this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:

  • They own/run businesses from prior to running for a political position- there’s always going to be a subconscious bias towards playing favours especially as they can go back to said business if they don’t last a term
  • They have a stake in the businesses that are in the free market
  • They could be receiving gifts and/or contributions from businesses that have a vested interest in having a politician that aligns with the business’ political agenda, including having a position for a politician if they lose a re-election bid

It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Yeah, we need a lot of reforms to fix underlying problems that get in the way of progress. Some things that I think can help:

  • voting reform - STAR, approval, or even ranked choice voting to better reflect the will of the people
  • electoral reform - some solution to gerrymandering, either algorithmic redistricting or (my preference) proportional representation
  • reduce obstructionism - in the US, I'd prefer for the House to pass laws, and for the Senate to ratify them with a high vote tally (say, 60% to block a piece of legislation)

These are large shifts in how governments are organized, and potentially could be passed through large-scale public protests, like the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The public is incredibly hard to motivate, so organizers need to be really careful about which causes they push for. My preference is the second, because I think it has the best chance of creating positive, long-term change, and it's something that's pretty hard for politicians to competently argue against.