Comment by mapt

Comment by mapt 2 days ago

There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices. We balance that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately the population will have its say in the long term.

Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?

I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.

If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.

jzb 2 days ago

"Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?"

There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)

*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...

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NoMoreNicksLeft 2 days ago

>There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head.
That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.
The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.
>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote
Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.

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- alasarmas 2 days ago
  
  This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are physically present in the same locations but they are not eating the same bread and drinking the same water, metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
  
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michaelt 2 days ago

In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less discretionary power, but much more ability to get legislation changed.

So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.

That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.

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acdha 2 days ago

> Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.

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cryptonector 2 days ago

> There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices.

Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".

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[removed] 2 days ago

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aredox 2 days ago

There is one, it is called a Constitution, and any rules where changes are only accepted by a qualified majority not of 50% but of 66% aka 2/3rds.

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sul_tasto 2 days ago

The electoral college was intended to serve this purpose.

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mrtesthah 2 days ago

The purpose of the electoral college was to protect slavery.

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- p_j_w 2 days ago
  
  For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:
  “There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
  James Madison
  
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ckozlowski 2 days ago

I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the occasion, but twice now, it didn't.
I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".
I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.

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- heylook 2 days ago
  
  > I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system.
  What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.
  
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