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Recall elections are one way that's sometimes used to handle the "electee turns around and goes nuts" problem: if enough people petition, an early election is h

Recall elections are one way that's sometimes used to handle the "electee turns around and goes nuts" problem: if enough people petition, an early election is held, so people get another chance to vote on whether they want to keep the representative. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall... A downside of that is that it can intensify populism, since you are essentially always campaigning, never governing. One person wins, but instead of getting a few years to try their agenda, the opposite party is every day looking for openings to get them booted out of office early. An in-between idea is just the classic impeachment. It can remove someone from office early, but is supposed to be used only for serious breaches of trust or lawlessness, not mere political disagreement. If Obama totally went nuts, Congress could remove him from office, if they weren't also on board. Overall I think I'm more worried about constant campaigning (and the amplification of political advertising and PACs that entails), so these various measures strike me as more worrying than the problems they try to solve.

msandford 13y ago
Also an excellent point. I'm a libertarian and I'm thoroughly fed up with both parties; neither hold true to their supposed core ideology when faced with the choice to do the right thing or to accrete more power. As such I'm really interested in ways to scare the shit out of politicians in the hope that they'll think LONG and HARD about whether what's being proposed is RIGHT or EXPEDIENT. As such the whole notion has a certain appeal, it's a way to try and curb particularly egregious abuses of power. For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended consequences of any change in policy.
- krapp 13y ago
  >For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Or you'll get bounties put out on postal workers because the Post Office is secretly reading everyone's mail. I would submit that out of the pool of people willing to participate in an assassination-for-hire marketplace, few are likely to be reasonable in what they would consider a killing offense.
  - msandford 13y ago
    The Post Office example isn't very good because most mail carriers don't serve more than a few thousand people (maybe a lot less in the 'burbs) so it would be very hard to get enough money together to make it worthwhile to kill any one individual. But the greater point, that people could act irrationally and cause entirely innocent people to be killed is still a possibility and tough to refute.
    - krapp 13y ago
      I really do find it difficult to believe that an assassination-for-hire marketplace would be mostly utilized by reasonable people anyway.
- polarix 13y ago
  The point is deeper than this -- with such a system in place, one must never even attach their real name or address to controversial ideas. This would allow thought to proceed on pure merit, rather than social proof.
  - krapp 13y ago
    But such a system only has the purpose of having people killed for money. There wouldn't be any other ideas discussed, except maybe haggling over whether to use a gun or a knife or maybe anthrax if the price is right. An assassination program like this more or less defies the concept of 'ideas based on merit.'

msandford 13y ago

Also an excellent point. I'm a libertarian and I'm thoroughly fed up with both parties; neither hold true to their supposed core ideology when faced with the choice to do the right thing or to accrete more power. As such I'm really interested in ways to scare the shit out of politicians in the hope that they'll think LONG and HARD about whether what's being proposed is RIGHT or EXPEDIENT. As such the whole notion has a certain appeal, it's a way to try and curb particularly egregious abuses of power. For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended consequences of any change in policy.

krapp 13y ago
>For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Or you'll get bounties put out on postal workers because the Post Office is secretly reading everyone's mail. I would submit that out of the pool of people willing to participate in an assassination-for-hire marketplace, few are likely to be reasonable in what they would consider a killing offense.
- msandford 13y ago
  The Post Office example isn't very good because most mail carriers don't serve more than a few thousand people (maybe a lot less in the 'burbs) so it would be very hard to get enough money together to make it worthwhile to kill any one individual. But the greater point, that people could act irrationally and cause entirely innocent people to be killed is still a possibility and tough to refute.
  - krapp 13y ago
    I really do find it difficult to believe that an assassination-for-hire marketplace would be mostly utilized by reasonable people anyway.
polarix 13y ago
The point is deeper than this -- with such a system in place, one must never even attach their real name or address to controversial ideas. This would allow thought to proceed on pure merit, rather than social proof.
- krapp 13y ago
  But such a system only has the purpose of having people killed for money. There wouldn't be any other ideas discussed, except maybe haggling over whether to use a gun or a knife or maybe anthrax if the price is right. An assassination program like this more or less defies the concept of 'ideas based on merit.'