Disturbing but not surprising. If you're a US citizen and outraged enough to spend a few minutes posting a comment here, why not write your local representative and express your feelings to them.
I know, actually picking up the phone and making a call is much more difficult than making snarky, cynical comments on HN, but it's more likely to accomplish something.
If you care enough, you could even get out there and do something like work on the campaign of a primary challenger, or donate money to Amnesty, or anything else out there in the real world that requires time/money/effort.
No, they will become the lobbyists, consultants etc. There are so many openings for former congresspersons that they don't need to fear unemployment.
So it's not like there is a strong fear of being voted out, if you can grab even better paid job(for most, not fore all).
They are pretty comfortable with the idea that most people do not care about these issues. Civil rights are a side show for the majority of voters.
The system has been gamed; it's fundamentally broken. I believe that we need to have some form of direct democracy, such as allowing the public to vote directly on any bill, and if more than 25% vote in any district, their choice overrides their representatives.
Don't tell me it's a technical issue -- that's cowardice. We can do this. If you were CEO of a company, you wouldn't throw up your hands in impotence as your employees ran the company into the ground. It's our country. We're in charge. No more whining. We can do this.
It might be true or false. Maybe masses still did better than politicians.
If you ask me, I think politics should be automated in some way. AI for that probably doesn't exist yet, but hey if they can replace surgeons, why not politicians?
Imagine SOPA had gone to a public vote. Who would have won, Hollywood or the public interest?
Of course there are also important movements like civil rights that don't always have majority support.
While I'm American, I've lived for almost a decade in Switzerland which has direct democracy. I've seen it first-hand.
that masses would make rather bad popular decisions
In other words, you don't believe in Democracy. The whole point is that it comes down to the decisions of the people. Representatives were important when voting was a tough logistical problem; that's not the case anymore. Now they're a liability. There are 18 lobbyists for the finance industry per congressman, each representing a large amount of money in case what the people want contradicts what the finance industry wants. And that's just one industry. No wonder Congress currently has an approval rating of 5%. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/congress-approval-r...]
It's abysmal, we agree, so why are we so petrified of an alternative that includes working together instead?
That's not why the U.S. is a Republic with a legislature rather than a Democracy. It's because the founders thought that a (direct) Democracy was a bad idea. In a country where most people don't believe in free speech and think that it would be a good idea to force children to pray to Jesus in school, I tend to agree. As bad and corrupt as Congress is, this would be worse.
I doubt you can organize USA's 300++ million people in the same way as a conservative and homogeneous small country (at least much less heterogeneous than USA; no gang/ghetto subcultures, for instance).
Edit: Cough. The same point were made in other comments, but clearer and with good examples. I'll leave it here anyway.
American idol?
I don't see why 8 million people should make better decisions than 80 or 800 million people.
Or do you mean that people in the Bay Area make better decisions than people in other areas?
With a smaller group that is local to one another, they're more likely to share interests and understand one another. Communication is faster and clearer among the electorate and between the electorate and the elected.
edited 13th to 17th amendment, oops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
Libertarianism is about individual rights, not States' rights. You can be both a Federalist and a Libertarian if you want, but one doesn't follow from the other.
That's pretty much the only example I know of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Reforms_and_transition_to...
Another one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy
I'm not very knowledgeable about the details, but it looks like he was basically handed the keys, and worked to transition to a democracy, rather than hold power.
Watch the video to see the difference between Australian and US politics.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/former-prem...
The Brits, after WW2, were exhausted. India had been clamoring for independence for ~50 years. And after the war, you suddenly had a million young men in India, well trained in arms and warfare; these men would have been hard to control with force. So they had no choice. Once India fell (i.e. became independent), the dominoes started falling, and soon the sun had set on the British Empire.
Voting is not so crucial to democracy as pluralism: having lots of groups involved and making a difference. It's generally not feasible for people to really keep up with politics on an individual basis, so you need activists or union representatives or religious leaders or NGOs to do the legwork.
But the US suffers from being very fragmented, fractious and individualistic. In that environment it's hard to promote a third alternative that sufficient numbers of people can get behind.
First-past-the-post is the main problem. Better democratic systems are used all over the world where actual parties that represent a spectrum of opinions get actually elected.
Direct democracy has huge drawbacks as well.
The third party's platform will be mixed proportional representation. Which I hope we see one day so maybe this won't be such an issue any more.
I guess the driver behind the success of direct democracy isn't the fact that voters can vote directly; it's the fact that voters actually have to think before casting their votes.
Direct democracy can be far worse, since when the majority becomes fickle and wants to kill someone (such as Socrates) who is there to stop them? And worse, it's usually the VOCAL ACTIVIST minority that goes and votes or intimidates others, such as the nazi party.
Thinking direct democracy will solve everything is naive. Here are some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interests
And by the way getting 25% of people to vote is not easy, without fines being imposed on the non-voters. Facebook wasn't even able to get 3% of people to vote, and that was online clicking a button.
Publius (federalist papers) wrote about democracies that they: have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (Federalist 10)
The founders of the USA are kind of like the writers of the initial codebase and the protocol for amending it. Before there was programming, there was ... legal constitution writing.
If we allow people to vote directly on bills, the constitutionality remains enforced, which means the founders would be happy and Socrates would be safe. The Nazi party was representative, that wasn't direct democracy.
You put out a lot of arguments but none of them showed very much thought.
The Nazi party is an example of a vocal and violent minority intimidating the majority into voting the "right way" for a single party to take over or staying away from the polls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_election_and_referendum,...
is this the kind of thing you want?
Democracy, direct or not, is the way forward. Accept it or not.
In your case this would be bypassing congress, and bypassing debate because referenda are always formulated in questions that cant be debated. You're with us or with the evil doers
For others' ease of navigation, the quote above comes from http://ukrainianweek.com/Columns/50/74762
https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/
Read the idea, review the mock-ups, and please provide constructive critiques on how the idea can be improved.
Your ideas are naive and it's clear you don't understand the purpose of representative democracy. Please don't confuse one of the worst representatives with "the system is entirely broken and should be replaced with this untested system".
My impression is that is one damned big list.
Things only get better through hard work.
Make enough of a stink, and people listen. That is one of the few immutable laws of politics. If you are not getting the desired results, you're not making enough of a stink yet.
- Millions protest regularly, Guantanamo: still open (Couldn't be bothered to source exact numbers, but here're some pictures: https://www.google.com/search?q=Protests+Guantanamo&source=l...)
- Ditto patriot act, status: passed
Exactly how much of a stink did you have in mind? Perhaps people setting themselves on fire en mass? Getting run over by tanks?
Care to elaborate on what possibly more could have been done in any of the cited examples that wasn't already done? Or indeed how you propose that "money, time, and hardwork" (sic) would help? I'd also be interested in why you feel money should be involved in preserving the right of any sentient being not to be tortured, invaded or denied the right to protest when the former happens.
You don't always get your way, you know? You win some, you lose some. That doesn't mean that ... there's no democracy and nothing is possible and woe is us, etc... etc... blah blah blah.
> why you feel money should be involved in preserving the right of any sentient being not to be tortured, invaded or denied the right to protest when the former happens.
We're not talking about an ideal world (duh), but about the one we inhabit. In this one, sometimes justice is difficult to obtain, and requires sacrifice.
So you can either get off your ass and do something, or you can sit around complaining on HN. The former sometimes won't work, or won't accomplish what you had hoped to. The latter is guaranteed to accomplish nothing.
I'm certainly not complaining unless that's how you define discussion that runs contrary to your interests, in which case: why are you here?
Also nice edit :-P
I have yet to see the cynics suggest a better reasonable course of action.
I also wish that people who have nothing constructive to add would kindly STFU instead of dumping all over everyone else's ideas and enthusiasm. I can think of no better way to ensure things never change.
Your whining accomplishes nothing, and just might discourage people from getting out there and making a difference. You are aiding and abetting those who would stick to the status quo.
What are you going to do today to make a difference, even if it's not much? Snarking on HN does not count.
(I gave my rep, Peter DeFazio a call to register my dismay with the ongoing situation in Guantanamo, BTW. It might not be much, but it's something)
Listen to George.
You know what's not funny? Torturing people.
I will not be quiet.
I also used to think that my government wasn't a democracy because they don't represent me. But the truth is, they do represent the majority of the population.
If no branch of your government gives a shit about this issue, that's because the majority of your society doesn't either. So long as they have McDonald's and reality TV, who gives a shit about some random terrorists being tortured?
Change the mindset of your society and then, only then, you will see change in your government, but not before.
They represent a majority of the money. The country's strategic assets are held to ransom by a fraction of 1% of the citizens. We're playing modern Monopoly.
The "I need to roll up my sleeves and work hard to make changes to gerrymandering, primaries and campaign finance reforms so that a much broader pool of American's can have a chance to run for and win" just isn't sexy. Heck one rogue sys admin and fringe blogger are single handily re-defining domestic and international politics. Imagine if every one else did just 5% of what they did to retool the current processes?
Heck one rogue sys admin and fringe blogger are single handily
re-defining domestic and international politics.
Americans just don't care enough to do anything. The few that do genuinely care are too afraid to do anything.
they are great because members from both parties are scared of them. they are great because members from both parties attempt to silence them.
My only concern is, where are the true grassroots groups from the left? OWS was manufactured. Tea Party suffers from attempts by monied interests attempting to take over but for the most part individual groups have shown resilience to that. Don't get me wrong, they have their loons but all political groups do.
We need to unsettle Washington more and more. Washington knows this, evident mostly by the abuses of the IRS, but the FBI and NSA are not far behind.
Except that they dictate the choices people have. The majority of people vote on the issues that the major parties declare to be the issues. Gay marriage, not the validity of the war on drugs. Abortion rights, not our constitutional rights. It is a democratic system of sorts I suppose...
You were always mad.