5 ms·

> So what now? On the political level, the meta problem causing most of other problems is money. Take money out of politics. No political advertising allowed

by dan_bk 12y ago

> So what now? On the political level, the meta problem causing most of other problems is money. Take money out of politics. No political advertising allowed, no "donations", no lobbying. 1 official website (or print brochure) as the only means for voters to get political information (or brainwash) from.

dsirijus 12y ago
That only changes strategy of how money goes into politics. In your scenario, the focus will most likely be on "building a politician" before the actual nominations and office runnings, boosting his popularity before his public announcement to go into politics even comes to table, ending up with a lot more Terminator governers. You can't take money out of it.
- easytiger 12y ago
  Sure you can. For all its problems UK elections are fairly money neutral for the big 3 parties.
- david927 12y ago
  You can't take money out of it. Sure you can -- using technology. The first step is massive deployment of accessible internet stations in public places, such as libraries, and voter chip cards. When someone votes they get two unique numbers with each type of vote (Yes and No). Of these two, one is circled: that is their vote number that they can write down and check on a national register. (e.g. #2359235 : Yes) They can use this number to change their vote at any time within the 72 hour voting period. Second step, every bill before Congress has a 72 hour delay where it's publicly available to read and vote on by the public. If more than 25% of eligible voters vote, their result overrides the vote of their Representative and Senator. Third step, banning advertisement for bills except for public notices. Congress is reduced to turning small bills to law. Anything serious is left to the people. And money in politics dies.
  - techsupporter 12y ago
    California and Washington are two examples of why I disagree: Both have direct initiative and referendum by the people and both reserve the "power of the purse" to the people, in addition to the legislature, through those methods. In both states, moreso in California than Washington, popular initiatives that have passed overwhelmingly have shown that We The People are horrible at money. Washington's mandatory-$30-car-registration (that didn't last long, but long enough and with lingering consequences), imposed statewide, flattened the Puget Sound region's public transportation and road systems (ohai, toll roads). California's Proposition 13, well, we know what that did to the state budget. I happen to be one of the people who thinks that government can be and is a force for good, when used appropriately. Ham-handed direct democracy through "bumper sticker" campaigns--like this would turn into--is no way to govern. "Defund the NSA" could be up there right alongside "abolish the EPA." We elect people to represent us, we need to be more resilient about voting out people who don't represent us at a common level.
    - david927 12y ago
      Congress' approval rating is around 13%; no one is happy with the system. No one. There are 15 lobbyists for each and every congressperson for the finance industry alone. Each one of those lobbyists is backing a huge amount of money to make sure that they get their way. The result is plutocracy, and the average American is fucked pretty hard. we need to be more resilient about voting out people Are you serious? That hasn't worked. Every time they're replaced by people who promise change and don't deliver. Then they're voted out and it goes on and on. It's like the old joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Then stop doing that." If you want money out of politics, if you want to feel less like the catcher and more like the pitcher, I've just told you how to do it. You're getting fucked. Let's be clear. The question is, do you want to do something about it?
      - techsupporter 12y ago
        I want to do something about it, but considering your method requires a Constitutional amendment just as much as my method, let's go for the simpler and more compatible one: - Only a natural person is a "person" for the purposes of influencing elections, voting on questions placed before the people (including, but not limited to, the election of representatives and Electors to the Electoral College), and when determining the applicability of rights guaranteed by the Constitution. - Entities created by force of law are not natural persons and the binding together of multiple natural persons to create, run, manage, or dissolve such an entity does not give said entity the status of a natural person. - The expenditure, or not, of money or the interaction with our economic system is not speech.
Hermel 12y ago
No, the meta problem is power. The more power politicians have, the higher the incentive to influence them. The solution is decentralization, which disperses power, thereby automagically reducing lobbyism.
- Xenmen 12y ago
  A lot of ordinary people seem to be barred from doing anything by willful ignorance. It seems to be a rational decision too; if they let themselves fall into Stockholm syndrome, they won't be weeded out for 'fighting the system'. Just having an attitude your employer doesn't like is enough to be denied opportunities, or work at all. ^People need relief from this fear, and time to read and become informed.
- amirmc 12y ago
  > "...thereby automagically reducing lobbyism." Only the visible stuff. Any sufficiently well-resourced organisation can simply adjust its tactics to suit this environment (a Global Active Adversary?). For example, just buy up enough media outlets and adjust the reporting to support your worldview. This probably happens to some extent now but it's probably easier to just keep a lobbyist on hand.
  - Fuxy 12y ago
    Buying up media outlets is already centralization of power if you truly build a system to distribute power you will limit the number of media companies one entity can own.
- halviti 12y ago
  You might be interested to know that there was an Amendment to the Constitution that was only one state short of being approved that attempted to address this problem early. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Bill_of_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_State...
  - nostrademons 12y ago
Ygg2 12y ago
I'd probably say take out politicans out of politics. Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating. Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people. At the moment, I think the second is more likely. I guess a detailed examination of competency of people to make decision should be made and based on that a new governmental structure should be made. There might be things that majority wouldn't be able to make good progressive decisions. For example - the LGBT rights are usually against the will of the majority.
- piokuc 12y ago
  > Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating. > Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people. AI is not the only possible way to mitigate the problem, here is another one: "Best way to pick legislators? At random. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/best-way-to-pick-legislators-at-random/2012/04/17/gIQAzeMxNT_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/best-way-t...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 12y ago
You mean, people are not allowed to talk publicly about politics? Sure, that's a great idea, that would bring about the renaissance of democracy. Or you mean they only can talk about politics where not too many people can hear them, like on their kitchen - a-la Brezhnev times in Soviet Union - is OK, but on TV - no-no, it's "political advertisement". And helping to elect a person with ideas which you share is not allowed too - it's "donations". Well, not that you'd know their ideas anyway, because political advertisement is banned, so unless you come and talk to them personally you won't know that.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
The problem isn't money, it's the fact that money has such strength in elections. And that comes down to the electorate and the media. Public schooling doesn't result in adults capable of doing the homework necessary to figure out the issues or the candidates. The media does an incredibly shitty job of providing basic facts about candidates and issues. If you want to know the voting history of a candidate the media isn't going to tell you, for them it's a game, a horse race / popularity contest. They're just there for the story. Add to that the fact that modern government has its fingers in every aspect of life and thus exerting any control over the government by whatever means is often an extreme necessity for many businesses and organizations, so there's a huge incentive to warp the political process. Folks of good intention need their lobbyists so that the government leaves them alone. Folks of bad intention want to twist the government for reward, either through subsidies, procurement programs, services, or regulations or other activity which preferentially hurts their competitors. Both of these issues have become more and more important through the mid-20th century to today. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates the format was for one person to speak for a solid hour then the other to respond with an hour and a half speech and then the first person following up with another half hour response, and there were 4 such debates. Newspapers printed transcripts of those debates in full and Lincoln published a book based on them, which was were much of his fame came from initially. How different our system is today, and how utterly imbecilic and superficial it is by comparison. Meanwhile, within the last few decades the wealthiest counties in the US have become those counties around DC. There's simply no way to squeeze money out of politics directly given the way it works now. There is too much incentive and insufficient countervailing forces to keep money out, no matter the laws, there will always be loopholes and through those loopholes the same corruption of the system will seep in. The problem needs to be fixed at its source. With better media and a more informed electorate as well as, in my opinion, a smaller government and saner laws and regulation.

by dan_bk 12y ago

dsirijus 12y ago

That only changes strategy of how money goes into politics. In your scenario, the focus will most likely be on "building a politician" before the actual nominations and office runnings, boosting his popularity before his public announcement to go into politics even comes to table, ending up with a lot more Terminator governers. You can't take money out of it.

easytiger 12y ago
Sure you can. For all its problems UK elections are fairly money neutral for the big 3 parties.
david927 12y ago
You can't take money out of it. Sure you can -- using technology. The first step is massive deployment of accessible internet stations in public places, such as libraries, and voter chip cards. When someone votes they get two unique numbers with each type of vote (Yes and No). Of these two, one is circled: that is their vote number that they can write down and check on a national register. (e.g. #2359235 : Yes) They can use this number to change their vote at any time within the 72 hour voting period. Second step, every bill before Congress has a 72 hour delay where it's publicly available to read and vote on by the public. If more than 25% of eligible voters vote, their result overrides the vote of their Representative and Senator. Third step, banning advertisement for bills except for public notices. Congress is reduced to turning small bills to law. Anything serious is left to the people. And money in politics dies.
- techsupporter 12y ago
  California and Washington are two examples of why I disagree: Both have direct initiative and referendum by the people and both reserve the "power of the purse" to the people, in addition to the legislature, through those methods. In both states, moreso in California than Washington, popular initiatives that have passed overwhelmingly have shown that We The People are horrible at money. Washington's mandatory-$30-car-registration (that didn't last long, but long enough and with lingering consequences), imposed statewide, flattened the Puget Sound region's public transportation and road systems (ohai, toll roads). California's Proposition 13, well, we know what that did to the state budget. I happen to be one of the people who thinks that government can be and is a force for good, when used appropriately. Ham-handed direct democracy through "bumper sticker" campaigns--like this would turn into--is no way to govern. "Defund the NSA" could be up there right alongside "abolish the EPA." We elect people to represent us, we need to be more resilient about voting out people who don't represent us at a common level.
  - david927 12y ago
    Congress' approval rating is around 13%; no one is happy with the system. No one. There are 15 lobbyists for each and every congressperson for the finance industry alone. Each one of those lobbyists is backing a huge amount of money to make sure that they get their way. The result is plutocracy, and the average American is fucked pretty hard. we need to be more resilient about voting out people Are you serious? That hasn't worked. Every time they're replaced by people who promise change and don't deliver. Then they're voted out and it goes on and on. It's like the old joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Then stop doing that." If you want money out of politics, if you want to feel less like the catcher and more like the pitcher, I've just told you how to do it. You're getting fucked. Let's be clear. The question is, do you want to do something about it?
    - techsupporter 12y ago
      I want to do something about it, but considering your method requires a Constitutional amendment just as much as my method, let's go for the simpler and more compatible one: - Only a natural person is a "person" for the purposes of influencing elections, voting on questions placed before the people (including, but not limited to, the election of representatives and Electors to the Electoral College), and when determining the applicability of rights guaranteed by the Constitution. - Entities created by force of law are not natural persons and the binding together of multiple natural persons to create, run, manage, or dissolve such an entity does not give said entity the status of a natural person. - The expenditure, or not, of money or the interaction with our economic system is not speech.

Hermel 12y ago

No, the meta problem is power. The more power politicians have, the higher the incentive to influence them. The solution is decentralization, which disperses power, thereby automagically reducing lobbyism.

Xenmen 12y ago
A lot of ordinary people seem to be barred from doing anything by willful ignorance. It seems to be a rational decision too; if they let themselves fall into Stockholm syndrome, they won't be weeded out for 'fighting the system'. Just having an attitude your employer doesn't like is enough to be denied opportunities, or work at all. ^People need relief from this fear, and time to read and become informed.
amirmc 12y ago
> "...thereby automagically reducing lobbyism." Only the visible stuff. Any sufficiently well-resourced organisation can simply adjust its tactics to suit this environment (a Global Active Adversary?). For example, just buy up enough media outlets and adjust the reporting to support your worldview. This probably happens to some extent now but it's probably easier to just keep a lobbyist on hand.
- Fuxy 12y ago
  Buying up media outlets is already centralization of power if you truly build a system to distribute power you will limit the number of media companies one entity can own.
halviti 12y ago
You might be interested to know that there was an Amendment to the Constitution that was only one state short of being approved that attempted to address this problem early. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Bill_of_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_State...
- nostrademons 12y ago

Ygg2 12y ago

I'd probably say take out politicans out of politics. Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating. Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people. At the moment, I think the second is more likely. I guess a detailed examination of competency of people to make decision should be made and based on that a new governmental structure should be made. There might be things that majority wouldn't be able to make good progressive decisions. For example - the LGBT rights are usually against the will of the majority.

piokuc 12y ago
> Basically, you need a better politician, but the selection pressures for best politician are somewhat self defeating. > Either you build one as an AI or you build one out of multitude of people. AI is not the only possible way to mitigate the problem, here is another one: "Best way to pick legislators? At random. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/best-way-to-pick-legislators-at-random/2012/04/17/gIQAzeMxNT_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/best-way-t...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

smsm42 12y ago

You mean, people are not allowed to talk publicly about politics? Sure, that's a great idea, that would bring about the renaissance of democracy. Or you mean they only can talk about politics where not too many people can hear them, like on their kitchen - a-la Brezhnev times in Soviet Union - is OK, but on TV - no-no, it's "political advertisement". And helping to elect a person with ideas which you share is not allowed too - it's "donations". Well, not that you'd know their ideas anyway, because political advertisement is banned, so unless you come and talk to them personally you won't know that.

InclinedPlane 12y ago

The problem isn't money, it's the fact that money has such strength in elections. And that comes down to the electorate and the media. Public schooling doesn't result in adults capable of doing the homework necessary to figure out the issues or the candidates. The media does an incredibly shitty job of providing basic facts about candidates and issues. If you want to know the voting history of a candidate the media isn't going to tell you, for them it's a game, a horse race / popularity contest. They're just there for the story. Add to that the fact that modern government has its fingers in every aspect of life and thus exerting any control over the government by whatever means is often an extreme necessity for many businesses and organizations, so there's a huge incentive to warp the political process. Folks of good intention need their lobbyists so that the government leaves them alone. Folks of bad intention want to twist the government for reward, either through subsidies, procurement programs, services, or regulations or other activity which preferentially hurts their competitors. Both of these issues have become more and more important through the mid-20th century to today. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates the format was for one person to speak for a solid hour then the other to respond with an hour and a half speech and then the first person following up with another half hour response, and there were 4 such debates. Newspapers printed transcripts of those debates in full and Lincoln published a book based on them, which was were much of his fame came from initially. How different our system is today, and how utterly imbecilic and superficial it is by comparison. Meanwhile, within the last few decades the wealthiest counties in the US have become those counties around DC. There's simply no way to squeeze money out of politics directly given the way it works now. There is too much incentive and insufficient countervailing forces to keep money out, no matter the laws, there will always be loopholes and through those loopholes the same corruption of the system will seep in. The problem needs to be fixed at its source. With better media and a more informed electorate as well as, in my opinion, a smaller government and saner laws and regulation.