an inherent problem in democracy

Discussion in 'Political Science' started by kazenatsu, Oct 10, 2019.

  1. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    I sympathize with your frustrations. But at the close of your post I sensed a dispiritedness that is poison, both to the individual and for the country in need of citizen action. I'm not going to push a Pollyanna perspective for you to adopt. On the contrary, my advice, for whatever it's worth is: for anything that involves people, expecting the ideal usually leads to disappointment (I know that sounds pretty cynical & depressing, too, but it doesn't have to be). I'm not suggesting you should expect the worst, because sometimes amazing things happen in our human world, only to lower your threshold for success; infuse those high aspirations w/ more of sense of realism. Put another way, policies & plans will never make things perfect because people have flaws & human nature, like anything else, has its limitations. It's an exercise in futility, e.g., to hope for an end to partisanship (something that I find especially distasteful, as well, regardless of the view being espoused) or to blame our particular society for this affliction. Certainly, the degree of partisanship we see varies from place to place, but so do the circumstances/conditions/ situations of those places. Tribalism has always been w/ us and, unfortunately, always will. So what good will come from lamenting this evolutionary fact of life.? If, however, you accept human shortcomings & let them be part of your calculus, the goals for which you strive will stand a better chance of coming to fruition. I hope my post provides you w/ some solace (& doesn't sound too preachy).
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020
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  2. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As far as I know, there was no real solutions. I know that people in Switzerland tend to use a lot of referendum that are launched first by a petition. The system work for a long time, and Switzerland tend to be a quite effective democracy, despite being a country constituted of two main different ethnic group (even if all christian and white, there is a third one also but much less important from a demographic point of view).

    I'm also extremly interested by random polling. The greeks of Athen tended to elect some people such generals or for a specific task, but their main assembly was constituted of citizens randomly polled. However, the system wasn't perfect, and after the sentence to death of Socrates, some eminent people such as Platon that grew bitterness again democracy, as he saw it as responsible of the death of his beloved teacher. Furthermore Athens fell into decadence and ended to be absorbed by the Macedonians. They suffered many times of demagogues that create great damage to the city.To that we can add that Athenian democracy worked only at a scale of a city, and women, foreigners didn't add access to power.
    I think that randomness is of great interest in a democracy, it's something nobody can't fully controle, even money, power.

    There is a very interesting book wrote by an american scholar, Neil Postman, a very brillant man, that explain also how TV and internet have degrading the structure of thought. The book have been wrote around the 80's and is really relevant for today. It's quite impressive how prophetic it is. N.Postman died in 2003. The pertinence of his work is really astonishing. Basically, he explain that a culture based on books favored a deeper reflexion, than a civilization based on picture. I'm not very good at explaining books, but I think it's quite important to read this one.

    If I'm extremely interested in reform of democratic systems, in the end I consider that the most important problem is human flaws itself. As all systems come from human themselves, and they can only be flawed. If trying to find better systems seems extremely important to my eyes, I reject the idea that a perfect system could be a solution, as a perfect system is an illusion. That's why I remain extremely skeptical about revolution happy people.

    What seems the most important to me today is education. What could be the aim of education ? Training curious and brave people, that have a strong wish for justice and truth. From my point of view, this education have to be mostly focused on the 5 YO to 15 YO. What kind of qualities should we want from good citizens in a democracy ?
    _ They have to be brave. Bravery is the key. Authoritarian systems feed on fear.
    _ To me it's included in bravery but they must have a taste of efforts. Without citizens that do deep efforts to understand complex matters, manipulators can dominate.
    _ That taste for efforts mean they must be self-disciplined.
    _ The last point is that they must be able of listening and humility. The last points make efficient individuals, but nazis were disciplined and brave, if those qualities are put in service of a wrong aim, that's a disaster. What plague democracies is the tendencies of demonizing the other side, something manipulator can use to feed their interest.
    _ It require bravery, but I think that good citizens must be able to be able to take initiatives at a local level. The power of governments become extreme when citizens make of those government their "god", when they except everything from them. Citizens that are able to create close and local system of cooperation are much more resilient. That's where religious people have sometimes and advantage over non religious people, but many churches are just people coexisting, no cooperating.

    That's the most important question : how can we educate independent, self-disciplined, brave, autonomous and initiative taking citizens ?

    It require not only to have a sufficient budget, but also that there is a clear vision in education. A coward can't train brave people and so teachers have a great role in that. Parents remain the primary educators, furthermore, it have been shown that the absence of fathers tend to have extremely detrimental aspects on the children. The unity of the family and the prosperity of a democracy are so directly linked.

    Beyond a simple reform of democracy, that's a reform of education that would be the most important.
     
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  3. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    I had not been aware of this interesting historical fact; thank you for sharing it. I hope you don't mind my 2, small, parenthetic adds; I'd wanted to make your meaning clear even to the reader who's just skimming. So the Athenians handled all their governance (the laws, courts, and overarching, at least, executive decisions) through the equivalent of jury pools(?) While this would surely diminish the direct corruption of law-makers, I don't think this would be possible now, in practice, at least not in the U.S.

    For starters, I have difficulty believing there'd be sufficient support for what would essentially be a governmental draft, in which citizens would be required, on short notice (to prevent their being wooed by special interests), to move to D.C. for months at a time--- it would be miraculous if all of our system's complex issues could be attended to in brief sessions, & all by fresh groups of recruits. Presumably, they would represent & included members gathered from every state & district? One needn't look further than this online forum to be pessimistic of the liklihood of average citizens reaching compromise any more readily than do our professional politicians. Perhaps the people who visit PoliticalForum are more inclined to hold fast to their perspective during debate(?); or maybe, once discussions were not just theoretical but had real-life consequences, a sense of civic duty would subdue citizens' urge to argue, but I wouldn't bank on it.

    I just now accidentally hit, "reply," & am far from finished with my examination of the, "random polling," idea, so stay tuned for more to follow.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020
  4. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    T
    Thanks much for your time and knowledge!
    I will look for the book you mentioned in the library.
     
  5. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    To pick up from my premature posting (addressing random assemblies as mentioned in another one of your posts in this thread), the next aspect to tackle &, to me, the biggest stumbling block, is the issue of competence. Certainly, there are elected officials serving on committees for which they don't have the bona fides or expertise to inspire confidence in their stewardship. Nevertheless, most members of Congress have legal training, at least, & the others have qualifications (military service, business experience, etc.) that a majority of the voting electorate they represent, at any rate, deemed satisfactory. But the random model you suggest would put people into offices which they did not even wish to have, unless you would allow, "opting out," which would already be the a step back towards the current status quo.

    As things now stand, our leaders rely heavily on the expertise of staff members who are, naturally, unelected but whose motives we can have no assurance are always strictly in service to the country. Now I'M not knowledgeable enough about this to make judgements, however, it should be clear that these expert people would have a TREMENDOUS amount of influence over an entire Congress full of wet-behind-the-ear lawmakers. And, as the insightful person you appear to be, I'm sure you have no trouble imagining that the upshot of this radical change in our way of governance would merely lead those wishing to use government for their own ends to shift their corrupting influence FROM politicians TO this new class of vital political worker, responsible for educating our newbie representatives on the issues.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020
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  6. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thank you for that insight.
    Seems like the corruption problem will persist no matter what changes can be made.
    There is frankly no motivation to tell the truth as far as I can see.
    It is much much safer not to speak up if you see corruption...and can even be profitable.
    People like Assange, Snowden, Vindman are very few. And after seeing what happens to those
    who try to call attention to possible wrong doing....
    why would anyone wish to stick their neck out anymore?
    Do you have any ideas concerning that problem??
     
  7. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    About having citizens to move to DC, I don't think it's necessary, especially considering new technologies, which could enable assemblies to be reparted in the country. Obviously, the same system can't be totally applied to nowodays, but I think it's an interesting other model to consider.
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2020
  8. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Believe it or not, your quote (above what I've reproduced here) wasn't long ENOUGH. I would have much preferred having YOU describe, in detail, the pertinent delineations of duty. The material you quoted assumed we know things that we don't, either because it is part of a longer article which we haven't read, or because it is written for people who already have some familiarity w/ the subject & terminology; it used words that did not seem well-defined, making some things unclear to me. I mean, you were talking about "random assemblies" as a having potential to eliminate corruption, & there's a long part of the quote that speaks about, "officeholders," who basically only did clerical work (is that the type of corruption you were referring to?). Does this apply to just those assemblymen chosen by LOT, to ALL the assemblymen, or is it another category altogether (in which case its inclusion only serves to confuse)? Another part states, "Citizens ACTIVE AS OFFICEHOLDERS served in quite a different capacity FROM WHEN THEY VOTED IN ASSEMBLIES or SERVED ON JURIES." On its face, that says that the SAME PEOPLE wore 3 hats: sometimes, they were, "active," as these clerical workers, but other times they were legislators, and still other times, members of the COURT system (since Athens didn't have non-officeholder, compulsory citizen juries as we have today, I'm guessing, wouldn't serving, "on juries," equate more with serving the function of our modern Judicial branch? I took for granted, when I replied w/ my look at your favored concept, that you were not suggesting that randomly-chosen citizens would be charged w/ sophisticated & subtle interpretations of Constitutional Law). But I can also imagine the previous quote-- & even suspect it to be its intent-- to mean that citizen-officeholders served a much different role from THOSE (other citizens) who voted in assemblies, and those who served on juries (not, "a different capacity from WHEN THEY VOTED in assemblies..."). But how could I be expected to know for sure?

    But enough of that. I still believe, for now, that the issues involved w/ running the modern U.S. require digesting a much larger & more complex set of information than was req'd by the ancient Athenians. Agree to diagree?

    I'd be curious to know, though, what you think about the, "direct democracy," suggestion of giving the populace the opportunity to vote on SPECIFIC ISSUES, similar to ballot propositions in state elections. Let's assume regular voting, not by computer, as some have suggested, to save ourselves the cyber-security discussion. Let's, instead, begin w/ handicapping the odds that the Congress would ever pass legislation making the voter's decisions binding (like British referendums-- Brexit, anyone?). It seems to me highly unlikely; the only motivations would be: 1) if one Party believed it could, in this manner, win some great battle that that it saw as nearly impossible to win legislatively (but still, such a future risk for that party to take, unless the procedure of approving a referendum question required both parties to essentially sign-off on it; then there would just be one more thing to fight over--"why can't we put this question to voters/ well why can't we put that one?"); or, hypothetically, 2) if there were something or things that Congress, as a whole, really WANTED to do but which enough Senators, let's say, feared their own constituents' reaction to ever vote on; in other words, getting the thing done w/o having to put their necks on the line by voting for it; yet, then, wouldn't it be a bit risky even voting to allow the question to be put up for a popular vote? (Of course, the votes could be non-binding, but then they'd be polls, which we already have).
     
  9. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    @DEFinning

    What would be my project ?
    It's important to says that most of my thoughts have been made in the context of France. It's a smaller country, and with deep cultural differences.
    Most assemblies such the senate are replaced by people randomly polled.

    On that, I have still some difficulties : People that own a business can more hardly being replaced than a simple employee, the same for farmers. Some people need more to be represented that others. It would be dangerous for instance for a large part of the rural populations to not be represented. The same trouble for other reasons happen for some people : the crazies, people that are too old. However, those two kind of population don't have the same difficulties : some people can't because they don't have the time, other can't because they are not able to.
    For the first category, the main solution would be to set more local assemblies. It's not useful to have only one assembly in the capital.
    Furthermore, instead having to be at the assembly everyday of the week, you could have an assembly that work the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Enabling people to keep in touch with their work and their family. Furthermore, why having a single assembly ? You can get two or three assemblies relieve each other to work on the different law projects.
    For the second category, I think they need representants. In my personnal life, I had the opportunity to realize the importance of both the
    crazy and the old. Both of them get often their situation ignored by the public power simply because they don't vote, aren't able to weight in.

    Considering who could be pooled, I think it's important that as few as possible people should be cast out. However, I think we can ask people to enrol, and a basic literacy test, so people could at least read.

    The place of experts is clearly there as advisor not decision maker.

    For more specific issues such laws, I would suggest people being polled specifically from law professions or with law degrees but mixed with some people that are not of this background.

    Considering election, I think that a president isn't strictly necessary. Why ? Why should you vote for the same guy for security, economics and war ?
    In the case of France, I considered that : culture/education, economics, security, health/welfare could be a potential basic division. However, it doesn't match that good for the USA because of how power is shared between local states and the federal state. I suppose however, that the division between economics and security could be good.
    You can agree with a candidate for his vision on security and immigration but not agree with him on education or economics. Having to vote for the same guys for all issues seems unnecessary and inefficient. Historically, the power has been build around military power, security and religion. Christianity suggested to separate both when Islam strongly united both. The fact that the state has to care about things as infrastructures, education, welfare is extremely recent. My question is : Is it really necessary that all the power are concentrated in the same hands ?

    Where I remain doubtful is : people tend to love charismatic leaders. They like to recognize themselves in a specific face. Would division of power confuse them ?

    Considering parties, the more weakened they are, the better it is : The aim of the republican party is to serve the interest of the republican oligarchy, the aim of the democratic party is to serve the democratic oligarchy, their aim isn't the good of the USA.

    What I ask for is a major change, and deeply different from democracy as we considered it today. Asking for revolutionary changes is always risky. All of that I ask for remain a theory and we won't know how it would be effective in real situations. I know that right now it's day dreaming. But who know ? Maybe in one century things would change.

    But I would like to repeat what I said before : I don't think that a "perfect" organization of the government is possible. I believe however that the organization I suggest would solve a lot of troubles, especially on the corruption level.

    However most of the troubles are at a human level. What afraid me is people becoming more and more just "consumer" of the state, and not actors of the life in society. If the mind of people is corrupted, no structural reform won't solve the problems.
     
  10. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    I think this more-elucidated description of your ideas makes for a much better post: relating a clearer picture of your meaning, more interesting, & providing many possible departure points for further discussion. I agree that government is not 1-size fits all, & need be tailored specifically to the culture. It's also good to see you realize that these institutional changes will take time, as people tolerate slow, incremental change much better than fast & wholesale change. So let me ask, in what ways are you trying to move your ideas a little closer to reality? Do you serve in any local office (school board-- remembering the important part you feel education must play; town council; zoning commission)? I'm not trying to put you on the spot; my last political action was 1999, when I went to Seattle to protest at the WTO's world meeting.

    While leading by example, I think, is always best, it doesn't suit everyone. So, maybe you promote your vision through media or the press? Thomas Paine had an incredible effect, with his pen, both here & in France.

    I do think some practical experience would be helpful for you, however, as a question that jumps to my mind, reading your post, is how do you prevent inconsistency between all the different municipalities, the development of a RANDOM patchwork of laws & regulations? Even just on the local level, if there are several different groups of citizens (to make service more convenient) instituting policy changes, how do you insure their work correlates w/ everyone else's contributions, as well as not contradicting larger, national/county-wide rules.? Just because they're assigned different areas of concentration, doesn't mean that the enactment of their policies won't impinge upon parts of one another's jurisdictions, so to speak. Is this all supposed to be kept orderly by the, "experts," you mention (in another part of your post that I planned to address in a future reply)? This seems overly-optimistic, to say the least. If you climbed your way up through one of France's parties, though, you'd likely gain a deeper, more accurate perspective on what difficulties might be encountered w/ any of the changes you're promoting, potentially leading you to pragmatic solutions to push things in the right direction.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2020
  11. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    @DEFinning I had a lot of health troubles, and I stay diminished by that, because of that, I stayed afar a lot of things. I don't recognize myself in the parti, so I try to participate as much as possible in the local associative and religious life, but not that much those last times, as it's difficult.

    I try to read as much as possible, It's important to have a deep political culture to understand more the problems. I would like to write books but I have much to study before.

    For the last point, that's one of the difficulty between USA and France, the political life in France is quite centralized.

    I would try to give a more precise example how I see things :
    A minister (elected) or citizens through a petition suggest a law (in that case for a nationwide decision)
    Then the law is debated in the regions that we will call A, B,C,D,E in assemblies of for instance, one hundred people. Every assembly debate of the same law in separate places, some experts intervene in the different assemblies, then the assemblies vote. Then at that moment, the vote of five assemblies are gathered, the majority win. Then the law is applied nationwide.

    I couldn't climb inside a parti, I'm more a thinker, crippled furthermore, I'm not a charismatic leader.
     
  12. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    That seems like an interesting idea; similar to the concept of having a central body w/ representatives from all parts of the country (e.g., the U.S. House of Representatives), but drawing on local, non-pols who remain in their particular regions to debate & vote locally on all national legislation. Though this might make it easier for each region to come to an agreement, I wonder if you'd wind up w/ too many versions of any law, that would vary so much in their particulars that it would be extremely difficult to reconcile them all (it is not so rare an occurrence, esp. on controversial subjects, for just our 2 houses, over here, to stalemate over the provisions in each chamber's end-product). Would you limit the ways an assembly could tinker w/ a proposed law? How would that work, in practice?

    The one other issue to be addressed, I see as confidentiality of the vote-counts/results for each assembly until all had voted; otherwise, knowing the tallies for those bodies that had already cast votes would influence the calculus of some members in assemblies that had yet to vote. Do you agree? And yet, for transparency's sake, you would not want to keep each assembly's debates/deliberations secret, would you? Would the idea be to not let any one assembly vote until all were ready, & then hold the votes in all assemblies simultaneously?
     
  13. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    While I share your sentiment that politicians SHOULD behave honorably, putting the good of the nation (meaning its people) ahead of all else, you said, yourself, earlier, that you thought that even the # of AMERICANS who could, open-mindedly & devoid of partisanship, vote for what they truly believe is in the best interests of the USA is only 3 (and also that it would be, "arrogant to believe 'everyone' is going to follow logical processes"), so you must realize that this lovely ideal is not a practically attainable one, at present. But I'm not trying to confront you over your high aspirations for America or for humanity; you've already taken enough flack in this short thread.

    With regard to that, I completely understood, & think it was clearly evident, what you meant by, "one man's 'logic,' is another's, 'lack of relevance' (my inner quotation marks):" that people have different ways of seeing things & different priorities, so share no universally agreeable list of relevant facts on any particular issue. Maybe my added punctuation would have clarified your meaning for unkotare, but I'd guess this poster-- despite making the very logical argument that, "a lack of mutually understood standards makes rational discourse impossible (referring to the dispute between you two)" -- came into the discussion w/ a pre-fixed point of view &, ironically, was objecting more to your terminology/wording than to the thought behind it.
     
  14. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I don't have 'high aspirations'...I have very low aspirations.

    In the US people used to be more communal while today they demand individualism. This leads to positions that represent the individual with little to no thought about what's in the best interest of the USA. This further means little to no consensus. This leads to division. And all of this leads to incompetence. This is proven to us every day across governments at all levels.

    Why can't we find consensus? If Apple Inc has a major crisis, employees are asked to solve the problem and move on. It would be 100% unacceptable for the employees to respond in a political fashion leaving the problem unsolved. It doesn't mean that every employee will agree with the solution but it means the action to be taken will be in the best interest of Apple Inc. Our president and Congress today are incapable of solving problems...
     
  15. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    While that seems, at 1st glance, to be a reasonable argument, I think there must be more at play than the rise of, "individualism," & waning of the, "communal," spirit. Americans are more partisan today, it appears to me, than ever and, while I would say that is our biggest problem, PARTISANSHIP IS a form of IDENTIFYING WITH A GROUP, and against any other group(s), which is hard to separate from the communal instinct in humans. Oh, you don't have to tell me the difference in RESULTS between the selfless communalism you attribute to companies like Apple & Microsoft, & the pernicious impact of the fractured communalism of political partisanship. But, to accurately diagnose the source of our current troubles, I think a more detailed analysis is required.

    Your post implies that our diminished sense of communal impulses or actions is tied to an increased, "individualism," in America. Again, not to needle you just for the sake of arguing, but rather to facilitate our reaching a deeper understanding THROUGH this testing of one another's hypotheses, I have to say that it's my impression that Americans, overall, have been extremely individualistic going back to before there even was a, "United States." So I, for one, think your argument would be more convincing if you gave POLITICAL examples of the communal quality as it existed in OUR PAST, rather than citing contemporary BUSINESS examples, as a much more, "apples-to-apples," comparison.
     
  16. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    In fact, the phenomena of loyalty to one's employer (the beneficial communalism, as cited by OldManOnFire) also manifests in ways that have a negative effect on our society as a whole when, for example, people w/in a company know that there are problems w/ their product, or their practices, but stay silent about it. There is a natural tendency, in some, to defend their boss's decisions & their company's actions which goes beyond mere self-interest. I would guess this has to do w/ humans' evolving as a communal creature, & our long tribal pre-history in which the chances for the group's very survival depended upon the leader, in whom humans must have placed great faith. It should be said that this blind support can flow in both directions, as in a boss who trusts implicitly in what he's told by his secretary, for example, or who defends his employees even when he(or she) has no direct knowledge of the incident in question. But in employers & employees alike, this instinct to support is by no means universal; it's not hard to find either, unfortunately, who are quick to throw their employees/employers under the bus when things go wrong. I think this difference is something that merits closer examination. For the record, I personally don't believe that BLIND allegiance is a good thing, generally; while there might be exceptional cases, as w/ a military unit in a combat zone, even then there are limits. I am now running into a subject more directly referenced by another in this thread, to whom I've planned to reply, so I will pick up with this line of thought there.
     
  17. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    This is one of the spin-off discussions presented by your answer. 1st I'll agree that the U.S. President's plate is overly-full. I think this realization became fully clear while I was watching President Obama present some U.S. award at an elaborate White House ceremony for the groundbreaking early metal band, Led Zeppelin. Even w/ tele-prompters, Obama was said to work on his speeches w/ his speech-writers, & he must have also spent time going over it afterward to have at least its general layout committed to memory. And he was always giving speeches. Meanwhile, we've got an unwieldly govt. w/ billions of unaccounted-for dollars in the defense budget, & even the IRS lacking the receipts to audit its own budget.

    Oh, people are still going to want to see a leader. It's human nature; our species spent thousands of yrs. in small tribes w/ a single leader/chief, upon whom the group depended for their survival. That's why, in times of war, people rally around the leader & tend (for the majority) to support him/her. And, while it is understandable that early human groups which survived to pass on their genes to us had decisive leaders who were unquestioningly followed when, say, they were attacked by a saber-toothed tiger (rather than multiple
    people giving conflicting directions), that instinct to follow, unchecked by rational contemplation, has become more of a hindrance than a help in modern society. In the past, the leader's fortunes (including survival) were closely tied to those of the rest of the group. Today, however, one cannot count on the leader's best interest necessarily being identical to that of his national tribe. Think of Pres. Lyndon Johnson & the Gulf of Tonkin incident (Viet Nam), or Pres. George W. Bush & the, "weapons of mass destruction," road into invading Iraq.

    But back to my initial point, I think we'd benefit from having 1 leader who would roll up his sleeves & get a real understanding of the structures & practices of government, through its minutia, who would address the nation on a relatively rare basis, and another figurehead President, who'd give the majority of speeches & presentations, show up for the photo-ops, and preside over all those non-diplomatic events like the annual White House Easter egg hunt, sparing/pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey, and the other P.R. events (as well as take point for the majority of the tweeting).

    But as for not having a person in charge, at the top, I don't see that as something the majority of the population would be able to accept. In the general psyche there is this desire for a savior, for a hero, trusted to ease our anxieties. Just look at the popularity of Super-hero films. It's to the point that no actor who wants to be, "A-list," even if he thinks of himself as a serious actor, can forego a comic book hero (or villain) role. From ahead- of-the-curve Michael Keaton's Batman, Will Smith's Men In Black, Liam Neeson's Dark Man, Rbt. Downey Jr.s Iron Man, to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, Ed Norton's Hulk, & Tobey Maguire's Spiderman. Ben Affleck had to settle for the lesser-known Daredevil, Ryan Reynolds for Deadpool, & Paul Rudd for the diminutive Ant Man. And now the most highly-lauded role for the talented Joachim Phoenix is as The Joker. Face it: at present, evolution is destiny.
     
  18. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    @VotreAltesse

    I forgot to mention that, even if you were able to divide the work of a President amongst several people, as you suggested, one would need to be preeminent because all the areas you mention are not mutually exclusive (take the economy & security, for instance) so there would be bound to be disagreements that would need to be decided. That's what a President would do amongst cabinet members whose ideas conflicted, & that's what your divisions bring to mind. In lieu of establishing a hierarchy (though I'm not proud of the fact), the, "culture/education," leader would probably be seen as lowest here, & whoever is in charge of security would be the one (in many countries, including the U.S.) considered chief by the people; and yet that is a step closer to a military dictatorship. Still, when a foreign fighter enters your nation's airspace, it would be an ineffectual system that would require a debate & a vote before action could be taken.

    And apologies to anyone who was offended by my only listing male actors in super-hero roles. More & more, that is slowly becoming an obligatory part for female actors to have in their repertoire, as well.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2020
  19. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I'm not going to provide a history lesson about communal versus individualism. Fact is we can't find consensus today! Even the people we place in the highest government positions are incapable of consensus. We have a president who is incapable of everything. My perspective is not a 'hypotheses'...it's simply an observation of reality. There are myriad reasons, complexity, why we are the way we are today. We prove every day on every issue our incompetence. I've also have written many times I believe the collective we have reached our full competency, and again, the reasons for this are complex and many. Yes we have smart people, but collectively, we have become buffoons! We have the 'potential' to do better but we don't currently possess the behavior to do better. Since nothing is free...we are and will pay dearly for our buffoonery...
     
  20. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Wasn't talking about 'loyalty' to anyone? In business we solve problems or we go out of business...severe consequences for lack of action. In government today there are no consequences for incompetency. Today we have ~80 million Americans blindly supporting the most incompetent president in the history of the USA...all of them supporting the incompetency to fulfill their personal needs...
     
  21. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Well it may have not escaped your notice that different people on this site, & throughout the world, on every aspect of life, observe reality from different perspectives &, hence, come up w/ differing conclusions. I guess my entreaties to you to share your opinions as to WHY the problems you cite exist & WHAT palliative measures, or even curative course, you might suggest turned out illustrating how different perspectives can lead to mistaken hypotheses (which is the plural form, which you quoted out of context in your reply, above, from my saying that by testing EACH OTHER'S theories, they might be improved & we might get closer to the truth or, at least, to consensus among ourselves). Unfortunately, & ironically, you seem not to be interested in making any effort to either persuade or find consensus:

    Instead, it seems, you only wish to COMPLAIN about things & offer unoriginal insights:

    So I'll just leave you w/ this advice, OldManOnFire: stop, drop, & roll.
     
  22. it's just me

    it's just me Well-Known Member

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    Democracy is mob rule, which is why this country was founded as a Republic.
     
  23. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    Your premise is too vague for a substantive debate, in my opinion.
     
  24. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    The real problem is, again, greed.

    What do I mean? Here's what I mean. There is too much incentive to win office. And therefore when control is held by either party, that party takes steps to improve or ensure chances of that party continuing to "win" in future elections. High salaries and perks do two things, both negative. First, it comprises incentive to ensure continuation of position. And secondly, any person anywhere at any time TENDS to identify with other in his income group. So if a politician is paid $300,000/year, that politician will tend to identify with others in his income group AND s/he will tend to favor that group.

    Imagine a reworking of the situation to make sure politicians are there to serve. The best although unreasonable would be to make political service voluntary and limited to people whose net worth is median. But since that is not reasonable, it could at least be reworked to make total compensation equal to that locally earned by workers in the 60-70% decile, require net worth to be no more than that of the 80th percentile which is currently just over half a million dollars, and ban book-writing and lobbying for a period of 7 years after leaving office.

    Of course other laws would probably be necessary and the goal would be to structure the job to ensure politicians work for what's best for the people. So one other law would be to ban all campaign contributions from anyone other than individuals and no more than what the median contribution would be. Better yet, since the office is intended to serve the people, ALL the people with the ability to contribute should contribute a flat amount, so make all campaigns funded ONLY by taxpayer dollars and tax everyone a flat $10 each per year or less and develop a fair way to distribute the funds equally to worthy candidates.

    Here is another possibility, and BTW, most of this is NOT "the American way" and that's a problem. But another measure would be that anyone who wants to be a politician at any level at or above governor must take an oath of lifelong dedication to the work, meaning they serve for the prescribed number of years for the prescribed compensation, and when they leave office they retire. No job other than volunteer work, no position of authority on the job, no other source of income from "outside" (interest income and dividends permitted), and they receive a pension equal at retirement to their compensation while in office and that amount increases at the same rate as the minimum wage and Social Security, both of which are linked so the percentage of annual increase in all three are the same.

    Just dreaming.
     
  25. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Actually the real problem is the inability of the voter to elect the best possible candidates. And this can't change because voters will never possess the knowledge and bipartisanship to elect better representatives. The collective we are mostly biased and not that smart. Many of the voters are okay with no facts or truths. How can you correct 160 million voters to do better? I don't think you can...
     

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