> This is why people fucking hate congress.
Wholeheartedly agree.
And to go one step further: how many percent Americans would have voted yes to something like this if they had been asked directly?
Representative democracy is utterly broken.
Wholeheartedly agree.
And to go one step further: how many percent Americans would have voted yes to something like this if they had been asked directly?
Representative democracy is utterly broken.
That seems an unfair burden. Many laws cover complex matters and the average American cannot be expected to know the pros and cons of every bill. I like clean water, for instance, but my opinion on what that means isn't well developed enough to vote on laws on exactly what should be permitted.
Our lawmakers aren't exactly subject matter experts either. And their SMEs are probably often just lobbyists.
Maybe that's because I've always lived in a direct democracy where it's commonplace to propose or challenge new laws, and while engaging in that process does require a few hours every now and then, I've always felt that's more than worth it.
By all means, I very much support citizen led initiatives (and there have been some excellent ones), but not out of the blue as an after the fact evaluation of a law.
It's the worst form of government, except all the others that have ever been tried.
You are right on one count, though, there are a lot of broken aspects to this particular flavor of representative democracy. It's the sort of thing that happens when you keep version 1 running in production for 250 years, with limited ability to patch it.
I disagree. There are places where direct democracy works quite well and has for a very long time.
The US certainly isn't one of them.
The patching process is called amendments. 17th put lobbyists in control. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/...
So we should just try new ones then?