I would go with one term on. One term off. My rule would be: no running for office -- any office -- while holding an office. If this means too much turnover in the House to keep things viable, maybe we should stagger House terms or something -- sort of how we do the Senate.
For Gerrymandering, an alternative enforceable rule would be: a district map which has fewer partial counties while also meeting one man/one vote, automatically beats the current proposal. One might also count cities above a certain size as counties for this purpose. The result would be district which follow county and city boundaries to close to the greatest degree possible.
In the event of several maps having the same number of partial counties/cities, then a vote must be held, so there would still be some room for naughtiness, but nothing close to what we have today. The original Gerrymander, for instance, would have failed this test.
I'm a fan on term limits, but not as I've often heard them expressed. I think there is value in having long-serving members of congress, since governing is a skill that takes time to acquire. Borrowing from the Roman model of term limits would alleviate this issue. And it has the added bonus of coming from the same political wellspring that inspired the Founders. Bravo.
However, there is another group that must be curtailed by term limits: bureaucrats. While I've heard much about term-limiting congressmen, the last five years have convinced me that lifelong bureaucrats are an order of mangitude more dangerous than lifelong congressmen.
I agree. We need a Cursus Honorum of some sort for Civil Servants. One option is to force them to switch departments every so often, like what the military does. The military constantly shuffles personnel around the world to fight corruption. Doing that with the civil service could help. I am not familiar enough with the details of how the civil service works to make specific recommendations though. Perhaps a sabbatical year where one year in 7 they need to work in the private sector?
Brilliant - and unlike the vast majority of political suggestions these days, it is all eminently practical also - (no experts required to explain the aims or function - makes it 'sellable' to all but the deeply corrupt who would be rapidly displaced). I really love ideas which are about building principle into practical systems! (and we've all drawn benefits from those who tried their best to do the same, long ago). Cheers for this truly excellent share!
The one reform I never see being addressed here is money. I wonder how different US politics would be if the federal government couldn't fund state (or even lower-level) programs. No more piles of money with political strings attached...
Re: #4: state embassies and delegations are a good idea but probably not something feasible in the DC area. Maybe it would be better to look for a place outside the beltway like near the geographical center of the country near Riverton, Nebraska along the Republican River. With tons of open space it affords the opportunity to build a new “National” city or special federal district.
Long overdue! DC was sort of near the country's center at the time of the founding. Perhaps a bit south of center, thanks to the deal of a southern capital in return for the south paying off the war debts, but still at the north side of the south, as it were.
The capital does need to moved further west. And we need a bigger building for the Capital, so we can have more representatives.
Yes, more “representatives” for a larger country. In 1775 the population of the colonies was about 2.5 million and we are over a hundred times bigger now but I don’t think that we should have a hundred times more representatives. However, I do think that we need to consider expanding our concept of government. We also should not abandon DC either. A new “City of The Republic” could host a “People’s Parliament” and the States Delegations. It would also have all of the federal bureaucracy there. Additionally, we should declare DC off limits to lobbying and have them lobby The People, openly. The People’s Parliament would be the place for lobbying and debate but would not have lawmaking authority. It would only pass along proposals reached by consensus on to final sober debate in DC. It would also act as a public watchdog to ensure corruption stays out of the formal federal government.
That's the tricky part. Large districts make House races undemocratic. Too many representatives make the House as viable as a Libertarian Party convention for getting work done.
One possibility would be to divide the House into several large supercommittees, say, National Defense and Foreign Relations, Taxation and Total Budget, Welfare and Human Services, and Domestic Regulation. Then have a small committee to adjudicate which issues go to which supercommittee.
Now here's the big twist: only the relevant supercommittee votes for laws which fall in their domain. Basically, I have divided the House into several separate Houses, with a small group of referees who vote on no bills other than to determine which sub House a bill belongs to. (Or whether it should get divided.)
The goal is to get everyone who votes on a bill to have actually read the bill. The second goal is to make each sub House small enough to have meaningful debates.
I chose 4 sub Houses/supercommittees off the top of my head. Feel free to contemplate a better division/number.
I am unsure of the ideal method of assigning which house to which district. I'm inclined to have each district rotate. That way you don't have the district with a big military base always just lobbying for military spending. Also, the voters need to know what their representative will be voting on.
Personally, I think term limits in our current system and consumer mindset are the opposite way to go. They're a way to make people CARE LESS about what is going on with their politics, what they do, their votes, etc.
Why is that?
Because, unlike Rome and Roman society, the United States has no sense of the Familia, honor, a good name, etc.
No sense of a magnanimous souled individuals or families.
No sense of legacies.
All of these were present in the Roman Republic. As were the ability to simply BECOME WEALTHY by holding those positions. Now we hate when people gain power or wealth through public office, and they have none of those qualities.
As such, I actually have been a fan of pushing against the idea of term limits. We already see that, in the House, people have nearly no time to accomplish anything before they have to run for office again. They're constantly having to accept bribes and handouts because of it. How much worse would it be if you had a constant churn of house reps? People that could only get into office once, had no name recognition, and then were off into the hinterlands?
What we need to do is actually stop this quasi-aristocracy, and actually move towards something real. Something where LONG TERM thinking is rewarded, which means that long term decisions are in place, and generational legacies are formed. This cannot happen with a churn environment; and the push for greater churn - because we understandably hate our current governmental officials - is a reflexively backwards way to go about it.
Well, when you look at it - our current reps are already representing an insane amount of people compared to the number the founders had them at. They're nearly constantly campaigning in the house. We complain about them when they vote to up their pay, but then we complain about when they're grifters to lobbyists or go into work for the lobbyists companies.
So yeah, they need a way to provide for themselves.
But me, I always say that this search for a 'perfect system' is also somewhat misinformed. You have to make virtuous people, because we're always ruled by actual humans. If we try to put a system in place, and follow it religiously, then we have two problems.
1. The system actually becomes tyrannical in itself. We have seen this in our own lifetimes.
2. The religious following of a political system becomes an idol in itself. Again, we can see this with civ nats.
So, you have to have a virtuous people, and have that first. Which necessarily entails religion. And I'm an avowed opponent of Enlightenment values - IE the separation of Church and State is the one that pertains to this conversation.
And this is hard to do in an Empire as large as ours. Which is why Empires as large as ours are unstable, historically. You have to have them operate at a national level, with people functioning as nations. Each with a national culture, ethnicity, religion, local government, etc - that is then fairly independent but ultimately answerable and subservient to - the Empire.
If you don't get this, it all falls apart. Revolution, rebellion, or simply ennui.
As the founders generally said, their system assumes a generally moral, virtuous society. Fallen, as they knew all are, their system sought to guard against power turning the leaders into tyrants.
Sadly, we have repeatedly been subverted from without and within. Another great awakening could help but many of the churches are also now subverted and the wealthy elites are often either knowingly subverting or do so based on their indoctrination.
I pray for and seek an Aenean age for us - but the path is unclear.
I understand that. But, like all the Enlightenment projects, their searching for a system leaves no course correction for when there is no virtuous society. Morals are dictated by Religion, as are what you believe Virtues are. Their beliefs about what those are were religious beliefs, and to state otherwise is merely to make unprincipled, question begging, lines in the sand.
In other words, with their system, we would always end up in SOME kind of situation like this, at SOME point in time, no matter what.
So, the solution is to abandon the Enlightenment foundation. To seek something more stable, that has the ability to course correct.
And, a path to that begins with acknowledging that our instinctual "Rule less and give less incentives." is likely the wrong approach; but we need to give positive incentives to virtues, honor, good names, and legacies.
I agree with your proposals—especially the return to a Cursus Honorum-style system that cultivates statesmanship over careerism. But my lingering question is this: how do we gain the power to implement any of this?
We’re talking about reforming the very machinery that currently preserves incumbency, inertia, and institutional decay. That’s not going to yield to good ideas alone. We need not just a vision for reform—but a strategy for command. Until we solve that, even the best proposals remain aspirational.
Some good ideas there. But it misses the most important one -- end universal suffrage. The right to vote has to be earned. And before each election, individuals get a statement showing taxes paid in the prior year minus benefits received. Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election.
The big failure in the US system is Congress -- which does not represent the people. I am very much in favor of adopting the Ancient Greek practice of choosing true representatives from among citizens by lottery, for a period of 1 year -- sort of like jury service -- with stringent audits for 3 years after this true "public service" to make sure no-one enriches herself. Further, all laws would be subject to the 60/40 rule -- it takes 60% of the representatives to pass a law, but only 40% to repeal that same law. Once Congress passes a law, it would not go into effect for a period of one year; if 40% of States decline to endorse that law during the year, then the law would be eliminated.
Of course, we should go back to the original system where Senators are elected by State Houses, with the same 1 term in office, 1 term as a private citizen rule.
Agreed. Those with voting rights and the right to serve in government positions or bureaucracies must have some skin in the game of the overall health and future of the nation. I'd like to see it especially limited by marriage, lack of divorce, 3+ children. Proves maturity, that you can judge the quality of important people and you have a stale in the future. The West has too many leaders who don't have any kids. Other qualifiers matter too, such as net tax paying and not being able to vote while serving in the public sector (those who live off the state should not be allowed to vote for more gimmedats).
I think I have a good rule for the House of Representatives. You can run for three terms, but then you have to take a break for a term; then you could run again. The three terms for a representative would be six years, which would mirror the whole term for a senator.
"State Embassies" - I like it, and I'm stealing that idea. I do have a lot of plans for DC. I think a lot of residential neighborhoods should be bulldozed over so that more of the national government can be housed within DC herself, instead of Virginia or Maryland. I'm also thinking that the Mayor of DC should be appointed by the President, and the Council is appointed by the Congress, half by the House and half by the Senate. Also, I think that juries in DC should be pooled from the entire nation as opposed to just DC. Since our national leaders are in DC doing things, criminal accusations of national importance are going to be heard in DC. It would not be right if only the residents of DC had a say, instead of the nation as a whole. Thus juries should be drawn from the 50 states instead of DC.
Frankly, I think Timocracy could work. A Colonel way back when brought it up during a group discussion on political systems (which had originally started off with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Book, not movie of course). For Timocracy to work IMHO, the citizen soldier/ militia (AKA draft) would likely need to be brought back.
For those not in the know:
timocracy /tī-mŏk′rə-sē/
noun
A state described by Plato as being governed on principles of honor and military glory.
An Aristotelian state in which civic honor or political power increases with the amount of property one owns.
A state in which the love of honor is the ruling motive.
A state in which honors are distributed according to a rating of property.
A form of government in which ambition for honor, power and military glory motivates the rulers.
A form of government in which civic honor or political power increases with the amount of property one owns.
Thanks for sharing this post by Mr. Umstattd (I'd already listened to the two podcasts you did with him; he's worth paying attention to!) I think that most of these are good ideas, especially getting rid of the filibuster; the idea that making Congress too weak to do much of anything will protect the people from tyranny is so obviously false (since, as he points out, the judiciary and civil service just step into the power vacuum and no one is strong enough to stop them) - and yet over and over again I will here otherwise-intelligent people pretending to believe it, and then (if challenged) they'll say something about how they trust the founding fathers and the constitution they wrote (with no seeming awareness that the filibuster isn't part of the constitution and came about by accident in the mid-19th century.)
I'm also inclined to agree about term limits. I've generally been against congressional term limits since replacing all the senators/representatives after six or eight or twelve years or whatever, whether they do well or not, would just make Congress even weaker than it already is when compared with lobbyists and bureaucrats who stay around forever. But Umstattd is totally right about the fact that (1) incumbents with little chance of losing re-election and (2) incumbents who aren't going to run for an important office again tend to be lazy, and if you have too many such people in Congress and/or the White House then they'll just rot in place while power slips away to the Deep State. So his compromise - limit consecutive terms but NOT total terms in order to keep people in politics if and only if they can repeatedly run for and win different offices - is actually a very good idea. (After all the Roman Republic didn't rise from ruling one town to ruling most of the known world for no reason!) State embassies are also a neat idea that I hadn't heard before, but would probably be beneficial for all the reasons Umstattd said.
Granted, if I were reforming the system myself I would go further in some ways, for instance repealing the seventeenth amendment. (If you do this, then term limits on senators will probably be unnecessary - if you look at the historical records you actually see a much higher turnover rate back when they had to justify their performance to attentive statehouses rather than the disengaged common voters). Also I would solve the gerrymandering problem by simply getting rid of one-man districts with first-past-the-post voting, and replace it with some sort of proportional representation system with three to six congressmen per district (i.e. similar to what Ireland or Finland has). I wouldn't go so far as the German or South African system where legislators just represent their party and aren't tied to any geographic region at all, but the winner-take-all, two-party system makes it just too easy for a party to neglect and exploit many or most of its constituent voting blocs over and over again (as, for instance, the GOP did for about fifty years before Trump), and keep on winning because the only alternative is a party diametrically opposed to everything they believe in. A multi-party system where it's easier to start new parties wouldn't have that problem, and politics would also be less acrimonious is politicians had to make coalitions to govern and couldn't just treat everything as a zero-sum game.
Scattered thoughts, feel free to laugh with scorn or gasp in awe as you please:
Or:
Lottery.
Natural-born citizen, legal adult, born to two natural-born citizens only. Not in prison, compos mentis (i.e. not on SSRIs or eq.), not in debt for failure to pay taxes, not ever having been comvicted for a crime with a potential jail-time of +5 years, currently not employed in any way by local, state or federal employers (inc. military, police and such).
Your name comes up, you can decline (and your name is then permanently stricken for the rest of your life) or accept. If you accept, you'll earn a salary no greater than the lowest-paid public employee, plus 10%. If needed, you'll be provided with residence (think college dorm) and cost-of-living allowance of no more than welfare plus 10%.
Et cetera. Details will need a bit of sanding and polishing more than above - but:
Add term limits - you'll only ever serve as mayor/state rep./whatever once. And:
Assuming it is not corrupted as per electronic voting machines and no voter-ID cheating, a lottery is the most representative of systems. You're almost guaranteed a statistical average of the citizenry.
Further: imagine how difficult if not downright impossible the form of bribery called lobbying would become.
Combine this with hobbling tax increases so that whenever a legislature wants to raise taxes, a referendum must be held, the result a minimum of 65% in favour or no raised taxes. Could very well be combined with some system limiting taxation/fees. A common scam here that our local councils run is they tax you and charge fees for the same service your taxes go to. Either, or.
Either a tax, the spending of which everyone paying gets a say in how its used (as in: every new post to be added is to be voted on, as per increases outlined above - town council wants to fund "tranny story hour" at the public library, they first must ask the constituency if they apporve of spending taxes on that).
Or a fee paid by anyone using the service. Want to take your garbage to the dump (sorry: climate-saving recycle-center I mean) yourself, sort it yourself and out in the right bins yourself? Pay a dumping fee as and when you go there. Want Bob's Craphauling Co. come pick up your crap? Pay unto Bob. Want the town to do it? Pay the town garbage hauler.
Anyway, some random thoughts from a man living in a nation with a +70% tax pressure.
>Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election.
considering recent AI progress, this inevitably translates as “only idle rich robotics company executives have the vote” and the remaining ninety-nine percent of the population either starving to death or waging Butlerian Jihad
How do you get "Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election." from what I wrote?
You can owe taxes and have a positive balance at the same time. You can in fact be hundreds of millions or even billions "in the hole" when it comes to taxes, and still be a billionaire.
Read up on Trump's mentor and role-model Roy Cohn for a text-book example of being rich and owing lots and lots of taxes.
Excellent ideas!
I would go with one term on. One term off. My rule would be: no running for office -- any office -- while holding an office. If this means too much turnover in the House to keep things viable, maybe we should stagger House terms or something -- sort of how we do the Senate.
For Gerrymandering, an alternative enforceable rule would be: a district map which has fewer partial counties while also meeting one man/one vote, automatically beats the current proposal. One might also count cities above a certain size as counties for this purpose. The result would be district which follow county and city boundaries to close to the greatest degree possible.
In the event of several maps having the same number of partial counties/cities, then a vote must be held, so there would still be some room for naughtiness, but nothing close to what we have today. The original Gerrymander, for instance, would have failed this test.
I'm a fan on term limits, but not as I've often heard them expressed. I think there is value in having long-serving members of congress, since governing is a skill that takes time to acquire. Borrowing from the Roman model of term limits would alleviate this issue. And it has the added bonus of coming from the same political wellspring that inspired the Founders. Bravo.
However, there is another group that must be curtailed by term limits: bureaucrats. While I've heard much about term-limiting congressmen, the last five years have convinced me that lifelong bureaucrats are an order of mangitude more dangerous than lifelong congressmen.
I agree. We need a Cursus Honorum of some sort for Civil Servants. One option is to force them to switch departments every so often, like what the military does. The military constantly shuffles personnel around the world to fight corruption. Doing that with the civil service could help. I am not familiar enough with the details of how the civil service works to make specific recommendations though. Perhaps a sabbatical year where one year in 7 they need to work in the private sector?
Good idea. Quite frankly, I don't think bureaucrats should exist. There should only be clerks, soldiers, cops, treasurers, and lawyers; that's it.
Brilliant - and unlike the vast majority of political suggestions these days, it is all eminently practical also - (no experts required to explain the aims or function - makes it 'sellable' to all but the deeply corrupt who would be rapidly displaced). I really love ideas which are about building principle into practical systems! (and we've all drawn benefits from those who tried their best to do the same, long ago). Cheers for this truly excellent share!
The one reform I never see being addressed here is money. I wonder how different US politics would be if the federal government couldn't fund state (or even lower-level) programs. No more piles of money with political strings attached...
This is partly why I would like to repeal the 16th amendment. Direct taxation is too much power for the federal government to have.
I believe that's more or less how things worked for the first two thirds of American history.
Good ideas and an important conversation to have.
Re: #4: state embassies and delegations are a good idea but probably not something feasible in the DC area. Maybe it would be better to look for a place outside the beltway like near the geographical center of the country near Riverton, Nebraska along the Republican River. With tons of open space it affords the opportunity to build a new “National” city or special federal district.
Long overdue! DC was sort of near the country's center at the time of the founding. Perhaps a bit south of center, thanks to the deal of a southern capital in return for the south paying off the war debts, but still at the north side of the south, as it were.
The capital does need to moved further west. And we need a bigger building for the Capital, so we can have more representatives.
Yes, more “representatives” for a larger country. In 1775 the population of the colonies was about 2.5 million and we are over a hundred times bigger now but I don’t think that we should have a hundred times more representatives. However, I do think that we need to consider expanding our concept of government. We also should not abandon DC either. A new “City of The Republic” could host a “People’s Parliament” and the States Delegations. It would also have all of the federal bureaucracy there. Additionally, we should declare DC off limits to lobbying and have them lobby The People, openly. The People’s Parliament would be the place for lobbying and debate but would not have lawmaking authority. It would only pass along proposals reached by consensus on to final sober debate in DC. It would also act as a public watchdog to ensure corruption stays out of the formal federal government.
That's the tricky part. Large districts make House races undemocratic. Too many representatives make the House as viable as a Libertarian Party convention for getting work done.
One possibility would be to divide the House into several large supercommittees, say, National Defense and Foreign Relations, Taxation and Total Budget, Welfare and Human Services, and Domestic Regulation. Then have a small committee to adjudicate which issues go to which supercommittee.
Now here's the big twist: only the relevant supercommittee votes for laws which fall in their domain. Basically, I have divided the House into several separate Houses, with a small group of referees who vote on no bills other than to determine which sub House a bill belongs to. (Or whether it should get divided.)
The goal is to get everyone who votes on a bill to have actually read the bill. The second goal is to make each sub House small enough to have meaningful debates.
I chose 4 sub Houses/supercommittees off the top of my head. Feel free to contemplate a better division/number.
I am unsure of the ideal method of assigning which house to which district. I'm inclined to have each district rotate. That way you don't have the district with a big military base always just lobbying for military spending. Also, the voters need to know what their representative will be voting on.
Eh, I think there's plenty of Room in DC. We just need to remove the permanent residents.
Personally, I think term limits in our current system and consumer mindset are the opposite way to go. They're a way to make people CARE LESS about what is going on with their politics, what they do, their votes, etc.
Why is that?
Because, unlike Rome and Roman society, the United States has no sense of the Familia, honor, a good name, etc.
No sense of a magnanimous souled individuals or families.
No sense of legacies.
All of these were present in the Roman Republic. As were the ability to simply BECOME WEALTHY by holding those positions. Now we hate when people gain power or wealth through public office, and they have none of those qualities.
As such, I actually have been a fan of pushing against the idea of term limits. We already see that, in the House, people have nearly no time to accomplish anything before they have to run for office again. They're constantly having to accept bribes and handouts because of it. How much worse would it be if you had a constant churn of house reps? People that could only get into office once, had no name recognition, and then were off into the hinterlands?
What we need to do is actually stop this quasi-aristocracy, and actually move towards something real. Something where LONG TERM thinking is rewarded, which means that long term decisions are in place, and generational legacies are formed. This cannot happen with a churn environment; and the push for greater churn - because we understandably hate our current governmental officials - is a reflexively backwards way to go about it.
Interesting take
Well, when you look at it - our current reps are already representing an insane amount of people compared to the number the founders had them at. They're nearly constantly campaigning in the house. We complain about them when they vote to up their pay, but then we complain about when they're grifters to lobbyists or go into work for the lobbyists companies.
So yeah, they need a way to provide for themselves.
But me, I always say that this search for a 'perfect system' is also somewhat misinformed. You have to make virtuous people, because we're always ruled by actual humans. If we try to put a system in place, and follow it religiously, then we have two problems.
1. The system actually becomes tyrannical in itself. We have seen this in our own lifetimes.
2. The religious following of a political system becomes an idol in itself. Again, we can see this with civ nats.
So, you have to have a virtuous people, and have that first. Which necessarily entails religion. And I'm an avowed opponent of Enlightenment values - IE the separation of Church and State is the one that pertains to this conversation.
And this is hard to do in an Empire as large as ours. Which is why Empires as large as ours are unstable, historically. You have to have them operate at a national level, with people functioning as nations. Each with a national culture, ethnicity, religion, local government, etc - that is then fairly independent but ultimately answerable and subservient to - the Empire.
If you don't get this, it all falls apart. Revolution, rebellion, or simply ennui.
As the founders generally said, their system assumes a generally moral, virtuous society. Fallen, as they knew all are, their system sought to guard against power turning the leaders into tyrants.
Sadly, we have repeatedly been subverted from without and within. Another great awakening could help but many of the churches are also now subverted and the wealthy elites are often either knowingly subverting or do so based on their indoctrination.
I pray for and seek an Aenean age for us - but the path is unclear.
I understand that. But, like all the Enlightenment projects, their searching for a system leaves no course correction for when there is no virtuous society. Morals are dictated by Religion, as are what you believe Virtues are. Their beliefs about what those are were religious beliefs, and to state otherwise is merely to make unprincipled, question begging, lines in the sand.
In other words, with their system, we would always end up in SOME kind of situation like this, at SOME point in time, no matter what.
So, the solution is to abandon the Enlightenment foundation. To seek something more stable, that has the ability to course correct.
And, a path to that begins with acknowledging that our instinctual "Rule less and give less incentives." is likely the wrong approach; but we need to give positive incentives to virtues, honor, good names, and legacies.
💯but how?
No term limits without severe limits on the bureaucracy.
I agree with your proposals—especially the return to a Cursus Honorum-style system that cultivates statesmanship over careerism. But my lingering question is this: how do we gain the power to implement any of this?
We’re talking about reforming the very machinery that currently preserves incumbency, inertia, and institutional decay. That’s not going to yield to good ideas alone. We need not just a vision for reform—but a strategy for command. Until we solve that, even the best proposals remain aspirational.
Some good ideas there. But it misses the most important one -- end universal suffrage. The right to vote has to be earned. And before each election, individuals get a statement showing taxes paid in the prior year minus benefits received. Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election.
The big failure in the US system is Congress -- which does not represent the people. I am very much in favor of adopting the Ancient Greek practice of choosing true representatives from among citizens by lottery, for a period of 1 year -- sort of like jury service -- with stringent audits for 3 years after this true "public service" to make sure no-one enriches herself. Further, all laws would be subject to the 60/40 rule -- it takes 60% of the representatives to pass a law, but only 40% to repeal that same law. Once Congress passes a law, it would not go into effect for a period of one year; if 40% of States decline to endorse that law during the year, then the law would be eliminated.
Of course, we should go back to the original system where Senators are elected by State Houses, with the same 1 term in office, 1 term as a private citizen rule.
Agreed. Those with voting rights and the right to serve in government positions or bureaucracies must have some skin in the game of the overall health and future of the nation. I'd like to see it especially limited by marriage, lack of divorce, 3+ children. Proves maturity, that you can judge the quality of important people and you have a stale in the future. The West has too many leaders who don't have any kids. Other qualifiers matter too, such as net tax paying and not being able to vote while serving in the public sector (those who live off the state should not be allowed to vote for more gimmedats).
Really like the suffrage idea 💡
I think I have a good rule for the House of Representatives. You can run for three terms, but then you have to take a break for a term; then you could run again. The three terms for a representative would be six years, which would mirror the whole term for a senator.
"State Embassies" - I like it, and I'm stealing that idea. I do have a lot of plans for DC. I think a lot of residential neighborhoods should be bulldozed over so that more of the national government can be housed within DC herself, instead of Virginia or Maryland. I'm also thinking that the Mayor of DC should be appointed by the President, and the Council is appointed by the Congress, half by the House and half by the Senate. Also, I think that juries in DC should be pooled from the entire nation as opposed to just DC. Since our national leaders are in DC doing things, criminal accusations of national importance are going to be heard in DC. It would not be right if only the residents of DC had a say, instead of the nation as a whole. Thus juries should be drawn from the 50 states instead of DC.
Repeal the 17th amendment!
Frankly, I think Timocracy could work. A Colonel way back when brought it up during a group discussion on political systems (which had originally started off with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Book, not movie of course). For Timocracy to work IMHO, the citizen soldier/ militia (AKA draft) would likely need to be brought back.
For those not in the know:
timocracy /tī-mŏk′rə-sē/
noun
A state described by Plato as being governed on principles of honor and military glory.
An Aristotelian state in which civic honor or political power increases with the amount of property one owns.
A state in which the love of honor is the ruling motive.
A state in which honors are distributed according to a rating of property.
A form of government in which ambition for honor, power and military glory motivates the rulers.
A form of government in which civic honor or political power increases with the amount of property one owns.
State Embassies will probably become partisan for the same reason congress did. Remember, all elections were originally supposed to be non-partisan.
Term limits are probably a bad idea, since they would simply further weaken the elected representatives at the expense of the swamp.
Thanks for sharing this post by Mr. Umstattd (I'd already listened to the two podcasts you did with him; he's worth paying attention to!) I think that most of these are good ideas, especially getting rid of the filibuster; the idea that making Congress too weak to do much of anything will protect the people from tyranny is so obviously false (since, as he points out, the judiciary and civil service just step into the power vacuum and no one is strong enough to stop them) - and yet over and over again I will here otherwise-intelligent people pretending to believe it, and then (if challenged) they'll say something about how they trust the founding fathers and the constitution they wrote (with no seeming awareness that the filibuster isn't part of the constitution and came about by accident in the mid-19th century.)
I'm also inclined to agree about term limits. I've generally been against congressional term limits since replacing all the senators/representatives after six or eight or twelve years or whatever, whether they do well or not, would just make Congress even weaker than it already is when compared with lobbyists and bureaucrats who stay around forever. But Umstattd is totally right about the fact that (1) incumbents with little chance of losing re-election and (2) incumbents who aren't going to run for an important office again tend to be lazy, and if you have too many such people in Congress and/or the White House then they'll just rot in place while power slips away to the Deep State. So his compromise - limit consecutive terms but NOT total terms in order to keep people in politics if and only if they can repeatedly run for and win different offices - is actually a very good idea. (After all the Roman Republic didn't rise from ruling one town to ruling most of the known world for no reason!) State embassies are also a neat idea that I hadn't heard before, but would probably be beneficial for all the reasons Umstattd said.
Granted, if I were reforming the system myself I would go further in some ways, for instance repealing the seventeenth amendment. (If you do this, then term limits on senators will probably be unnecessary - if you look at the historical records you actually see a much higher turnover rate back when they had to justify their performance to attentive statehouses rather than the disengaged common voters). Also I would solve the gerrymandering problem by simply getting rid of one-man districts with first-past-the-post voting, and replace it with some sort of proportional representation system with three to six congressmen per district (i.e. similar to what Ireland or Finland has). I wouldn't go so far as the German or South African system where legislators just represent their party and aren't tied to any geographic region at all, but the winner-take-all, two-party system makes it just too easy for a party to neglect and exploit many or most of its constituent voting blocs over and over again (as, for instance, the GOP did for about fifty years before Trump), and keep on winning because the only alternative is a party diametrically opposed to everything they believe in. A multi-party system where it's easier to start new parties wouldn't have that problem, and politics would also be less acrimonious is politicians had to make coalitions to govern and couldn't just treat everything as a zero-sum game.
Scattered thoughts, feel free to laugh with scorn or gasp in awe as you please:
Or:
Lottery.
Natural-born citizen, legal adult, born to two natural-born citizens only. Not in prison, compos mentis (i.e. not on SSRIs or eq.), not in debt for failure to pay taxes, not ever having been comvicted for a crime with a potential jail-time of +5 years, currently not employed in any way by local, state or federal employers (inc. military, police and such).
Your name comes up, you can decline (and your name is then permanently stricken for the rest of your life) or accept. If you accept, you'll earn a salary no greater than the lowest-paid public employee, plus 10%. If needed, you'll be provided with residence (think college dorm) and cost-of-living allowance of no more than welfare plus 10%.
Et cetera. Details will need a bit of sanding and polishing more than above - but:
Add term limits - you'll only ever serve as mayor/state rep./whatever once. And:
Assuming it is not corrupted as per electronic voting machines and no voter-ID cheating, a lottery is the most representative of systems. You're almost guaranteed a statistical average of the citizenry.
Further: imagine how difficult if not downright impossible the form of bribery called lobbying would become.
Combine this with hobbling tax increases so that whenever a legislature wants to raise taxes, a referendum must be held, the result a minimum of 65% in favour or no raised taxes. Could very well be combined with some system limiting taxation/fees. A common scam here that our local councils run is they tax you and charge fees for the same service your taxes go to. Either, or.
Either a tax, the spending of which everyone paying gets a say in how its used (as in: every new post to be added is to be voted on, as per increases outlined above - town council wants to fund "tranny story hour" at the public library, they first must ask the constituency if they apporve of spending taxes on that).
Or a fee paid by anyone using the service. Want to take your garbage to the dump (sorry: climate-saving recycle-center I mean) yourself, sort it yourself and out in the right bins yourself? Pay a dumping fee as and when you go there. Want Bob's Craphauling Co. come pick up your crap? Pay unto Bob. Want the town to do it? Pay the town garbage hauler.
Anyway, some random thoughts from a man living in a nation with a +70% tax pressure.
>Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election.
considering recent AI progress, this inevitably translates as “only idle rich robotics company executives have the vote” and the remaining ninety-nine percent of the population either starving to death or waging Butlerian Jihad
"...not in debt for failure to pay taxes..."
How do you get "Only those individuals with a positive balance are allowed to vote in that election." from what I wrote?
You can owe taxes and have a positive balance at the same time. You can in fact be hundreds of millions or even billions "in the hole" when it comes to taxes, and still be a billionaire.
Read up on Trump's mentor and role-model Roy Cohn for a text-book example of being rich and owing lots and lots of taxes.