@STP @curtosis @mattyglesias Yes. In my view, the American Constitutional system remains untried. But the logic of the American Constitutional system has the House as first mover, but with acknowledgment that in some spheres (“Commander-in-Chief”) executive initiative remains necessary. The President has veto power. But his role is to take Care that the laws be faithfully executed, not to make or organizing the making of them.
@STP @curtosis @mattyglesias In practice, this should yield something like a parliamentary system with House leadership becomes “prime minister”, but with the President taking a much more active role in reducing lawmaking into practice (or resisting that) than more ceremonial heads of state in many parliamentary arrangements.
@STP @curtosis @mattyglesias There is an extra check, and extra player, in the American system. Which renders the system dangerous, unstable, incoherent **if that extra player is an oppositional partisan**. Which is why I think Presidential elections should be by something like approval voting, that elevates nobody’s favorite, but someone everyone can live with, ideally “quality” in a nonfactional sense.
@peterbutler indeed. i’ve got to wonder what it feels like, to be ostensibly one of the most powerful people on the planet but sit quietly on the losing end trying to save a quite possibly innocent life.
earlier it was a hot sunny day here in West Central Florida now all of a sudden it’s getting very windy, thundery, rainy.
@curtosis @mattyglesias I’ve read Linz and some of literature that followed. Overall my view is that there’s a good point there (what do you do when two electoral mandates conflict?) and a kind of very course grained empirical regularity, but “presidentialism” is too broad and vague a term to be evaluated as an empirical treatment, and it’s better to think through mechanisms and pathologies than simple prescribe “parliamentarism”. (cf France + Britain!) 1/
@curtosis @mattyglesias I don’t know that I know Lipset, though it’s been a few years since my reading spree on this stuff.
I agree that MMP would be a fantastic system for the US House, nicely reconciling the personalistic representation US-ians expect for constituent services and glad-handling with the proportional representation the logical place of the House in our Constitutional system desperately demands. /fin
@curtosis @mattyglesias France and Britain are both outliers in different ways among parliamentary systems. I mean, sure, they have “parliaments”. But voting in Great Britain is first-past-the-post, not anything that would approximate proportional representation. And France’s system is unusually presidential, as we just saw when Macron supervened any negotiation within parliament to form a new government. 1/
@curtosis @mattyglesias (That said, I don’t think parliamentary vs presidential is the core axis of concern. I think US-style presidentialism could work, if Presidential elections were by a system that elevates the most broadly acceptable candidate rather than any narrow factional squeakers, and if elections for House were made consistent with its Constitutional role as first-mover in US governance, rather than ceding that to the Executive.) /fin
@curtosis no offense to @mattyglesias, but there's some noise in the linked post, adjudication of hobbyhorses about neoliberalism and its definitions and discontents, cross-currents that distract from, and i think perhaps substitute for, the kind of practical discussion you are asking for.
what would it mean to treat electoral outcomes as much stronger mandate to act? in a 50%+ε (at best) democracy, would it become license to screw and oppress 50%-ε? what electoral changes might mitigate this?
"For [DOJ antitrust head] Kanter, mixing advocacy with expertise doesn't create expert advocacy – it obliterates expertise, as least when it comes to making good policy. This mixing has created a 'crisis of expertise…a pervasive breakdown in the distinction between expertise and advocacy in competition policy.'" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/25/epistemological-chaos/#incentives-matter
cf me "Authority minimization" https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/09/authority-minimization/index.html
@curtosis @mattyglesias it's not clear that the alternative of veto points through litigation is more democratic or legitimate, though. i agree that improvements to deeply imperfect US democracy are perhaps the highest priority issue. yet, even in the meantime, things do need to get done, and what the imperfect state does remains much more public spirited than what plutocrats bribe past chokepoints.
"'Dead Internet' is not an inevitable outcome of the various technologies in question--generative A.I. among them--but a condition brought about by the particular arrangement of money and business models." #MaxRead https://maxread.substack.com/p/were-in-our-slop-era
"What we need is a vigorous public sector reform campaign to increase the likelihood that, when elected officials want the government to do X, X occurs in a reasonably timely and cost-effective manner. And the question of whether X is bad is fought out in electoral politics." @mattyglesias https://www.slowboring.com/p/shackling-the-state
@marick some gift. i subscribed on a teaser discount because i needed access to some of their (very pretty!) multimedia pieces as part of a correspondence. at cost of a bit of annoyance, their firewall is circumventable for ordinary text. i look forward to not renewing.
It is very hard to affect that Israeli government actions over the past year have been conditioned by any intention to ever find peaceful means of cohabitation with the Palestinian population that currently resides on the territory it controls. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/world/middleeast/west-bank-raids.html
“As Milanovic dismissively concludes, neoclassical models of distribution related ‘to life on Earth about as much as the theories that astrobiologists have developed about life on Mars.’” @storracinta reviews #BrankoMilanovic https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/inequality-without-class/
@LesterB99 i see you are part of the conspiracy!
has the Netanyahu government timed its escalation-to-deescalate with Hezbollah in order to deliver an October surprise that might benefit Trump?
“focus on communities, not individuals, as the unit of change.” ~Raj Chetty https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/opinion/kamala-harris-opportunity-economy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb&ngrp=mnp&cbgrp=p&pvid=1C2437CB-C684-49E9-8335-137AF37EC420
i was more proud of the United States back when we had already won the Civil War.
“But as Keynesian economists have long understood, the most important factor in trade flows is changes in incomes, not prices. Far from being fixed, demand is the most dynamic element in the system.” @jwmason https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-dissent-industrial-policy-without-nationalism/
do the people of missouri just not gaf?