The outdated communication systems and technologies of federal administrations and bureaucracies. I'm really boring.

Federal administrators needs to have modern technologies to communicate with each other and citizens, and there needs to be a more unified way for these to communicate, since different bureaucracies can only communicate in certain ways. Some only take fax, others only take hand-written letters.

Have the election districts drawn by computers in geometric patterns rather than by the same hoodlums that are running for reelection in them. Currently, the two parties get together, draw boundaries that ensure that the individuals involved all get re-elected.

It is the only thing that they can agree on.

Oh, my second biggest thing is electoral college reform. I think the system utilized by Nebraska and Maine to give electoral votes should be maintained by the rest of the states.

Get rid of the electoral college. Have the president elected by a nationwide preferential ballot.

Make the all the territories states or part of states. (i.e. merge the smaller ones together).

Elect congress using proportional representation.

Ban campaigning prior to one month before the election. Year long campaigns are not helpful in any way and waste time and resources.

campaign ads should be held up to the same level of integrity that journalists do:

if you lie, or make false accusations, it's Libel.

Is adding sinister music and creepy footage a lie? They keep making jason kander sound like he eats babies in the
Ads in missouri

Wait, why are we trying to fix democracy? It's fundamentally flawed and oppresses minorities.

Rather let's try out technocracy. It's a rather simple concept. Instead of congressional committees and houses you just have committees determine the laws and government policies, but those committees be experts or have experience in the field they are working on the committee for (economists on econ policy, former generals/diplomats on foreign policy, etc...).

But who will appoint them?
Ah here is the rub, at least for a majority of the positions, you have the boards of prestigious universities appoint them, sure they are likely to appoint from their alumni but: 1. This means these people are still likely to be generally informed on whatever discipline and are educated and 2. It is more important to be factual correct and make good policy decisions than blind appeals to the fears of the massive by parroting minority views of the academic community to get re-elected.

But how do you determine who is presitgious?
Two methods. 1 you aggregate Forbes, US News, Princeton review, etc....and have an independent international adjudicators also come in (they obviously can't become appointed) and conduct their own survey of how good the education programs are for each of these universities, for each subject. A high score for philo/ethics would give appointees to that commitee, the same for econ or other things, etc...

So long as you include proper term limits and add in a few more internal checks (and transparency so the people don't get screwed) I feel it would be rather interesting to experiment with. But whatever, probably won't happen and there's probably some fatal flaw left unconsidered.

Ahem, my #1 was a suggestion about fixing practical administration. Back of the line, Vash.

Yes, and I fixed it. ;)

Yours is kind of missing a big step.

Well yeah, the transition is hard to do....need to work on that part.

I understand the idea of a technocracy, but I'm sceptical about the notion that your elite universities are above moral corruption, eg Harvard's business school is so tied in to your private finance sector it's implicitly involved in the GFC

Well obviously we don't give Harvard all the votes ;) Also most government scandals would likely be followed by a drop in prestige and loss of power.

"and have an independent international adjudicators also come in (they obviously can't become appointed) and conduct their own survey of how good the education programs are for each of these universities, for each subject"

um... that'd be extremely easy to corrupt. If I were corrupt I'd pay off these people to give my university a better rating. done. this is exactly what has happened in many nation's pasts.


"A high score for philo/ethics would give appointees to that commitee, the same for econ or other things, etc..."

the problem is, especially in econ, there's much debate on what IS good in econ. Keynesian economics has flaws, but it's not like the free market or Friedman econ is much more verified.

What to do during what times over what time period... these questions are yet to be answered in economics. Data is extremely interpretable

and Philosophy? How do you score that??? Unless if you have this moral objective handbook i haven't seen, tough look there bro.

@James: That's why I split between the adjudicators and the aggregate....you can't bribe them all.

Also, MM, it's not that technocrats are incorruptible, but comparatively less likely to be corrupt than politicians in modern day, as they actually have to justify their views to the academic community.

I dunno man, it's not that far away from Orwellian society: knowledge is controlled by the elite. And you say there would be supervision by ALL of these, but have you ever heard of cartels? One bad generation man, and that' it.

Besides, you're acting like there is an academic consensus on most things, when there isn't. Most policies that work one year don't work the next, and the idea that we can know all this is centuries into the future

@Vashta

at least in our system, we have directly accountability to the people. The problem with our current system is that people would rather once every four years be mildly informed, make a decision based off of Pathos, then ignore all local politics all the while ignoring the Press whose job is to uncover scandals, and instead focus on Buzzfeed's "22 questions for white people" which btw, is one of the most racist series I've ever seen

that's a social flaw in society, not a legal one. I don't think your'e giving our founding father's enough credit for how malleable they made the constitution.

I'm not saying our nation is perfect, but we've kept a single constitution, while also making major social reform. While we still need action to fight corruption, but we're going about it all the wrong ways. PC culture vs Troll culture. a truly horrific war has engulfed our nation

and as a millennial.

I apologize for my kind

I mean like, I find a demagogue rising through the ranks of a democracy and fucking everything up far more likely than the technocrats managing to brainwash us all. Like it isn't just the ivory tower guys, and well these colleges kind of depend on people paying tuition and shit, and an educated populace is much harder to overthrow.

Republic > Democracy

Technocracy would emphasize social stratification. If the elite schools are going to be the ones running society, and if participating involves paying tuition, then only the wealthy elites would be able to run it, and when that elite has control they'd fight against changing that.

NOT ONLY THE ELITE RUN IT! For fucks sake do you think no public unis have good programs.

The non-elite schools would become elite schools. Same problem.

If you care about electiral college reform, check this out: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/write9?link_id=0&can_id=&source=email-statefull-default-your-state-doesnt-count-8&email_referrer=statefull-default-your-state-doesnt-count-8&email_subject=statefull-default-your-state-doesnt-count

@dupersteve, but who would write the algorithms?

@"Vashta
Well obviously we don't give Harvard all the votes ;) Also most government scandals would likely be followed by a drop in prestige and loss of power."

So what about the less prestigious state colleges? Do they get anything? What about Trump University? Who decides?? Is it a private club where the orestigious get to decide who 'counts' as prestigious (thu diluting their own prestige?)

My first fix, Texan independence, second California and the west coast going their own way... Break the federal government's power.

Get rid of First-Past-the-Post and implement ranked balloting like in Australia, have term limits for Senators/House Reps.

Congressional district method electoral vote by ranked ballot is <3, but getting a ranked ballot takes a lot of work and activism. So does congressional district voting, but not as much since there's a precedent for it in a couple states.

How do you mean? We already elect our Reps by district.

I mean for president. Individual districts would utilize ranked ballots to decide how the electoral vote is decided, then whether the same or different system being used for the two residual state-wide votes would be worked out, but it's only 100 total votes that rarely if ever would decide the election.

"So what about the less prestigious state colleges? Do they get anything? What about Trump University? Who decides?? Is it a private club where the orestigious get to decide who 'counts' as prestigious (thu diluting their own prestige?)"

1. There are plently of state schools with good reputation. UNC, William and Mary, Rutgers, Most of the University of California schools, etc...

2. At a certain level, yes they do, but there will be a cut off (probably somewhere around 200/250). Perhaps schools at the lower end can send 1 representative while schools at the higher end can send 5, at least to the legislative branch, this would probably make about equivalent numbers.

(Btw this mostly restricts the law makers (or possibly interpreters) to be technocrats, those these norms might seep into executive branch practices).

3. Trump University is not even accredited university...it won't get votes.

4. I already told you, aggregate of US News, Forbes, Princeton Review, maybe a few others, and an independent UN adjudicator board, this way you get both US and International perspective considered. Also none of these people are eligible to work for the government (at least the technocratic position) for obvious reasons.

"The non-elite schools would become elite schools. Same problem."
What does this even mean, cause if you have a shift in school prestige but still fundamentally the same distribution, then the original algorithm solves. But if the distribution changes then this seems to imply that education as a whole will become better, I am fine with this.

"Elite" schools are determined as much by wealth and age as by the quality of research produced and teaching done. Factors in rankings like graduation and retention rates, endowment, reputation, and the like are fundamentally biased toward the already-wealthy and influential. This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, but counting on "elite" schools means we just formalize an already-too-much-in-place system where the wealthy and a few high-achieving middle class individuals run the country.

If you let the wealthy and elite make decisions for everyone, those decisions will necessary (perhaps unconsciously, but necessarily nonetheless) favor the upper classes.

The ones that get votes will hold that up in marketing and hitch up their cost because who doesn't want to send their kid to a school with that reputation?

You mean like in status quo?

Except worse :)

I don't see why. Like government doesn't vote on the tuition of PRIVATE universities and I already told you they send like 5 reps at the tippy top

As an American and a student in a competitive civic education class, where I need to study and know the constitution better than most congressmen, I feel that American democracy is good and shouldn't be changed.

Granted, America does have some issues it needs to take care of, but what nation hasn't had its share of issues? Germany had the Nazis, and Russia's Stalin killed 20 million of his own people! The best way to take care of these issues is through better civic education(I was surprised as to how much of my government I misunderstood until I got into the civic education class) and more civic engagement and understanding.

For instance, one of the issues plaguing America are lethal cop shootings. The people have their right to protest, but they also need to understand the situation cops are in, and have faith in the American Justice system.

My opinion may seem biased, which it probably is, but remember that the American Constitution is the longest standing constitution in the world(200+ years!) and we have gone through some tremendous social-cultural changes, slow as they were.

@TheBritishGent

was that moderate?

how DARE you be moderate???

gtfo

Also, I think a technocracy is like communism, idealistic.
Its basically an oligarchy run by the top universities, and when you give humans power, they will try to expand and consolidate that power. I have no doubt that the top universities would elect people partial to their graduating schools, and American culture would be seriously tilted towards universities and promoting them(not as good as it sounds).

But free college would be nice! :)

Vash:
I think there's a serious disconnect here. The policy-makers and elected officials in our republic largely serve as oversight. In arguing that technocracy is a real big fix misses out on the big way government is served: through administrative discretion. Administrations are given more to civil servants and trusted with expertise more than you give credit for. Cabinet level officials in these may change a little bit of operation, but that largely brings in new fresh ideas, and the majority of workers in these administrations stay the same and simply continue enforcement of the law.

"Germany had the Nazis, and Russia's Stalin killed 20 million of his own people!"

You left out the genocide by Americans against native 'indians' - you know, in case you were naming horrible things done by well known countries.... To be entirely fair The British intentionally exported food from Ireland during the potato famine, and over a million died. Irish haven't been in a position to murder millions themselves, but we did imprison many women without trial for having pre-marital sex... and force them to work in laundries.

But America has a number of large problems. Militarisation of the police force is just one among them.

It's just my opinion, but how about trying to fix two systems.. Taxation and public education ? I'm not suggesting you / we forget / ignore other issues, problems.. But how about prioritising a small group of major problems and really pushing for reforms there first ?