Ask HN: Systemically, what should be added or removed for a better democracy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Systemically, what should be added or removed for a better democracy?

9 pointsSeparo27 comments

The USA should be dissolved into thousands of sovereign city states. At the very least the existing states should dissolve the federal union.

The size of government should be reduced until its voters can meaningfully participate, and understand the scope of its responsibilities.

People who live in entirely different communities should not be governing each other. One office, like the US President, should not govern millions of people. A legislature of a few hundred should not govern hundreds of millions.

Another alternative is just greatly reducing the power of the federation. There's definitely some benefit to being a large country, such as loose borders and a common currency.

Another thing to consider is that some states are rich, some are not. In many countries, it's because the big cities are getting rich off the less developed, but resource rich states. You'd have taxes heavily distributed to industrialised or develop highways in an industrial state. The poorer states are used for oil or corn farming. A richer state processes that into soda. And an even richer city has all the CEOs, lawyers, marketers, banks, etc, used to power that soda company.

Anything gained by federation can be gained without it.

It’s interesting you bring up loose borders as a benefit. Some communities may prefer strict borders. Others may prefer to welcome anyone. Why should the entire continent be forced to have one immigration policy? Size makes a mockery of democracy.

Are they allowed to work together, eg they could vote to join some kind of union, maybe it’s just limited to free trade at first but slowly and with popular support gains powers from the sovereign governments?

I don’t think city states will last long. Is there a name for this political opinion? What happens when governing a city state becomes too complex, as you might say it already is for LA or NYC?

Of course they could work together. Governments work together all the time. By maintaining their sovereignty, they would only need work together when it benefits them, rather than when it benefits others. By remaining as small as possible, they can more effectively represent their citizen’s interests.

Unfortunately that poses significant justice issues. If every city-state can impose their own form of justice, you would have an exponential increase of injustices where a legal act in one city-state could be illegal in another. While the current system may be imperfect in that regard, there are more safeguards in the form of federal level standardization that limit the inter-state legal issues. Yes, a common set of rights could be established by treaty, but it would be less likely to be universally applied or accepted when silos have the power to make their own rules and change them on a whim.

" ...you would have an exponential increase of injustices where a legal act in one city-state could be illegal in another."

Yes, this is a problem which has already caused issues, and mostly been resolved under the current scheme. Most states have some laws that preempt local jurisdictions from enacting anything beyond what the state has already enacted on the issue in question.

What is just is not universally agreed upon.

Larger government doesn’t necessarily enforce your sense of justice. China is a large government. The axis powers were large governments. USSR was a large government.

And what of the human cost? Millions of lives have been expended in the quest for justice. War is a path to universal law and one-world government. And what has history shown us? The larger the government, the larger the union, the larger their wars.

You seem to be forgetting the power of economies of scale. Enact your plan and you destroy the power of Federal bargaining and everything gets really expensive really fast.

Also you've unwound the tenuous Federal solution to the tragedy of the commons. Only high level control can come anywhere close to fixing that.

Businesses operate across multiple states, so the size of government doesn’t preclude economies of scale.

I don’t understand why goods would necessarily be more expensive because a government is smaller. The price of goods is mostly a function of economics, not government price controls. Consumable goods in Singapore or Monaco sell at prices similar to other very large governments.

> I don’t understand why goods would necessarily be more expensive because a government is smaller

Because they've lost their leverage. It's an 800 pound gorilla, not an 80 pound gorilla.

The 33% solution. Add a group equal to 33% of representatives and senators to both congressional chambers that are filled via a jury-pool like system of common people with a term of one congressional session. Participants would earn equal pay as other representatives and service would be equivalent to national guard duty, where employers have to hold your position open for your return. Would need to apply at state level as well for full effect. Participants can serve only once and must not have an active affiliation with one of the other political parties. It eliminates majority party leadership as the entire body has to vote on a leader they all can get behind, which allows for a less obstructive path for legislation and fair debate for all policy and spending.

Such a change would force traditional parties and this neutral group of citizens to compromise on all legislation removing extreme policies from the equation. Because legislation has a direct effect on this neutral body and there terms are short, career politician agendas and "loss of connection" to the common needs of citizens is virtually eliminated. It would also eliminate the us vs them ideology, as common citizens become an actual party to the governmental process and have skin in the game from their own participation in the process.

The 33% solution provides the biggest bang for the buck with the least impact to current government structures and election processes.

For one, we need rule of law to be followed. The government seems to frequently violate rule of law. For example, the constitution says that Congress shall pass a budget, yet all we get are "spending bills" and last minute stop-gap legislation.

America has a first passed the post tweedist republic.

In order for the act of democracy to perform better, barriers to entry for participating need to be dropped and representation has to be improved.

Big steps that can be made are

- getting money as far away from politics as possible. This will be done by limiting spending and limiting time spent campaigning.

- mathematically designed districts

- instead of first pass the post, many will say instant runoff. Instant runoff is fine, but it is still super linear. To get closer to a direct democracy, liquid voting is far more effective. I personally like log-liquid voting that scales a representative influence logarithmically with their constituent size. This logarithmic scaling allows smaller communities to be heard and dissuades clout chasing.

- typically smaller countries are able to represent the diversity of their citizens better

- term limits on all positions

- remove advertising from news outlets

- Break apart information and monopolies like all of the major social networks and news stations

Remove: Parties. Law and governance is nuanced and shouldn't be reduced to black and white issues.

Remove: Disproportionate representation. One vote should count as much as any other vote from anywhere in the country.

Remove: Politics is popularity contests and soundbites for fame. Remove this by allowing people to assign their votes to experts by proxy.

Remove: Ban lobbyists and lobby groups.

Remove: Ban anyone in government from holding financial interests in anything.

Add: Digitally secure elections. Somehow.

I agree with some of these.

I don't think lobbying should be completely banned. Maybe just restricted to organizations funded by individuals with contribution caps. I think concerned citizens should be allowed to organize a group to represent themselves as a unified voice.

I agree with removing parties in their current form. I'm not sure banning them entirely will be a fix, but I also don't know what would.

I'm not sure how we address disproportionate voting while preserving rural faith in the system. The issues are mostly split in an urban vs rural fashion. The Senate provides assurances to each state that the state's interests will be equally heard.

Ability of normal citizens to view and comment on laws being enacted on their behalf before such laws are being voted on.

This exists to a degree. Bills are required to be posted for the public and then you contact your representatives about it. Regulations of agencies can also be open to public comment periods, like the ATF frequently does (the most recent one about AR pistols shows how effective those comments can be).

Vote of no confidence. Has big implications. -Better feedback loop, more real time accountability. -Ability to change pitcher having given up runs without waiting for the next inning. -Ability to respond quicker to administration failures. -More power to the people.

1.) As soon as you get (re)elected you have to start working on getting money for your next election, hence people/businesses with money will always have a higher chance of getting time in your schedule. As long as more money equals a higher chance of a position of power in politics it is at a minimum an unfair democracy. No lobbying, no money to politicians outside a fair wage.

2.) A two party system will always end up with candidates most voters "can live with". Everyone else than the biggest candidates are wasted votes. This leads to populism, like how you can be hard on crime/immigration/whatever and the other candidates have to beat you. This leads to laws like "Three strikes and you're out" and candidates like Donald Trump. No more Dem. vs Rep. It fuels hatred / Us vs Them mentality.

Voting reform - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNCHVwtpeBY4mybPkHEnR...

It strikes a good balance of something that would have profound systemic effects and influence many ongoing issues but at the same time it's also achievable.

Electronic/Mail ballot voting cannot guarantee both anonymity and easy auditing which results in a lack of trust in election results.

It must be removed. https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs

It's funny how nobody mentions fixes for gerrymandering. Gerrymandering works for winning those 49% votes, but in all honesty, if the votes are that close, it doesn't really matter.

I think you're sort of right. I don't like gerrymandering, but I think there are other actions at play.

If the votes are consistently that close, then I think this points to a deep ideological divide in the population. Possibly pointing to a lack of understanding and empathy of the opposition's position. This seems to lead to people feeling their voices don't matter because legislation is just crammed through the system without compromise or protections.

Add: Government funded airtime for candidates to speak uninterrupted about their policies

I think this should be mandatory. Restrict candidates to use a common website for campaigning/issues. Don't allow them to buy ads or campaign on other platforms (just in person). This would greatly reduce the billions wastefully spent every election cycle and make researching candidates more streamlined.

Here's a great video on that topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE5B9uGpqrM

tl;dr A firewall between money and the leaders doing politics

Reply on news.ycombinator.com