For some reason, though, they seem to mainly do the same thing under both parties' administrations, which makes me suspect that trade policies are really crafted by a set of career bureaucrats who stay there under all kinds of administrations, aiding a revolving door of people with largely the same political viewpoints. As far as I can tell, ACTA negotiations have been exactly the same under Bush and Obama, such that if you were looking at U.S. politics through them you would barely know there was more than one political party in the US.
True, but I don't believe that Congress is allowed to negotiate foreign treaties. So I would assume that the onus for anything that the US government proposes at these discussions falls on his administration, making it all his responsibility.
I wish he was, actually. Every four years, vote in a new king, with near-unlimited power to do practically anything they want, excepting the extension of their own power. Then he might actually get something done.
Which history? There are many examples of multi-hundred years of stable government by kings. And there are plenty of failed democracies.
Remember that democracy is still a fairly young experiment, which has only recently encountered its mortal enemies - the middle classes and the permanent bureaucracy. I do not claim to know the future but I can tell you which direction things look like they're going to me, and it's not up.
In many ways it's looking like we have created the worst of both worlds - a royal court of privileged elite governing only for themselves, with a neutered king serving only to take the blame. That must end in tears, too.
> In many ways it's looking like we have created the worst of both worlds - a royal court of privileged elite governing only for themselves, with a neutered king serving only to take the blame.
So, you're claiming that giving all power to a single individual is a 'stable' form of government? If the executive branch wielded the full power of the government to enact laws at a whim and to be judge-jury-executioner to anyone it so desired, we would be in governmental nirvana? I think that you might want to check that your prescription glasses weren't filled by your local stained-glass craftsman, because you seem to have a pretty 'rosy' view of the history of 'all powerful' leaders.
It's incredible sailormoon is getting upvoted for basically proposing the arguments used by the fascists (strong central man, remove checks and balances to help him clean up) and making the incredibly stupid move of assuming that people (from both sides, now and into the unforeseeable future) won't extend their term of office when they are a "king, with near-unlimited power to do practically anything they want". This argument wasn't believed by the actual fascists that took power, they were far more cynical, but it was made to and believed by the people who were duped into voting for them. I just keep rubbing my eyes and looking at his upvotes.
I think I didn't explain myself well. I actually proposed that the "king" be democratically elected, so instead of hundreds of bickering congressmen, he would have largely unfettered power to then make decisions as he saw fit. The one thing he could not influence, at all, would be the process by which the cycle continued fairly after four years.
I don't see how that's all that different than today in terms of risk of executive takeover. I mean in theory the president could stage a military coup and declare himself dictator for life tomorrow. And the legislative branch could vote in measures by which it could be exceedingly difficult to remove the currently sitting members.
It was just a thought experiment, vary at your pleasure. How about dramatically reducing the number of legislators to, say, 12? Would that really be much worse? It's still democracy, just a different spin on it.
Seems like most of the arguments for our current implementation of democracy are a variation on the notion that government is so inefficient and bloated it can't act decisively on anything, thus reducing the likelihood of bad decisions (while of course throwing out the baby with the bathwater - no good ones, either). Well, that's a pretty lame defense.
All this talk about defending fascism etc is just wild extrapolation from what I said.
> I actually proposed that the "king" be democratically elected, so instead of hundreds of bickering congressmen, he would have largely unfettered power to then make decisions as he saw fit. The one thing he could not influence, at all, would be the process by which the cycle continued fairly after four years.
Do you really think that once someone is in power that they couldn't just ignore that limitation?
> I don't see how that's all that different than today in terms of risk of executive takeover. I mean in theory the president could stage a military coup and declare himself dictator for life tomorrow. And the legislative branch could vote in measures by which it could be exceedingly difficult to remove the currently sitting members.
The reason that the president can't stage a military coup is because there is more to the government than just the executive branch. If the 'president' by and large is the government, then the military just does whatever he says. Sure the president is currently the command-in-chief of the armed forces, but do you really think that they would obey an order to take over Congress? But you are proposing that there is no Congress. It's much easier to obey an order to suppress the population (i.e. 'keep them at bay') in order to keep the 'president' in power than it is to obey an order to completely restructure the government (i.e. remove power from Congress by force). Even military coups in banana republics are pretty 'small' when compared to taking power from every Senator and Congressperson (i.e. you only have to take out the current 'leader' and some of his associates).
> It was just a thought experiment, vary at your pleasure. How about dramatically reducing the number of legislators to, say, 12? Would that really be much worse? It's still democracy, just a different spin on it.
I was under the impression that we have such a system of Congress so as to make sure that everyone gets a fair hearing. The real issue isn't that Congress no longer listens to the people, it's that the people feel helpless to do anything about Congress. Most people don't deal with political matters anymore, they just ignore them. Maybe it's just a sign of our country/population being too large to be governed by a single body. Maybe we should take the more Libertarian route and give power back to the state governments with a severely neutered federal government.
And your example of a 'democracy' isn't really a democracy, it's a republic (which is what the US really is).
Do you really think that once someone is in power that they couldn't just ignore that limitation?
As I said, they have that power now.
I think you're being unfair. You presume - rightly, I believe - that the military would likely not obey an order to take over congress today. But why would they suddenly break all the rules once my proposed system was put in place? There would be very clear rules in place as to how long this super-presidency would be allowed to last. The military then would presumably be just as inclined to follow them then as now.
Congress doesn't have any power other than that ascribed it in the law, otherwise they're just a bunch of old men. The president has no power in law to take away that power now and would have no power to expand his own tenancy in my proposed system. The military, courts, etc, would presumably obey the law in either respect.
Anyway, I admit what I said was a bit extreme. How about a compromise - today's system, but with the congress relegated to "advisor" status? In other words, today's system, but with the president able to force through any bill he really wanted? Wouldn't that be interesting?
Maybe we should take the more Libertarian route and give power back to the state governments with a severely neutered federal government
I have a lot of sympathy for this idea too. I would like to see meaningful competition between the states with the federal govt just providing a kind of basic national infrastructure. I feel this benefit of the state system has been lost with creeping purview of the fed.
And your example of a 'democracy' isn't really a democracy, it's a republic
Actually, that's a US-only use of the word. The rest of the world would call the USA a representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy.
Which history are you reading? Democracy is not a "fairly young experiment". The ancient Athenians had an impressive democratic government from 508BC until it was destroyed, from the outside, in 322BC.
You cite "multi-hundred years of stable government by kings" like there are no power struggles when a given king dies, and like "stable" is even remotely near what we'd call stable or desirable (freedom?). Which history are you reading in which these wonderful benevolent king-systems (not just singular kings if you want "multi-hundred years") exist? Cite one.
There is no counter-corruption in a system with a powerful executive and no democracy for long. Without checks on corruption and a powerful state there is no freedom for very long. I can't believe the suggestion that the west moves to the model of voting in leaders with "near-unlimited power to do practically anything they want" is being taken seriously in a time when questionable wars have been started and torture policies implemented by the already too strong executives.
Your biases are showing pretty strong here. There's no reason we can't ponder alternative forms of government that have and have not been tried and consider their benefits and drawbacks.
For what it's worth, I do think democracy is too irrational to run itself very well, and it may cause its own demise. In my estimation it depends on whether or not technology saves us by producing wealth faster than our leaders can squander it on interest group politics. 250 years is a pretty good run for a country, even if it falls short of the monarchies of Europe.
You mean my bias towards wanting actual evidence of the benefits of this benevolent kingship? I hope you don't think the European monarchies of the past are good examples of anything (although constitutional monarchies fall on my side of the argument as they defer to parliaments and the leaders are not near-dictators in the sense being proposed here). I am not certain about your history if you think interest group politics now is worse than pre-democratic periods.
Liberal representative democracies are self-modifying. That is why the United States will persevere well past the records of the petty genetically-based monarchies, quite asides from the fact that even if were it to end tomorrow its achievements politically, technologically and economically outrank anything in human history (I am not a US citizen by the way).
I can understand the allure of a powerful leader who understands what needs to be done for some of the entrepreneurs on this forum. But you are peddling is basically the argument used by the supporters of fascism; strong leader, central control (as opposed to letting the market sort things out) and a total naivety toward the nature of corruption (do away with checks and balances because they are just hindering the visionary leader who has our best interests at heart). And as with most naive political reforms it totally fails the "but what happens when the other side has 51%" test.
Popular kings? There are plenty. King Abdullah is very popular. The Ming dynasty oversaw an extraordinary explosion in trade and art. The Medici family planted the seeds of the Renaissance. The Meiji Emperor dragged Japan, kicking and screaming, into the modern world.
Maybe I shouldn't have said "king", since that has quite a specific meaning. I really meant a leader, or group of leaders, who have a great personal stake in the country and its progress. Supreme leaders care about posterity, whereas parliamentarians always have someone else to blame.
Who do you think makes the best long-term decisions? A leader who knows they will still be there in 20 years to accept the consequences, or the politician scrambling to get out a press release so he can be seen to be "doing something" about the latest opinion poll?
I do not have anything like the faith in the long-term viability of democracy, at least as we know it, that you have. I do not see how a disinterested, ignorant population has any capability to govern, or even vaguely direct, a country's path better than, say, the Standing Committee in China.
> Who do you think makes the best long-term decisions? A leader who knows they will still be there in 20 years to accept the consequences
So are you willing to argue that Kim Jong-Il is a positive force in the development of North Korea? What about the USSR under Stalin? Are these all better forms of government what what the US has now?
Nope. Those are both terrible examples of what can go wrong. I provided some examples of it not going wrong.
So the question is, do we throw out the entire notion of concentrating power in one person or small group of people, because they might abuse it? Or is it possible to devise a system that retains the advantages and minimises disadvantages? Because we know the consequences of giving that power to several hundreds of people - deadlock.
Of course there are power struggles when a king dies. There are power struggles for preselection in democracy, there are power struggles to head up unelected but supremely powerful institutions. I don't see your point.
Stability and freedom would seem to be more a function of wealth than mode of government. There are plenty of people with freedom to do pretty much nothing but die under democratic rule in Africa.
Where's the counter-corruption in democracy? Plenty of democratic countries are corrupt to the core. India. Italy. Thailand (I personally bribed a police officer there once). The powerful control the media, and the people vote for who they're told whether the puppetmaster was elected or not.
How can you try and distance democracy from the wars and torture? Is this a "no true Scotsman" argument? Those acts are the acts of a democracy in decay. You're acting like if only we did democracy better, it wouldn't happen. I'm saying - what if that's the end result of all democracy?
Anyway, don't take it too seriously, I'm just throwing ideas out there, as usual.
I get it that you're just throwing ideas out there, but you can't throw around claims of a "no true Scotsman" argument when you yourself are dismissing some of your former claims.
First you claimed, "multi-hundred years of stable government by kings," but now you claim, "stability and freedom would seem to be more a function of wealth than mode of government." Don't spend time dissecting other people's words when your own words aren't necessarily in order. Are you claiming that an all-powerful ruler brings stability or are you claiming that stability is completely disjoint from government?
Well, I was kind of drawn into defending monarchies in general ..
I'm not making sweeping generalisations for either! I get the impression it's others doing that. I merely say that there are examples of stability and (relative to the times) prosperity under either form.
Stability is not completely disjoint from government but I would say it is completely disjoint from the form of government. But as you point out, yes, I do believe it has more to do with the prosperity of the population than the way their leaders are elected.
Stability and prosperity are a function of quality of government, not form of government. I am trying to point out that the form of government, ie elected or not, does not necessarily decide the quality. I gave examples of rulers who, in my opinion, did not discharge their roles badly, considering the times.
Summary: having a King is a multiplier, rather than a valuer. You might multiply corruption and despotism. Or you might multiply progress and decisiveness.
Yes, it would have helped Republicans quite a bit in the last decade. It should be hard for government to institute sweeping changes that only 51% of the voters want.
In other words, it should be hard for the government to govern? Well, that's one way of looking at it.
You know, if they instituted these "sweeping changes" and the public didn't like it, they could always be voted out next time and the changes reversed (with ease!). At least that way the policy would actually get tested. And it seems that the ability to actually enact the majority's wishes is more democratic than not.
And the same Obama that picked Biden (well known as one of the main DMCA promoters and great friend of the RIAA AND MPAA) for VP.
So this is not a surprise to me, I was just trying to sarcastically point out how the claims of some Obama supporters have been shown to be quite incorrect to say the least.
And I don't agree with the grandparent that the issue is lack of understanding of technology, I'm sure Obama understands technology, just as he probably understand that the War on Drugs doesn't work, but he prefers to not rock the boat and keep pushing the policies that have become political sacred cows, because doing so would imply that the political class as a whole has been completely wrong for decades.
