Cato wrote this: " I made this thread to brainstorm about ways to fix our(USA) current government.

Try and keep your responses short, on topic, impersonal, serious, and only ideas for improving democracy. Do not simply suggest a different system.

I have been thinking about the distrust of our elected officials and how many of them are probably corrupt. It seems politics has gotten in the way of government, and this upsets me."

But I am making this as the wide open not specifically American version of the thread. Suggest different systems. Make your answers as long as you want. What would be the best form of government for nations like Nigeria and Iraq that have ethnic and tribal divisions?



.................................................. .................................................. .
Bottom line for me, Democracy is only as good as the quality of the public debate.

So, How to improve the debate?

Ban all political advertising from non-text media. Emotions are the core of everything human but political debate needs to be intellect based if democracy is to rise to it's potential. Real intellectual content can not be expressed in one or two minutes therefore TV and Radio are not proper medium for political advertising to add to the debate. If people feel informed because of seeing or hearing TV or radio advertising then the advertising has harmed the debate. A few big font words and some graphics on a mailing also does not help the debate. I would mandate a certain amount of text per page of paid advertising.

Then we have the problem of the disparity of money that allows one side to advertise heavily and even buy and censor media while the other sides can't get their ideas heard. Something with taxing of advertising and media plus funding of political parties needs to be done.

Then there is two poled thinking. What is left and what is right? George Lakoff explains left and right in terms of "Nurturant Parent" and "Strict Father" social orders. Before I heard Lakoff my own words for almost the same concept was simplistic kindness versus simplistic discipline. Because our minds are preconditioned to see everything in terms of number line like dimensions that have two infinitely distant extreme poles and one exactly here now mid point we try to make politics and ourselves fit into a left-right, us-them political number line; but this is stupid and cripples the political debate.

Government structures should be created that push us away from two poled political thinking. America's winner take all elections are very bad. Parliamentary systems in which a winning coalition takes all are not much better. We do not want our politicians and media telling us what they think we want to hear in order to gain our allegiance to them. We want our politicians and media telling us what they think the truth is and what they think wise policy is in order to try to gain our allegiance to the truth and wise policy. We want as many competing viewpoints as we are willing to listen to vigorously trying to prove that they are true and the others are false so that we have the best possible chance to be wise voters.

Suppose that all of the people must be part of one of five parties. Suppose that in each neighborhood the percent of people that may be part of any single party may not exceed 21%. If you would like to be part of a party that is filled you get on the waiting list and join one of the other parties until there is space for you to join your first choice party. Suppose that Congress or Parliament is Comprised of only five people, one elected nationwide from each party. Suppose the five members of Congress appoint a new president for a one month term every month. Suppose the president may not be from the same party two months in a row and may not serve as president more than four months in a year. Suppose the President is only allowed to replace one member of the cabinet in a one month term.

The above described government is very different from any form of democracy that has yet been tried. It is designed to advance the debate rather than to elect the person that 51% of the voters consider the less bad of two bad choices. It is also designed for nonpartisan continuity of government.

It is also designed to channel politics into ideological political groupings rather than tribal political groupings. When there are great tensions in a society that could turn violent regardless whether the tension is between races, tribes, religions or economic classes, their is a tendency for the groups to segregate themselves and live in separate neighborhoods. Politicians are always out there who would claim to be the defender of their group. These rotten politicians always enflame the tensions so that they can be the leader of the group. The government that I created in which neighborhoods can not vote as blocks forces the politics to other types of issues. If your tribe is 30% of the nation and the other tribe is 70% of the nation you were not going to win anything by having your own party anyway and will be more effective at protecting your tribe by helping to choose five less hostile members of the other tribe to be the congress.

Each twenty percent chooses a congress-person that can argue for their view. Five parties is a arbitrary choice; it could be four or nine parties. However many parties would create the best debate is how many parties this form of government should have but we need to be realistic about the limits as to how far the political attention span of the voters can be expanded by a better debate.

In The USA I imagine the Parties to be something like this: Christian Patriot Party, Christian Labor Party, Progressive Party, Libertarian Party, and American Enterprise party.

The Christian Patriot Party would be for traditionalists, family values, people highly involved with conservative forms of Christianity, Christian (and maybe Jewish and Muslim) fundamentalists, racists, xenophobes, people who think other nations are dangerous, people who feel oppressed by upper middle class coastal arrogant demeaning white collar snobbishness, people who love the South, people who consider Nascar and WWF wrestling part of their culture, people who are very very proud of America and the flag and the military and any cultural rather than economic Lakoff "strict father" model people.

The Christian Labor party would be people for whom middle class, and working poor economic issues come first but who also feel the Christian Patriot cultural issues. Christian labor would also feel the simplistic kindness, underdog loving, bleeding heart liberal point of view of the progressives but would be basically cultural moderates or mild cultural conservatives. They would dislike gay marriage but not as passionately as the Christian Patriots dislike gay marriage. Christian Labor would be a place for people who are deeply involved with less conservative forms of Christianity. Christian Labor would dislike war and internationalism because it costs too much but would support the president and troops because they are patriots.

The Progressive Party would support kindness toward everything. Welfare and nurturing and protection for everybody. Protect the animals and trees and the environment of the future generations. If somebody robbed somebody it is because the robber was not given enough love and money. Helping the potential robber is the way to end crime unless the robber is a rich white collar criminal in which case throw him in jail and throw away the key. The progressive party is a place for those who dislike and distrust economic and political authority and power. The progressive party is a place for religious heretics. Progressives dislike all violence and some of the more distasteful sex on TV polluting their kids minds where as Christian Patriots dislike all sex and some of the more distasteful violence on TV polluting their kids minds. The Progressive Party would not let rich corporations put out unsafe products. Progressives defend underdogs and are for fairness and therefore fight against racial discrimination and support gay rights. Some progressives say open the door to illegal immigrants because illegal immigrants are underdogs where as Christian Labor wants to keep immigrants out because they undercut the prevailing wages and Christian Patriots want immigrants kept out because they undercut our culture. The basic rule for progressive is that they support simplistic kindness and fairness but sometimes don't understand all of the consequences of the rules that they would create to protect everyone.

The Libertarian Party is the small government party. If you have a small business and hate all of the rules and regulations this party is for you. If you hate taxes this party is for you. If you hate subsidies and tax breaks for large corporations this party is for you. If you don't want the Christian Right crazies, or Brie eating Liberals telling you what you are supposed to believe and speak this Party is for you. If you don't believe in getting involved in foreign entanglements this party is for you. If you think that the desperate can not be saved so screw them, this party is for you. If you don't think government should be subsidizing the creation of new drugs that will be owned by big pharmaceutical corporations this party is for you. Basically Libertarians don't believe in government and are almost Anarchists.

American Enterprise Party: We have to give the special interests, Wall Street, corporations, Defense contractors, the Corporate Welfare State, K street lobbyists, think tankers, and organized crime a party or they will take control of all the parties. But who is their constituency? Where do I find twenty percent of the population who could vote with these groups? No problem. I call these people, "Walk like a winner, Talk like a winner people". Conventional Wisdom, Neoliberalism, and mild NeoConservatism are the intellectual dress code of a large segment of the population that just want to be winners. These people emulate the ideological style of the political and corporate and academic movers and shakers. Because these movers and shakers are more economically and politically literate than most of the nation their believers also sound more economically and politically literate. Anybody who appreciates economic literacy might gravitate to this party to be with their fellow economic literates.

Anybody who believes in government intervention might feel at home in this party. Anybody who thinks the wealthy are under-appreciated would probably choose this party if the Libertarian Party was Anarchistic for them. Guys like Grover Norquist who straddle the boundary of the current Republican and Libertarian parties would straddle the edge of the American Enterprise Party and Libertarian Party. The American Enterprise Party could advocate small government, no taxes on corporations and the wealthy, creating governmental and corporate modernism and efficiency, but they really could not deliver on the small government part because they have too many projects that they believe in. Borrow and spend Republicans would fit here.

NeoConservatives, advocates of Neoliberalism, people who believe that the government should help corporations to succeed and thereby make the nation prosperous, people who believe in central planning, people who believe that there is a big bad world out there and America had better control it, and people who believe that the world needs America's help and believe that the current ruling elite are just the right folks to manage that help belong in this party.

Five Parties like that could have a better debate and create a better democracy. Under the current system the special interests control both parties and dumb the debate down and try to keep the American people away from the important decisions.

How did I do at cutting America into five approximately equal political ideological pieces? Do I have the sizes wrong and could I have picked better groupings?

well first of all, in order to counteract any voting fraud or taknig power by force. a board of observers will be set up, this board will last for 25 years before new foreign impartiol observers are brought in. the purpose of this board will be to monitor the governments actions, and should the government stray too far from the laws and regulations fo that country, the board has the right to immediately and permanently remove any or all members af that govrnmnt nad hold elections for their replacements

Democracy is a broken idea. Most people don't have the ability, inclination or desire to understand government, so letting them make the decisions is cRaZy.

Then make someone your absolute dictator with all the power of life and death in his hands. I would gladly take the job.

There aren't many good options.

There are plenty of middle paths between the extremes.

I have yet to hear one that didn't have the failings of one off the extremes or, worse yet, both.

Democracy is a broken idea. Most people don't have the ability, inclination or desire to understand government, so letting them make the decisions is cRaZy.
So how would you prevent a totalitarian government? Communism was supposed to be all-equal, but unless you give the people the power to choose it will always end up with an empire

p.s. I always felt that democracy was a compromise to prevent everything going to shit. if you make someone your king you can get a great leader or the worst leader. democracy basically says: we will make a half assed government that doesn’t have enough power to become an empire. don’t get me wrong, I am all for democracy. however democracy is founded on knowledge, we have to come up with some way of getting people to care more. what we need is the opposite of a 1960s, we need an age of maturity.

Communism is based on the illusion that all people behave identically, and can be motivated by fear.

There are other options (...)

Political things just seem to wobble and dance around like a child's gyroscope on the floor. But all in all, they do seem to remain upright. Maybe all that wobbling is the secret to success. After all, the Unites States is the longest lived democratic republic in the world.

Too many parties mean too many single issue candidates.