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Political systems and the mess we are in

anon_five said in #4249 2d ago: received

It seems everyone in our sphere has given up on democracy and liberalism. One thing Curtis Yarvin often says about democracy is its like making a six year old the king. The example is to illustrate that a person(or group) that has no agency cannot actually be sovereign or wield any power. Someone else will just manipulate that person and take control. This is a pretty clearly going on with our voting population. They are controlled by mass media fear programming and school brainwashing. Ppl then often take the next step to say we need some sort of king or CEO or whatever and we need to abandon liberalism, get rid of free speech and have some far right masculine military dictatorship. I am not really sold on these ideas exactly. Perhaps I am naive but I like liberalism, democracy and free speech. I like to think that if we had stricter rules about voting we would really not be in this mess. Yes most ppl have no agency but many do. It should not be the .00001% ruling over the 99.9999% but perhaps the top 10% most competent should be given a say.

What would be good rules to restrict voting to?

-some sort of IQ requirement nothing crazy maybe like 115?
-American history test
-some basic physical fitness test dependent on age
-pass a drug test and cannot be on Adderall, SSRIs, TRT, ozempic ect
-parents(or grandparents) born in the US
-maybe community service hours or something?
-firearms proficiency test

Ideally it could just be like 2-3 things. Would make it more elegant.
Why would this not work(if we could get there)? Is this wishful thinking?

referenced by: >>4257 >>4265

It seems everyone in received

anon_tede said in #4250 2d ago: received

1. Do you care about them?
2. Are you able to care about them?
3. If no, try to fix it. Many people don't want to be "fixed."
4. If yes, find people you care about and just live your life.

referenced by: >>4251

1. Do you care about received

anon_five said in #4251 2d ago: received

>>4250
not sure what you mean here. Who is them?

referenced by: >>4252

not sure what you me received

anon_tede said in #4252 2d ago: received

>>4251

Mentally disabled children. Recent immigrants/international students. Seniors on Medicare and residents on Medicaid. You were considering the whole country, yes?

Realistically there is nothing I can do for a child born with developmental problems. I could waste my energy trying and thinking about it, but I am not in a position to do so. I feel sad for them and help them in the brief moments I can, but I am not willing to drown to save the drowning.

I think elected politicians should serve the people rather than their own interests. But >my highest leverage ability is finding good people, making money through employment, and moving to a place more human.

I probably have enough mental bandwidth to care about people in my city, and at most my state or surrounding cities. But you can't do that if new people keep moving in or between towns.

referenced by: >>4255

Mentally disabled ch received

anon_jyky said in #4253 2d ago: received

https://haroldwinslow.com/posts/choosing_leaders/ has some relevant ideas.

I don’t think you can meaningfully restrict suffrage in an existing democracy - people aren’t going to vote themselves out of the right to vote. Best you can do is trim around the edges (e.g. disallow criminals and the like) or have a revolution. I think it would be more palatable and less time consuming to place more requirements on the candidates than on the voters. Also, any test which effectively filters for competence will create a hereditary underclass unable to vote. Not a good recipe for social harmony.

referenced by: >>4258

I don’t think you ca received

anon_five said in #4255 2d ago: received

>>4252
Im really not sure what you're talking about.

My post was basically saying:
1. Ppl are starting to abandon democracy and liberalism
2. Curtis and BAP say we should move to CEO king or military dictatorship
3. I propose we have very restricted voting rights rather than military rule

Im really not sure w received

egon said in #4257 2d ago: received

>>4249

> It seems everyone in our sphere has given up on democracy and liberalism.

They remain the worst systems except for all others that have been tried.

> What would be good rules to restrict voting to?

None of these work. One Man, One Vote is a powerful Schelling point.

Ironically, the meme solutions you propose (muh firearms proficiency test... muh IQ score) show that you still believe in the lib framing of Democracy too much.

Democracy is not about having smart voters!

It is not about the "wisdom of the crowd" (lol) making complex decisions, or, god forbid, policy. Unshackle your mind.

The Founding Fathers made America a constitutional republic because they read history deeply and understood that direct democracy was an experiment that had already been tried and invalidated. A few places like California have since drank too much of the Smart Voter Theory kool-aid and decided to relearn this lesson again.

The reason democracy and liberalism work is because because they are the only long-term robust way to foster peaceful competition. And there is nothing gnon loves more than competition.

Democracy doesn't have to mean the McDemocracy we've seen in recent years. In its strongest form, it looks more like the two Roosevelts or Singapore, a powerful party-state.

All successful societies are run by an elite with the Mandate of Heaven. All sufficiently nondemocratic societies end up in with a decrepit dead-player elite and, eventually, a state of war. This last part can take an indefinitely long time... a big mistake many non-democracy-enjoyers make is they envision some exciting situation akin to warring Greek city-states, when actually existing non-democracy mostly looks like Venezuela.

In a democracy, you have to prove that you still have the Mandate of Heaven periodically by winning an election. For reasonably youthful, demonstrably competent, live elites--like Bukele, like the PAP, like the prewar USA WASP elite--this is an easy bar to clear.

What we have is not a crisis of democracy, but a crisis of competence.

They remain the wors received

anon_five said in #4258 2d ago: received

>>4253
It is more effort to place rules on voters rather than candidates but I think it would work much better on voters. Trump would likely not pass whatever basic tests you would want him to pass lol, but he is the best we have right now. If we had those rules I stated on the population it would be excellent. It certainly could be bad for social harmony, but I dont see how you get around that, some ppl are more competent than others. The social harmony currently is not good. I think that having the requirements to vote should be attainable and nothing crazy but also a good filter. Even just basic fitness test, American history test and pass a drug test. Can anyone really object to any of these. This would not create an underclass, all of these are easily attainable. I mean many will object to these obviously but they are not a very high unattainable bar

It is more effort to received

anon_five said in #4260 2d ago: received

"None of these work. One Man, One Vote is a powerful Schelling point."
We already restrict voting rights. People have to be 18, they cannot be felons. Historically women and colored people could not vote.
You have not really expressed what is wrong with my rules or why such rules would be bad. It seems more like you're saying things could work without these rules? Well, I guess. My observation is very simple - If the voting base is awful nothing will work. I am not suggesting that a smarter voting base would be making the policy, but they would be electing the politicians. Perhaps I didn't make this clear. I am imagining the current American system but with a few simple rules. I am not suggesting a real democracy where ppl set the policy thats very dumb.

"decrepit dead-player elite" - what means?

"What we have is not a crisis of democracy, but a crisis of competence." - among who? how would you solve? - I am suggesting rules that stripe the franchise to vote of those who are not competent

"None of these work. received

anon_xuru said in #4262 2d ago: received

If you're so stoked on liberal democracy, I think the ideal is striving to make most of those conditions universal. Cultivate free men that are capable of participating in civilized political and social life. Restore democracy and the free market, as well as their legal protections and key institutions.

If that sounds farfetched, maybe someone can sell you on more sensible radical programs, whether political or individual. But what you're asking us to contemplate is a scenario where someone has power sufficient to coordinate the rapid disenfranchisement of a couple hundred million people, transform the Constitution, and remake the American electoral system without a clear purpose, except restricting suffrage to ten or twenty million mostly white electors. At that point, the best case scenario is much nastier people deciding which of many illiberal alternatives might be most expediently pursued after helter skelter.

referenced by: >>4263

If you're so stoked received

anon_five said in #4263 2d ago: received

>>4262
Im not really suggesting this as a realistic senario, it is more so a response to ideas I see online that are growing in popularity. As I've mentioned BAP promotes a military dictatorship and Curtis Yarvin a patchwork of mini empires with CEO dictators. These objections to what im saying like "that sounds farfetched" are frankly annoying. Do you think that I don't know that it is far fetched? My question is "would this work as a political system?" not "is this realistic". If people are happy to entertain BAP suggesting a military dictatorship or Curtis's thing, they should be willing to respond to what I'm saying.

The idea of "democracy has failed" is something I see very very often online. Even "Sargon of Akkad" who is like some gamer game commentator is saying this. I'm not really sure what to make of this? Do they really want Hitler? I'm not sure they really understand what they are saying. What I am suggesting is far less radical than all of these people suggesting we completely get rid of Democracy.

"transform the Constitution" - we already have the 19th amendment

The clear purpose is that if you cannot pass a drug test and/or are seriously overweight and/or cannot learn basic history of the country you have no agency and should not be allowed to vote.

"restricting suffrage to ten or twenty million mostly white electors" - wrong

referenced by: >>4264

Im not really sugges received

anon_xuru said in #4264 2d ago: received

>>4263
I will be a bit vague: Yes, some people you're reading on the internet do really want Hitler. Some want Stalin, in fact. Many others would balk at a charismatic strongman. That's not a fashionable solution. They think there are much more sound alternatives to the present state of things.

I'll talk about Curtis Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert, even if I'm not an expert on them.

Curtis Yarvin suggests that when we ask people, "Do we live in a democracy, and should we?", you're going to get a hesitant, qualified response on the first half, and an emphatic, "Yes!" on the second. But so, could or should that democracy be the American civics textbook ideal? Maybe. Since not many would give a firm, positive to the first question, "democracy" is probably not the system under which Americans live at present. So, we need to redefine democracy as something that does not accord with our popular definition, which looks illiberal or elitist. Monarchy can be democratic, after all. And the Chinese live in a democracy, they say. The Communist Party didn't win power because they killed all the democrats, but because they sold themselves as the true democrats, even if their understanding of these terms is more classical than our own popular understanding of that word. There is a reason Curtis Yarvin talks so much about FDR, who took power as a democrat.

This is what Bronze Age Pervert is getting at, too. I don't know if he's actively calling for military dictatorship in America. Is he? His solution is somehow democratic, too, if you abandon the present definition of the word and hostility against elitism and so on.

So, you can pull from the writings of Curtis Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert a modernized revolutionary scheme, a program for what comes next, and arguments for why these things need to be done.

I'm not trying to be dismissive, since perhaps I'm still missing something, but the way I see it is this: No, at the present, leaving aside how it might be done, simply restricting suffrage to a small minority of citizens would not work.

Retarded, poor, foreign-born people vote at fairly low rates already.

Legally disenfranchising more than half the electorate, which is what an IQ test and requirements for American-born parents would do, wouldn't solve the problems that plague the present system (the accounts of these would be different for a progressive than for a Yarvinite, but not fundamentally). If major reforms were carried out simultaneously, this new electoral bloc is, anyway, not naturally an elite in waiting, and would be given power they didn't desire. They could not for long resist powers arrayed against them.

I will be a bit vagu received

db said in #4265 2d ago: received

>>4249

I’d like to surface the theory of Our Democracy as a complex of institutions rather than any particular voting mechanism or suffrage rule. Different mechanisms and rules have existed in the US in the past and at the end of that line of development lies us and our present situation. Through it all we have still had essentially the same three branch core with a relatively stable set of major governmental institutions in orbit around it.

Taking the complex of institutions view, American democracy is a modern triumvirate, which consists of three governments in a stable state of permanent competition with another. The Presidency, the Congress and the Court each claim legitimacy via a different route and each exert influence through different means. The institutions surrounding this core change infrequently, the Federal Reserve being a notable modern addition. Over time each institution waxes and wanes but taking the long view the structure has demonstrated remarkable persistence.

Note that Presidents, Congresses and Courts tend to uphold and maintain the policies and actions of their predecessors, regardless of party affiliation. Once something has started to be done, institutional momentum across government builds up and it is difficult to stop or reverse, even for the President. This explains the effectiveness of tactics like the wedge, that is introducing a small and seemingly harmless version of your policy to build some institutional muscle for it, later to expand it dramatically through mind-numbing bureaucratic shuffling without meaningful democratic oversight.*

To effect change in Washington one must first recognize this as the primary game: that institutions matter and voters don’t. With that in mind, we are in an era of institutional dysfunction: Congress can barely pass a budget, let alone any meaningful legislation; approval ratings of Congress as a whole are through the floor. The Supreme Court is now seen as partisan by Democrats and elitist by Republicans; and it starts with the least democratic claim to legitimacy of the three core branches. The Presidency is increasingly the only branch that can actually do anything - recognizing the all-or-nothing stakes of the Presidency has made elections a complete circus and the moment of transition of power a volatile flashpoint.

The institutions are breaking down, but this has happened before**. The Trump presidency is potentially a New Deal moment where the balance of power between the three branches shifts and shapes at least the next couple of decades until the next crisis. In this moment, the power of Congress is at a low water mark and the Presidency and Supreme Court are strong. States have little to no ability to meaningfully contest Federal actions. One might predict that: States will find ways to assert their own authority again; Congress will have to be reformed (see current gerrymandering discourse) and the result will be a stronger Congress than before; and the Presidency will have to be reined in along with the powerful fiefdoms of the executive branch.

Under the general theme of reforming Congress there might be changes to the rules about who gets to vote, but that seems unlikely. Instead we might see a crisis emerge over who decides who gets to vote in what electorate i.e. the problems of gerrymandering and closed party primaries. The result could be in the best case something practical like multi-member districts which solve both problems. In any case, the advice is to ignore who the voters are and focus instead on what they get to vote on, and who gets to act once the voting is over.

I’d like to surface received

db said in #4266 2d ago: received

*For examples see: income tax (constitutional amendment passed because initially scoped to ~1% of Americans, now covers practically everyone), civil asset forfeiture (initially aimed at only drug seizures, now the cops can legally take your stuff almost without any checks), executive emergency powers (now a permanent expansion of executive power over almost anything), vehicle emissions regulation (clean air act initially target large emitters like factories & power plants, now EPA rule making distorts the car market and the SUV-ridden dystopia we live in is the result). Etc.

**Examples include:
1787 - a weak Congress can’t make states pay tax or enforce federal laws, so it creates Presidency and Court to help it govern
1803 - in the first Presidential transition of power, the outgoing President attempts major rearguard executive action and the incoming President refuses to abide them. The Court defuses the crisis and greatly enhances its own power
1833 - Congress again too weak to enforce critical taxation law, so it awards President new powers to use military force against individual states if necessary
1861 - Congress gridlocked, Supreme Court perceived as partisan. Sweeping wartime powers awarded to the President result in Lincoln becoming the most powerful American leader since Washington, stopped only through assassination.
1913 - The industrial age has completely reshaped the American economy, putting huge power in the hands of a technocratic corporate elite. Congress and the Supreme Court are often in conflict over the power of the Federal government to regulate this phenomenon. New constitutional amendments strengthen Congress’ mandate, Federal Reserve is created, direct election of Senators begins.
1933 - Great Depression enables President to take direct control of economic policy and legislate via executive order. Congress cooperates but Supreme Court pushes back. Court is ultimately bullied into deference to the other two branches.
Exercise for the reader: fill in post WW2 examples.

*For examples see: i received

anon_wodu said in #4271 11h ago: received

> What would be good rules to restrict voting to?

Landownership.

Landownership. received

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