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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

Nice thoughts, but

resolve individual clauses down to individual lawmakers, then back to lobbyists.

In some cases you might be able to attribute a clause to a lobbyist, but this isn't the general case. And how could this be enforced?

outward facing interface allowing the public to track the progress of bills in real time, increasing democratic awareness and participation.

This exists, and doesn't seem to be helping. See thomas.loc.gov. For example, concerneing SOPA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d112:1:./temp/~bdNuy... (Suggestion for enhancement: easy permalinks)

Legally mandated commit messages accompanying each change justifying and explaining it ... force them to write these in simple english

There are already requirements that bills specify the authority on which they're grounded. Most of these just wind up saying "Interstate Commerce". In other words, you'll never be able to enforce this in any meaningful way.

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>Most of these just wind up saying "Interstate Commerce". In other words, you'll never be able to enforce this in any meaningful way.

In my imagined utopia, all these justifying messages would be listed on a lawmaker's github profile-style page next to a big picture of their face, and any lawmaker with a long list of "interstate commerce" type messages would look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public. I'd put the messages in speech bubbles emanating from the headshot photo, like you see in some commenting systems, just to drive the point home.

And how do you plan on getting Congress to agree to use a system in which vast swathes of them will "look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public"?

Do you want to bring Democracy back to the system (or your choice of roughly equivalent question), or are you just trying to put your own political ideals on a privileged pedestal? I think one of the key reasons we have been unable to successfully reform things is that in general, people want the latter a lot more than they want the former. And DC knows what to do with those types... embrace, extend, embed.

>And how do you plan on getting Congress to agree to use a system in which vast swathes of them will "look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public"?

Maybe they'd be forced to do so in order to compete with the new cohort of younger, technology-embracing politicians which will sweep to power on the crest of a wave of louis ck-style "OMG finally someone who understands" sentiment from the reddit generation, bumrushing congress in much the same way that the tea party has done.

I fully admit that these ideas are not workable in this form. I'm trying to "dream big." That's why I used the phrase in my imagined utopia.

That will never happen because too few of the Reddit generation are willing and/or capable of pulling out their checkbook (err, PayPal account) to cover the cost of that. In fact, too few of them are even willing to show up at the polls (40ish% compared to over 70% for age 55+[1]). Until those change, nobody is getting kicked out by the Reddit generation.

[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p...

One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. Let us vote from our civic centers (e.g. the net) and we'll do so in much higher numbers. Increasing the barrier to political participation has the effect of excluding all but the highly motivated, thus pushing politics toward extremes.

The important barrier to (effective) participation is not the drive to an inconvenient polling location. The barrier is learning about the candidates and the issues, and enough background to fit all the pieces together.

That is, making an optimal choice for your vote is an extremely expensive undertaking. Thus, relatively few people do it well.

Clearly people don't agree with my original comment. I'll see if I can figure out where I've strayed, and make my original idea clearer.

If I may, I'd like to squish the content of your comment into the single word "motivation." At present, it takes a high enough amount of motivation to either take time off work to vote early, vote by mail, or wait in excessively long lines after work, that far fewer than a majority of people participate. The arguments I've typically heard suggest that highly-motivated voters are more likely to make correct choices, and well-informed voters are more likely to be motivated.

My (untested) conjecture is that, rather than trying to increase motivation, we should decrease the level of motivation required by making it ridiculously easy to vote. Allowing larger numbers of less-motivated voters may lead to an improved "wisdom of the crowd" effect[0][1], counterbalancing the vocal minorities that we often see controlling local and national politics.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/in-group-decisio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

I think buried in your statement is the idea that democracy is inherently better, an end in itself. I strongly dispute this: I think that it's more important to get to the best answer, than to follow the herd, whatever direction it might go in.

In your second link, it notes two problems. First, it says that Crowds tend to work best when there is a correct answer to the question being posed, such as a question about geography or mathematics. I submit that this is quite the opposite of political questions.

But more importantly, it also discusses one of the big problems of "Wisdom of the crowd", although it couches it as an advantage. The effect is enhanced through communication between individuals, as would (and should) be the case in any political question. To this I reply with two words: "witch hunt".

History is replete with examples wherein the common, accepted ideas of society have stood in the way of progress -- I don't think I even need to recite any. And the whole point of the United States is to protect the minority, or even the one, against the will of a strong majority. So I don't think it's wise to strengthen further the crowd-based aspect of our political system.

That Wikipedia article used to explain how democracy was not an example of "wisdom of the crowds"; I'm disappointed that I can't find an older revision with that segment intact.

But that said, it's important to distinguish "crowd" from "people". I've lately been trying to explain to people that the vote is the least important (while still being necessary) part of a democracy. The effort of explaining to the whole population why a certain law needs passage is the soul of democracy; votes are merely to maintain a formal record of dissent and to resolve deadlocks. They're decision making tools of last resort.

> One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with.

You didn't go to high school or the library growing up?

Sure, but they were far from being a place I'd like to revisit, especially not on election day. The Internet is the community commons of today just as much as a library or city building was 30-40 years ago.

Are you really saying that high school was so bad you'd rather not vote than go back there for an hour or 3?

Absolutely. Try growing up as a geek in a semi-suburbanized farming community (though things have changed since then).

If you want to play this game: try growing up as a liberal, atheist geek from out of town in a rural bible-belt town of ~7,000. Then, try becoming an adult and getting over it so that you can perform your civic duty.

High school, for me, is 3+ hours away. And yes, I'd rather never revisit that place again.

>bumrushing congress in much the same way that the tea party has done.

Let's hope not. The Teaparty congress started going to work on things that didn't serve the tea party, but rather, corporate benefactors.

Another example of the big problem being that money == speech.

Still, you would get all kinds of "Ensuring freedom and security for all citizens", "providing new opportunities" and similar crap.

I think you'll find that much of the power that Congress wields is due to the interstate commerce clause. It is one of a few bits of constitutional authority that Congress can use to justify laws.

It would be more apropos to talk about "commit messages" that were a long list of : "typos", "bugfix"... not that I have commit messages that look like this... nope, not me...

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