Congress has no incentives to work better since voters don't hold them accountable for bad governing. That's because voters aren't held directly accountable for casting votes for politicians who govern badly.
The whole system seems more likely to collapse than it is to fix itself.
The less power these children have, the better. That's why my first principle is "more individual liberty, less government". Liberty has its problems too, but having these know-nothing masterminds control us is just not the answer.
I know that my "less government" rant doesn't resolve the immigration issue directly. But maybe if those DC clowns had less to worry about, they could deal with the few issues (like immigration) that the Constitution enumerates as their powers. Certainly if they did less we could monitor their progress more closely.
"That's because voters aren't held directly accountable for casting votes for politicians who govern badly."
The above seems more like an argument against democarcy than an argument for "smaller government." More over if we found ourselves under your "smaller government" how will that solve the problem that voters are not held accountable for "votes for politicians who govern badly"?
It's an argument against allowing democracy to engulf too many aspects of our lives, especially when it comes to the "one size fits all" democracy of the Federal government.
Why should voters in Wisconsin get a say in what chemical substances I put into my body where I live? They shouldn't. It's unnecessary and just opens our government up to all sorts of abuses of the system.
So many things in our lives should be left to us, not decided upon by politicians in DC who were put there by voters in other states who are completely ignorant of our lives and circumstances.
The problem is: Where do you draw the line? How do you determine what should be left to us as individuals and what should be decided via the force of majority-rules democracy? Potentially everything could be left to the free market so there is no line to draw which wouldn't be to some extent, arbitrary. We could argue that the majority can decide what the limits of the government could be, but that would be government deciding its own limits. Not the best idea if you want a small government.
The US Constitution had some great lines drawn and it required much more than just majority rule whims to change it. Unfortunately, it's been butchered by politicians and the courts and that butchering has effectively become law through practice and precedent. The US Constitution had a good run, but it's fairly ineffective now.
If you're just asking a philosophical question about where to draw the line -- Libertarians have put a great deal of thought into this matter. The non-aggression principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle) may not work in absolute terms, but it would be nice to move toward it to battle the continual feature creep of the federal government.
Societies, governments, and businesses have life cycles. America had a great start with the idea of Liberty being central to everything (except the ironic scourge of slavery). That notion of Liberty attracted people all over the world who helped turn the US into the super power that it was. Over time, though, the success and ends that Liberty created became more powerful than the core message of Liberty itself.
Now here we are. The Takers have infected our society to such a degree that all of our societal "safety nets" are headed for near-inevitable bankruptcy. Unless people wake up pretty soon and realize that we have to act responsibly, we're pretty much doomed to suffer a great amount of financial upheaval in the next 25 years. With the new season of Dancing With the Stars underway, though, I doubt anyone will have time to worry much about Liberty.
If a solution can be local, it should be. The reason the US Constitution was so limited in the powers that it gave the Govt was because those powers not listed were to be left to the states. That was what the 10th amendment was all about.
It's been very much ignored over the last 90 years, and that's a shame.
But how are you going to make voters accountable for their votes? That was my initial question and despite all the talk about federalism you have yet to answer...
You can ask all you want, but I didn't claim to have a solution to that problem. It's a fundamental flaw with democratically-based governments.
My droning on about federalism was related, though. Individual Liberty allows people to succeed or fail based upon the decisions they make in life. Economic frameworks built upon individual Liberty like capitalism reward good decisions about how to use your labor and capital while punishing poor decisions.
The best the government can do is to go back to a more Constitutionally supported mandate, taking care of foreign policy, regulating interstate commerce in the sense that the founders wished, and only providing the barest of frameworks within which the free market could operate.
You're still operating in a fantasy world where the "children" somehow loosen the reins long enough for you to implement your principle of personal liberty.
I'm a lot more optimistic about concrete plans to make things better that folks from all over the political spectrum can support:
If you really think the system is going to collapse, you could make money by buying put options on U.S. Treasury bills. Done at scale, this could potentially affect the system a lot more than complaining on Internet forums...
>You're still operating in a fantasy world where the "children" somehow loosen the reins[...]
Who said that I thought they would? America seems to have slipped into a "vote myself more stuff" mode of democracy that will send us the way of Greece. There are a few politicians like Jim DeMint who seem to vote against their own political power by trying to cut the size of the budget. People like him are worth voting for, but they're pretty few and far between.
I like the americanselect site. I'll have to peruse it more.
> If you really think the system is going to collapse[...]
It seems like collapse is the way we're headed (http://usdebtclock.org/), but we could still be decades away from it. I'm sure I'd lose my shirt playing with something as near-term as puts on T-bills.
I view it as a much better use of my time to work within my own profession so that I can put away enough money and to diversify my holdings. Sitting around betting on the collapse of the US would be a less wise use of my time.
I have to wonder; what makes a lot of these people qualified to do this sort of thing? I'm not saying it isn't a noble goal, but do they have any experience in behavioral pharmacology or classroom education? And yet they're dictating what should and shouldn't be scored? I cringed a little when I read they would be ranking various criteria, such as 'teamwork'.
And after all the articles on introverts on here, lately.
For people not following the immigration bill that is being discussed in this article, it eliminates archaic per-country limits on issuance of green cards.
It has been incredibly frustrating to see such a common sense "fix" - which is supported by a majority in both parties and the industry - get stuck due to pure politics. I guess the lesson here is that it is the Senate rules that really need to be reformed.
This seems like an awfully nationalist perspective. (Can we start using nationalist as a derogatory term like racist or sexist?)
If the United States really has the best universities, I have a hard time imagining a better use for them than spraying highly educated people all over the world.
Of course, startups are a somewhat different issue...
The whole system seems more likely to collapse than it is to fix itself.
The less power these children have, the better. That's why my first principle is "more individual liberty, less government". Liberty has its problems too, but having these know-nothing masterminds control us is just not the answer.
I know that my "less government" rant doesn't resolve the immigration issue directly. But maybe if those DC clowns had less to worry about, they could deal with the few issues (like immigration) that the Constitution enumerates as their powers. Certainly if they did less we could monitor their progress more closely.