Edit: Thanks @Jearom for providing the paywall free link!
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/UozLV
In my view, the gerontocracy is a side effect of deeper, systemic issues: too much power in incumbency, too much power placed in the hands of the hands of too few, too much power given to money. I would prioritize these three changes to fix our democracy:
- Publicly funded elections
- Uncap the House
- Term limits on the Supreme Court
That’s it. Everything else flows downhill from there.
Thanks for the paywall free link. I didn’t realize it had a paywall as it worked fine for me, it must have a certain number of “free” views.
Happy to! Thanks for posting it originally. FT does good reporting, their paywall is obnoxious.
Can you expand on 2 (uncap the house)? I’m not familiar enough to know what that refers to.
Fully agree with 1 and 3 though.
We need a constitutional amendment to place term limits on the Supreme Court.
We do not need an amendment to increase the number of justices or to impeach them.
I still would love to see a new political party which represents the people’s interests - call it the direct democracy party. Use blockchain technology to create a general ledger of polling for every vote inside the party - everyone would have a copy of the polling data so it couldn’t be hacked/changed. Every party member would have one single vote in every poll, and their elected politicians would be bound to follow the polling data in how they vote, or they are immediately replaced under the party rules.
Of course that’ll never happen - too expensive to implement and the campaign laws are setup to ensure a two-party system while preventing a third party from challenging them.
But damn it would be nice to have a party which represents the voice of the people, directly.
We’ve had parties like this in Australia, but they’ve never won a seat unfortunately.
Maybe a collection of old folks that would be completely unemployable in any other field shouldn’t be running the country?
They can all be Walmart greeters in their home states
A certain number of hours a month/year doing something like that should be a requirement to be a representative in my opinion. As things are elected officials are allowed to be to detached from those they are supposed to be representing.
Agree. It’s partly the age, but also the wealth.
I have to work for a living. They do not represent me.
These people may be very old and also may be evil pieces of shit, but they have earned their …
Earned their what?
Um… They earned their uh… …,…
Go on, you can do it. Say it for me. Earned… theirrrrr?
…sandbag?
Retirement.
I couldn’t read it because the article is behind a paywall
I edited the link in the post, try https://archive.is/UozLV and it should be paywall free.
Does anyone know what exactly happened to him? Mini stroke or something?
A former nurse I know called “Transient Ischemic Attack” - aka mini-stroke.
There have been quite a few doctors who have weighed in based on the media clips alone and said that it’s extremely likely that is what is, but without actually diagnosing in-person it’s hard to say 100%.
Some are theorizing Parkinson’s or possibly early Alzheimers but that is all very speculative. We likely won’t know until he is out of office.
and he has no plans to leave office.
For him, Alzheimers isn’t early
Politicians should be restricted to minimum wage. Its supposed to be a public service, not a fuckin career. You’re supposed to do it because you want to speak for the people. Maybe then they’d move their asses.
Tale as old as Rome. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken so much from them.
Sounds like a great way to ensure only the wealthy hold office. Also, the government salary is hardly breaking the bank. These people get their money from the wealthy, not from our taxes.
Good point. I guess a wealth limit that bars you from running if your net worth were too high might work… hmmm.
What would you do, if you had the power to change it?
I’m not sure a wealth limit would be the right solution, but it is an interesting idea. Honestly, I’m not nearly smart enough to have a detailed solution to something like this, but in general, eliminating the methods and loopholes government officials use to enrich themselves with their position - insider trading, campaign financing, lobbying, etc. All the things that corrupt the purpose of government.
You might be able to work with that. Cap the salary at twice minimum wage. There are far more poor people than wealthy people, and running for office would be both attractive for them financially, while making it unattractive for the wealthier of society. It wouldn’t solve the problem of Bush Jrs or D. Trumps (the wealthy who inherited, but have proven incapable of making money themselves), but those people will always be a pestilence.
A concern might be that poor people will be easier to bribe, but I’ve seen no evidence in my life that being rich is a prophylactic against being crooked, so maybe it’d be OK.
There isn’t really actually anything in particular wrong with career politicians. It’s a hard job if done well, and I don’t think we want an entirely rookie congress every few years.
The problem is that it’s supposed to be a representative democracy, and it never has been because the whole design of the system is to ensure wealthy white supremacy. The existence of the senate at all, the existence of the electoral college, etc. And then you start looking at the senate make up for example, and there are all kinds of questions like do we really need two fucking Dakotas/Virginias/Carolinas? Then sprinkle in some gerrymandering and we get to a situation where you can poll basically lefty/progressive policy (raise min wage, m4a, gun restrictions, wealth taxes, tuition forgiveness and other programs, etc) and get 70% agreeing and congress doing fucking nothing with that, and instead continuing to have a 70% disapproval rating (not coincidence.)
Which brings us to the real problem which is money in politics. If we want to reform congress, the answer isn’t really pay them less, it’s probably based around ethics reforms. The modern concept of lobbying is insane. They should get a good salary, but it doesn’t make sense that these people are voting on laws that impact stock prices and they’re still allowed to own stock. It doesn’t make sense that they have a salary of less than $200k, but still manage to often end up multi-millionaires. But because the ethics are so fucked, the system basically incentivize congress to work for big business and the wealthy. I’d much rather pay congress $1m/yr and cut off all of the other sources of revenue (including “gifts” a la Clarence Thomas/Harlan Crowe) and make it so they are incentivized to work for the actual people. There are quite a few other reforms needed along with this.
