As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong.
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition". And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. Otherwise, people suffer.
This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. What you're describing is anarchy.
You build checks and balances, but you cannot have a functioning government without the assumption that the people you put in charge will act in good faith, but also have a reliable means to remove them from power if they act in bad faith.
In addition to all of the theoretical responses provided, I would also say that the US has withstood the test (so far).
Trump is probably one of the “worst”* people and held the highest office. And yet despite the fact that it happened, the US is still chugging along. Bad things happened but the quality of life is similar to pre-trump presidency (as long as you are willing to discount for covid’s impact on the world).
*Some say there are worse ppl than djt, but I argue very few has his combination of badness + boldness + tenacity. A bad+meek person thrust into presidency would probably just go with the flow.
Interesting, if Trump is so bad, why do you think half of the country will vote for him?
Those people have real problems that I am sympathetic to. For example, being left behind economically. Problems at the border. etc. Trump speaks to these problems and the democratic party does not fix these problems.
The reason Trump is popular is because he is willing to lie and make false promises in order to gain support. Any one can do this, you just have to have no moral boundaries and some charisma. For example how Enron, Theranos, and that crypto guy are able to defraud billions of dollars from investors.
he is willing to lie and make false promises in order to gain support
This describes pretty much every politician who ever had to be democratically elected. Has any other American president behaved differently?
Who said anything about comparisons with other presidents? In general people who even seek political office should not be allowed such office.
Let’s not forget that trump is a known associate with convicted child rapists Epstein and Maxwell.
The best guy to be president is probably an average unnamed dude chillin somewhere.
I don’t have any connections with child rapists. Do you? Then already as a starting point we can be better than Trump.
Just those that fell short of actively encouraging and organising attempted overthrows of congress to alter the outcome of the vote.
until the next election occurs we haven't really seen the effect of the damage done in 2020
1 in 3 voters no longer believing that the electoral system is fit for purpose ("the election was stolen") is really very scary
A large fraction doesn’t view the government as fit for purpose either — as they allowed widespread, coordinated arson attacks across major cities totaling $2B+ in damages and then sent the FBI after peaceful demonstrators, based on which political faction people belonged to.
That’s some real fascism.
And are male, of course.
Taking an argument to it's logical conclusion isn't "falling apart". The best scenario for governance is anarchy; ideally we could all just do what we want. It is a tautology that anything we're forced to do by the police is something we don't think is a good idea/in our interests.
The problem with anarchy is that it will get toppled by a group - probably internally to the society - that is organised and forms a standing military. Organised factions tend to grow. The US is creeping in the same direction as a group like the USSR or China - an overdeveloped and too-powerful central bureaucracy - but much more slowly because it started from a well designed system with lots of checks and balances. But just because centralised power tends to be stable doesn't mean it is good, decentralised power is much more pleasant to live under.
So the ideal government is anarchy, the practically ideal government is as close to anarchy as we can get without being destabilised by a military, and the reality of the situation is militarys form and tend to move away from anarchy towards tyranny. But that doesn't make them good.
What this is missing is that you can be forced to do something by someone other than a military.
If a corporation pollutes the air, you're being forced to breathe polluted air. It's not in your interest for them to pollute the air, but it's in their interest because it's cheaper and they value money over incrementally cleaner air. Then you need a means to stop them from doing something they find to be in their own interest, because it isn't in yours and you didn't consent to it.
The problem with this is that if you extend it to its logical conclusion, now you're not allowed to breathe because I didn't consent to you emitting CO2 from your lungs.
The key here is to limit the government to the things that are both important and can only be feasibly accomplished through a monopoly on force. Prohibiting violence and monopolies, pricing major externalities, funding certain types of fundamental research, etc.
Not prohibiting entirely consensual behavior or micromanaging marginal commercial activity or impairing your view of the bay by having the gall to construct housing during a housing shortfall.
There can be some disagreement around the edges on what these things are, but the real hard part is finding a way to create checks and balances effective enough to resist when a wave of populism wants to stop imposing all of these restrictions on Their Guy. Because the thing that follows that is invariably centralization of power, corruption and injustice.
Not at all a settled point. There is a strong correlation between air pollution and rapidly improving quality of life. I think it probably is in my interest. The best salary I drew in my life was when I lived in the region with the worst air pollution and that wasn't an accident.
I think the evidence suggests governments have crippled society's capability to improve itself, in part through over-regulation of environmental issues based on faith and ideology rather than thinking seriously about what the optimal behaviour is.
There is a strong correlation between air pollution and industrialization and a strong correlation between industrialization and quality of life. That doesn't mean pollution improves quality of life, it means you want industrialization without pollution.
To take a specific example, the ban on leaded gasoline was Good. Lead is powerfully toxic, the science on this is solid, and the negative consequence of the ban is that gasoline costs marginally more if at all.
Now you can list many more examples of the EPA imposing stupid rules with a marginal benefit that doesn't even exceed their implementation costs which in aggregate significantly increase the cost of everything while having negative overall value.
But it's not physically impossible to repeal all of those and keep the ban on leaded gasoline. The question is how to accomplish that in practice, and to maintain that as a stable equilibrium.
If we have the option of industrialisation without pollution, why are the corporations polluting the air in your example? Nobody pollutes for the sheer joy of annoying their neighbours. The issue we face in the modern world is nobody knows how to do industrialisation without pollution. Governments banning pollution has just stifled industrialisation. Industrialisation and pollution is a better equilibrium point for all of us than the slow choking out of industry.
The natural market equilibrium is typically fast improvement. Moving away from the equilibrium because the elites are inconvenienced by the side effects is rarely a good idea. I'll give you leaded fuels were a mistake, but by and large the anti-industrial policies have been more harm than good.
The benefits of anarchy get “toppled” the first moment someone violates another persons freedom, leaving them no recourse but ad hoc retaliation, and the unlimited risks of further repercussions to themselves and those they care about. Assuming they are left in any shape to do so.
No group needed.
This is actually the point though.
You shouldn't have to give power to an individual. If you're going to, you should give that power to a group of individuals who have to agree for the thing to move forward.
And then have checks on that group as well.
I live in South Carolina and one of the things I like about how this state works is that the governor is virtually powerless, so you never really have to worry about who is elected. There's certainly some degree of power outside of the veto, but for the most part the real power is with the state senate.
There are pluses and minuses to it. On the plus side, it means that things are slower to change. On the minus side, it means that things are slower to change.
Sounds like South Carolina follows a Westminster style government. Look at the UK, NZ, AU governments (and I assume Canada, don't know for sure): A King, or Governor-General, with the theoretical power to override parliament. A Head of State which can issue decrees and makes important decisions "on the advice of the Prime Minster".
Basically a figure head and a bunch of legal fictions wrapped up in the concept of "The Crown". But the real power lies with the PM and their Cabinet. But the party in charge can change the PM whenever they want, and if it ever got bad enough Parliament can change the party in charge without waiting for an election.
The PM is responsible to the Cabinet and to their party and to the rest of Parliament. It is all one big mess of ambitious people pointing guns at each other, constantly evaluating their position ahead of the next election.
Westminster system is not a particularly good example of checks and balances, though, given that whole parliamentary supremacy thing. A Westminster-style Parliament is essentially unanswerable to anyone but the voters; and even then it can unilaterally change election laws, so it can circumvent the voters as well. If the courts deem some act of Parliament unlawful, the latter can just pass another act explicitly declaring it lawful (the recent Safety of Rwanda Bill was a good example of just such an attempt).
Yeah, parliament is sovereign, the checks and balances are (meant to be) internal to parliament.
That may break down a bit with modern parties and modern elections, I guess we will see if these systems still work in another couple of hundred years.
Don't be reactive to the current successful tactic. The senate GOP has organized and wields their power effectively; the governor has not gathered and organized power. In a different scenario, with a different people, it could be the other way.
The discussion was about giving power to an entire government, not an individual.
I don't think society is dependent on government.
Literally no power ensconced in the hands of a _single individual_, I think was the point.
Is that a hypothetical or are there large and successful societies around today that don't have one (or a group by some other name fulfilling the same function)?
You'd have to more thoroughly define "successful." You'd also have to explain why you think the lack of one would prove any point.
It's not that the lack of one proves it's impossible, but if one existed it'd sure be evidence that government isn't a requirement. As for "successful" I suppose that is very much subjective. Is there one you'd consider to be successful?
There are no historical or current examples of societies larger than a tribe that are lacking any form of government.
The thing that is not mandatory, however, is the state, which is not a synonym. State-based government is centralized government, but government does not necessarily need to be centralized to the point where the result is a state.
You are limiting your definition of society to one that can be described by defended political borders. It's circular and tautological.
I would argue that the internet is a society that's broader than these political borders, obviously exists, and does so entirely outside of government control.
I would suggest you both missed this definition of society.
Thats the point, the power will be abused. Free markets subvert toxic heirarchies and inefficient industries, thats how america was designed to work, private capital formation and the ability to compete freely. When you need to resort to political means to achieve your ends you violate peoples rights, those rights are considered above the authority of the government.
But a free market cannot exist in the absence of regulation, and regulation is a form of government.
> a free market cannot exist in the absence of regulation
As you are using the term "regulation" (see below), this is false. A free market is in fact exactly what you do get in the absence of government regulation: all transactions are voluntary. Only governments can force people to engage in market transactions they don't want to engage in, or prevent them from engaging in market transactions they do want to engage in.
> regulation is a form of government
Not necessarily. A true free market is regulated by the voluntary choices of all of its participants. No government is required. Government regulation replaces or overrides regulation by voluntary choices of market participants.
A gun can also force people to participate in transactions they don't want to engage in.
Sure, and that can happen whether there is a government or not. In fact, in the US, courts up to and including the Supreme Court have ruled that the government has no affirmative duty to protect individuals from crime.
I don't think laws against crime were the sort of regulation of markets that the post I responded to was talking about. But in any case, if the existence of crime is sufficient to make markets not free, then free markets don't exist with government any more than they would without it.
Not at all.
Suppose the worst possible person is in the prosecutor's office. They get to decide who to prosecute. But they can't just file false charges against someone and throw away the key, they have to prove it in court with evidence and convince a jury of the defendant's peers. Moreover, we could prohibit prosecutorial misconduct and set up an independent agency for investigating and punishing it. And we could require vague laws to be construed in the defendant's favor and strike down excessively broad ones as unconstitutional.
It's possible for these checks and balances to fail -- there is some evidence that they have -- but in principle we could have stricter ones that work better. And if they work as intended, it doesn't matter how bad the prosecutor is, they don't have the power to cause harm, and they themselves are punished if they try to exceed the limits of their power.
But if they just do their job, i.e. investigate crimes and prosecute the offenders, they do have the power to do that.
And so it is with any other office in the government.
There is another failure mode. The prosecutor can refuse to prosecute a guilty party. This can happen for several reasons. 1) corruption, don’t prosecute your friends. 2) ideology, the law or punishment are “unfair” or the defendant is “misunderstood” or “disadvantaged” according to the prosecutor. 3) politics, to advance their political careers prosecutors want an unblemished record of successful convictions.
It is good that our system biases toward avoiding wrongful conviction but there’s no check that forces a party to “do their job.”
Prosecutors are relatively new. It used to be the right of citizens to petition a grand jury to indict. A few states still allow it.
You can have multiple prosecutors. E.g., if one does not want to prosecute (and so not get paid) then another will.
While you can't ensure an individual does their job, market forces and competition can ensure the job gets done (by someone).
But this is intended as one of the checks and balances. If the legislature passes an unjust law or one with unjust applications, the prosecutor can exercise their discretion and not enforce it, acting as a check on the tyranny of the majority.
You could remove prosecutorial discretion and require prosecutors to proceed against anyone someone wants to file charges against (let the judge and jury sort it out), but now you're making a trade off against something else.
Notice that this applies to any of the rest of it. Congress could refuse to pass a law that makes sense because their cronies benefit from the status quo etc. But the concern here is that the government has an unprecedented capacity to do harm because it exercises a monopoly on violence. If the prosecutor's buddy is a serial killer, you can still exercise your right to self-defense, or avoid being alone in public. If the prosecutor's buddy is allowing your company to not pay you for hours worked, you can sue them yourself, or quit. All while lobbying the government to replace the prosecutor. If you're falsely imprisoned by the government, what are you supposed to do?
I know countries are different, but there are many people who are pro severely minimal government in the USA.
And it does not seem so unlike the initial intentions for the country either.
If you frame it as anarchy it sounds like screaming chaos. But consider for a moment that the vast majority of laws that exist that are enforcable now only recently came to be.
There’s also real trade offs:
I had fiber to my condo a decade ago in Thailand, but still don’t reliably in the US.
Regulations and government monopolies on poles and conduits slow development at the same time they reduce fires and clutter on the poles. (Whoa are there some real tangles in Thailand.)
There’s a reasonable debate on where and how much we should regulate things.
I'm not concerned with slow development and the occasional fire. I'm more concerned with rampant over-regulation. Being required to have a license to put up a non load bearing wall in my own house... The homeless in the US that cannot afford the minimum ordained "humane" dwelling size. Minimum parking lot size requirements. Minimum wage. The fed modulating the currency value with the goal of INCREASING unemployment. Homes being required to have running water and electricity, be above a certain size, or you aren't allowed to live in them (Even if they are way wayy out in the middle of the woods). $20,000 driveway concrete keying fees intended to hurt companies that prevent basic individual rights on personal property.
Regulation raises costs, and raises price floors. Generally you gain some quality, but don't see the ghost it unleashes.
I understand we need building codes in cities so fires don't burn down all of New York, and train, plane, drug inspection laws. But I think overall, non-violent crime in the world is absolutely over-regulated.
For some reason people usually assume there are no costs to regulation, and only benefit. I think its a just psychology. Regulation is a thin line that requires dancing on. Always assume there's a ghost cost behind a decision, even if it seems harmless. Even something as well intended as banning candy from the front of grocery stores to cut childhood obesity could unroll into a huge problem as each actor solves their local issue, and generate an emergent behavior. I'll function as an annoying representative of this concept.
"people in charge" doesn't just include elected officials, it also includes heads of corporations. Checks and balances has to apply to them as well, meaning that regulation is necessary.
And it should apply to parties.
Especially in systems like the US where single party rule is actually attainable.
Political parties work hard to centralize and consolidate power across disparate voting districts, pushing and incentivizing their elected members to be more loyal to their party than to their districts.
Then the party as a coordinated whole just works for itself.
The whole point of having diverse representatives from diverse districts gets nullified.
National level seat limits, and cross state party limits for local elections, would eliminate any chance of single party rule and evaporate the dysfunction that spreads from seeking and holding that crown.
This goes both ways. The merchant class is one of the checks and balances on the government because it serves as a separate power base that should find it in its own interest to oppose government misconduct.
One of the most important things for checks and balances to do is ensure the separation of commerce and state. Prevent the merger of state and corporate power.
So they must restrain the government from inhibiting competition at the behest of crony incumbent corporations. Which requires you to restrict what kinds of regulation the government can impose, when that regulation impairs competition or otherwise advantages crony corporations.
The last thing you want is to give a government official the power to do a corporation's bidding.
Many good answers, but to put it simply, ideally you create a system that assumes abuse, which will then make abuse difficult or obvious. If you make any positive assumptions about someone in power, then they will, eventually, be used against you.
I think that's the right take, with particular attention to overall transparency, since otherwise you have nothing— how do you hold someone accountable if you don't have the right to see what they're up to?
That answers your concern -- that's a reduction in the power of government. The worst possible person being in charge is OK if that person cannot unilaterally make things worse for everyone. I don't think it necessarily describes anarchy, though I do take your point.
As for people acting in good faith, well, POSIWID[0] is a thing; ideally the system should be designed such that it shouldn't matter whether any individual within the system is acting in good faith or not, because the incentive structures set up therein will lead to positive outcomes. Besides, for any politically divisive topic, someone will always think you're acting in bad faith, anyway.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
What they're describing is infrastructure, which is what government should be.
Not a ruling class.
I think a better way of phrasing that is "We cannot ask for better people. The right system makes the wrong people do the right thing". Russ Roberts sometimes says something like this and probably quoted someone else who I forgot
The words "right" and "wrong" in that sentence could make light of the Ardblair stones.
The statement isn't about what we want to get out of a system or government, but about how to approach shaping the system to create the desired outcome. You can fill in "good" and "bad" with your own subjective values and it continues to hold true. How you make the collective decision to agree on what's desired and what's not is a whole other can of worms.
The problem is the worst people NOT IN GOVERNMENT already have more power than that, and can thus easily crush such a government and turn it into a de facto oligarchy.
More power than the Government has?
Which company or individual has nuclear weapons? Could send you to war like Russia in Ukraine to die? Could print as much money as they want. Can raise arbitrary taxes and people have to pay or you just incarcerate them. Can send you to prison. Spy everything you do by force.
Governments can kill you, rob you, kidnap you, spy you, without consequences.
I don't know any individual or company with as much power as Governments have.
If you think the worst people cannot have nuclear weapons, then by your own logic governments should not have nuclear weapons, because a bad person could get elected and then have nuclear weapons.
Strangely the UK, which has a no formal constitution and an unimaginable number "gentleman's agreement" parliamentary traditions - with absolutely no recourse for political malfeasance - has faired remarkably well for hundreds of years. The entire system is built on the notion that "the next leader will probably not undermine the entire system". It's only really faced a couple of real internal systemic threats throughout its history and was (until the last decade) considered a bastion of political stability.
With the French Revolution, the American Revolution, then Imperialism, then World War 2 and then its loss of influence: The UK faired remarkably simply because of the Enlightenment and later, the consequences of fighting against the people. Then antagonizing ally that shared many common interests.
Still, I can totally see the UK’s democracy devolving quickly, if in the decades and generations ahead governments trend towards authoritarianism.
the political instability was an unintended consequence of a small change in 2011: the Fixed Term Parliaments Act
the Act removed the ancient power of the PM to call an election early (ironically intending to provide stability)
it resulted in a situation where parliament couldn't agree on anything with the usual way out (government calling a general election) no longer possible
the Fixed Term Parliaments Act has now been repealed, so hopefully this was a one-off
Off topic, but are you implying that Mao was 'good people'? It seems that for the Communist 'dynasty', it fell apart immediately - that is, it never got anywhere. I'm not sure the Communist dynasty is any worse than the Qing or Ming or others before it, at least in that respect.
Every Westminster-style democracy by your logic should have turned into a dictature. There is nothing stopping a governor general from seizing power but tradition and expectations.
What they failed to recognize is that factions (i.e. political parties) will inevitably form so they should be regulated. There is nothing in the Constitution about political parties. They found the time to mention the Post office but not political parties.
Sounds nice but it’s fundamental a recipe for getting nothing done. And just because the government doesn’t do it doesn’t mean it won’t be done. Private entities, with far fewer restraints (any ambitions to restrain them are of course counteracted) will naturally fill in the gaps. It’s why the US has private companies selling expensive tax software rather than a simple system which would benefit everyone.
China hasn’t reached it yet but once Xi is out they have to hope they can find another benevolent king or the entire system is going to come crashing down.
I do not think you have picked a good example. Mao was a pretty nasty piece of work. The relatively prosperity of modern China is the result of abandoning his ideology - and a large chunk is the result of reversing the damage he and his followers did.
There has been no line of good people in communist and post communist China. It failed from the start.
Just for reference, the "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" line comes from Federalist 51, also by Madison.
They all depend on this. There is no set-it-and-forget-it algorithm that you can put in place that self-perpetuates good government. There are "people" at every point along the chain of any government including those writing its laws, enforcing them, interpreting laws in court and in many bureaucratic institutions that may or may not ignore these rules or undermine them.
I think every system has a life-cycle like an organism, and some aspects of degradation and corruption are almost unavoidable in practice if not in principle.
That doesn't make real sense to me, because that means that government is impossible. I prefer the idea that "desire for office should be disqualification for office."
I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. Conflicts heighten without compromise or resolution for decades until they reach a breaking point. In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise.
Similarly, judicial review seems to be much much weaker in most countries. In the US, the supreme court can strike down a law with immediate effect of nullifying that law. It's been hard for me to find comparisons, but it seems like in other countries, there's some combination of judicial review being only advisory, or not having immediate effect. So in some countries, the judicial branch says a law is un-constitutional, and the legislative branch can ignore it, or has some period of time to defend or revise the law, rather than the law being immediately struck. This is fundamentally undemocratic. That's a good thing some times, but not good other times.
In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances. This does not seem like the hallmark of an effective democracy to me.
I agree that the the Supreme Court is more important because of the inability of Congress to pass regular legislation.
However I don't think the root cause is "checks and balances". I think the root cause is the (unconstitutional) Senate filibuster. This prevents parties who control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency from passing laws. It is often the case that this happens (2016-18 for Republicans; 2020-22 for Democrats) and in those periods it should be possible to pass many laws and thus diminish the role of the Supreme Court. But the filibuster prevents this.
How is the filibuster unconstitutional? The Constitution explicitly gives each House the power to select its own rules, and the Senate is never "dissolved" like the House of Representatives is, so its rules carry on.
Legal scholars as in [1] can make the point better than me:
In general, the Senate's ability to set its own rules surely cannot be unrestricted. For example, when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate would it have been constitutional for them to create a new rule that all tax decreases require unanimous consent of the Senate? Or for Republicans in the same situation to create a rule that all tax increases require unanimous consent? Both of these changes would seem to be within the rule-making authority of the Senate. However both rules would be profoundly undemocratic because they would generally prevent a majority (or supermajority) of US voters from changing US tax law in the future.
[1] https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-t...
What you describe is pretty much what has happened and still is happening in Hungary.
The conclusion here is that even if the majority agrees that these rules are against the spirit of the democracy, there's nothing practical to do against them. So yeah, checks and balances are important to have in practice, not just in spirit.
When you're relying on self-imposed limitations, radicals will sooner or later take over and do whatever necessary to stay in power.
I think we should clarify that there is no "filibuster rule" in the Senate. The rule is that debate by default is unlimited; in order to close debate on any non-rule change, sixty senators must agree to invoke "cloture," after which debate continues for up to thirty hours under various restrictions. Then the vote on the underlying measure (e.g. a bill, a resolution, advice & consent on an executive matter) takes place with the majority vote rule. (Debate about rule changes can only be ended by 2/3 of the Senate, followed by a majority vote on the rule change itself.)
With that settled, we should also consider that the Constitution itself mandates super-majorities in the Senate for various reasons, including expelling a senator; giving advice and consent for the president to ratify a treaty; convicting an impeached president, vice president, other officer or judge; overriding a veto; or proposing an amendment to the Constitution. It further specifies certain procedures that can be invoked by less than a majority, like the 1/5 vote to record the names of those voting on any given measure, or the minority vote required to compel the presence of absent senators in the absence of a quorum. The Constitution clearly contemplates these situations where the vice president's vote wouldn't matter, so it stands to reason that the Senate is free to adopt rules requiring a different vote threshold than simple majority.
As to the hypothetical about rules governing tax legislation, I see nothing in the Constitution forbidding such a ludicrous procedure. I do see loads of evidence that it would be extremely impractical, including the 2/3 majority required to invoke couture on rule amendments; the "nuclear option" precedent; and the fact that the tit-for-tat is possible.
Finally, all legislative bodies have substantially undemocratic procedures. Referring matters to committee is undemocratic, restricting floor amendments is undemocratic, points of order are undemocratic, etc. It seems to me that preserving the minority's right to further debate is not so different.
There is a solution to that as well: put explicit limits on the length of speech and the number of speakers for each debate item. This worked well in the Turkish legislature to make the legislature faster.
I'd argue that the US biparty system tends to have fewer checks and balances than a parliamentary system.
In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power.
Historically, I think it's been exceedingly rare to have as finely balanced government as recent times have featured.
And to me, the Supreme Court is less about the people currently sitting on it, and more about the fact that they have all dedicated their lives to the legal profession.
They may rule one way or another on hot issues, for personal reasons. But you're checking with people who all hold the rule of law (as a concept) much higher than the legislature or executive. Which is a valuable check to have.
In that way, they're more like the UK's Speaker of the House of Commons.
In recent times the Supreme Court has also been staffed by graduates of only a handful of law schools. I think that, more than a dedication to the rule of law, is what sets them apart from the rest of the country. Given the complexities of harmonizing a large body of law that's centuries old, I'm not sure there's a better way. But I think we should always remember that the Supreme Court is by far the least representative and least democratic branch of government.
It's also the only branch of government that, at least as designed, cannot originate policy.
You need 60% in the senate to get anything passed. There have been many cases where one party controlled all three but couldnt accomplish much due to the filibuster. Famously Obama's first couple years.
Which, in practice, means senators representing an extreme minority of US citizens can block hugely popular legislation. California itself has a larger population than the least populous 21 states combined, yet gets the same 2 senate votes as each of those other states. The Senate is a hot mess as far as political game theory goes.
Those are 3 separate bodies, each independently elected.
Versus the parliamentary system where it's one election for a combined executive and legislative and sometimes with a token senate. Power is far more concentrated than the US system.
The problem in the US is actually the opposite -- the checks and balances were intended to be stronger but have been substantially weakened, in a way that creates instability.
In the original constitutional framework the federal government was meant to be extremely limited. Senators were appointed by state legislators so that they would limit expansion of federal power at the expense of state power, but that was changed and deprived the states of their primary representation in the federal government. Which not coincidentally was immediately followed by a massive expansion of federal control.
Which was itself meant to be much more limited. The original intention of the interstate commerce clause was for the federal government to handle things like mail fraud, where you have a perpetrator and a victim in different states and the victims have no representation in the perpetrator's jurisdiction. It has since been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate essentially anything, infamously including non-commerce that occurs solely within a single state.
In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level, doing things at the federal level was disfavored in general, and that was fine because anything outside the scope of federal power or without widespread consensus could be handled by the states. Laboratories of democracy.
But then we made it too easy to do things at the federal level, and of course power-hungry sociopaths are attracted to centralized power. So instead of the federal government being weak and uninteresting because strong checks and balances limited it from being abused, it became the battleground for winner-take-all popularity contests.
If gridlock was intended, what's the purpose of the formal simple majority requirement to pass laws? If gridlock was always to be the main state when disagreement existed, the "Nay" vote seems superfluous, which is an absurd result IMO.
It isn't a simple majority. You need both houses of Congress (which were originally representing separate interests) and the signature of the President, or you need two thirds in both the House and Senate to override a veto.
In theory you could require unanimity, but then you could never pass anything, even if it had 95% support. The point isn't to prevent all laws, it's to require the approval of enough distinct interests that controversial issues are easier to address at a different level of government, and each of their controversial solutions only apply in an area where that idea has local support, while everyone has freedom of movement in the event that they disagree with the local majority enough to vote with their feet.
The simple majority I'm referring to is about both houses of Congress in isolation. In the House of Representatives you need 218 out of 435 reps, while in the Senate it's 51 of 100. That's what I meant.
Either the rules of Congress are superfluous (by requiring only a simple majority in each house to pass a law despite the existence of the fillibuster/gridlock), or the fillibuster/gridlock is an obstructionist, absurd, and potentially unconstituional tactic.
The way the filibuster actually works is that you need a vote to close the debate before you have the vote on the bill, and that vote requires 60 rather than 51, and that makes some sense. Because if a bill is going to pass 97 to 3 and the proponents are satisfied they've heard enough discussion, the chances of you convincing 47 Senators to change their vote are pretty slim. But if the bill is only going to pass 51 to 49, there's a real chance you might be able to change the result if you had more time, and so the rules give the minority the ability to delay the vote if the vote is close enough.
Of course, since they can take as long as they want, that means in practice they can delay the vote indefinitely. But that doesn't seem substantially different than some committee being able to kill a bill by just never passing it through to the full Senate even if it would pass there. It's just another opportunity to prevent government action if there is insufficient consensus.
And "60 votes to end debate" and "60 votes to pass a bill" aren't the same thing, and therefore aren't superfluous. The Senate passes many, many bills by a vote of less than 60 to 40, because many Senators will vote to end debate on a bill they intend to vote against. The filibuster is a means for the minority party to moderate a bill that they generally don't support. If the majority party submits an extremist version of a bill, the minority threatens to filibuster it unless they replace it with a moderate version. Then they don't filibuster the moderate bill but still vote against it, and it passes along party lines with less than 60 votes.
Also notice that it doesn't take 60 votes to amend the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster. If the majority wanted it enough, they could remove the rule and then pass whatever they wanted with 51 votes. But then so could the other party, the next time they're in the majority. There are enough Senators who don't want to see that happen the next time they're in the minority that there aren't 51 votes to change the rules. Even if there are 51 votes to pass a bill the other party is filibustering.
This is a feature. In a unitary state, it would be suicide. But in a federation, national disagreement prompts gridlock which automatically devolves the question.
It doesn't, though. It just means that whatever current arrangement exists on federal level (which is not necessarily devolution!) remains in force.
This was one of the biggest defects in the original constitutional framework. They made it hard to pass laws, which was by design, but then used the same procedure to repeal them. If the goal is for federal laws to reflect general consensus, they should be easier to repeal than to pass.
Easy: make all statutes temporary, not just budgeting acts. Then inaction means repeal.
Yeah, if I understand, the original idea of the checks & balances in the US was that each branch of government would be fighting to become the most powerful and so they all had ways to stop each other. But it wasn't really designed to deal with the idea that political parties would grow in power enough to supersede the branches of government as the top-level entities fighting for power.
This idea that you'd be able to form a large enough coalition across Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency that you could get all three branches to work together wasn't really considered back then. With more localized politics that was basically impossible and so the individual branches were fighting for power.
Our form of government should be updated to reflect the reality of more powerful political parties.
Precisely. There’s effectively no forcing mechanism which guarantees any factions work with each other. So I see Washington’s farewell address warning against factions less as a drop of quaint wisdom but more of a last ditch attempt to rectify a gaping hole in the constitution they had just written.
And keep in mind that the current constitution took effect in 1789, only 8 years after the Articles of Confederation went into effect. So there was far less of a feeling that the fundamentals of the Constitution we have now would last forever.
The flaw is actually in the use of first past the post voting, which causes more powerful political parties, because the math induces a two party system.
Use score voting or approval voting and you'll have more parties that each have less power.
This seems like a very presentism viewpoint. I don't think your points hold historically nor do they acknowledge that "strong checks and balances" and the adversarialness of congress is the same thing and considered a feature, not a bug.
Other democracies do generally have their own checks and balances. They might not be the same set of checks and balances as the US, but it's difficult to say as a whole that they are weaker. It's true that often the division of the executive and legislative branches is rather weak. But on the other hand there is often a stronger division between the judicial and other branches as judges are appointed independently. There are plenty of countries out there with very strong constitutional courts as well.
I'm also not sure I agree that the US system is necessarily less sustainable than those other systems. A lot of European democracies are younger than the US, and some of them are more frequently deadlocked. I think effectiveness and sustainability are orthogonal concepts here (some would say they are diametrically opposed...)
Alternatively, you get brinkmanship where you have a coalition of 53.33% where every party in the coalition that has >=4% of the votes (a.k.a. all of them) will threaten to bring down the entire coalition unless they get their most extreme demand. Incidentally, they are still trying to bring down the supreme court.
Personally, I'd gladly welcome some political deadlock over here.
Completely American myopic POV. Stable, healthy democracies that are unicameral parliamentary systems include Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Portugal, and Sweden. (Most of those countries don't have strong judicial review either. Or federalism). That's without even getting into bicameral countries where the upper house is actually a lot weaker/just for show.
You don't have to separate the executive & the head of state, and you don't need to have checks & balances- that's propaganda for presidential systems. In fact I'd say the opposite is true- it's the countries with the checks & balances (by having a separately elected legislature and president) that are much more unstable and prone to autocracy. See Juan Linz on the Perils of Presidentialism
Look at all those nations you listed that are very homogeneous. I want a nation with significant culture tradition differences listed that is like that. American exceptionalist is mostly BS but we do have some ways that we are very unique as a nation and that is how many different kinds of major cultures we have hanging out in US. People handwave the US as all the same but that is very much not the case. Even for as good as American indoctrination is, nothing is gonna change that living in Montana is nothing like living in Florida. What rural urban even means in both states is so different. And we've been this heterogeneous.
I'm willing to accept your premise, but I want an example where there isn't one overwhelmingly dominant culture. I'll accept 2 equally dominant cultures.
The problem with this argument is that Montana and Florida vote for the same political party, and then their representatives generally vote the same way once in Congress
I don’t think that necessarily follows; you could argue that rather it’s because states are so different that the best (national) strategy is to have a broad uniform national platform that can appeal to the most voters. Our political (electorally and procedurally) system does not favor having a multitude of regionally distinct parties.
We use FPTP, which famously does favor having regionally distinct parties. Smaller parties can get outsized seats in the legislature by running up the vote in just a few districts, whereas if they had the same number of voters nationally but were spread out they'd get 0 seats. If you looked at all of the electoral systems globally and said 'pick the 1 that favors regionally distinct parties the most', it'd be FPTP.
In the UK which also uses FPTP the Lib Dems got 11.5% of the vote nationally and 11 seats in the last election. The SNP got 3.8% of the vote and 48 seats
25% of people living in NZ were not born in NZ. Add to that, NZ was founded out of an agreement between the British Crown and some, not all, of the Iwi (indigenous tribes) that already lived there.
Tell me that NZ is a homogeneous place with no cultural or political divisions that make working together tricky, go on.
Canada is bicameral but with a dysfunctional senate, meaning that it's effectively a unicameral system - and it's a highly diverse country.
New Zealand isn't.
It's not just homogeneity, they are also tiny. I didn't check all of them but I would guess Portugal is probably the biggest of those, with about 10 million people or 1/30 of the population of the US.
Comparing tiny countries at the edge of Europe and the edge of the world with the the US as super-power is a weakness.
Every country has adopted American Republicanism with a clearly defined and written constitution that has some form of separation of powers. None of these, for example, allow the PM to act as an absolute dictator without some form of emergency. The difference is simply in whether the president has an independent mandate from the parliament or not.
the UK has none of this and its current system of government predates the US
The modern UK state has superficial resemblances - primarily in a shiny ceremonies with colonial era Britain,
the franchise widened and there have been some minor tweaks (e.g. devolution), but the fundamental system has remained essentially unchanged since the Civil War
The UK, Israel, Canada, and New Zealand all don't have written constitutions. 'None of these, for example, allow the PM to act as an absolute dictator' is not an example of the separation of powers, that's not what that phrase means at all
Canada may not have a singular written document called "constitution", but it has the Constitution Act, the Canada Act, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so I'd argue that it's still mostly written.
I mean, why not go full bore and do the Singaporean system? An effective dictatorship? It's a great example of a stable, healthy system (until it isn't).
While the Federalist Papers are great works, I don't agree with taking them as enlightened guidance from on high. They were theorizing. No one of them really knew how a modern democracy/republic would actually work in practice.
Remember, the authors of the constitution (large overlap) stated on the record that they expected they got a lot of it wrong, and expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced once actual experience was obtained.
Yes, for those on one side of the spectrum the ruling orthodoxy is textual originalism. The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers.
The Supreme Court itself wasn't really defined by the constitution - they conveyed a need for it - but not how to structure it, given the lack of historical data. They also foresaw the problems with parties but didn't take enough steps to retire them.
This is why things like Roe V. Wade are (/were) so controversial. Does the Supreme Court have the right to imagine new rights to abortion with no textual basis in the Constitution? Even RBG didn't think so. OTOH, given the recent election results, Abortion is finally starting to become settled law - something the USSC could not do. Democracy works again.
That said - they got far more right then wrong, and ditching the lessons they learned first are a big reason we are in the state we are in now.
Once upon a time, leaders actually had to learn history to be leaders. Now-adays, not so much.
The Supreme Court's power of judicial review isn't defined in the text of the Constitution. It was applied by the Court to itself not by interpreting the text but reading between the lines and deciding it should have been there.
It seems to me that if we can accept that then we've already accepted that the Supreme Court can imagine new rights with no textual basis in the Constitution. After all, the Constitution isn't meant to describe an exhaustive list of rights so much as maximally bind the Federal government as to what rights it is allowed to abridge. So the concept of "rights having a textual basis in the Constitution" is nonsensical, ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶s̶t̶i̶t̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶"̶C̶r̶e̶a̶t̶o̶r̶,̶"̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ (edit: ... ok that was in the Bill of Rights my bad but still, rights aren't defined by the Constitution.)
Also, RBG believed abortion could be supported as Constitutional right, but she preferred an argument on the basis of equal protection over the arguments from privacy that underpinned Roe V. Wade, which she believed were too weak and easily undermined (and she was correct.)
The only relevant question per the Constitution is not whether the right to an abortion exists, but whether the Federal government should be allowed to interfere with that right, whether states should be allowed to interfere with that right, or whether that right should be left in its default state of being claimed by the people.
Not the Bill of Rights, either. The Declaration of Independence.
No, there's another question on abortion. Is abortion a right that anyone should have? Bluntly, is it murder, or not? If it's murder, then it's not a right that anyone should have, whether or not that inconveniences the mother.
So do you regard the fetus as human (and therefore entitled to the same protection as other humans), or not? That's not a question that you can answer by law, or by constitution. That's a religion/philosophy/worldview question, on which there is no consensus. Which is why the abortion question is such a mess.
But nothing short of resolving "is it human, or not?" is going to solve the question. If it's human, then killing it is murder, and compromise is completely unacceptable. You just don't compromise on murdering people.
You're oversimplifying the argument, because not every case of killing another human being is considered murder. "Murder" is a legal construct. The right to kill another human being does exist in certain circumstances, such as in self defense, warfare or capital punishment, but the right to commit "murder" does not. The US has an entire Constitutional amendment to protect the right of people to kill other people "in defense of a free state."
Even if one does concede that a zygote at the moment of conception is fully equal to human being, it still doesn't follow that abortion is murder. Especially not when the health of the mother is threatened (which would arguably make abortion in that case a matter of self defense.)
And it's honestly weird to me that shooting a person will be defended to the ends of the earth by Americans as sacrosanct, while in numerous states it's now a crime to even search the web for a morning after pill, and women are forced to carry even stillborn fetuses to term. Let's not pretend there is even an objective definition of "human" in regards to American jurisprudence, there never has been.
As to whether someone should have that right, it exists whether anyone wants it to or not. The question at hand is whether government should be allowed to abridge that right, or made to respect it. I believe there is no argument that the government should be allowed to abridge the right to abortion if the test is strict constitutional originalism, and the intent of the founders relative to their culture. When the Constitution was ratified, abortion was seen as a personal choice, shameful in the way that everything related to women was shameful, but not illegal. Rightly a matter left to the people.
See, in your last paragraph, you're assuming the answer. "That right exists whether anyone wants it to or not". Does the right to murder exist?
If you can't understand the other side's view, you can't do anything but fight them to the ends of the earth. Well, it's been 51 years since Roe, and you still haven't won, so maybe you should re-think that approach.
The right that I was talking about was clearly abortion, not murder, since it was a answer to your question of whether abortion was "a right that anyone should have?". I even went through the trouble of pointing out that "murder" is a legal construct, not a right, whereas killing another human being is, clearly, considered a right. This is an important context to consider in the question of abortion, because "if a fetus is human then abortion is murder" (essentially your argument) is a false dichotomy, just as "does the right to murder exist" is a contradiction in terms.
I think I understand the other side's view more than you understand mine, since you seem to be arguing against some strawman anti-abortionist living rent free in your head, and I at least put in a good faith attempt.
And as far as approaches go, attacking the person instead of their arguments will doubtless score you points on the internet, but it won't convince anyone of anything. But I guess you're correct that I can't argue with results. You don't have to convince anyone when you can just force the issue through a cabal of unelected judges by fiat.
Would they have? There exists a mechanism to amend the Constitution, and it seems reasonable to me that the Supreme Court would insist on textual originalism until the text is amended through that legal process.
Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."
That's one founding father to another. Funny how the "originalists" never bring this quote up. It's one founding father, later our 3rd president, writing to another founder who would later be our 4th.
Edit: Here's the full letter, and it's actually from late 1789: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...
Originalists never said the Constitution can't be changed, it can and has. Originalists say that if you want to change the Constitution, then change it, don't try and interpret it in a different way just to fit what you want. That's subverting the process itself.
I’d read Madison’s reply. Everyone knows Jefferson talked a lot of shit. The other founders were used to him. This is him getting emotional in Paris during the French Revolution. He thought the proto-Cult of Reason people were a bunch of crackpots and was worried the same thing was going to happen here.
you could even say that the USA founders’ vision is the worst ever tried—except for all those others.
There are plenty of other countries that have similar or even better (depending on the viewpoint of the observer) systems of governance, this sort of American exceptionalism isn't rooted in an objective evaluation but simply a nice soundbite and a riff on the 'democracy' one, which has a lot more substance to it.
Yet at the same time, when re-reading them, I often find it striking just how relevant they are to some of our problems today, even though they were written by people in very different overall circumstances. My favorite for the past decade or so has been Federalist #22:
"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
"But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."
"It is not difficult to discover, that a principle of this kind gives greater scope to foreign corruption, as well as to domestic faction, than that which permits the sense of the majority to decide; though the contrary of this has been presumed. The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods. "
The Federalist Papers themselves point out that Constitution is not meant to be a perfect document, but merely the best that everyone could agree on.
"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?"
this is a very US centric view
constitutional monarchies seem to work as well, if not better by the various democracy/stability indicies
the near term survival of the current US system certainly looks far from certain at present
Aren't most modern constitutional monarchies just a veneer over a republican democracy anyways? The monarch wields no real power -- even if on paper they may still retain a great deal.
The US system is notoriously bad to get working and really seems to only work for the US. Anywhere else we have tried it has ended with some kind of failure. However, it's reasonable to call the parliamentary systems like the UK republican democracies and those have been emulated else where with a higher degree of success.
it's the other way round, by the time of the rebellion absolute monarchy was long gone, the things the colonists didn't like were being passed by parliament
the US then gave its presidency more power than George III would have dreamed of
(in practice the presidency also seems to be prone to dynasties)
Absolute monarchy was still a thread at this time. They just called it enlightened despotism. The colonists were objecting to taxation (and really any form of government) without representation, which both the monarch and the parliament were at fault for. Enlightened Despotism died when George III didn't apply reason (as the colonists saw it) to rectify the problem.
In terms of power then George III would have dreamed of - yes, we live in a era when the power of government is still orders of magnitude greater then what anyone could have imagined at the time.
The Civil War (1642-1651) was the last attempt at absolute monarchy in England
then Bill of Rights (1688) put it well and truly to bed when Parliament decided they didn't like the current king and picked someone else, simultaneously stripping them of their powers
it was well and truly dead by the time of the rebellion
Absolute monarchy never really existed in England. There is more to the world then England, and monarchy as government is still a thing. After all, a short hop-skip-jump across the channel, there is a French king soon to lose his head.
of course it did
I suspect my English history is better than yours!
Wow. I feel foolish to have not come to that same conclusion until now despite knowing the same sets of facts as you. Great point.
The important difference isn't between monarchy or republic, but how the executive is chosen. Parliamentary democracies elect the prime minister. Presidential democracies have separate executive. For example, Ireland is parliamentary republic; the president is only head of state, the prime minister has all the power.
That's not true. It varies by country, in some most power is hold by president, in some by premier, yet in some it's a mixture. But I don't know any country with a premier who is elected by the people. He is either selected by president or is the leader of the winning party. The executive can be chosen in various ways in a monarchy, too, because there are constitutional monarchies, too, where power of a monarch is limited (famously the UK is still a constitutional monarchy, but their monarch holds almost no power, but it wasn't so historically). You obviously only had the worst kind of monarchy in mind, the absolute monarchy
I was conusing; in parliamentary democracies, the parliament chooses the prime minister. There are hybrids like France with head-of-state President with lots of power; I can't tell how different from monarch "choosing" the prime minister.
We're not talking about absolute monarchies. For one thing, doesn't really matter how selects the government. It also doesn't really matter for absolute governments if power is inherited, inherited without acknowleding like North Korea, or says is President.
It turned out the US system depended more on human virtuousness than many of us realized. Personally I've been kinda shocked to find out how much was just based on norms and traditions with no enforcement at all.
I agree. But on the other hand, it has survived a pretty steady onslaught so far, with a significant plurality of the elected representatives trying to subvert it. There's hope yet.
The UK system depends on the same even more, though.
And yet in Federalist 55 virtue is needed to sustain self-government:
* https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp
A particular faction can gain control over the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial in the US, and then they can collude unless individuals choose to follow the Constitution.
* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pressured-michigan-of...
There are no "institutions" (to protect things), only people.
it is utter madness that politicians are involved in anyway in certifying the results of elections
Checks and balances will fail without virtue. There are plenty of examples of that around the world. Checks and balances are fundamentally nothing more than words on a paper. They cannot be stronger than the elites' belief in their legitimacy.
That's true to an extent, but you're viewing it in too black and white a way.
A system with checks and balances can be subverted, but it's still better than a system without them.
If the goal is just sustaining government then there are lots of countries without those features that have a longer history of sustained government than the US.
There are three governments that have existed longer than the US. Sweden, UK, Denmark.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fo...
Microstates don’t count.
In addition are other essential solutions, which accept the reality that we all have virtue and evil inside us; we are all biologically the same as MLK and Stalin, as Lincoln and the slave-owners (and the slaves).
* Good people, which is people who are at that moment able to bring out the virtue in themselves, must act to promote virtue. If they sit on the sidelines, the results are predictable - other people won't do it.
* Good people can specifically develop and institutionalize systems - of government, society, culture - that bring out the good in people. It won't happen by accident, and plenty of bad people will do the opposite with intent.
If you think these things aren't possible, look at the incredible accomplishments of our ancestors, as we live in a world of freedom, peace, and prosperity absolutely unmatched in human history. What will we build for our descendents? Or will we throw away our inheritance?
wasn't that how we ended up with WW1?
But some guy told me disbanding congress and the Supreme Court was the way
This makes me think about the Roman Republic. Yes, it failed in the end, but the idea of having two Consuls is appealing to check each others ambition. As an aside, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast has a multiparter called Death Throes of the Republic which is highly entertaining.
Edit: can you imagine what it would be like though if the US had a dual presidential system and Trump and Obama were both in power at the same time? Somehow I think it would be more dysfunctional.
Sounds very Puritan.
All governments fail, it’s only a question of when. The stability of the US is in no small part due to its geography and natural wealth. Having two oceans on each side and more arable land than you know what to do with is far more of an asset anything written on paper. It seriously reduces the threat of external and internal conflict, and the US got this for a song.
Further, there’s a strong argument to be made that the US did not last this entire time. The centralization that happened after the Civil War created a fundamentally different government than was created in 1789. Through the process of incorporation, constitutional amendments were enforced on states which created a far more uniform country.
This is precisely why the Department of Homeland Security was such a bad idea.
For anyone interested, the only thing I can add of use to this thoughtful comment is a link to the paper:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
Neither this nor any of the top replies make even a cursory effort to connect these thoughts to the friggin article this conversation is supposed to be about. It’s literally dozens of irrelevant comments sitting like deadweight at the top of the post.
that was the crucial difference between communism and capitalism. Communism used virtuousness only, when capitalism used virtuousness and greed. Communism failed.
Madison elaborates also on this theme in Federalist 51, but with separation of powers rather than federalism & factions.
Over many discussions with American friends I have been persuaded that a governmental system that is fundamentally untrusting of the various components is one of the main features of American democracy.
The form of government is irrelevant compared to the culture that is being governed.
Japanese cities are incredible because the Japanese culture demands safety, cleanliness and beauty. You could make just about any change to the form of government you want and the result will be the same.