrument of debt (really an issued bond) which will be covered by the yield of their investments into our children's futures. So for instance, there's some agreed upon metric that ever dollar invested in preschool will generate an extra say $100 in lifetime earnings, taxed at ~30%, that dollar will yield a 30x return. So a debt instrument of say $1 funding per dollar invested up to some cap is issued by a trust to future generations to finance candidates who will allocate funds accordingly. The bond will be paid in the future through the increased tax revenue. It can be a convertible note so if the politician fails to act, it can become debt on the books. This makes the pool of money more secure the more candidates dip into it, creating a virtuous cycle and thus institutionalizing it. Candidates who successfully diligently invest in far future payoffs, perhaps well after they're dead, will have access to a large pool of money to win election today. If corporations and other legal fictions have rights, there's really no reason they can't be granted to other concepts as well.