Government (a Political Issue)
Whatever political system we use, whether it is a form of democracy, monarchy, dictatorship or something else, its purpose is to form a government. A government is given the power to make and to enforce the laws of a country, land area, people, or organization. It has the job of doing what is needed to protect its citizens from undue harm and to help them prosper.
In general, how well a government performs its job is far more important than what political system is used. However, a better political system can help to ensure that a government does a better job. For us to determine whether a government is doing a good job or not, we will first need to understand clearly the purpose of having a government.
The goal of any government should be to make its citizens’ lives better. More specifically, its job should be to protect its citizens from things like foreign invaders, criminals and various types of disasters, and to help its citizens to prosper, to live good lives and to achieve their goals. A good government also gives its citizens the liberty and freedom to live their lives as they choose. Therefore, a government is doing a good job when it is providing all the protection, help, liberty and freedom that its citizens need and want at a reasonable cost.
Each of us may need and want very different things, and we may have very different ideas about what a reasonable cost would be for those things. This means that there may be a big difference in what many of us think our governments should be doing and the things that our governments are doing.
Given our differences, it would seem inevitable that there will always be some of us who are not happy with the job that our governments are doing no matter whether other individuals think they are doing a good job or not. Part of the problem is that a lot of individuals think or feel that our governments should work the way they want them to work without regard to how well they would end up working for the rest of us.
This situation has led many individuals to form or to join political parties and special interest groups. For the most part, the goal of each of these groups is to try to alter what our governments do and how they do things based on what its members think our governments should or should not be doing. This has meant an ongoing struggle for control of our governments and the constant changes to what and to how our governments do their jobs based on which groups have the upper hand at any given moment in time.
This has left a lot of us unhappy with how our governments are doing their jobs and with what they are doing for us. I believe that when a government is doing a good job, all of us should be happy or at least okay with what it is doing and how it is doing it. Therefore, with all our problems and with so many of us being unhappy, it is obvious to me that our governments are not doing as good a job as they should. This also would mean that our political system is not doing its job and so it would also need to be changed.
One way to make our governments work better for all of us is to give each of us the ability to customize our own personal versions of our governments so that they would meet each of our specific needs. In this way, if we did not like some aspect of how our version of government was working for us, then we could customize the way it worked so that it did work better for us.
Even with customizable governments, there would probably still be some of us who would be unhappy with our governments, especially any of us who felt the need to control other individuals’ lives. Even so, I believe more of us would prefer these customizable governments over the alternative of having others decide how our governments work for everyone.
Of course, letting all of us create our own separate governments would lead to anarchy. However, there is a way to allow us to customize some aspects of how much and in what way we interact with our governments. Although there are many government programs that all of us must participate in, there are other programs where we could have the option to opt into them or to opt out of them.
These optional programs just need to be structured in a way where they would be fair for those of us who participated and for those of us who did not. We could then decide which of these optional programs we wanted to participate in. We would of course need to pay for the programs that we opted into, but we would not need to pay for any of the programs we did not opt into.
One big roadblock for many of us being able to participate in these customized versions of our governments is the need for many of our government’s current aid programs due to our unemployment or under-employment. That is, too many of us need the money and services used to help the poor that our governments currently provide for our governments to be able to create customized versions of them.
This situation is bad for those of us who are dependent on these aid programs and those of us who are forced to pay for those aid programs through our taxes. Our dependence and lack of any extra funds means that we cannot afford to select our own programs, so it seems that we may be stuck with the programs we currently have. However, there is a way for us to make it possible for us to customize our governments so that we can select our own programs.
What we need is to ensure that everyone who is willing and able to work can get or be given a job that will at least pay a living wage. If everyone can earn a living wage, then there will be very little need for aid programs, and everyone will be able to select which if any other programs they want to pay for. In addition, with everyone able to work at a living wage this will allow us and our nation to be more prosperous, and this will also help solve or at least greatly reduce a lot of our other problems with things like poverty, health and crime.
To start with, having everyone working and earning a living wage is not a new way of doing things. This is essentially how our earliest human ancestors lived for a long time. In our earliest hunter/gatherer tribal groups, everyone had to work to be able to share in the fruits of their shared labor. Everyone had to work for the survival and prosperity of the group. It was only with the many advances that our ancestors made over time that allowed the group to be able to survive without everyone working.
All other living things need to work or they will starve. It is only us humans who have the means to survive while supporting those who are unemployed or under-employed. However, even if we can now survive with many of us being unemployed or under-employed, we cannot be as prosperous as we can be when we need to support those who are not working unless the rest of us are forced to do more of the work.
Given our more complex society and the multitudes of different jobs that need to be done, it will take quite a bit of effort to make the changes needed to give everyone the opportunity to work and to earn a living wage. Our government will need to do a better job of tracking what job skills are needed, getting schools to teach those skills and getting us to learn those skills. When necessary, our government would also need to provide those of us who are unable to find work with some productive but temporary work so we can continue to earn a living wage.
With all of us working for a living wage, some labor costs will go up for some businesses, but other businesses will benefit from more of us being able to buy more things. This realignment of our economy may mean higher prices for some things, but a lot more of us will end up being able to afford a lot more things. This will also stimulate the economy and make it possible for all of us to be better able to afford to have lifestyles that are closer to what we desire. Although, it may also mean that some ultra-rich individuals may need to get by where they are just super-rich.
Our government’s job is to protect us and our freedom and liberty, and they cannot do that unless they make it possible for us all to work and to earn enough to live a good lifestyle of our own choosing. In addition, not only would this be the right thing to do, but it is the best way to ensure that we can all live a good life.
In the upcoming chapter on our Economic Issues, I will talk more about how our economy will work better when we allow everyone to have a living wage. In addition, in the upcoming chapter on our Economic Issues, I will talk about how with some cost-of-living savings and some changes to reduce shifted and hidden costs most of us should be far better off than we have ever been. In the meantime, much of the following discussion assumes that most of us will be able to work for a living wage.
In the previous section on democracy, I have already talked about how our laws need to be changed to protect us when we are in the minority on some issues. The idea is to limit our laws to the minimum needed to protect us from being unduly harmed by others, to help us prosper, and to give us the liberties and freedom we want and need. By limiting how our laws control what we are allowed to do and by having laws that help us to be more self-sufficient, we would give ourselves the ability to better customize the way we live our lives.
With this more limiting and helping approach, our governments would not be as involved in protecting us from ourselves nor in controlling how we live. However, they would still protect all of us from outside dangers and provide the services and the laws that would truly be needed by all of us, and they would provide us with the means to live better lives of our own choosing.
Those of us who wanted to have other services or abide by other laws could do so individually, through some group in the private sector or as part of some government run program supported by those of us who opt into it. If we do not do undue harm to others, then we should be free to live our lives by our own rules. In other words, we all could, in essence, choose our own customized versions of our governments.
Let’s look at one quick example dealing with car seatbelt and motorcycle helmet laws. It should be up to each of us to decide whether we wanted to wear a seatbelt or a helmet, or to live with the consequences of not doing so. Of course, those of us who do not wear seat belts or helmets would be required to pay higher insurance premiums to cover our greater risk of injury due to our choice. Since those of us who do wear a seatbelt or motorcycle helmet would have a lower risk of injury or death, then our insurance premiums would be correspondingly lower as well.
On the other hand, the law should still require any of us who carries passengers to provide seatbelts or helmets to our passengers who choose to use them. We should still require minors to be buckled up or helmeted, since they would be too young to make an informed choice about wearing them or not. We also would make appropriate insurance provisions so that passengers who choose not to wear them would handle any extra cost stemming from their choice.
Another example would be health care. If we choose to live with the consequences of not having health insurance, then our government should not force us to get it. The only exception might be for emergency medical care since a hospital should not have to worry whether we had insurance or not when they need to save our life. If we did not have health insurance and did not pay the bill, then our government should take care of paying the bill and should then take the needed steps to get reimbursed by us.
A similar thing needs to be done with the services and programs provided by our governments as with our laws. Our governments should not force us to pay for specialized services and programs that are geared towards special interests or small groups when they do not directly or indirectly help all of us.
If these specialized services and programs are truly important, then they should and would be provided by the private sector. For instance, many communities use tax money to help build sports arenas and stadiums that benefit only a small group of sports fans. It is usually done in the name of economic development, but I can think of hundreds of things that would do much more for the whole community. If the sports fans really want a sports team, then they could choose to support it out of their own pockets and not force everyone else to help pay for it.
Of course, there are still many services that our governments would need to provide. For instance, it would not be very safe nor efficient if we had competing militaries. We need to have a common military that would protect all of us. We would also need to have some common obligations. For instance, it would also be very unfair if each of us could decide how much we were willing to spend on our common military. It would be very difficult for our military to try to protect each of us based on how much each of us contributed to our military’s budget.
Given the need for some common services and obligations, and a desire to be able to customize our governments the way each of us would like it to work for ourselves, our governments would need a two-tiered system of services, programs, and obligations. We would all need to belong to the first tier, which would include all the common services and programs that we all need, and we would need to enforce all our common obligations. The second tier would include a wide array of services and programs, and their corresponding obligations that each of us could select from. This “a la carte” tier would give us the ability to customize our governments to our specific needs, wants and desires.
In the first tier, the services would include the things that our government must provide for all of us so we all can be protected and treated fairly. These would include things like the military, police, courts, and all the regulatory agencies that ensure that we, businesses, and local and foreign governments play fairly and honestly. As citizens, we would all have an obligation to pay for our fair and honest share of these services and to abide by the laws needed to protect us from undue harm.
In the second tier, the services would include those things that our government could do better than the private sector, but that all of us do not need to participate in. Of course, I am not sure whether there would really be anything in this tier or not, since it is quite possible that, with proper oversight, the private sector could do a better job of providing everything that was not in the first tier and at a lower cost.
In many areas, our governments play an administrative, regulatory and oversight role. Agencies and departments like the Food and Drug Administration, Consumer Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Education, the Department of Transportation, and others administer, regulate and oversee various business and consumer activities to protect and to help us. They also administer various other services and programs.
If it would be appropriate for reasons of cost savings and efficiency, we could move more of the administration of those services and programs to private businesses. Then our governments could move more towards just regulation and oversight. This would include adding additional regulation and oversight of the businesses that would now be administering these services and programs.
One way to look at our government and its services and programs as they are today and how they can be customized in the future is through an analogy. Although at bit farfetched and outlandish, we could think of our government and its services and programs as the fixings and toppings for a pizza. Where our two major political parties are vying to determine what fixings and toppings we will use for our pizza.
Since this is a pizza, we would of course start with the basic fixings being a crust, tomato sauce and cheese. These could represent the basic government functions including things like our military, legal system, and needed regulatory agencies. As with our basic government functions, there may be some disagreement over our basic pizza fixings. For instance, should it be a small, medium or large pizza with a thin or thick crust and should we accommodate those who are lactose-intolerant when selecting our cheese.
We can then think of our government services and programs as our pizza toppings. To keep things simple, let’s say one political party wants a vegetarian pizza with broccoli, cauliflower and pineapple slices, and the other political party wants a meat pizza with spam, haggis and liver bits. In our current system, if we want a vegetarian pizza we are then stuck with broccoli, cauliflower and pineapple and if we want a meat pizza we are then stuck with spam, haggis and liver bits.
However, this is a False Delema fallacy. There are far more options for our toppings and our fixings than what the two major political parties are offering us. With a customizable government or pizza, we should have a choice as to what options we want. There may be some basic things needed to have a government just as there are some basic fixings needed to have a pizza. Nevertheless, beyond those basics, we should all get to decide what is best for ourselves.
When we talk about our elected government officials, we sometimes talk in terms of them being our leaders or sometimes in terms of them being our representatives. In authoritarian political systems, the government does rule over its citizens, and the highest-ranking officials are considered the leaders of the state or the leaders of the country. These authoritarian governments then make many decisions about how their citizens must live their lives. In a democracy, things are supposed to be different. The idea is that we remain in charge, but we elect individuals to represent our interests in the government. We should then be left to decide how we each want to live our own lives.
Each of us has different abilities and may or may not need help in the various areas of our lives. Some of us are good at managing our lives and do not need nor want our governments to tell us what to do. On the other hand, some of us may need some or a lot of guidance and may need someone to help us plan our lives.
Therefore, we need a system that will work for the full spectrum of us, from those of us who are completely independent to those of us who are much more dependent. Of course, in times of emergency, there may not be time for all of us to make our own decisions, so sometimes some individuals in our government may need to take charge and make some needed decisions for all of us. However, that should only be temporary and only last until the emergency is over or under control.
Here again we have a need for us to have our own customized versions of our governments. Those of us who can take care of ourselves could more easily do so as we choose. Those of us who need help could belong to an appropriate group that could help us manage our lives and set up any additional rules for us to live by. Unless we demonstrated that we could not take care of ourselves without unduly hurting others, we should be free to decide whether we needed any help or not and whether we needed to join an appropriate group that could help us or not. Many of these groups could be handled by private businesses, with some appropriate oversight from our governments.
We elect individuals to fill a wide range of government jobs. Not only do we elect mayors, governors, presidents, and local, state and national representatives, but also judges, auditors, coroners and sheriffs. In some of these cases, it should be obvious that we need to elect someone who is highly qualified to do the specified job. For instance, a coroner should not only have medical experience but also have specialized training in the forensic sciences.
The problem with us electing individuals to fill most of these specialized positions is that most of us really do not have the necessary knowledge about these positions to decide who is best qualified. We must rely on the opinions of those individuals or groups who are qualified to evaluate the candidates or try to decide based on whether a candidate presents themselves in a way that makes them seem qualified or not.
A better way to handle this would be to let the experts handle the hiring and firing of individuals for these positions. It would then be the job of these experts and our representatives to monitor the job performance of the individuals they hired, and to make any changes needed. This would make our jobs as voters easier, since we would not need to evaluate individuals for positions where we do not have the expertise to make informed decisions.
By reducing the number of elected officials, we as voters can concentrate more on evaluating the candidates for the remaining positions. For those remaining positions, we would be electing individuals for the difficult, but easier to understand, role of representing our best interests in our governments.
Given our current electoral process, with just 2 main political parties and separate primaries for each where only members of the given party can vote, we are almost guaranteed that extremists of some type will be elected. In addition, whoever is elected is also more likely to represent their party's interests instead of representing our interests. What we need is a way to ensure that our representatives are more representative of all of us and do not try to force their party's positions on all of us.
To elect better representatives, we need to change the way candidates are selected and elected, and how campaigns are paid for. Instead of political parties selecting candidates through party only primaries, we need to open the primaries up so that all of us get a vote. We also need to use ranked choice voting so that we can vote for all our preferred candidates. In addition, we need to have clean elections, or at least reform our campaign finance laws, so that we can get rid of all the outside money that comes in.
Most of our current primary elections are partisan. That is, only voters of the given political party can vote to decide which candidate will represent their party in the general election. The main problem with partisan primaries is right there in its definition. The party is electing a candidate who will represent their party. However, we need to elect representatives who will represent all of us.
With our two-party system and a competitive general election, a few votes one way or the other can make a big difference in how we are represented or not represented. In a non-competitive general election, we are stuck with whoever the leading party selects, who will more than likely be even more extreme than who we would get in a more competitive general election.
With open primaries, we all will get a chance to vote for who the candidates will be, even when we do not belong to a political party. In addition, since the candidates will need to appeal to a wider audience than just members of their party, we will get candidates who are less extreme and who will be more willing to represent all of us.
When a primary is needed, all candidates would be on the same ballot, whether representing a political party or running as an independent. All voters in the given jurisdiction would be able to vote in the primary irrespective of any party affiliation and they could vote for their preferred candidates among all the candidates irrespective of any party affiliation.
A given primary could have a few candidates from each political party and a few independents. The primary could result in all the winners being from different parties, including some independents, or with all the winners being from the same party or all being independent. The result would depend a lot on the ideological makeup of who ran and who voted.
The bottom line would be a list of candidates for the general election who were preferred by more of the voters and the election of a candidate that is preferred by more of the voters. This would especially be true if Ranked Choice Voting was used for the primary and the general election.
Most of our current primary and general elections are won by whoever gets a plurality of the votes, even if that is far less than a majority. For instance, if there were 3 candidates on the ballot, someone could win with as little as 34% of the vote. If there were 4 candidates on the ballot, someone could win with as little as 26% of the vote. The situation gets worse with more candidates on the ballot. The problem with our plurality voting system is that when there are more than 2 candidates, the votes are sometimes split between the candidates in such a way that the least preferred candidate wins the election.
For instance, if 40% of the voters preferred candidate A and 60% preferred either candidate B or candidate C rather than candidate A. With all 3 candidates in the race, it is possible that candidates B and C could split the vote of their supporters and each only gets about 30% of the vote. This would mean that the least preferred candidate would win with only 40% of the vote. That is, with both candidates B and C on the ballot, one of them would have spoiled it for the other and let the least preferred candidate win.
With ranked choice voting, we will be able to have more than two candidates on the ballot without worrying that one of them might end up being a spoiler. We will be able to vote for all our preferred candidates. If our first choice does not make the cut, then our second choice will be counted. Not only will our vote count, but we will have a better chance of electing someone who most of us like.
If the above election were run with ranked choice voting, the results would be different. With 3 candidates on the ballot, each voter would select their first and second choice candidates. With no candidate getting a majority of the votes, some type of ranked choice counting would be done.
In the usual method of counting the ranked choices, the candidate with the least first place votes would be eliminated. Let's say that was candidate C. If the voters for candidate C had selected candidate B as their second choice, then candidate B would get their votes. The voting count would then be 40% for candidate A and 60% for candidate B, and candidate B would be the winner.
The important thing to remember is that the voters preferred candidate B over candidate A, and that with ranked choice voting, the voters were able to elect their preferred candidate. Another way to look at this is that if the election had only been between candidates A and B, then candidate B would have won. Therefore, ranked choice voting was able to eliminate the spoiler effect that candidate C would have otherwise caused.
Given the above, a better method of counting the ranked choices would be to do one-on-one matchups between the three candidates. That is, we would count the votes for the matchups between A and B, A and C, and B and C. For each matchup, a candidate would get a vote for each time a voter ranked that candidate higher than the other candidate. In most cases, one candidate would win both matchups, one candidate would win one matchup and lose one matchup, and the other candidate would lose both matchups. Given the above scenario, candidate B would have won both matchups and would have been declared the winner.
In our current elections, money plays an outsized role in determining who gets elected. With enough money, even truly bad candidates can buy enough advertising time to overwhelm and to drown out their opponents. For instance, a wealthy individual could form a PAC (Political Action Committee) and pore unlimited funds into supporting a candidate. In addition, some candidates might modify their positions on the issues to garner the support of some big campaign donors so they can buy more advertising.
When wealthy constituents make big campaign donations, they can gain undue influence over our candidates or representatives. This can lead to our representatives focusing more on what these big donor constituents want rather than on what the rest of us want. The situation is even worse when some of their big campaign donors are not constituents. In these cases, our representatives may prioritize representing the interests of these non-constituent donors instead of really representing any of their constituents.
With clean elections, campaigns would be primarily funded by the appropriate local, state or national government. This would eliminate the need for fundraising and the extra influence that big donors might buy. Until such a time that we can have clean elections, we at least need to bar donations from individuals and groups that are outside of the candidate’s district. Our representatives need to represent the interests of their constituents, and not the interests of outsiders.
With clean elections, each certified candidate would get an equal budget for the given primary or general election that they run in. The appropriate nonpartisan election board would be responsible for approving and paying for all expenditures. Separate budgets would be set up for the expenditures for each type of campaign.
The government provided money could be spent on any valid campaign expenses. Candidates would need to manage their funds wisely to ensure that they had enough to last them through their entire campaigns. Expenses would need to be monitored so that someone or some business did not indirectly contribute to a candidate by giving a discount not offered to all the candidates.
Government and private groups could also sponsor debates and other events. All candidates would need to be invited and given equal time and resources to talk and to get to know the attendees. Speaking order would either be random or rotated from event to event.
During the campaign season, limitations would be placed on any events that are held by an incumbent in their official capacity. Since we do not want an incumbent to get an unfair advantage in the election, we need to ensure that all other candidates can attend and get an appropriate amount of time at any of these events.
If we were to make all these changes, we would end up with what could be called a Moderated Democratic system. We would have a government that is moderated by virtue of what it does and by how we are represented. In turn, we would moderate the activities of our representatives. With a government that is working better for all of us, there would be much less need for political parties and special interest groups. In fact, as I will explain in more detail in the following sections, we should completely get rid of the role of political parties in selecting and electing our representatives.
Political Parties -
How to eliminate the partisan politics of our Political Parties.
|