The problem runs deeper than the current administration. Voting doesn't work.
The Biden administration isn't the antidote to our problems.
The Biden administration isn't the antidote to our problems.
It works fine to accomplish what it is intended to do: Pick a worker to hire.
The problem is that many assume it ends there and the employee will magically go off and do great things. That is not how it works. If you've ever worked with employees before, you'll know full well that you have to regularly communicate with them to keep them on track. Even if the most stellar employee in the world trying to do everything right will never be a mind reader.
When was the last time you spoke to the person you hired for the job of representative? I expect for most reading this, the answer will be never. That is what doesn't work.
You can merely lie and spend money and get elected and then do the opposite. Rinse and repeat.
See: John Fetterman.
It doesn't work. It's fundamentally broken.
It is not fundamentally broken. The model proves to work perfectly fine in other contexts regularly. The trouble is that you, along with a lot of other people, are looking for magic so that you don't have to get your hands dirty. The harsh reality is that magic doesn't exist, I'm afraid.
It's corrupted by money, bribery, gerrymandering, an electoral system that is anti-democratic, and a two party system that has as a joint monolopy on power via division.
Corrupt means broken.
It is not fundamentally broken. It is fixable by the people stepping up and doing what an employer needs to do. The reluctance to want to roll up sleeves is understandable, but magic doesn't exist. It is either let the employees run wild or stand up and manage them. Your choice.
Ok I'm an employer, and voting is my superpower. So I guess I just need to vote for the ones that aren't corrupt and that'll fix it? Too easy. Help me out though because I don't want to screw this up...who exactly do I need to vote for to fix our broken systems?
> They think they can spend all day, every day, on the golf corse, metaphorically speaking, and everything will function hunky dory.
Wait a minute...voting isn't enough? I also need to dedicate my life to this? Ok what should I do? Run for office? Volunteer at a campaign? Whose campaign? Go to DC and protest? Lie down on the freeway? Post my thoughts on r/politics? Wait does this HN post count? Am I fixing our corrupt country right now? This is easy!
No, being the boss is your superpower. Selecting an employee to hire isn't all that important. There will never be a magical genie that grants all your wishes to choose from, just simple, imperfect humans that require constant management. Like, maybe don't pick a 'vegetable' that you cannot talk to if one shows up in the applicant pool, because you will need to talk to your employee regularly to convey what you expect of them and scold them when they screw up. It is still worth some of your time to flip through the resumes. But the reality is that of the average people who generally apply for the job, any will do as well as any other. None of them will be the ideal candidate.
> voting isn't enough?
Has hiring an employee and then cutting them loose ever been enough? Have you never had a job before? If you have, did your employer, after telling you that you got the job, disappear into the night, never to be heard from again? For those who have had jobs, the answer is an obvious: No, of course not. Why would this job somehow be different? It wouldn't be, obviously. You haven't hired a magical genie. Magic doesn't exist.
> I also need to dedicate my life to this?
No, you don't have to. The employees are generally willing to dutifully show up and do something. But if you don't stay in regular communication with them as to communicate what it is you want and expect out of them they'll be left to guess. They are certainly not mind readers. How could they know what you are thinking if you don't tell them? So, no, you don't have to, but you are not going to like the results if you don't get involved.
> Wait does this HN post count?
Do you mean count as a distraction that is taking you away from your duties as an employer? Sure. If you owned a McDonalds, would posting on HN complaining that the burgers at your establishment are coming out raw fix anything? Stranger things have happened, but I expect the odds are exceedingly low. Why would you come to HN to vent your frustrations instead of talking to the employees that aren't doing their job properly?
> No, being the boss is your superpower
Ok so how exactly do I do this? That's what I'm asking. I'm trying to get your concrete recommendation here. What does "be the boss" mean? How do I actually do it?
Here's why I ask:
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
Over half the country doesn't know what you know: they don't know how to use their superpower. So what are they missing?
Keep in mind that Trump was hired by the slate of electors you chose to hire. You did not choose him yourself. While ultimately all employees in your business are your responsibility, it is best for you to focus on the high ranking individuals, not the low-rung peons that are doing the busywork. First step is to call up the middle manager electors you hired directly and ask "What the hell?" They can worry about pushing things forward after that. Your role is to lead, not do everything.
In addition, you also directly hired a representative and a senator, tasked with keeping the rank and file employee in line. If they are not doing that, you also need to call them up and ask "What the hell?" If the phone is not your thing, visit their office. You are paying good money as their employer to give them an office. Don't be afraid to step foot in it. Your company directory gives the office location and phone number, in case your memory happens to be short and you've forgotten how to contact the person you hired already.
From there, it is a case by case basis. Every employee is going to have their own quirks and you have to learn how to work with them. But, I mean, they're just regular humans. You treat them like you would any other employee. If you owned a McDonalds location, you'd have to deal with imperfect humans just the same. This is no different.
If all this still is beyond your grasp, community colleges typically have management courses you can enrol in. Jumping straight in and doing it is usually the best way to learn, however. You might look like a fool the first time you engage with your employees, but who cares? By next year you'll be a seasoned pro. Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now.
You're taking this analogy too far. Managing an employee is not like electing a representative. We're not describing a boss-employee relationship here.
This motivational talk of "you have a superpower" and "you're the boss" all boiled down to one piece of concrete advice you gave: "call your representative". You've not given me anything else I can do with my high level management skills.
I admire your optimism, but I think we have enough evidence at this point to know that this is just not going to do it.
Quite literally we are. I know it may not feel like it if you are accustomed to sitting back and letting the world crumble around you, but you are electing someone to work for you. What would the voting process be for if you didn't need anyone to do your bidding? Most importantly, why are you putting the elected on the payroll if you don't need them to work for you? Were you under the impression that they work for free?
> I think we have enough evidence at this point to know that this is just not going to do it.
If you don't like being called the boss, there's another word we use to describe participating in democracy: Lobbying. I think we can reasonably conclude that it does work because those who push a dictatorial agenda always cry about how the lobbyists (i.e. those who take time to talk to the workers) actually get things done — just not the things they imagine would get done if there was one all knowing, all powerful supreme dictator. Plus we know it works because we can see it in every other walk of life. The people don't become space aliens when the word government is thrown into the mix. People are people are people.
I get this desire for magic, but magic doesn't exist.
And there's another word we can use to describe Lobbying: Bribery.
Lobbying is a (corrupt) industry and I'm not a participant in it, so unfortunately I'm still down to "call your representative".
The system really doesn't work as you say. Representatives don't respond to what their constituents want. They respond to money and and power. That's not democracy.
Which is literally lobbying, which you refuse to participate in, so that leaves accepting that all your great thoughts will be forever stuck in your head. The person you hired to work with your thoughts is most definitely not a mind reader.
> They respond to money and and power.
Money and power is not some fundamental property of the universe. It is only social. It is given to whom the people want to give it to. So, if the money and power isn't directed where you want to see it, give money and power to someone else.
> That's not democracy.
Right. Democracy takes place when you make yourself heard, by actually talking to people, not computers, about what you feel needs to be heard, while holding the representatives accountable if they do not do their job. So far you appear to be doing neither. If democracy isn't your thing, that's fine. The neat thing about democracy is if you don't like it and choose not to participate, it naturally turns into the only alternative, so everyone wins — except those who cling to the idea of magic. Unfortunately, magic doesn't exist.
It's literally not possible to fix a corrupt system by asking a participant in it to change the system that benefits them.
> Unfortunately, magic doesn't exist.
You are under the illusion that we operate under a functional democracy that responds to the will of the people. It's you that believes in magic, not me.
If that were the case we wouldn't have spent time talking about how it is broken, nor would we have spent time talking about what needs to be done to fix it. However, like you said, when you benefit from the system there is no incentive to change.
To those reading this who are not winners under the status quo, know that you can change. The power is in your hands. Don't let the propagandists try to convince you that it is hopeless. As they suggest themselves, only those who want to keep things the same seek preservation.
You've done exactly the opposite. All you've done is defend the system and cast blame at the "bosses" for not doing their job.
> The power is in your hands.
There you go again.
Please update this thread when you put your money where your mouth is and make a real difference. Then all those reading this can be inspired by your actions rather than your empty words.
It is upto to the voters to see past this.
People complain about their choices. Meanwhile, there's atrocious turnout in the primaries which determine those choices.
"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."
to the anonymous scholar who first said, probably as a joke:
"If violence didn't work you didn't use enough".
Whatever you think of voting and democracy, the alternatives are far more unpleasant. Vote every time, without fail.
Far too many people complain about the bad candidates in the general, and don't do the most basic thing to influence that.
I agree that mixing of the party primary system and the governmental election process is a problem leading to dominance of finge views.
Disparaging democracy doesn't work. Saying shit like this is worse than not voting.
EDIT: Downvoted for defending democracy. I do love democracy :-D
Representatives in ancient democracies were selected by sortition, which is based on statistics, not popularity or money.
The ancient Athenians knew that elections favored the rich. That’s why they incorporated selection by lot into their system. Our modern understanding of democracy has fetishized elections to the point that some voters might see hundreds of them in a year, including for positions that shouldn’t ever be elected (e.g. judges), while still having little to no actual civic power.
Oh totally agree. But also civic involvement. The returns to even small amounts of civic engagement in America are so ridiculously high because most of the population doesn’t do it. If like 5% more of the electorate called their electeds at least twice a year, that would represent a 25% increase in civic engagement, enough to break constituencies.
Out of control inflation? No healthcare? Endless war?
Just vote! You just have to vote for a democrat!
It's time to say no to these charlatans. If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change.
Or a third party.
> If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change
There's only 2 ways it can change: voting or violence. You're saying voting doesn't work. That means you're advocating violence.
Biased much? Why not say no to Republicans, they put us in this mess time and time again.
I read somewhere recently about how congress should be much bigger than it is currently due to population growth, and how that would make all the redistricting that currently happens irrelevant.
We need sortition.
You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.
Fuck what the professional politicians think of sortition; do an end run around them, because professional politicians are the problem.
Get this accomplished in enough states, and then you have a level chance of doing an amendment to the US Constitution.
Aka...voting.
If you truly believe "voting doesn't work", as you first said (EDIT: that was someone else whose username starts with a "b" sorry), then this referendum won't go anywhere either.
There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics, I suggest you take a breath and actually engage with the ideas contained within them.
Sorry, can you please point to one of these thoughtful responses? I've seen one idea suggested: "sortition". But no ideas for how to get it peacefully without voting it in. I engaged with all these comments and asked this question.
"Voting doesn't work" is a cynical, doomerist, thought terminating cliche. I don't want this mind virus to propagate. You may call my comments "histrionics". But instead I suggest you take a breath and think about where calling voting and elections "useless" leads.
But I would say that the voting that matters most is voting in primaries. Get rid of the ideologues and zealots on both sides; get some people who can think rather than just yell.
Key figures, wealth, etc. Shouldn't influence their power to this extend. The general public isn't silent, it's silenced.