Chomsky called this in the 80s I think
Innovatiom happens between fields.
In evolution asexual reproduction suffers from an analogous process called Muller’s Ratchet (the irreversible accumulation of mostly bad mutations). On a dynamic fitness landscape this is overcome by sexual reproduction which facilitates recombination of the best parts of genomes (when under selection).
Is there any smart polysci person in the comments who could extrapolate this huge leap in evolution to a new system of representative government? From my perspective seems like the most important first step would be overturning our de facto two-party system somehow. Is that possible in practice? If so, how?
representative government
is likely to be the problem, self selects for sociopaths, narcissists, the elite etc., and rewards the representative for corruption.
How about something like Athenian Democracy where you just randomly select citizens to form an executive council, a judiciary and a legislative assembly (hey, want a senate as well, why not) for a year or so.
If you’re worried about competency, first, remember the representative requires none (as is painfully demonstrated), second, you likely underestimate the average person and a bunch averages out significant lacks, third, supply a competent public service as advisors.
Worked for hundreds of years for Athens, they even went back to it after becoming a monarchy a number of times, and we no longer have the travel limitations which ‘required’ a representative approach.
Something very similar functions in Ireland as separate arm of government, so you don’t even need a revolution. Although you talk of the two-party system as a given which likely means USian, so maybe you should consider one.
That’s still representative, just random rather than elective. Not saying that’s bad at all though.
If we’re okay with random people leading why not just go all the way to a direct democracy? Typical objections to it are:
• It’ll lead to mob rule, however we’ll still have checks and balances from the other two branches.
• People don’t have time to learn about and vote on everything, however people can just vote on what matters to them. Moreover we can make the voting periods much longer to allow for people to make time like we do for jury duty. The legislature is meant to be slow whereas the executive branch is intended to be agile.
I believe the average citizen sometimes running into a wall of checks and balances would be just the sort of forced motivation for education we need in the US (I live in the US).
That’s still representative, just random rather than elective.
Fair enough.
why not just go all the way to a direct democracy?
Fine by me, in fact I would expect it to go that way in time. It is more approachable to the average person IMO. I also think running it in concert, initially, could allow peaceful transition rather than revolutionary bloodshed, but that applies to DD as well. Some places may have too much ingrained resistance to transition without revolution IMO.
You can cry all day. If you don’t change the choice to dems vs a leftist party, you’re upholding the status quo and the best choice will still be dems.
As a European I recommend you change the voting system to something that allows coalitions, so slow transitions from one party to another are possible.
Read the article next time.
Loldumbfucks trusted a dem. Obama was 20 years ago; die in your fucking dilotted comas, you fucking dumb shits.
