Comment by sofixa
3 years ago
Funnily, my learnings from this are the exact opposite.
The majority of US problems come from the inherent duality of the political system. Every matter gets split among political lines, with one party for, the other against, regardless of merits. What would fix that would be to move to popular votes (real, proportional popular votes, not first past the post disenfranchising the vast majority of the population), which would result in more parties emerging, which would lead to more nuance, actual debates and compromises.
If your proposal is enacted, what changes? Governors, elected by first past the post (checking the stats for 2022, with 40-60% of the vote)[1], or state congresses, which are also elected by first past the post and thanks to gerrymandering are usually highly partisan with near total domination of one party[2], elect the two senators for the state. What's the difference? Same two parties as before, same stupid dividing lines on every single topic, same impossible to achieve supermajority needed to do anything significant.
Oh, and actual political finance limits. Whoever came up with "companies donating millions to politicians is free speech so nothing can be done to limit that" is either a massive idiot or extremely biased towards big money influencing elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_gubernatori...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_state_legis...
> Whoever came up with "companies donating millions to politicians is free speech so nothing can be done to limit that" is either a massive idiot or extremely biased towards big money influencing elections.
Isn't this a straightforward deduction from combining an extension of the first amendment with corporate personhood?
I'd think that the actual problem (which manifests itself in many ways other than this one) is that latter legal situation, not the first amendment or the logic itself.
>>Whoever came up with "companies donating millions to politicians is free speech so nothing can be done to limit that" is either a massive idiot or extremely biased towards big money influencing elections.
So Elon Musk wants to spend millions on politics it is OK, but if I and 10,000 of my friends want to form a corporation to spend millions it is idiotic??
And if you want to Limit Elon how do you get around the 1st amendment ?
Nope, do it the other way around. No political campaign can receive more than X money in donations / more than Y money of it's own funds, adjusted for inflation yearly, with highly public transparency lists on who donated to what campaign when.
Well then, that will only service to make the media the selector then, as who ever can get the most "free" media air time would win. What if I went all Bezo's and bought a newspaper or TV Station... What about the corporations that own those networks, Does every time they talk favorably about Biden count as a Campaign Ad?
I dont see how you can achieve that while maintaining a support free expression, unless of course you do not care about free speech?
1 reply →
OK. And what do we do about Pelosi's husband? What about his brother? What about his business partner who lives in another country? The primary issue with this line of thinking is that it simply makes things more difficult to track. The idea with the current system is that at least it's all out in the open.