At 04:40 AM 3/21/2006, Raphael Ryan wrote: >Ok, so you don't think division of power between the executive and >legislature is a good idea ?
Depends on the goal, doesn't it? The purpose of such a division, in the U.S. system, was clearly to reserve major power for an equivalent of a monarch, which was considered essential. Your proposal dilutes the power of that single executive, perhaps, distributing it among an elected cabinet. The key issue is terms. In a system where the executive is elected by popular vote, terms are essential, because frequent elections reduce electoral participation. Now, if I were, as a single individual, were to hire someone to manage my affairs, I would never set a term; rather, I would use a standard employment arrangement, where the person serves at my pleasure and may be discharged at will, so long as I was competent. Why would we collectively do something different? I'll give a reason: the oligarchy that created and implemented the U.S. Constitution was largely afraid of the electorate, feared that it would succumb to populist pressures. "Populist" is a term which is precariously close to "Democratic." But it implies a manipulation of the public by presenting it with plans which look good to a majority but which would be disastrous in practice. Think Milosevic. The fact is, however, that the majority has power, which power can only be contained by an oligarchy by preventing the majority from directly organizing and acting collectively. The Constitution, thus, was, among other things, a device for presenting an illusion of popular control, thus co-opting attempts to organize the people directly, given that the government was ostensibly that organization, "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." This is a criticism of the founding principles of the U.S. only in a technical sense, a neutral sense. It is quite reasonable to assert that the Constitution was the best that could be done at the time; I am not asserting some malevolent conspiracy, merely observing the nature and consequences of the Constitution. And opposition to true democracy is still quite common: I've seen it among certain election method reform advocates, for example. Indeed, I suspect, it is possible that *most* people still think that "people" are unfit to govern and without the restraining effect of a republican system (which reserves power for an elite, often a wealthy elite) would drive the nation into a hole. One still hears the canard that the poor would simply legislate transfer of wealth from the wealthy to them. The logic behind this assertion is almost unresistable: almost by definition, the majority of people do not have the majority of wealth (the wealth distribution curve would have to be balanced, and it has always been far from that). So the relatively unwealthy could simply require the more wealthy to distribute their wealth. However, such action has not been seen in small direct democracies. Why? My opinion is that people are quite simply not that stupid; such distribution only would make sense where wealth has been appropriated unjustly by a small oligarchy, and rarely is inequity in wealth so simple. Such take-from-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor *has* been a platform of elitist "vanguard" parties which attained and maintained power at gunpoint, not as a true democratic process. Back to the present point: the balance of power was created (or grew out of history) as a method for restraining the power of the monarch while simultaneously restraining the power of the people. By electing cabinets, one creates, in a sense, a mini-legislature with issue czars, fragmenting public policy into fiefdoms, with the overall executive structure being restrained by the general legislature. From my point of view, this is balance-of-powers taken to a Rube Goldberg extreme. I can only vaguely anticipate how this would actually work, but I have no reason to believe that it would be any better than what we have, and, indeed, plenty of reason to expect that it would be worse. I'd think it would be more vulnerable, for example, to special interest manipulation, for there would be tighter and weaker foci on which to exert special interest power, thus magnifying the relative effect of a given level of effort (read "dollars spent") by any special interest. So, at the very least, I would want to see such a system tried in a less critical organization, some proof that it worked. I'd want this even if I expected that it would be a good idea, much more if, as I do, I think it a bad idea. Note that I consider delegable proxy, under certain conditions rather easily obtained, I expect, to be just about perfect as a method of creating a government; yet you do not see me proposing it for government, except to sometimes theorize here about how it could work. Instead, I propose it for NGOs, where organizational failure is likely to do much less damage. If it works in NGOs, then we can propose it for government, and we will have, indeed, the power to implement proposals. One of my realizations has been that the problem of government is quite the same problem as the problem of human organization. If you want to create a political party, how is the party to be organized? What will work for one, with maximum effect, is likely to work for the other; the only difference, really, is in the definition of "citizenship," as well as the degree of power that the organization will have over its members. I had written about the direct election of cabinet officers: > >However, how the general public is supposed to be able to do better > >is completely beyond me. We don't have the information and even if we > >did, we don't have the time to analyze it. And we are missing > >something huge: personal contact with these people. > >It is that it gives the public more control over policy, rather than >just pick 1 party and you have to accept everything the party stands for. Some seem to assume that proportional representation and party list are the same thing. First of all, the ultimate proportional representation is direct democracy, assuming somehow that all members of the public were able to participate legislatively. They are not, but proxy representation then is almost exactly equivalent. Every citizen has one vote, which may be cast directly or indirectly through a proxy. Delegable proxy makes this scalable, and, under good conditions (basically an electorate which has come to expect good service from proxies, plus a general awareness of the power of consensus and the dangers of premature decision by simple majority rule, which weakens society even to the point of civil war), remains perfectly proportional while being, it appears, simple, practical, highly efficient, and, I anticipate, extremely difficult to corrupt (because of the broad distribution of power). And party affiliation is not even part of the system: if people choose to consider party affiliation, they may, of course, do so. But DP practically makes parties a fifth wheel, largely by eliminating representative elections entirely (except in the technical sense that I "elect" a proxy by appointing him or her). Asset Voting also similarly could create an almost perfectly proportional legislature without needing party lists. It differs from Delegable Proxy in that it creates a peer legislature, with every member having equal voting power, but otherwise it would function, on a large scale, quite the same as Delegable Proxy except, of course, that representatives would have terms. In Delegable Proxy, the only term is the system latency, which could be less than a day. (If Asset Voting is conducted by secret ballot, it would, the same as Secret Ballot Delegable Proxy) lose direct responsibility and connection between voters and representatives, but this loss would occur in both cases only at the base level, so the connectivity created by Asset Voting would be *almost* as good as with Delegable Proxy. I favor the latter because it is terminally simple, and, note, wealthy people able to choose for themselves how corporations would be governed chose proxy representation, without exception.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info