The US system of governance at this point is such a failure for real democratic rule. It's devolved into a two-party system, and for some reason we grant whichever party happens to be in power the ability to appoint party apparatchiks to vacancies on the Supreme Court. These people then rule until death, when they are replaced in the same manner.
This being the framework, there is never any structural incentive to do anything but convince voters that your opponent is a monster, so you can retain power. Good governance is not rewarded, bad behavior is not punished - we may only rely on the questionable morality of the elected officials to "do the right thing," since they cannot be held accountable.
Americans have the unusual belief that it's a good idea to elect and appoint members of government that believe government is good for nothing and can't do anything right.
For some reason this attitude has not led to effective, efficient governance.
Problem is US leaders are elected based on populism rather than merit and whether theyre actually competent, let alone qualified.
The result is a political system that rewards morally bankrupt, sociopathic behavior that prioritizes self interest and profits over people.
Many will say it has worked considering how wealthy the US is and how it facilitates innovation. However, this is only made possible by the fact US, as global reserve currency of the world, is able to print $$$ w/impunity while exporting much of the resulting inflation which rest of the world has to bare -- essentially subsidizing US wealth.
Not OP but Many many instances of corrupt leaders or leaders with unpopular policies/poor governance being thrown out of power in elections peacefully. If anything, the fatalism & inability of Americans to change their political establishment tends to be puzzling for us.
This is incredibly shallow thinking. The government in the U.S. is an elected body. Elections have consequences. This is one of them. You can blame the individual politicians and want to see them die a painful death since it might be emotionally satisfying for you, but the reason the politicians are there in the first place and the reason they pull the lever the way they do has a little to do with their own personal viewpoints and more to do with the people who put them there.
The problem is that governance is complex that representatives are in many respects just incompetent voters. We elect a lot of lawyers because they're skilled in both assimilation and evaluation, but the upshot is legalism, procedural paralysis, exponential growth of the legal corpus, inaccessibility to the citizenry, and factionalism.
Indeed.. When the public has only two candidates to realistically choose from, both of whom represent parties which run on massive legalized bribery ("donations") and coordinate to systematically keep incumbents out - it's not fair to blame the American public for "electing" leaders that maintain and strengthen the status quo. They don't really have much of a choice.
We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US...
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, in my opinion, one of the things that simply does not work in modern democracy is the election system, two-party death march or otherwise: Candidates play to emotion and often outright lie or intentionally overpromise solely for the purpose of attaining office. And it works, every damn time.
They then find themselves either predictably impotent or, worse, they settle in and show their real colors... and usually win re-election anyway.
If enough people continue to fail to understand this, the majority of the voting public will continue to actively subjugate everyone to the rule and whim of dangerously uninterested officials, and those who do understand will continue to find themselves without candidates worth voting for, as these races the world over are overwhelmingly choked with self-serving bureaucrats who have little if any interest in their constituents' (or anyone else's) well-being.
Do you think the way up the current US political ladder is more about merit or more about quid quo pro? I think there's this sort of cognitive dissonance many of us are suffering. Are you happy with your professional politicians in Washington? Do you think they're doing a good job? It seems to me that many people want change in Washington, and don't appreciate that the 'political experience' rhetoric is being pushed by DC insiders in an effort to try to strengthen their own grasp on power.
That's the conventional argument of course. But it's pretty clear the one party wants to govern, and one wants to "strangle the beast" (that is literally the policy).
It seems to me that people want government to govern, but not waste money, and they are fine with politicians who aren't captured by interest groups.
The real problem is accountability, and there is none if the same party holds power and has no competition. They have no incentive to avoid failure, no real consequences, so they play political games with these issues just to virtue signal instead of actually looking for an effective solution. The optics are more important than the results. The sad part is people seem to go along with it because they can't fathom voting differently.
I think US politicians' failure to act effectively in the interests of US citizens is caused more by the concentration of political power than it is by bad people. The US isn't alone among developed countries in having this problem, but there are plenty of developed countries that manage to avoid it. The answer is more democratic accountability, in the form of measures such as proportional representation.
Why don't get is why there is so little discussion of systematic governance system shortcomings in the US.
Gerrymandering, a primary system empowering extreme positions, the role of money in politics, the extreme level of noise and lack of signal in the media, house and senate rules enabling obstructionism, lack of clarity in the constitution (e.g. senate being able to stall a supreme court judge for a year), etc.
As a general rule of thumb, money and power don't mix all that well ...
As you might have noticed, voting is no guarantee that good leaders are elected, nor does it necessarily prevent corruption.
"We the people" is a founding myth, and it's our myth, but it's still a political myth similar to the divine right of kings, a way of justifying the rule of the many by the few. The leaders are not the masses, no matter what anyone pretends.
(I'm not saying I have a better idea, but let's not be naive about principal-agent problems.)
"Our system is currently working as intended" implies that someone designed the system to work the way it does. What you're really arguing is that no actor is incentivized to improve things, and multiple actors are incentivized to preserve the status quo.
I'd argue that strident condemnations (ala your "our system is currently working as intended") is actually one of the features of the US political system that tends to create/preserve a subpar status quo: https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/11063022464493690...
I don't believe that the US has a monopoly on greedy businesspeople or politicians, relative to other countries. But I do find myself wondering if the toxicity of our politics tends to filter out candidates with a good faith desire to serve the public. People who enjoy conflict tend to be jerks.
EDIT -- Here is some specific evidence that US elites are not uniquely rapacious:
These situations happen not because of any particular cases of mismanagement or lack of overseeing from the voting public. They are a fundamental feature of how incentives are structured. The idea that people can just "manage politicians" better is ridiculous.
The US government is elected by its citizens, although the US President is elected via a labyrinthine political process. I haven't seen any reform to the legal system in the past decade. So even if the problem is seen, there does not seem to be any attempt to elect politicians that will do something about the problem.
I certainly blame the structure, as in, the Citizens United supreme court decision that the constitution protects spending unlimited money convincing politicians to do what you want. It's just not something you can change without clarifying or modifying the constitution, and thus corruption is fundamentally a inevitable outcome of our current political structure.
The US system of governance at this point is such a failure for real democratic rule. It's devolved into a two-party system, and for some reason we grant whichever party happens to be in power the ability to appoint party apparatchiks to vacancies on the Supreme Court. These people then rule until death, when they are replaced in the same manner.
This being the framework, there is never any structural incentive to do anything but convince voters that your opponent is a monster, so you can retain power. Good governance is not rewarded, bad behavior is not punished - we may only rely on the questionable morality of the elected officials to "do the right thing," since they cannot be held accountable.
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