Democracy Is Broken

Happy 4th of July by the way.

Let me go ahead and disclaim this by saying to the federal agent reading this post--I'm looking at YOU, Jerry--that a) I don't know anything better than democracy off the top of my head, b) I am not proposing violent revolution, and c) I criticize because I care--these are things to fix, not reasons to jump ship.

What do you get when you look at all five of our trends? You get the U.S. government.

Monetization is decoupled from service.

Officials aren't elected by voters. They're elected by contributors. Contributors elect officials based on the promise of funding (or ideology) being funneled to the right causes. Money gets funneled to projects based on what's good for congressmen and they're contributors. None of this, incidentally has a damned thing to do with actually governing the nation.

This circle of funding, incidentally, can have horrible, horrible repercussions when it comes to policy. You've no doubt heard that there's a debate about the reality of climate change. You have been lied to. Every single national science academy that has ever said anything about global warming has said that it is real. There is no controversy. But we can't even have an honest national discussion because it is not politically expedient vis-à-vis the economic impact it might have on certain contributors.

Causal conditions are incorrectly assumed to be normal or permanent.

The Constitution is an incredibly flexible document, but the world has changed a lot since it was first penned. I'm not saying we should scrap the whole thing and do a page one re-write, but I do wonder if our amendment system isn't insurmountable. But amendments aren't used to amend the Constitution anymore, they're used to pick fights with the Supreme Court (see also: gay marriage amendment).

More to the point, the way our government was set up was so that the country would be run by the elites, by people with national recognition. This was immediately undermined by the two-party system (which sprang up immediately, I don't mind saying). And with our modern Information-Age culture, it is legislatively impossible to think more than two years into the future. Times have changed and we need to change. And we do change, but right now we're on the trailing edge of those changes.

Inherent conflicts of interest arise from incentive schemes.

What kind of person runs for office? The kind of person who wants to run the country responsibly? No. The kind of people who run for office are the kind of people who like to win contests. They are proud, showy, attention whores. Mostly. This is why we now have a two year election cycle. More time is spent gearing up for the next win than actually doing any governing.

A caveat to this is that you can't take anything back. Reneging on even the most obvious of bad ideas is seen as an admission of failure, so while it might make for better government, it hurts your chances of winning. This is why drug laws will never be effectively updated. Not seriously or soon, anyway.

Design is decoupled from use.

You know that old saying? "Government does not exist for the benefit of the governed?" It's not true, of course, but it is kinda true, and that's a little bit scary. If a Health Care bill comes down the pipe, it becomes THE Health Care bill. If you oppose it, for any reason, you oppose Health Care. If you oppose funding for the war, it's because you don't support the troops. People vote on issues, but issues are not what are passed, laws are what are passed, and we don't seem to be able to see the difference between the two.

Furthermore, laws become pieces of propaganda. You know what I found out that thoroughly boiled my blood? Remember the Patriot Act? "Patriot" is an acronym. The actual title was the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001". That's right, it was named so it could be called the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act with a straight face. And it's not limited to Bush-era Orwellian legislation either, or haven't you heard of the "Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized, and Effective New Treatments and Services" (P.A.T.I.E.N.T.S) Act of 2009?

Humans, as a rule, have a fundamental misunderstanding of themselves.

This is the two-way street of failure right here. Voters forget that legislators are people--this is why we have such blatant disregard for the future. Issues are boiled down to bumper sticker slogans, not honest, public discussions. Likewise, voters forget that legislators are people--an affair should not be career-ending, but it is in politics. Or, at least, it can be.

Mostly, we all just sort of forget what it is to be human.

So Happy Birthday, America. I'm sure we'll talk again next year.

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