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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

The government should just use an exponential decay like on HN or Reddit, where something can theoretically stay on the front page forever but it needs exponentially more votes to do so over time.

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As an interesting idea as that is, the moment you introduce the possibility of staying in power forever then it only becomes an issue of adjusting the ratio parameters, something people won't react to like "abolish the hard term limit".

Is the hard term limit really something can't be abolished then? Obama spent years of efforts building something and Trump spent its term tears it down. Can the government achieve anything meaningful like that?

Inefficiency is a feature of democracy: Checks and balances will inevitably slow things down, but they also prevent emotional decisions from escalating too quickly. It's exceedingly frustrating to watch a decade-long battle over universal healthcare, but it's still way better than e.g. efficiently starting a war.

LMFTFY:

"efficiently starting a MAJOR war"

The whole AUMF thing is probably not a good example to use.

Yes! If the country has at least a weak consensus, each generation builds on the last, with politicians competing on who can make more progress faster. Resistance to a radical faction is a feature, not a bug.

Dictators do tend to command high vote counts. When people see you are going to stick around they try to keep you happy. As in russia, the province that most supports the leader recieves the most from him in turn.

I'd argue that countries who've experinced hardship have a tendency to favour stability and economic prosperity.

Pretty sure Putin stays in power because people still remember Yeltsin. Today's Russia is a massive improvement on 90's Russia.

As for Xi, China isn't exactly doing poorly. Not sure why anyone would want to shake things up now.

Americans should understand, Obama would have beat Trump...

If Putin were so popular he wouldn't have to suppress and murder his opposition

Are you referring to Nemtsov? Because he was definitely more useful alive, being a vestige of the old failure of a "pro-western" regime and all...

Or are you referring to his other opposition, which are paid by the US to commit crimes, and still barely get a slap on the wrist?

FYI the "stability" he brings as opposed to the chaos of the 1990s is one of Putin's major talking points.

It is one of the few constant themes in Russia.

There're certainly other government forms outside western democracy and pure dictatorship

You know that Trump is planning the same with his red vs. blue states. We all know he's got revenge planned for California.

Would it be an exponentially increasing percentage of votes, or absolute votes?

The nice thing about a finite population is that they’ll approximate each other pretty quickly

Why does it have to be voting

You are assuming a free vote.

Or something like public support rate. Doesn't have to be a vote.

If you can measure it, you can manipulate it.

Come on, Core Leader Xi has a 120% public approval rating according to reputable state owned media.

Theoretically, this rule can also be gamed by taking all votes by influence of power.

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