The United States should be dissolved into 56 countries, each with a population of 6 million, about the same as Denmark. There are 5.5 million people in Colorado so it could be a country.
It's not like the states are all in agreement or anything. There are so many federal laws that DON'T exist because the states can't agree! If you can't agree that much, it's hardly the UNITED states of America, is it?!
In Australia we might as well be a different country for each state:
-Western Australia has been pushing to be their own country for decades.
-Tasmania is our backwards little friend (much less so a friend with covid...) across Bass Strait.
-South Australians are nice but just a bit weird.
-Queenslanders are, well, Queenslanders (!) and they're a bit rough and tumble.
-Northern Territorians are definitely a bit different!
-Victorians seem to love Chairman Dan, so they can HAVE him and become a totalitarian state for all I care now. If they overwhelmingly vote him in again come November, and it's not a tinkered-with election (ha!) then I stand by this statement: anyone who stays for more than a few months after his re-election deserves the punishment that WILL be dished out by him. Already we are seeing mass exodus from VIC when normally people flock there. The economy has been going really well but Chairman Dan & tonnes of rain are nicely wrecking that one...
-Australian Capital Territorians can just go and join Victoria, or get swallowed up by NSW. They're a massive Labor-stronghold and love what the govt does by all accounts. How can we save people who follow such madness?!
-And the New South Welshpeople? They love consumerism and have a fairly strong economy. They'll be fine as a country.
So there we go. Maybe BIG countries aren't the way to go. Maybe you're right!
Yes, each Australian state should be an independent country because they don't enjoy any benefits from the federal government. Each Canadian province should be an independent country, too, and Britain should dissolve into 10 new countries.
The Germans in Switzerland are richer than the Germans in Germany; the French in Switzerland are richer than the French in France; and the Italians in Switzerland are richer than the Italians in Italy. Big countries are misgoverned countries.
Well, the States in Oz DO get the GST divvied up and handed out to them by the Feds, along with other handouts, but regardless, with 3 tiers of govt in this country, it's at LEAST 1 tier too much!
Why have states if everyone does everything differently in each state? From different driving rules to education rules to abortion rules. Honestly, I don't see the point of having so many levels of government. It's just a great way to drown in red tape as far as I can see!!
The people in Mississippi are different from California so they need different abortion rules. If the central government gives money to the states, it adds conditions, effectively creating a monopoly that's often oppressive. If a state oppresses you, move to another state. You're screwed when the central government oppresses you because the only escape is another country.
More members of congress means more people that Big Pharma (and every other special interest) has to pay off to get their way. Same reason for all the outrage and vitriol about the federal government standing down from Roe v. Wade. The federal government had been "one stop shopping" for all your lobbying needs, whether you were pro-life or pro-choice. Now? In light of the recent decision, you have to fight the battle in each of the 50 states.
The downside of having so many congressional representatives is that person-to-person argument and debate becomes impossible. The upside is that buying off the representatives (and the logrolling of legislation) becomes that much more impossible.
We need ways to devolve power from Washington and put it in the hands of the American people.
Thanks for proposing a plan that would help achieve that.
Non violent protest is key. Gandhi drove the British out of India that way. Poor as it is, in India the legal system is showing signs of life with regard to the medical tyranny, signs not showing up in wealthier places like Europe.
Jury nullification might help too, imo. This could be useful in the case of protesting paying medical, debt and utility bills where they are unreasonable, and in nullifying other unjust laws too.
Jury nullification is incredibly powerful. The key is, the people on the jury need to know it is possible. It already exists. It just needs to be used. Basically, for most things, one can force a jury trial. Then, each juror is free to vote as they see fit, without having to explain or justify it to anybody else. Even if they feel the accused did the thing, if they think the thing is okay, or that the penalty for a guilty verdict would be too strict, they can vote not guilty without ever having to tell anyone their reasoning. I love the principle. We just need to spread the word until it becomes common knowledge. Then, you can represent yourself at the trial, and be involved in the jury selection.
The terrorist warlord perpetrators count on their propaganda to keep people divided and atomized enough to prevent these strategies (non-violent protests+jury nullification for debt+local prosecutions for medical/pharma murders) from working, so the first thing is for people to see through the propaganda. Unfortunately a lot of people won't listen until they see some victories, some facts on the ground. Thats where faith comes in.
I realized a long time ago that anybody saying you can't make a change is really saying they don't want things to change. They believe they benefit from the status quo, no matter how much they pretend to have problems with it. They are trying to cast a spell over efforts to change and weaken them.
The U.S. political system is completely broken: Thank you for asking for our comment.
TR wrote: The small legislative chamber in D.C. would be out, huge convention centers and electronic voting systems would be in. Having thousands of elected officials on our side might create a countervailing force to offset the power of the bureaucracy.
reply: It is very important electronic voting systems are run by open source programs. Bit Coin has proved that open source program is uncrackable by anyone including the US gov. Another advantage to "open source" is the code running in the electronic voting systems is open to public inspection at anytime. Obviously the only folks able to truly understand the code are programmers. They would blow the whistle on lousy code or back doors.
TR wrote: All sorts of other reforms could and should take place too.
Reply: It would be nice to audit the money gained by HSS (Health and Human Services) from Pharma directly. Then write laws that prevent that from every happening again. Also each year that amount should be collected as taxes on Pharma profits as well as taxes on any pharma fines. All the taxes should evolve for the benefit of the taxpayer in light of inflation.
TR wrote: But if there were 10,000 members of Congress, I imagine they might need some sort of tool to facilitate discussion and enable the best ideas from the public to rise to the top. The OFA platform provided an early model for how something like that could be designed and I’m sure that other even better platforms already exist (if you know of any, please tell us in the comments).
Reply: Great idea as are all you have raised so far. I can't emphasize enough how important Open Source code is and needs to be run on on all government systems. We the people are paying for it. Then we the people need to know who the programmers are what the code is etc.
Compare Linus Linus Torvalds (Open Source software creator) with Bill Gates or Steve jobs (deceased) and you will see a difference. I think upon viewing the three videos of Mr. Torvalds open source reflects the way forward. Below are video links for Linus Torvalds
TR wrote: And I’m intrigued by the question of whether increasing the size of the playing field might tip the balance of power in our favor? I look forward to the conversation in the comments.
reply: In this day and age given the Internet we should have town halls at the
congressional level with all constituents. Some things come to my mind. Most important is:
1. Constituent participation in such town hall meetings. While technology is important, people are more important. The Obama example is a case in point. Contrary to his campaign rhetoric he did not implement the platform used to quick start his campaign. He set it aside. The best technology in the world won't be able to solve a problem if it is not implemented. It takes people of exceptional character and motivated by a profound concern for the public good to insure technical solutions of merit be used.
2. Complete transparency of our elected officials sources of income and conflict of interests. Certainly they should leave office no richer than the avg citizen standard of living increase during their duration in office. There base income should be no more than the mean income of the middle class.
3. All software used by the government needs to be open source! No hiding by government from those who elect the government. This also includes those that work in all depts. of the government. Transparency and accountability begins with open source software.
Cost is never the problem. We keep sending billions to Ukraine. We can upgrade the people interface with our government and it won't cost near as much.
4. All amendments to proposed legislation, including insertion of clauses must pass public debate. Public debate must last for as many days as necessary for the people to reflect and respond to the proposed legislation.
Should that take an inordinate amount of time we should reflect on all the legislation that has been tabled over the years before finally being passed by congress. If people are unable to reach a decision on the legislation then it doesn't pass. It is tabled.
5. Should any clause or hidden amendment be included in the legislation passed by congress and discovered by the public (any member of the public) the legislation is immediately voided. The last version that fully meets public's acceptance becomes de facto legislation sent to the President for his signature. Or if the legislation is already law. It is void and the people approved legislation is put in its place!
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding our governments current level of participation and soliciting ideas for improvement.
If you haven’t read it already, check out Dan Larimer‘s “More equal animals“, applying Blockchain technology to the electoral system. I wonder if it too could work for proposed legislation as you described in the Chris Hughes platform that Obama jettisoned ?
Interesting observation. Puts me in mind of the old saying: "Think globally, act locally."
We can more easily get through to our city councilors and enlist their aid in getting through to our state representatives.... who should be more effective in influencing our national politicians. However, we need people with integrity and courage sitting in each of those seats, and that isn't a given. Many of those who seek office and most of those who stay in office over long periods of time are motivated by power, prestige and profit motivations. Consequently, their decisions and actions are not necessarily based on morality, justice or common good. In other words, it is in their personal best interest to be blind, deaf and dumb to anything that could hurt their professional careers.
What we really need is a return to first-principles thinking about government. No restructuring can save you when the population doesn't understand what government is supposed to be about or what lines it should never cross.
People rarely think about what government should do but it happened recently in Chile where they should representatives for a constitutional convention. However, the convention was filled with socialists so their document was rejected by a 2/3 margin even though a supermajority was required to pass. In reality, the existing constitution can be modified and has been modified many times so that they don't need a new one.
Keep up the out-of-the-box thinking. I do think we do need a rethink on "democracy". Another promising development is cryptocurrency. The lack of accountability in the US federal government is driven in part by the fact that no one really cares about federal government spending - funding is magically created from the financiasphere (???) with various government maneuvers. An independent currency would force a zero-sum kind of accounting on government - we might think twice about entering trillion dollar foreign wars or wars on a virus.
It's best to think about Switzerland. The Germans in Switzerland are richer than the Germans in Germany, the French in Switzerland are richer than the French in France, and the Italians in Switzerland are richer than the Italians in northern Italy.
The worst catastrophe in the history of Italy is that it became a unified country in the 19th century, allowing it to sacrifice one million men in the Great War and many more in the WWII sequel.
The smaller the country, the happier the citizens, as long as they can defend themselves.
I think this is why systems eventually fragment. You can get most people to agree on a few things, a few people to agree on most things but to get most people to agree on most things takes force, which isn't really agreement - it's tyranny. There's only so much force and so much time before the whole system comes crashing down/breaks up.
Unfortunately, tyranny - i.e. 'agreement by force' is an existential problem, for which there is no 'solution'. It's just a matter of degree.
So long as you take the funds to pay for the thousands of extra congresspeople out of the Military or Vaccine budgets, that'll be fine ;-)
And yes, it'll be a helluva lot harder to con 10K people!!! Still doable, but it will put far more burden on Big Pharma.
Love your thinking, Toby :-)
‘Big Win for Free Speech’: 5th Circuit Upholds Texas Law Holding Big Tech Accountable for Censorship
https://newspunch.com/big-win-for-free-speech-5th-circuit-upholds-texas-law-holding-big-tech-accountable-for-censorship/
Compensation is in order
https://attorneycox.substack.com/p/our-constitution-is-the-answer
People whose response to a proposed solution is, "it won't work," are more obstructive to progress than the people doing the initial wrong thing.
Agreed.
The United States should be dissolved into 56 countries, each with a population of 6 million, about the same as Denmark. There are 5.5 million people in Colorado so it could be a country.
It's not like the states are all in agreement or anything. There are so many federal laws that DON'T exist because the states can't agree! If you can't agree that much, it's hardly the UNITED states of America, is it?!
In Australia we might as well be a different country for each state:
-Western Australia has been pushing to be their own country for decades.
-Tasmania is our backwards little friend (much less so a friend with covid...) across Bass Strait.
-South Australians are nice but just a bit weird.
-Queenslanders are, well, Queenslanders (!) and they're a bit rough and tumble.
-Northern Territorians are definitely a bit different!
-Victorians seem to love Chairman Dan, so they can HAVE him and become a totalitarian state for all I care now. If they overwhelmingly vote him in again come November, and it's not a tinkered-with election (ha!) then I stand by this statement: anyone who stays for more than a few months after his re-election deserves the punishment that WILL be dished out by him. Already we are seeing mass exodus from VIC when normally people flock there. The economy has been going really well but Chairman Dan & tonnes of rain are nicely wrecking that one...
-Australian Capital Territorians can just go and join Victoria, or get swallowed up by NSW. They're a massive Labor-stronghold and love what the govt does by all accounts. How can we save people who follow such madness?!
-And the New South Welshpeople? They love consumerism and have a fairly strong economy. They'll be fine as a country.
So there we go. Maybe BIG countries aren't the way to go. Maybe you're right!
Yes, each Australian state should be an independent country because they don't enjoy any benefits from the federal government. Each Canadian province should be an independent country, too, and Britain should dissolve into 10 new countries.
The Germans in Switzerland are richer than the Germans in Germany; the French in Switzerland are richer than the French in France; and the Italians in Switzerland are richer than the Italians in Italy. Big countries are misgoverned countries.
Well, the States in Oz DO get the GST divvied up and handed out to them by the Feds, along with other handouts, but regardless, with 3 tiers of govt in this country, it's at LEAST 1 tier too much!
Why have states if everyone does everything differently in each state? From different driving rules to education rules to abortion rules. Honestly, I don't see the point of having so many levels of government. It's just a great way to drown in red tape as far as I can see!!
The people in Mississippi are different from California so they need different abortion rules. If the central government gives money to the states, it adds conditions, effectively creating a monopoly that's often oppressive. If a state oppresses you, move to another state. You're screwed when the central government oppresses you because the only escape is another country.
More members of congress means more people that Big Pharma (and every other special interest) has to pay off to get their way. Same reason for all the outrage and vitriol about the federal government standing down from Roe v. Wade. The federal government had been "one stop shopping" for all your lobbying needs, whether you were pro-life or pro-choice. Now? In light of the recent decision, you have to fight the battle in each of the 50 states.
The downside of having so many congressional representatives is that person-to-person argument and debate becomes impossible. The upside is that buying off the representatives (and the logrolling of legislation) becomes that much more impossible.
We need ways to devolve power from Washington and put it in the hands of the American people.
Thanks for proposing a plan that would help achieve that.
Term limits do you have eight years in Congress and then you’re out for good and I agree with repealing the 1971 the legislative repeal act
Decentralized ways to effect change are needed.
Non violent protest is key. Gandhi drove the British out of India that way. Poor as it is, in India the legal system is showing signs of life with regard to the medical tyranny, signs not showing up in wealthier places like Europe.
Jury nullification might help too, imo. This could be useful in the case of protesting paying medical, debt and utility bills where they are unreasonable, and in nullifying other unjust laws too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
And of course making the criminal laws as they are work as they are intended in the case of medical tyranny and murder by injection is critical now.
https://odysee.com/@Fingerbob:c/Francis-A.-Boyle-Roadmap-for-Prosecuting-COVID-Crimes:e
Jury nullification is incredibly powerful. The key is, the people on the jury need to know it is possible. It already exists. It just needs to be used. Basically, for most things, one can force a jury trial. Then, each juror is free to vote as they see fit, without having to explain or justify it to anybody else. Even if they feel the accused did the thing, if they think the thing is okay, or that the penalty for a guilty verdict would be too strict, they can vote not guilty without ever having to tell anyone their reasoning. I love the principle. We just need to spread the word until it becomes common knowledge. Then, you can represent yourself at the trial, and be involved in the jury selection.
Jury nullification only works when there are juries. Since there are almost no juries, that ship has sailed.
Defendants have the right to a jury trial.
The terrorist warlord perpetrators count on their propaganda to keep people divided and atomized enough to prevent these strategies (non-violent protests+jury nullification for debt+local prosecutions for medical/pharma murders) from working, so the first thing is for people to see through the propaganda. Unfortunately a lot of people won't listen until they see some victories, some facts on the ground. Thats where faith comes in.
Faith is useless. Wishing the world were different won't change anything.
Was faith useless to Gandhi when he stood up to the British?
I realized a long time ago that anybody saying you can't make a change is really saying they don't want things to change. They believe they benefit from the status quo, no matter how much they pretend to have problems with it. They are trying to cast a spell over efforts to change and weaken them.
Heckuva point Elliott!!! 🙌
Legislators are intimidated by lobbyists. Time to repeal the 1971 Legislative Reform Act which gives Pharma and other lobbyists power.
https://youtu.be/6l5SVpFPxDY
The U.S. political system is completely broken: Thank you for asking for our comment.
TR wrote: The small legislative chamber in D.C. would be out, huge convention centers and electronic voting systems would be in. Having thousands of elected officials on our side might create a countervailing force to offset the power of the bureaucracy.
reply: It is very important electronic voting systems are run by open source programs. Bit Coin has proved that open source program is uncrackable by anyone including the US gov. Another advantage to "open source" is the code running in the electronic voting systems is open to public inspection at anytime. Obviously the only folks able to truly understand the code are programmers. They would blow the whistle on lousy code or back doors.
TR wrote: All sorts of other reforms could and should take place too.
Reply: It would be nice to audit the money gained by HSS (Health and Human Services) from Pharma directly. Then write laws that prevent that from every happening again. Also each year that amount should be collected as taxes on Pharma profits as well as taxes on any pharma fines. All the taxes should evolve for the benefit of the taxpayer in light of inflation.
TR wrote: But if there were 10,000 members of Congress, I imagine they might need some sort of tool to facilitate discussion and enable the best ideas from the public to rise to the top. The OFA platform provided an early model for how something like that could be designed and I’m sure that other even better platforms already exist (if you know of any, please tell us in the comments).
Reply: Great idea as are all you have raised so far. I can't emphasize enough how important Open Source code is and needs to be run on on all government systems. We the people are paying for it. Then we the people need to know who the programmers are what the code is etc.
Compare Linus Linus Torvalds (Open Source software creator) with Bill Gates or Steve jobs (deceased) and you will see a difference. I think upon viewing the three videos of Mr. Torvalds open source reflects the way forward. Below are video links for Linus Torvalds
The mind behind Linux | Linus Torvalds TED TALK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8NPllzkFhE
Link: Linus Torvalds Guided Tour of His Home Office
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOXeXauRAm0
Linus Torvalds On Future Of Desktop Linux
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mysM-V5h9z8
TR wrote: And I’m intrigued by the question of whether increasing the size of the playing field might tip the balance of power in our favor? I look forward to the conversation in the comments.
reply: In this day and age given the Internet we should have town halls at the
congressional level with all constituents. Some things come to my mind. Most important is:
1. Constituent participation in such town hall meetings. While technology is important, people are more important. The Obama example is a case in point. Contrary to his campaign rhetoric he did not implement the platform used to quick start his campaign. He set it aside. The best technology in the world won't be able to solve a problem if it is not implemented. It takes people of exceptional character and motivated by a profound concern for the public good to insure technical solutions of merit be used.
2. Complete transparency of our elected officials sources of income and conflict of interests. Certainly they should leave office no richer than the avg citizen standard of living increase during their duration in office. There base income should be no more than the mean income of the middle class.
3. All software used by the government needs to be open source! No hiding by government from those who elect the government. This also includes those that work in all depts. of the government. Transparency and accountability begins with open source software.
Cost is never the problem. We keep sending billions to Ukraine. We can upgrade the people interface with our government and it won't cost near as much.
4. All amendments to proposed legislation, including insertion of clauses must pass public debate. Public debate must last for as many days as necessary for the people to reflect and respond to the proposed legislation.
Should that take an inordinate amount of time we should reflect on all the legislation that has been tabled over the years before finally being passed by congress. If people are unable to reach a decision on the legislation then it doesn't pass. It is tabled.
5. Should any clause or hidden amendment be included in the legislation passed by congress and discovered by the public (any member of the public) the legislation is immediately voided. The last version that fully meets public's acceptance becomes de facto legislation sent to the President for his signature. Or if the legislation is already law. It is void and the people approved legislation is put in its place!
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding our governments current level of participation and soliciting ideas for improvement.
If you haven’t read it already, check out Dan Larimer‘s “More equal animals“, applying Blockchain technology to the electoral system. I wonder if it too could work for proposed legislation as you described in the Chris Hughes platform that Obama jettisoned ?
Interesting observation. Puts me in mind of the old saying: "Think globally, act locally."
We can more easily get through to our city councilors and enlist their aid in getting through to our state representatives.... who should be more effective in influencing our national politicians. However, we need people with integrity and courage sitting in each of those seats, and that isn't a given. Many of those who seek office and most of those who stay in office over long periods of time are motivated by power, prestige and profit motivations. Consequently, their decisions and actions are not necessarily based on morality, justice or common good. In other words, it is in their personal best interest to be blind, deaf and dumb to anything that could hurt their professional careers.
I agree this would be great. Those in charge will fight this by talking about the cost of it.
What we really need is a return to first-principles thinking about government. No restructuring can save you when the population doesn't understand what government is supposed to be about or what lines it should never cross.
People rarely think about what government should do but it happened recently in Chile where they should representatives for a constitutional convention. However, the convention was filled with socialists so their document was rejected by a 2/3 margin even though a supermajority was required to pass. In reality, the existing constitution can be modified and has been modified many times so that they don't need a new one.
Keep up the out-of-the-box thinking. I do think we do need a rethink on "democracy". Another promising development is cryptocurrency. The lack of accountability in the US federal government is driven in part by the fact that no one really cares about federal government spending - funding is magically created from the financiasphere (???) with various government maneuvers. An independent currency would force a zero-sum kind of accounting on government - we might think twice about entering trillion dollar foreign wars or wars on a virus.
It's best to think about Switzerland. The Germans in Switzerland are richer than the Germans in Germany, the French in Switzerland are richer than the French in France, and the Italians in Switzerland are richer than the Italians in northern Italy.
The worst catastrophe in the history of Italy is that it became a unified country in the 19th century, allowing it to sacrifice one million men in the Great War and many more in the WWII sequel.
The smaller the country, the happier the citizens, as long as they can defend themselves.
I think this is why systems eventually fragment. You can get most people to agree on a few things, a few people to agree on most things but to get most people to agree on most things takes force, which isn't really agreement - it's tyranny. There's only so much force and so much time before the whole system comes crashing down/breaks up.
Unfortunately, tyranny - i.e. 'agreement by force' is an existential problem, for which there is no 'solution'. It's just a matter of degree.
Banned Movie: "The Forecaster"
Here's your missing puzzle piece. Distribution was banned throughout the US by Wall Street interests. https://jimychanga.substack.com/p/banned-movie-the-forecaster