I would much rather see all bills and amendments put under a public version control where everyone could see who is adding what in real-time.
This transparency would really help out democracy in my opinion.
Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a representative leave so much influence in the hands of a girl in her middle twenties who's dumb enough to doll out influence to bringers of chocolate?
What's dumb about it? It's called greasing the wheel. You want to get the meeting over every other asshole who wants a meeting. Who gets the meeting, gets the laws.
The girl is dumb for playing loose with American legislation for fucking chocolates.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the solution is just to ban lobbying as it currently exists. I ran across an interesting argument about a month ago basically saying that, legally, there are things we can own but not sell, like a spleen, because the societal consequences of allowing people to sell their organs are so disastrous. They made the point that maybe you should similarly have the right to lobby your congressman but that you wouldn't…
I think we can get more benefit just by making all lobbying communications public.
This is a much better idea. Make it a crime to conceal this information. You can't just ban lobbying unilaterally (or even just getting paid to lobby) because it's such a fundamental aspect of democracy. Whether you have elections or sortition, you need to have the right to lobby the government.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bias towards those whose profession benefits from a growing abundance of laws? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
If you are going to build a bridge are you going to hire an engineer or a cook? Now if you're going to create laws would you hire someone who has studied roman, germanic, sharia law since the times of Hammurabi, philosophy, sociology, politics and everything necessary to understand human interaction and association, or a bus driver? We get the government we deserve, proportional to our level of ignorance. There is a…
You need to balance it though. For example by adding economists and social scientists to the pool. You can't let one group have too much power.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
So no lobbying from EFF or Natural Resources Defense Council?
The EFF wouldn't need to lobby if Comcast/Google/etc. didn't lobby
I disagree. Laws like CFAA get passed because legislators want to look tough on crime. Not, IMHO, because corporations are lobbying for them.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#76It's an interesting idea but has the same flaw as term limits: the power would shift from the Congressperson to the staffers who are unknown, unaccountable, and sometimes even worse people. When I worked for various agencies in DC, one of the first things I learned was who the power players and key people were in each of our Senators' & Congresspersons' offices. It is quite often not the Senator but the scheduler. Ye…
Why would a representative leave so much influence in the hands of a girl in her middle twenties who's dumb enough to doll out influence to bringers of chocolate?
It's not dumb at all. It's helping people who are polite and considerate to you.
If every interaction you have with someone is positive, when they ask for a small favor that is 100% part of your job anyway, of course you say yes.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#77If your job is to create laws, then you must be an expert in that field. So the pool of candidates should be meritocratic in its nature, like a Law School degree and at least 10 years of experience plus 2 in public domains. Then you can randomize. Most countries in the world allow any bus driver to be a congressman and we know how great their understanding of laws and human rights are, none.
Law-drafting isn't the entire job of representation. Also, current performance, such as using legislation written by consortia of corporations with lobbying interests, doesn't speak highly for such specialization. You might as well require representatives be CPAs, or MBAs, since budget allocation and oversight of spending is at least as important as making laws.
Absolutely, the executive needs CPAs and MBAs, the legislative needs lawyers, the judiciary needs judges and to be honest that's the only one where meritocracy permeates, just add a little randomization instead of handpicking, that's all.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#78Obligatory Doge http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.html . I think it would work better as a means for electing the President though (as in Venice).
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#79Neighborhood DC lobbyists here.. It's an idea worthy of study, but in practice it would be difficult to implement. First, the warm-up time for someone entering congress, to get them to the point where they do know what they're doing, is about six months. These are folks who want to be there, who have at least spent some time studying the issues, the process, and time on the campaign trail. A completely random, lay congress picked off the street would need about a year to get to that point. Those who have some advanced education, knowledge, or training in government, are going to quickly run right over them. Then there's the staff. You've got a randomly selected congress, but what about the staff? That's who really runs the place, and those with the best staffers are going to get up to speed the quickest. What about parties? Who is the Speaker? Who runs the committees? If it's a free-for-all with no one in a party, and no one able to unit a group to control, it's chaos. Even Britain, with its myriad of parties and voting blocs, has a lot of function built into their structure.
Re: Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress?
#80It's an interesting idea but has the same flaw as term limits: the power would shift from the Congressperson to the staffers who are unknown, unaccountable, and sometimes even worse people. When I worked for various agencies in DC, one of the first things I learned was who the power players and key people were in each of our Senators' & Congresspersons' offices. It is quite often not the Senator but the scheduler. Ye…
Agencies? How long ago was this? Technically under the new lobbying rules she's not supposed to accept those flowers, or that chocolate. Certainly an opponent of your agency, or whatever, would be inclined to report this fact. The scheduler is nice, but get to know the Chief of Staff. It's one thing to get a meeting, anyone can get a meeting, but if you want to actually get something done it's better to get to know the Legislative Director or the Chief.