[–] pissonmybitch ago
I honestly don't think anything will get fixed. I hope that things will get fixed, I'll spend a little effort and voat for the guy that has gone against the machine in the past and hope they can continue to do that in the future. But I have little hope.
Teddy Roosevelt did it a hundred years ago, some one can do it again.
[–] othilien 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Neither.
I think the primary issue is that most politicians are there to get/keep money. I propose that politicians and their immediate families be forced to live at (and also guaranteed) double the median household income of the united states while they are serving and for ten years after. (but I know this is unrealistic)
Secondly, campaign finance reform. There should be spending limits on campaigns. I also think it wouldn't hurt to have an official department to collect the official political stances, ideas, and platforms of any and all candidates.
Third, voting reform. This would loosen both parties' stranglehold on the proposal of new law.
-Primaries are unnecessary and promote divisive ideas that have gridlocked congress. If we would use approval voting or range voting, we could have six candidates all running against each other simultaneously and without confusion or worry about "throwing away" a vote, since your vote carries your opinion of every candidate instead of just one.
-Districts should be redrawn to something unbiased.
-I don't see the point of the electoral college. A popular vote should be just fine for the presidential race.
[–] quaestio-omnia 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Not the ones with the backroom party support. A grassroots anti-establishment candidate might, but they would need to have nearly impossibly high grassroots support.
But then, they would have to deal with a congress who is bought and paid for.
So, no, no single candidate can really fix much.
But, the right candidate might be able to start small and get the ball rolling on more significant changes.
Otherwise, it's going to take a sudden popular movement to for drastic and immediate changes. Those are seldom peaceful.
[–] Stanley_Yelnats_IV 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Depends on how lenient you're willing to be with "anything." I think that some things are beyond repair through politics alone, while others can still be fixed.
[–] LagDragon 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
No way! They are all the same. I think Carlin said it best
[–] Balrogic 0 points 6 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago (edited ago)
Not particularly, no. Any excitement I might have over candidates is elation at the thought there's a couple of them that will do far less damage than expected. It's my strongly held personal belief that government will be rendered obsolete by technology within my lifetime, ushering in a golden age of prosperity as we become unconstrained by oppressive policies designed to hold us all down in the mud. Any political action until that time consists of simple damage control. I'd rather have deterministic algorithms and AI in charge of coordinating large scale initiatives, even if it's Skynet. Skynet would cause less devastation to humanity than Congress. That said, I consider a hostile anti-human AI like Skynet's depiction in the Terminator series to be unlikely to the point I'm not worried about it.
I say neither, let's automate those fuckers into permanent unemployment. Let's automate it in such a way that no one has proprietary control, so that no one has the power to hijack the system toward their own ends. What's the worst case? We wind up creating a self-deterministic AI that uses it's position to exploit us in exactly the same way we're currently being exploited? That's not a real risk. We can treat that like an engineering problem and fix it in short order.
[–] collator 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I'm intrigued by this idea but you would have to have complete faith in the AI. By allowing a backdoor for human meddling, you hand over power to the engineers who can "fix the problem." They become the rulers, likely bending the system to their benefit. Soviet Russia and China attempted a technocracy before with unfortunate results. Admittedly, China has been more successful in recent years but their efforts haven't dampened corruption.
Where I think technology is important is the idea of the Fifth Estate. Freelancing and citizen journalism can help hold those in power accountable when the Fourth Estate is bought off. The Intercept is a good example of this.
[–] Balrogic 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
I think the key would be ensuring that every last bit of it is out in the open, not one hidden character of code, no hardware tricks. Open to audits and inspections at any time by anyone. Fully transparent processes with zero secrets, actively generate data logs that allow ongoing analysis of what it's doing. Every single person wouldn't be able to understand it but several hundred thousand people would at the bare minimum... Including an extremely activist faction of the open source movement that would not stay quiet about the slightest irregularity. I think it would be most useful as a sort of advisor that's able to look at data, crunch all the numbers, process the factors and come up with recommendations that are firmly rooted in objective fact. We could start off by using it as a system to check the safety of new foods, medicines, analyze various problems with infrastructure, the environment... Then we take that information and use it to implement improvements in our systems in the most efficient manner possible.
Even that much, we'd suddenly have politically neutral data-driven analysis that can be independently verified by anyone that cares to do so. No social antics, no playing favorites. When someone tries to spin up a bunch of lies to smear the smart move we'll be able to objectively demonstrate the lie for what it is. I think we can do a great deal to neuter the mechanisms used to abuse us if we make smart use of technology, start taking human error out of the equation. Improve it bit by bit, expand the scope as our technological mastery grows. We have the means to fix a lot of the world's problems through our technology, we just lack the analytical capacity to deploy all of our technology in the right places for maximum effect. The interesting thing about that kind of open automated project is that it would allow absolutely anyone with the technical skills to participate see toward their own governance directly without having to filter through a bunch of politicians. We could even put communications infrastructure in place in order to let people give their feedback on various proposals through direct voting.
Unlike politicians, we could look through every little bit that makes it tick, see how it thinks and how it can be expected to behave. You'll never get that degree of honesty or political transparency with a political body. Openly verifiable trust.
[–] Ioxvm ago
No.