What if there was a way to defund Washington? Would you be for it? We have so much access to instant polls, even here on this board. What if we could authenticate a biometric signature that couldn't be messed with, and when issues came up, we could just vote on them with, say, our smartphones? Obviously I'm talking hypotheticals here, as well as radical governmental changes. We'd still need some sort of centralized cabinet and figureheads, and they could be turned over, incrementally, each five years, but they would ensure proper checks and balances. We'd probably leave the Supreme Court untouched, as well. As well as some sort of economic branch in place. Like I said, this is a ll super hypothetical and radically different, but still based on our current constitution and what our forefathers wanted. Essentially your Congress is cancelled. Lobbying, cancelled. Political ads during voting season, largely cancelled. Politically parties, largely meaningless. True democracy. The biggest issue would be keeping order and having those that would keep the power players in check. Those that are enacting the public's will would have to be trusted and kept in check somehow. If you can do this, I feel society is largely better for it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I'm curious to see who would entertain this and who would immediately dismiss it. I figure this is an interesting, lighthearted topic for the current time...
Not at all. There are so many things that are essential and valuable our govt. Does. They pay our service men and women, they maintain the interstates, they keep food safe by preventing companies from selling us rotting, infected and inferior foods, they maintain the borders, they maintain federal lands, etc.
The Senate, the House, and lobbyists don't do these things. Obviously there are a million different things you can dissect here, but I don't mean cutting out federal programs and protections. I mean leaving the decision making truly up to the people. It would free up tons of cash.
Most voters do not truly care about the nitty gritty work of governing. I'm one of them. A simpler way to look at this would be the idea of nude beaches. Good idea on the surface, but then there's more bad than good. A deeper look is that democracies generally operate on the rule of law rather than by mob rule. This would more or less be Rule by Likes.
How about regulate campaign contributions and outlaw or restrict special interest groups operating in Washington
Nah, despite the Kochs and cranky billionaire inspired "libertariansim" for the last 75 years in America social mobility has gone down and and poverty has gone up as government spending has gone down.
Haven't listened to the podcast in link but the last two supplemental links seems related to OP's idea about crowdsourcing governance intelligently https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/10/how...r-democracy-with-digital-minister-audrey-tang October 14, 2020 “Democracy is a technology. Like any […] technology, it gets better when more people strive to improve it,” says Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first digital minister. Minister Tang joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the Taiwanese Government is using the Internet as a space for civic participation, dialogue, and consensus building. They also discuss: How the open Internet helped Taiwan proactively tackle the Covid-19 outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic. Algorithmic co-governance, and how it can keep social media platforms in check. How the values of radical transparency and digital openness shape new forms of decision-making. Further reading: “How Taiwan’s Unlikely Digital Minister Hacked the Pandemic” (Wired, 2020) “How Taiwan’s ‘Civic Hackers’ Helped Find A New Way to Run a Country” (The Guardian, 2020) “The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws” (Technology Review, 2018)
We need government reform badly (get rid of corruption, self-dealing, voter suppression, ...) but not this. Government run as a social media style? That's an initiation of a constant jerky disaster with no strategy or forward planning. Almost like what we have with Trump.
