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Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

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Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#41

Post by bjnortier_hn »

bad_user wrote: post #11

This is a parody, but something like this could work: (1) show a list of bills that are passing Congress / the Senate (2) for each proposal, show a list of politicians that supports or opposes it (3) have a way for the user to flag politicians he wants to reward (4) plus a way for the user to setup a recurring monthly donation, distributed towards the politicians he supports, with a note pointing to your online profi…

What happened to "No taxation without representation"?

This would skew the government even more towards rewarding the rich - increasing the size of the government-as-a-service market is a step in the wrong direction.

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#42

Post by georgecmu »

Excellent idea!

Consider adding a separate sign-on for politicians promising them a campaign funds dashboard, real-time tracking of most profitable causes, political profile tuner, etc

Limit sign-ons to .gov email addresses, restricting early stage use to elected officials and representatives only.

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#43

Post by david927 »

scottdw2 wrote: post #32
Angostura wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurrah, so the people who would be bribed wouldn't be publicly accountable officials - they would be whoever we handed the power to.

I don't think you understand. The point is to either eliminate the power, or make it extremely diffuse. That way, there is nothing to purchase.

But that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The wealthiest countries in the world have large governments and don't have these problems. Just outlaw lobbying(bribing) of officials. Outlaw political campaign advertising. Better yet, as I mention above, allow the people to better represent themselves using technology. There are a thousand ways to apply the brakes -- killing the engine is maybe not the best.

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#44

Post by toyg »

JanezStupar wrote: post #33
wladimir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no longer a democracy, but at least it'd be transparent and honest.

Democracy in classical sense means participation of the aristocracy, not wide populist participation as practiced in 20th century. I along with many of people I discuss politics agree that for wellbeing of democracy the civic duties and privileges should be limited and not available to everybody as a universal right. Ignorance is the worst enemy of democracy. Letting the ignorant majority participate in democratic pr…

Bollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the right veneral disease, whatever).

The real problem is that the Greek concept of Democracy was implemented at the town level (their "cities" were really villages in the modern sense), and it has struggled to scale ever since. It's not surprising that the best "democracies" tend to be the smallest in terms of population.

A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical; unfortunately, once you introduce human intermediaries / aggregators (i.e. your "representatives"), the dynamics change massively, so you introduce corrections, which further sway the dynamics, and on and on...

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#45

Post by toyg »

rrhm wrote: post #39
toyg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From one-head-one-vote to one-dollar-one-vote. We should call it "pecuniacy". (Note: "pecunia" is Latin for "money"; I know, the right way to do this would be to use the ancient greek equivalent for "money" and replace it for "demo", but I couldn't find it.)

Perhaps "plutocracy" would work. The root "ploutus" is the ancient greek word for "wealth".

Yeah, but that has already assumed negative connotations; you cannot use it for tongue-in-cheek jokes.

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#48

Post by bjnortier_hn »

andrewcooke wrote: post #34
scottdw2 wrote: post #16

I don't think that public funding of elections or free advertising (see the bottom of the page) are the solutions to government corruption. That would just force bribers to be more covert. It's analogous to the fact that SOPA wouldn't stop piracy. It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to…

that doesn't solve the real problem, though, which is that some entities are much more powerful than others. by removing the government, which can work as a (limited, imperfect) balance, you give other powerful institutions (ie big corporations) even more power. it won't be the government searching your laptop, it will be the airline, as part of a conglomerate that includes media companies. government exists for a re…

The world is not a zero-sum game - you don't necessarily give corporations more power if you reduce the size of government. That power could be distributed to citizens. And removing the ability of corporations to influence laws can make them less powerful, not more.

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#49

Post by kiloaper »

david927 wrote: post #38
scottdw2 wrote: post #16

I don't think that public funding of elections or free advertising (see the bottom of the page) are the solutions to government corruption. That would just force bribers to be more covert. It's analogous to the fact that SOPA wouldn't stop piracy. It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to…

The wealthiest countries in the world have large governments and don't have these problems. Still, if we can bank online, we can vote online. I see nothing stopping a proposal where if 25% of the public vote online, the result is accepted over what Congress voted. No advertising allowed. Suddenly, bribing/lobbying Congress would no longer make sense.

Regarding voting I highly recommend the brilliant 1970 comedy The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. It raises interesting questions about how people would react to being about to vote for everything. Here's a brief summary of it stolen from http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2011/06/25/you-cant-vote-for-e...

>Rimmer poses as a true democrat, insisting that the people should always have their way, hence the consultation on important matters – such as any new tax – with the public at large.

>Whenever a question arose for determination a red light and loud buzzer would come on and not go off until the household had voted on whatever question appeared on the television screen.

>But Rimmer was a meglomaniacal schemer. He made more and more issues matters for referendum questions. After a while the population got thoroughly fed of having their lives incessantly disrupted. So he posed a final referendum question – that all future questions should be decided by him. The masses voted Yes

Re: Show HN: I'm tired of corrupt US politicians, so I created this

#50

Post by wladimir »

toyg wrote: post #44
JanezStupar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy in classical sense means participation of the aristocracy, not wide populist participation as practiced in 20th century. I along with many of people I discuss politics agree that for wellbeing of democracy the civic duties and privileges should be limited and not available to everybody as a universal right. Ignorance is the worst enemy of democracy. Letting the ignorant majority participate in democratic pr…

Bollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the rig…

A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical

It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still?

And I'm not sure that there always needs to be an "ignorant majority". If people are closely involved with any aspect of lawmaking, they'll feel more responsible for being educated about political issues.

Most "politically ignorant" people I know are that because they feel voting is hardly worth the time, because it only contributes indirectly and abstractly to decision processes (and politicians say one thing and do another...). I think an important responsibility of a democracy is to educate people in critical thinking and make sure they are not "ignorant".

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