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Mostly good stuff. I don’t think I’d merge house and Senate. Some of them need more constraint, like I’d legalize prostitution, but only if it’s regulated like restaurants (health inspectors, workers rights, etc.).
What is your solution the massively disproportionate representation in the senate then? There are currently around 66.7 Californians for every Wyomingite. Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate? And yes, legalization would occur with reasonable regulations which would make sure the industry is safer for all those involved. I tried to keep the list as concise as possible for each issue reformed.
Do you think wyoming deserves to be a state? Every state gets the same representation in the Senate and I think that’s fair. I don’t think it’s fair that the proportional side of the legislature isn’t proportional anymore, though, and fixing that goes a very long way.
States don’t deserve equal representation. American citizens deserve equal representation, they are the ones who create value.
Then what you’re really saying is abolish the concept of states and have a single federal state.
No, states still would elect a number of representatives based on their population. Just no 2 senators per state.
Why even have states? Good way to get rid of jerrymandering would be to get rid of imaginary borders. No states, no senate necessary.
Because state legislatures should continue to exist. If less populated conservative states want to go down a rabbit hole of far right shit then let them. Just don’t give them 2 senators per state to gridlock the states that continue to produce and provide for their population.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body, it’s just two per state. They aren’t doing things like setting funding/budgets. Congress (the house of representatives) is designed to do that, though that needs some tweaking.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body
Both the house and senate vote to pass bills. The disproportionate population increases have led to less representation of citizens in more populated states.
But the original states didn’t have balanced populations, the founders knew that, but they still set it to be two senators per state. The house is scaled by population.
There are other proposals to solve the Senate’s disproportionate nature, such as apportioning Senate seats by state population. Most proposals I’ve seen for that would leave the Senate with a little more than a hundred seats (with a minimum of 1 seat per state), which would (mostly) solve the problem and make it closer to the house in terms of proportionality. Of course, it all depends on the exact implementation.
What’s the purpose of the senate at that point? Seems redundant, like having two house of representatives.
That is in fact the point. It’s about checks and balances to stop bad actors from completely changing all of the rules the moment their party is in power. Of course, that’s completely pointless in a 2 Party system anyways and we should really reform campaign finance and election laws surrounding how to get on the ballot.
The point of the Senate is that it’s a more deliberative body, representing larger numbers of people, which serves to moderate the power of the House. Mind you, Congress as a whole was more powerful when the nation was founded; they’ve handed off power to the executive over the years, for better or worse (really, a bit of both). The House was also intended to grow with the population, and if we’d followed the general guidelines for growth the Founders suggested, we’d have a House with more than 600 members. The number of seats was capped ~90 years ago, because Congress didn’t want to fund another renovation of the capitol building to fit more people. Also keep in mind that the States had a more uniform population distribution when the country was founded. You didn’t have California and Nebraska sitting with orders of magnitude of difference between them, so the difference in representation in the Senate was not nearly as significant as it is today.
Wether we need a secondary deliberative body in the legislature or not is a matter of debate and opinion. I can see why you’d want one, but I can also understand why people would think it’s not useful anymore.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with. Individuals (should) have proportional representation in the House, and states have proportional representation in the Senate, which is how it should be.
Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate?
Yes.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with.
This is funny, it’s like an self soothing mantra. I’ll try to repeat this to myself as things get worse.
The last one could just be “free education”
Could? I think it should be.
There is a case for having some cost otherwise people go to university for absolutely worthless degrees just to do something.
I’m 90-95% on board, which is astounding considering the current options. Now fleshing out the legislation to make this transition possible…
Exactly my thought. This may as well be a list that has one bullet point “* fix America” without a lot more detail on most of these
Would you have commented on a post that just had an image of “* fix America”?
Mandatory voting just adds semi-random votes, skewing the proportion of people who are really voting for their own interests, but rather out of vibes due to obligation. Holiday on voting days and repealing of disenfranchisement measures work much better.
One minor twist: the legislation mandates that one reports to the polling center. The uninformed can select “none of the above” if they are not sure what would be best.
I think it would still encourage meme voting in retaliation for having to show up. “You can force me to do this but you can’t force me to do this in good faith.”
If the worst you can say about this scheme is: “people may vote randomly” I don’t feel that bad. I assume the amount of people that spite vote(!) would be greatly outnumbered by people that actually give a shit (but who may not be able to vote today, due to work obligations)
The reason I think mandatory voting in Australia is nice (tiny fine for not doing it, so turn out is like 85-95% every time) is that because everyone obliged, it keeps voter disenfranchisement politically difficult. When you go to vote on election day, you wait 20 mins, tops, usually less, and you can vote ahead of time via mail or in person. It’s always Saturday for this reason too.
I’d argue it’s this easy partially because everyone HAS to do it, so if politicians start making it hard, people are gonna be pissed very quickly, so no one messes with the well-oiled machine.
And there are no stupid “get out to vote campaigns” wasting valuable headspace where instead we could be talking about actually issues.
Australia’s electoral system is far from perfect (single member local electorates which basically guarantees two stronger parties), but mandatory voting is definitely a feature I do not want to be rid of.
It doesn’t “just” do that. It totally reverses the ability for governments to block people from voting. If it’s an obligation then people must be provided a reasonable chance to vote. It makes more people engaged in politics as well instead of “can’t be bothered”
All the points are nice but the plan does not “make sense” in the sense that it will probably never happen (at least within our lifetimes).
We need a new country with a fresh constitution based on these ideals and what we’ve learned since the last one. Like what the US did to the British in 1776, but again and better
I don’t really see “new countries” being a thing in that way ever again. The USA was new because a “new” piece of land was literally found (well obviously it was already found by other people but you get what I mean).
There is no new land to find today. You can’t just set off and create a new country - all of the land is already taken. You’ll need to work within the confines of the current countries and try your best to improve them gradually.
At least, any other approach would probably be very bloody…
I mean, the US was just a colonial state that broke ties to the british monarchy, and that shit happens all the time, so I think through that method, there’s still a pretty good chance. If you’re talking more about like, the establishment of the US as a state through the genocide of the native peoples, intentional or otherwise, I’d say, sure, yeah, that’s hopefully never gonna happen again, but general independence movements happen all the time.
Don’t worry, World War 3 will leave vast swaths of uninhabited land.
Uninhabitable*
If you arent dying, dont overestimate capitalism’s remaining lifetime
Free education.
No private/charter schools.
Religions are businesses and pay taxes.
Ban religious-justified discrimination.
Religion is private between you and God.
Absolute separation between church and state.
Repeal all religion based laws.
I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.
No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.
I believe Australia has mandatory voting and achieves a ~95% participation of registered voters basically every election, though they do enforce it with either a day in court or a fine.
I do wonder if you fined people, or wasted a day of theirs with court, whether it would have an impact in Greece after a couple of elections?
We swing between 93-95% participation
We alao make voting as easy as possible with voting opening 2-4 weeks in advance of election day, election day is always a weekend and as long as you vote before or on election day it’s counted.
Also democracy sausages
I think such a high turn out makes our politicians a bit more honest with less empty promises since they can’t dissuade anyone from voting.
Right. And for people who try to argue that they shouldn’t be forced to choose between people they like like, or whatever, it’s important to understand that it is only mandatory to get your name ticked off the list. You don’t actually have to submit a valid vote. You can choose to just turn in a blank ballot paper, or write “fuck you” or whatever you like. There are no laws against that.
So the ‘mandatory voting’ just makes it mandatory to put in the small amount of effort required to show up; but doesn’t force you to express an opinion. (Of course, I’d say that you should submit a valid vote. But you don’t have to.)
You can not enforce new social norms like that. People, including voting ones, will revolt. They will call it undemocratic and a cash grab. You are just asking for trouble.
I agree many wouldn’t bother, but I still believe it should be every citizen’s duty to vote. It’s literally the bare minimum political involvement people can have.
I wouldnt want idiots having to vote then voting because some friend said some madeup thing or it was the last thing they seen on ticktok. If people don’t care and refuse to do the most minimum of looking into politics why should they decide my future
because you could do literally anything else, and it would be more useful. Mandatory voting is the equivalent to asking everyone in the room what they think about every interaction that ever happens. It’s fully redundant.
Make it tied to your UBI check. Now it’s incentivized so enforcement not needed.
Yea I think I’ll add this to the v4. Incentivize rather than punish. Just give people an extra $100 a month in their UBI for voting.
Why only $100 and not the whole UBI allowance?
Why only $100 and not the whole UBI allowance?
Incentivize rather than punish
Then it’s a punishment of $100 if you don’t vote. UBI as a reward for participating in our democracy would be a great step. A punishment would be a fine or jailtime.
Does your legal system work on imprisonment or nothing at all? Sounds very extreme.
Here it’s a small fine, but it’s also a day off and takes like 20 mins to go do plus you can get a delicious sausage. So it’s a no brainer that people go vote.
Greece is a pretty failed state from what I’ve seen, wouldn’t read too much into what they don’t do.
As for why compulsory voting, it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
thoughts on Selb and Lachat, 2009?:
In particular, the analyses suggest that CV compels a substantial share of uninterested and less knowledgeable voters to the polls. These voters, in turn, cast votes that are clearly less consistent with their own political preferences than those of the more informed and motivated voluntary voters. Claims that CV promotes equal representation of political interests are therefore questionable.
Here it’s a small fine
People will call it a cashgrab, that will mostly affect poor people(since the rich people both vote and also dont care about small fines).
it’s also a day off
Greek elections are always on Sunday and people can be given a day off if their voting location is far away(especially back in the day, when moving your voting location was hard).
Greece is a pretty failed state from what I’ve seen
I have been shitting on Greece for my entire life, but it aint cool when non greeks do it. Yes, Greece is fucked but i wouldnt really call it a failed state. It is a shithole but only greeks get to call it a shithole. It also relatively shitholey, in comparison to western european countries.
It just happens to be the worst “western” country. And yes, it is in the East, but the West/East thing was a Cold War thing and Greece was with the “West”. Nowadays, many “eastern european” countries have reached and surpassed Greece.
In any case, take a look at the wikipedia map, which countries have compulsory voting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
If you exclude Australia, all other countries are shitholes. And i am sure australians will be the first to tell you that Australia is also a shithole and politically fucked.
As for why compulsory voting, it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
It doesnt. If anything, it might do exactly the opposite. When a greek neonazi party was popular, a lot of “apolitic” greeks supported it not because they supported neonazism but because “fuck the system, at least they will go in and smash some heads”. When clueless people are forced to vote, they might be clueless about what they are voting.
America’s issue is the first past the post, winner takes all system. If the US had a more representative system, that allowed third parties and coalitions(like almost all other democratic countries have), things would have been better.
Ok so…
Mandatory voting
I think this can get messy. It would require a system to prosecute those who don’t vote. That kind of registry can be very easily used for nefarious purposes by politicians or just anyone with access to that information. Also, it would really depend on what degree of mandatory this is. If you get thrown in jail then we are going to see a lot of poor people in prison for no reason. If you get just a fine then we are essentially introducing the inverse of a poll tax. Not voting is a protected form of free speech for a reason and can be interpreted as protest.
Merge house into senate
Last time something like this was posted I got flamed for asking what the point of this one is. The Senate is a representation of the states rights we have in our constitution. It serves as a safeguard against heavily populated areas dictating the laws for much less populated states. I’m all for reform but eliminating the Senate all together seems like a step backwards.
Ban tipping
I think this is another one where the spirit of the idea is right but the execution is wrong. What we need to ban is allowing restaurants to pay tipped positions far below minimum wage, and stop allowing restaurants to take a cut of the tip at all.
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing it needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
+1 on the senate, it serves a purpose, if you don’t think it does you clearly don’t understand why it exists lol.
It exists because there was a time when we needed buy in from states, not just people. The Senate was how that was accomplished.
It’s a way of ensuring our democracy isn’t too democratic.You can understand the point of the Senate without thinking that we need to ensure that land is adequately represented in our government.
legislatively it makes sense. it removes a significant portion of say from large states, like texas and california, over small states like wyoming, who have comparatively little say. The trick is that it’s application specific. Unless we’re restructuring the entire government the senate does exist for a pretty explicit purpose.
I think it only makes sense if you think that it matters that Wyoming is fairly represented, and not the people in Wyoming.
I don’t particularly care about the representation of the land, only the people who live on it, where each person should have as much say as any other.The Senate is explicitly antidemocratic, and since I’m a fan of fair representation, I’m not a fan of the Senate.
Well, I suppose you could also make it so states get equal numbers of senators and representatives. That would also be fine, since there’s a slight use for the Senate having a longer election cycle.
Since this whole thread is basically playing and dreaming, I’ll easily agree that you can’t just drop the Senate without at least giving a look at how that impacts the rest of the government organization.
it depends on the legislation. If it’s something that the states are involved in, and it isn’t particularly relevant to the people of the state like most legislation probably is. And in that scenario, it would be beneficial for wyoming to not be overshadowed by.
Also i dont think you understand how senate seats work, they’re literally popular votes. We put them there. That’s at least following the basic principles of democracy. I’m not sure how one would argue against that, unless you have a massive problem with the electoral college, would which would be fair i suppose.
This isn’t a supreme court situation where they’re appointed magically.
Tipping is really hard to rein in. Your suggestion of banning the “tipped wage” is good, but the regular minimum wage is so far below living wage already that paying people minimum wage still leaves them relying on tips.
As a Canadian I refuse to participate in the “tip for everything” grift that has sprung up recently. However when we’re down at the local bar and the service is great, the food is good, the waitress is friendly and cheerful, I want to leave a tip.
Also as a Canadian, the Canadian Senate is an irrelevant relic that doesn’t serve the same purpose as the US Senate, and should totally be abolished. But it’s a totally different situation.
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing it needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
If you are a customer at a food or retail business and opt to give one worker there a cash gift while they are on the clock, how can that not be a tip? Current US laws like FLSA already have a very clear definition of tipped wages which would include anything matching that description.
Even if you want to allow that sort of cash “gift”, eliminating tips for credit card payments should be enough to shift the norms and expectations. Namely, prohibit payment terminals from prompting for a tip as part of the same credit card transaction and prohibit the tip lines on receipts. Majority of Americans don’t pay with cash. If a business says they accept credit card, customers clearly aren’t expected to give a decent tip and by extension the advertised meal prices and wage amounts should reflect what the customer is expected to pay and what the staff should expect to earn independent of customer whims.
I can see the argument for credit card tips not being necessary, especially given that it puts the onus on the restaurant to be honest and distribute that tip correctly instead of just pocketing it (thanks subway).
But if I choose to give a server a dollar, that should be my right as an individual. Micromanaging who I’m allowed to give cash to is a step in the wrong direction.
We already have a registry of who did or didn’t vote.
That you voted is a matter of public record, as is voter registration information.
Registration data is used for campaign purposes, and voter participation data is mostly used to encourage people to vote.
- internet listed as an essential utility like water, power, and phone services
Yes, that would be included in “Municipalize internet service”.
Oh. Right, lol
How tf Americans don’t have a holiday on voting day 😭
Yeah except increase taxes on highest income bracket by 65, not 5%.
You forgot “embrace the metric system”.
As someone who hates this God forsaken measuring system, I genuinely don’t know if the costs of this would ever be worth it. There’d be thousands and thousands of miles marker signs that’d have to be replaced, not to mention having to redo thousands of textbooks.
Plus, when it comes to some things, imperial is just better. Mostly this is carpentry. 12 is way more divisible than 10 and fractions are way easier for cutting than decimal
It would very much be worth it. Imperial invites mistakes by using weird conversions and factional sizes. I often have to stop and think which factions of an inch are bigger or smaller than each other. When Australia switched from imperial to metric, it’s estimated they save about 10% annually from having a lower error rate. Fewer things need to get fixed or replaced from measurement mistakes.
A kitchen-scale example: I once mixed up tablespoons and teaspoons when adding baking soda to my pancake mix. They turned out disgusting and we had to re-make breakfast because version 1 was inedible. Such mistakes are less likely to happen under metric.
Eeeh… We have tablespoon (15ml) and teaspoon (5ml) here too…
Can’t we just have both, and teach both? But like, in a more committed fashion than we currently do. Probably swapping out road signs and textbooks as they naturally need to be swapped out, to include both sets of measurements and the conversions between them.
The UK did this.
It’s absolutely worth it. If you are worried about textbooks staying in circulation for a long time especially in 2024 then you got bigger issues to be honest.
There are also tons of machines and tools made to work in inches. As more things are becoming computer controlled, it’s easier to convert between inch and mm on the fly, but every drill bit, end mill, and tool holder for the manual mill in my company’s shop is in inch.
I’m also gonna disagree with you on the 12 better than 10 front. Just use a calculator if you can’t do it in your head and round to the nearest mm. I bet you’ll learn what 10/6 and 10/3 are faster than 12/5 too.
I can actually do all of those in my head, so that wouldn’t be an issue for me.
But yeah, all of my tools and bits and holders are imperial, and someone else better be paying to get the damn things replaced or they are staying imperial even if we go metric. I think the only things I have in metric are allans (allens? I’ve never had to spell it out), like 2 hole saws from an old project, and a set of calipers I was gifted and have used maybe twice
Everyone thinks the the switch would somehow be overnight and everyone would be required to throw away their old stuff. In reality, you just replace the things when they wear out and all the new equipment is metric. Tada!
This will be considered for v4 as “Transition to metric system”. It would take several years for the transition to completely take place for the average American. I’m also probably going to add “end daylight savings”, which is close to being passed anyway.
Legally, we adopted the metric system in the 70s, so more than “a few years” I’d say
What about making the highest tax bracket immutable.
Basically, anyone earning more than that amount, for every dollar of earnings above that amount, taxes cannot be exempted, refunded or otherwise redirected.
Say that tax bracket is 500k/yr, and some rich fuck earns 2M. They must pay the tax, whatever percent of tax that is, on the final 1.5M of earnings. So if it’s 50% taxes, they must pay $750k, plus whatever taxation is applicable to the first $500k. They can’t skirt it by putting that money into a tax shelter or by donating it to the corrupt charity that they run.
Not sure if your list is ordered or not, but I would order it in a way where the top N can be implemented sensibly.
For instance, banning tax preparation companies is a bad idea if you haven’t first made the IRS file your taxes for you, but your list had the former above the latter.
Likewise, the voting stuff only makes sense if implemented backwards from how you have it:
- national holiday first
- mail in for all second
- mandatory third (this is getting a bit…overreachy?)
Merg Senate in house: no: checks and balances.
What positives would merging them accomplish?
This is the only one i cant figure out.
That person didn’t suggest it, it’s in OP’s list.
There’s no benefit to that. Removing the limit on house representatives, that’s huge and real, but merging Congress is dumb. There’s a few dumb things on the list (eg “abolish gerrymandering” is like saying “abolish speeding”). Choose your favorite!
Edit: Now that I’m not trying to hurry to get ready for work:
Chapter One: the HoRs.
For those that aren’t aware of how it works:
There’s are two lawmaking bodies with two different purposes. The Senate is equally split among states. There are 2 senators for each state – as a result, those seats are elected by their entire state (more people voting on each person), and the seats are more competitive (more people want to be elected to that seat). So Senators tend to be more serious politicians, more “universally appealing” (aka centrist). This also makes the Senate the one that gives smaller, or less populous states, more power, because both California and Wyoming get 2 senators, no matter what. These factors contribute to the Senate being a more deliberative body.
The House Representatives are determined by population – so California has many more senators than Wyoming. They’re elected in their district, which can be quite small, so the profile of voters in a district is often very different than in an entire state. (This is why all the crazies are in the House.)
There’s a minimum, obviously – the smallest state will always have at least 1? Or 2? I don’t remember. But you can’t have a state with no representation, that’s not ok.
The problem is, our national population is very very different from what it was. The difference between New York and Maine is much more drastic than it was 200 years ago. But we haven’t increased the number of Representatives. And there’s a minimum. As the oopulation grows, and the House doesn’t, it’s becoming more and more unbalanced, in favor of smaller states.
Imagine trying to get smaller states to vote in favor of decreasing their power.
(Also: electoral college votes are on the same system. The electoral college was intended to give smaller states more power, but because there’s a minimum, and we haven’t reduced the total, it’s become super imbalanced. It was a mediocre idea to start with, and now it’s even worse. Abolishing the EC is pretty popular, but it might be easier/better to just follow the rules and increase the total number of EC votes. But, again, small states won’t agree to it.)
The Constitution says we’re supposed to increase the total number of Representatives (and EC votes) but at some point (1929 to be specific) Congress was like nahhhh
Chapter two: why we can’t Abolish Gerrymandering.
First of all, it’s already illegal.
Secondly, it’s hard for outsiders to tell the difference between appropriate “gerrymandering” and actual gerrymandering. If you look at Chicago, where I’m from, there’s a weird vote assignment on the west side of the city, it looks manipulated and weird. But if you live here, you know, there’s a huge highway that cuts through there that’s very hard to cross, so populations on one side are very different from on the other. One side of the highway is there a bunch of Latino immigrants and settled, and on the north side are more affluent (white) people.
(The fact that a highway cuts through a neighborhood isn’t an accident, but that’s just regular systemic racism, unrelated to Congress.)
If you made the voting map a simple grid, the Latino voters might be split up in a way that reduces their voting power. So the map is weird, but it’s actually good that it’s weird.
(This is why I said it’s like speeding: one, it’s already illegal, but two, it’s something everyone is doing (and traffic would be super shitty if everyone followed the speed limit), but some people are taking it to an illegal extreme.)
If you look at a state, calculate a percentage of the minorities, and check that number (those numbers – since there are more than one minority) against the number of districts that vote the way those minorities vote, then, that’s what we’ve decided is “fine” – and, for real, what else are you going to do.
Illegal gerrymandering is when those blocks of voters (“blocs,” is you want to get into Gramsci), are intentionally divided so as to reduce their power. The voting rights act of 1965 made this illegal, and every ten years, after the census, districts are often redrawn. In 2010, we ended up with a lot of gerrymandering. Now,finally, were starting to see some corrections to badly gerrymandered maps, like Alabama, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, Georgia… Louisiana…idr the others, but it’s a lot. 2024 is going to have a very very different House of Representatives than the one we have now.
This last point is worth underscoring. The current Republican house majority is due to illegal distract maps. It is, technically, an illegal Congress. So all these ridiculous shenanigans the House Republicans are up to shouldn’t be happening. (And, in fact, one could easily make the argument that the high percentage of insane and stupid Republican Representatives is because of the maps – because the the “depressurization” caused by fair maps would have dialed Congress back to a more centrist stance.
If you want to learn more, check out Democracy Docket, which is a news source from a group of people (lawyers) who are taking bad maps to court.
I feel like the whole gerrymandering debate is missing the point. Why are our elected officials representing land rather than people? The majority of voters in my district are ideologically opposed to my existence, so they elect people who actively try to harm me. No other representatives are allowed to speak on my behalf because I’m not on their patch of land. I have no one representing my interests in the House of Representatives or my state’s equivalent. This will be true for someone no matter how you draw the lines.
It would be better to abolish the idea of districts entirely, and come up with some way to award representatives proportionally.
You have done a good job of beginning to outline why things are going to break rather than change.
Imagine trying to get smaller states to vote in favor of decreasing their power.
None you lose thr checks and balance
Checks and balances would be the executive and judicial branches, not the senate.
You think the executive has power? Haha
No senate has powers beyond policy, inquiry committees to reviel corruption ect list goes on. Checks Nd balances
No, that is the original meaning of having three branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. If any of them are not doing their job the other two branches are supposed to hold them accountable (supposed to being the operative term here). I was just saying that the senate was not established as a system of checks and balances against the house of Representatives, but rather as a compromise so that smaller states wouldnt necessarily be completely beholden to one’s with much larger populations.
