posted
There was a post on Less Wrong recently about the budget crisis, and how the two-party system contributed to it. Less Wrong normally doesn't discuss politics and this post is being downvoted for breaking the norm, but I thought it raised some good points.
In the comments, someone suggested this:
quote:One possibility that occurred to me a while back is to just make congress a random sample of the population. Nobody outside of congress will vote, so they won't form any sort of political party until their chosen. There will still be some party effects. For example, if congress has to appoint someone, and they vote on it, it will go back to the first case.
Parties will still be caused by normal human biases. If you get a hundred people together, they will form groups. It can at least be improved from the US system, which forces the adoption of parties.
Obviously a change this major would be unlikely to happen, regardless of its merit. But the idea seems interesting to me. I think it is workable if the "Congressional Draft" is sampled from people with some particular degree of education. Maybe a specific series of government ed courses that are available for free to anyone, and can be used as general ed courses in regular Bachelor degrees. They'd include things like economics, public speaking, logic, history, some sciences, etc. There could be a few levels of education and completing higher levels gets you entered multiple times into the Congressional Draft if you so choose.
Requiring the education ensures that congresspeople have SOME idea what they're talking about. Random sampling means congresspeople don't have to spend time and money on campaigning, and should alter the political landscape in some fashion while remaining a statistically accurate reflection of people who actively care about politics. And if you still manually enter yourself into the lottery, that guarantees that the people in congress actually want to be there.
If the US somehow enacted this policy, do you think that'd increase or decrease the quality of our legislature?
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posted
"Obviously a change this major would be unlikely to happen, regardless of its merit. But the idea seems interesting to me. I think it is workable if the "Congressional Draft" is sampled from people with some particular degree of education."
Which is an example of why it would not work.
The whole concept is also wildly unconstitutional. The first obvious challenge would be the 17th amendment, but other amendments would also present challenges- the 15th, the 12th and 25th (due to avenue of congressional selection for the presidency, and the ascension of speaker of the house to the Presidency).
It also runs contrary to the constitutions entire structuring of congress.
In short. No, this is not a good idea, and not just because it's not constitutional.
If you think free and open elections lend themselves to corruption and electioneering, let's just imagine what would go on in a congressional *draft*.
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posted
What do you actually think the consequences would be?
This was a not a "hey this is a great idea we should begin campaigning to adopt!" thread, it was a "in the magical world where this suddenly happened [because Congress made the necessary changes to the constitution], what would the actual consequences be?"
At this point I haven't given this much thought, but I can't think of obvious ways to game this that aren't already possible in the current system.
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posted
I can imagine businesses or non-profit entities springing up to advise new congresspeople who find themselves suddnly in office with enormous power and no idea what the rules or norms are. These consultants could offer staffers and networking opportunities. Ideological lean could be a pretty major selling point for a new congresswoman shopping around for an advisory organisation.
posted
Is this better or worse than having the congressman already in their pocket before they walk in the door?
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posted
It's not *better*. But the way to eliminate systemic corruption is not to completely upend the system.
With zero accountability to an electorate, attention to even a veneer of responsibility for that electorate can be dismissed. This type of system would invite an essentially privatized congress under the near total control of interest groups and collective lobbies. The issue would not be that a single individual serving in a role could potentially vote however she wished, but that the system as a whole would be on the auction block. Individual descent wouldn't matter a great deal in that scenario.
And let's not even get into how you would go about confirming your draftees. That would place the selection of candidates out of the hands of even a lottery system, and firmly into the hands of private interests.
Again, things are bad now, but such a system would only allow it to get worse.
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posted
So only the highly educated get to be in Congress, regular people no longer vote, and there's no guarantee that random selection won't just pick 500 conservatives or 500 liberals who will run rampant?
I think you'd be much closer with some sort of parliamentary system. Everyone gets to vote for a party, and then once that's set, the party can choose people at random who adhere to a certain set of party ideals.
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quote:So only the highly educated get to be in Congress, regular people no longer vote, and there's no guarantee that random selection won't just pick 500 conservatives or 500 liberals who will run rampant?
I don't necessarily consider these downsides. "Educated" doesn't have to mean more than two semesters, which I think is the absolute minimum I want congresspeople to have anyway. (The course load would be set up so that regular degrees could take them as electives/general ed - it wouldn't make sense to dedicate a full degree to something you only had a random shot of making.)
The only reason I'd consider random distribution of interested people a bad thing is public perception. I don't think a congress made up of a random sampling of interested people is going to be much worse than the swings we get nowadays based on "well, the republicans suck, lets vote in democrats.... huh, the democrats suck too, let's vote in republicans." But yes, the loss of the ability to vote would FEEL wrong, whether it produces better or worse results.
That said:
quote:The issue would not be that a single individual serving in a role could potentially vote however she wished, but that the system as a whole would be on the auction block. Individual descent wouldn't matter a great deal in that scenario.
Okay, that's pretty game breaking and I can't think of a way to even begin to fix it.
But:
quote:It's not *better*. But the way to eliminate systemic corruption is not to completely upend the system.
For practical purposes, yes I agree with this, but I also think that our current system is pretty awful. However many incremental steps are necessary to reach it, I think a truly good governing system is going to look radically different from what the US currently does.
[ August 22, 2011, 10:08 PM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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posted
This thought process was originally an attempt at a solution to the "politicians will be auctioned off to corporations" problem. I don't think it solves that all. (In fact, to even be meaningful it needs to be able to compete with what corporations can pay, and if we could solve that problem this "solution" wouldn't even be necessary).
But as long as it's "Ray spews out random ideas that probably aren't good" day:
One problem with congress is that it rewards short term platitudes (archetypical one being "lower taxes" over long term but expensive solutions).
Is there any way to meaningfully reward Congresspeople a few years *after* a particular year they served? The initial thought was something like "they get paid an initial, barely livable amount, and then for the next 10 years they get paid extra based on voter satisfaction."
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quote:Obviously a change this major would be unlikely to happen, regardless of its merit. But the idea seems interesting to me. I think it is workable if the "Congressional Draft" is sampled from people with some particular degree of education. Maybe a specific series of government ed courses that are available for free to anyone, and can be used as general ed courses in regular Bachelor degrees. They'd include things like economics, public speaking, logic, history, some sciences, etc. There could be a few levels of education and completing higher levels gets you entered multiple times into the Congressional Draft if you so choose.
I don't know how to describe this feeling, but it's like a thousand red flags were raised in my head just by reading this proposal. Thin-slicing the idea gives me this foreboding unintended-consequences dread.
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quote:Is there any way to meaningfully reward Congresspeople a few years *after* a particular year they served? The initial thought was something like "they get paid an initial, barely livable amount, and then for the next 10 years they get paid extra based on voter satisfaction."
this - this too. in the time it took me to read it i thought up ten ways special interests can game the crap out of it
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posted
I can easily see that one being useless. Again, I don't really get how it's MORE gameable than the current system, but I'm not that good at gaming systems.
I mean, I didn't specify... well, anything, really, about how the payments would be made or what the maximum payout would be. Can you actually name 10 ways to game it based on the limited information I listed, or are you assuming it'd be implemented in the worst of possible ways?
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quote:One problem with congress is that it rewards short term platitudes (archetypical one being "lower taxes" over long term but expensive solutions).
This is a problem with pretty much every form of democracy.
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I don't like the notion of direct democracy for federal legislation because I don't trust popular opinion on issues. Instead I like representatives. But for them to be representative of me, I feel like I should have a chance to voice my support or dissent for a particular candidate.
My neighbor down the street being randomly selected via draft suddenly being my congressman when I had no choice in the matter? Not a fan of the notion on principle alone.
If our concern is corruption and people being bought out let's address the problem itself and find ways to take the corruption out of the system. Let's not destroy the system itself.
Also, I like incumbency.
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posted
Well, nearly any form of government. And if you can collect the political capital to pursue an expensive long term goal, you probably also have the political capital necessary to get away with murdering your citizens and suppressing their individual liberties as an end to those goals. I mean, Libya had far reaching and expensive long term projects funded by the last regime. Considering the country's actual financial situation, no democracy would ever have done them.
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