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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

I laughed when those people self-identified as accelerationists... but holly shit! they knew what it means and were honest.

Historically, they are just a bunch of rich morons that got lucky, got power, and decided to stage a coup. This is not some enlightened movement trying to replace the social norms. It's just your run of the mill personal power switch, and the only notable things about it are it's on a country that has been extremely stable before, and those people are stupid enough to willfully destroy it.

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> it's on a country that has been extremely stable before

The US is a known bad design, nation builders working for the United States stopped trying to use this design for new countries in the 20th century, it doesn't work. It's inherently unstable and you previously got very lucky, although you have had a civil war and numerous close calls.

It's like oh, why don't we make coal-powered cars. Well because it's a known bad idea. We actually did try that, it's a bad idea, don't do it again.

And the bad design has severely limited our ability to self-correct.

While I absolutely do not like what is happening right now, I cannot agree with your general statement. Could you elaborate?

The US has proper separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The legislative has a per-state and popular representation. Which part of this is "inherently unstable"?

The only part lacking a proper proportional representation (as in a parliament).

The US Executive is way more powerful than the other powers. It can act as it wishes, and consequences only come years later, if ever.

Also, the per-state representation doesn't seem to lead to good results at all. As you said, the popular representation isn't proportional, what is a more relevant flaw than anything before this point on this comment.

And that is before you get into the details that are actually bad. It's incredible that they managed to stay stable with that electoral system, for example.

That said, looks like they will have an almost perfect opportunity to fix some of those in a few years...

[Citation Needed]

I'd love to read about the new designs.

Literally every other existing democracy is newer. Dig in.

The core is the President is kept from becoming a dictator by nothing more than norms. If Trump staffs the military with loyalists, there isn’t much anyone can do to make him do anything. Most other countries have power over the military, particularly in domestic contexts, much more shattered.

In those "newer designs" there is no electoral college. Also various alternative electoral systems have been tried. The winner-takes-all system of the US is known pathological and inevitably results in a two party system. Democracies in Europe most often result in many parties and a necessity to form coalitions. Ireland even goes as far as using IRV and STV.

The issue isn't even in how votes are counted, it's in parliamentary versus presidential republics.

The latter inevitably slide towards autocracy. Too much power is concentrated in one person, who is almost impossible to legally remove before their term is up, and who will happily punish dissenters within the party.

In parliamentary republics, every PM is one internal party vote away from being deposed. You tend to see less of the tail wagging the dog in them.

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