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Comment by Press2forEN | Hacker News Reader

"As I’ve argued for years, we should prefer the problems of a system where elected majorities can fulfill the promises that got them elected to one where elected majorities cannot deliver on the promises that the American people voted for."

Does that include building the wall, privatizing social security, eliminating the income tax, or implementing school choice? When you live in a country where one side just wants to undo the policies of the other, there's a deeper problem.

Naval Ravikant said on Joe Rogan 1309, and I'm paraphrasing, if you want to build a good system, give it to your enemy for 10 years.

We can't build because the idea of "we" needs to be reevaluated.

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The argument is that the electorate can't vote on policy unless they can see those policies in action. Voters can rest on the dogmatic idea that private markets solve everything without ever having to experience the effects of privatized social security.

Elected officials can rely on dogma too, styling themselves like sports teams, knowing that because actually accomplishing something is off the table for both parties, they have to appeal to voters almost entirely by signaling their virtues.

Yes, it would mean rapid fluctuations in policy, but the idea is that we need to inject some volatility so we can see what works and what doesn't. Obviously, this can lead to problems, like a majority party implementing policies which restrict the electorate or affect populations that can't form a strong voting coalition, but I'm not sure this is worse than what we have already.

Further, I'm not really sure how we're supposed to reevaluate "we." That's a neat soundbite, but what does that mean? What are you suggesting we actually do? Alter the electorate? Split the union?

> Further, I'm not really sure how we're supposed to reevaluate "we." That's a neat soundbite, but what does that mean? What are you suggesting we actually do? Alter the electorate? Split the union?

There's no need to split the Union if we just follow the US Constitutions as the Framers intended: a Union of States with powers broadly vested in the States (see: the 9th and 10th Amendments).

The more we take out of the purview of the Federal government and the more we allow States the leeway to enact whatever systems they wish (democratically), the more the States coexist harmoniously. The United States begins to look like the European Union.

> Does that include building the wall, privatizing social security, eliminating the income tax, or implementing school choice? When you live in a country where one side just wants to undo the policies of the other, there's a deeper problem.

I'm not sure I fully grasp your point, but yes we absolutely should allow this. Voters need to personally experience the impact of voting for different parties in order for them to make better choices. The median voter isn't informed, or educated enough to be able to gather, and evaluate between different party platforms in any other way.

Having read the author's book, yes he is committed to saying Trump should be able to build the wall.

He contends that if the USA public could see active governance by their political parties they could be choose between them. Klein would hope (and expect) that the majority of citizens would react quite negatively to a GOP government that gets most of what it wants done, and vote them out of office.

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