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To my mind, the most interesting question is the other way around. We have an abundance of data about the public, we have relatively little data about how the elites operate. As I've gone up in my career, and begun to reach elite levels, I've been fascinated to learn about some of the upper levels of the economy, some of the odd rituals that it has.

I have taken an almost sociological interest in some of the minor social codes of elite life, such as who is allowed to use curse words, and what they are actually communicating when they allow themselves to use curse words. But also the opposite: who never uses curse words, and why?

But my point is, if I want to learn how coal miners in West Virginia use curse words, I can easily learn about that. I own several good books about working class life in Appalachia, I've read half of them. But good books about the use of curse words among the elites? That is much more rare, and the situation tends to evolve at a faster rate.

Also, I'll point out, this form of journalism is fairly common. Over the last year I've seen several good essays that suggested various elite groups were misunderstanding the mood of the public. What is somewhat more rare is to read a book about how the public misreads the elites. Into this category I would, arguably, suggest that Democracy For Realists is the best:

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...

I read this at the end of last year, and posted a few excerpts here:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...

The public also seems to misunderstand how much any political system, but especially democratic systems, depend on certain elites, and in particular political parties, to allow the system to continue to function. Consider the Panama Exception:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-panama-exception

Occasionally someone is born into wealth and they turn out to be a great novelist, so they can write a novel that gives us some sense of growing up in the upper class. Interesting stuff. But in general, if I want to learn how poverty persists in Appalachia, I have many more books to read than books that teach me how the upper class transmits its status to its children. Some of the details of that operation are hidden, and difficult to learn about, save when we make friends with people who had that upbringing, and even then, we are only seeing a narrow slice of the overall process.

And obviously, the life of the wealthy frequently shows up on television and movies, but not in a realistic way. Such shows amount to a kind of obfuscation of elite reality.

⬐ whimsicalism

I'm not sure I agree - but also "elite" is not really a stable locus.

If we look back to ancient Rome, we have much more information about the life of elites than we do of the life of the common peasant. I am skeptical that the phenomena has entirely reversed in modern America.

> Occasionally someone is born into wealth and they turn out to be a great novelist, so they can write a novel that gives us some sense of growing up in the upper class. Interesting stuff. But in general, if I want to learn how poverty persists in Appalachia, I have many more books to read than books that teach me how the upper class transmits its status to its children

"Turning out to be a great [and widely read] novelist" and growing up with wealth are not independent conditions that are very rare to coincide. The people writing these stories and creating content are typically elites, writing from an elite perspective.

Term limits shift power away from the representatives that the public has democratically chosen and instead empowers those bureaucrats who serve in government for 40 or 50 years. Please see:

"Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government"

by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels.

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...

If you want democratically elected representatives to be able to gain power over the machinery of government, then you should advocate for longer terms, without limits. If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get better government.

⬐ mech422

If Senators served 15 year terms, without limits...

We'd be right back where we are now - people server 30+ years, so entrenched in serving their own good and not the public good.

⬐ lkrubner

I'd ask you to consider the possibility that it doesn't matter how long an individual serves, what does matter is whether that person's party can lose power. It's an argument explored by Achen and Bartels, and I wrote about it here:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...

⬐ mech422

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I tend to think of which party is in 'power' as just a proxy for which party gets the biggest bribes :-P

But tbh, if I had the answers, I'd run for govt :-D

⬐ salawat

I'm convinced we need more people without answers going in in government.

It bugs me that every representative we elect is expected to have their own plan other than to "represent". Fast talk and snappy speeches are cheap. Willingness to acquire deep understanding, be challenged, and even sometimes put your own convictions aside for your constituents, and the systems that exist to serve them? That's hard.

⬐ dragonwriter

> what does matter is whether that person's party can lose power.

With 15 year terms, that can't happen on any reasonable timetable, either. If you maintained the three-class system, you’d have 1/3 of the Senate elected every five years. If you kept roughly equal sets every two years you'd have 2/15 (13-14 out of 100) every 2 years.

⬐ lkrubner

The risk of losing power could potentially happen every month, if you have elections every month. Electing 3 people a month for 15 years would give a legislature of 540 people, the size of the combined houses of the USA Congress and close in size to the British parliament. I'd suggest every voter gets 2 votes and then the top 3 vote-getters are then elected. Of course, when one side has a large lead, it means they are safe for a few months (if you've got 30 person lead, then you know you are safe for at least 10 months). And also, such a system suggests the whole polity voting for national figures, without representation of specific geographic regions. As with software, it is a set of tradeoffs about what kind of system one wants to has. The important thing to realize is that most of the current problems with democracy can be fixed, by adapting a different architecture, which would have different starting premises. The goal would be to have a government that functions well and which has mechanisms of accountability that limit corruption and abuse.

⬐ dragonwriter

> The risk of losing power could potentially happen every month, if you have elections every month. Electing 3 people a month for 15 years would give a legislature of 540 people, the size of the combined houses of the USA Congress

The proposal was for Senators specifically. This is clearly different, but it's not clear what it is. So, is your proposal:

(1) to abolish the Senate, and do this in the House, or (2) to abolish the House, and do this to the Senate, maintains equal representation (540 not being divisible by 50 makes this problematic), (3) to abolish the House, and do this to the Senate without equal representation, or (4) to do this to the House, but retain the Senate as is, or (5) something else?

Note that #3 and arguably #1 are outside the power of even a Constitutional Amendment, since the power to amend the Constitution explicitly does not extend to removing equal representation of states in the Senate.

> Of course, when one side has a large lead, it means they are safe for a few months

A 4 seat (<1%) lead is safe for 6 mmonths. A 16 seat (3%) lead is safe for 15 months. A margin the proportional size of that after the 2018 House election in the US would take losing every seat up for election for 3 years, 9 months to lose. These are small margins; a large lead is absolutely secure for lot longer than “a fee months”.

> The important thing to realize is that most of the current problems with

I’m fully behind that. Long legislative terms just is a very bad idea that is hyperfocused on one (overstated) problem and which makes (almost independent of what else you try to do alongside) most other problems worse.

⬐ lkrubner

"A margin the proportional size of that after the 2018 House election in the US would take losing every seat up for election for 3 years, 9 months to lose"

You make it sound like that is a long time. In Britain, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it unlikely there will be many elections held at less than 5 years.

But having a safe majority that is locked in for longer than 5 years can bring benefits. The evidence is overwhelming that the current majority is, at all times, ignorant, irrational, biased, bigoted and impulsive. Therefore, we should want all real power to be in the hands of the long-term majority, not the current majority. Big changes should come from majorities that manage to survive for several years.

I believe you are a software developer? So you should understand the concept that a signal can be derived from a noisy source, given enough time.

⬐ dragonwriter

> You make it sound like that is a long time.

It is compared to the claim that “a large margin is safe for a few months”.

> In Britain, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it unlikely there will be many elections held at less than 5 years.

Yes, but it assures that 100% of seats will be elected in 5 years, and that no majority is safe for longer than that and none takes more than a majority of the elections in that time to overturn.

> The evidence is overwhelming that the current majority is, at all times, ignorant, irrational, biased, bigoted and impulsive

No, the evidence is that effectively representative, responsive democracies produce the best results for their people. The US mostly fails on effective representation, and the proposed change would compound that by making it also fail on responsiveness.

> Big changes should come from majorities that manage to survive for several years.

Sure, maybe, that's why procedures that require long (e.g., multistage, with legally or practically mandatory delays) process for major changes arguably make sense.

But rendering any substantial majority effectively immune to change once established defeats the purpose of that. If the argument is correct at all, it is that big changes should come from legislative majorities that survive for an extended time because they represent a durable majority in the electorate.

⬐ IG_Semmelweiss

You can easily solve for that too:

- No federal employee making in excess of 2x (3x?) poverty level may remain on the job for more than 8 years. Possible exemptions: senators + enlisted military personnel. (Need more turnover at the top of officer corps anyway)

- No appointee federal bureaucrat may remain on the job for more than 8 years

- Any appointed bureaucrat or elected official, will have a fixed 79% and 99% tax bracket on any income in excess of the high watermark of the average income in the 5 years preceding their appointment or election.

There. Fixed it. Want to serve?

Do it for duty Not for money.

⬐ lp0_on_fire

Perhaps having career bureaucrats isn't exactly the best thing, either. Many people complain about the lack of term limits for congress but most don't seem to have a problem with the byzantine bureaucracy that practically necessitates having these career bureaucrats, who are often the ones implementing _real_ policy. (I.e. the administrative state).

⬐ lkrubner

The advice I give to startup CEOs, regarding their business, is exactly the same advice that I would give to every citizen regarding their government:

"Take, for instance, money. A small team of highly ethical individuals can generally trust one another to safeguard money in an appropriate way. Many small churches and family businesses are run this way, with loose controls over who can deposit or spend. However, as a company grows, the chance you'll hire an unethical individual also grows. At a certain scale it is almost certain that a worker will steal some money, if they have the chance to do so. So a company must impose rules about handling money, and there needs to be a process for paying bills, with someone authorized to write checks and use the company credit cards. This is the beginning of your financial bureaucracy, and the tight limit on who holds the authority to spend is the beginning of hierarchy in this area."

"Is this a bad thing? Again, you'll confuse yourself if you think about this in terms of good or bad. Just focus on your goals. What strengths do you want to build into your organization?"

"Nowadays, there is a widespread idea that bureaucracy makes an organization rigid. But consider the ways that a well-designed bureaucracy for money control can make your organization more flexible. If you decide to keep your money control bureaucracy small then you'll also need to keep your purchasing process simple, perhaps by centralizing all purchasing decisions in the hands of the CEO or CFO. That one individual then becomes a choke point that limits progress – nothing can get done until they find time to pay some bills and buy some necessary materials or services. And there is an obvious limit on how much the company can grow when the authority to pay a bill is so limited. But even when the money handling bureaucracy grows to three or four people, that’s still not enough to oversee complex spending patterns, so your company will still be forced to follow simple and inflexible rules. By contrast, what if you wanted to decentralize the power to make purchases? What if you wanted to empower each team with the ability to make whatever purchases they felt they needed, up to some reasonable limit? That would make your organization much more flexible, but it also makes it more difficult to track the money, and therefore it requires a larger bureaucracy for tracking each dollar. My point is, the larger bureaucracy can actually help enable some kinds of decentralized decision making, and thus improve the agility of the organization. A growing bureaucracy does not automatically equal growing inflexibility, rather, the whole point is to try to maintain flexibility at scale."

An excerpt from:

"Don't make a fetish of having flat organization"

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/dont-make-a-fetish-of-havin...

⬐ njarboe

Maybe term limits for all government employees. 10 years and you are out. Of course then you would likely end up with tons of former government employees working as contractors to the government. Ban that next? This is a hard problem to solve with rules and laws instead of culture.

⬐ lkrubner

If we want good government, then we need civil servants who are willing to work their whole careers in government. If we want good military officers then we need people who will devote their whole life to the military. If we want good park maintenance we should hope for people who are willing to live their whole lives as park rangers. If we want accurate budget projections, we need accountants and economists who are willing to commit their whole lives to understanding the relationship between government policy, taxes, and the results on the budget.

Term limits won't get us there. We need to go in the other direction.

⬐ anamax

> If we want good government, then we need civil servants who are willing to work their whole careers in government.

Working for a long time on a given problem may make one competent, but it doesn't make one good.

⬐ xanaxagoras

That's an interesting idea and it makes a certain kind of sense, but I would hate to be 17 though when my senator gets elected and be stuck with someone I hate an didn't vote for until I'm 32.

⬐ lkrubner

That's just it though, once we start considering how to fix one issue, we realize that a particular design decision is part of a wider architecture, and it's impossible to change the one design decision without undermining the whole architecture. It's like software, in a sense, that if you try to quickly patch a system, with no regard for the assumptions of the system, you will end up with tech debt. That implies that actually fixing the problems with our democracy requires a hard re-think of certain fundamentals. If you're at all interested, I plan to spend the next year writing about this issue:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/what-i-hope-to-prove

⬐ dragonwriter

> That's just it though, once we start considering how to fix one issue, we realize that a particular design decision is part of a wider architecture, and it's impossible to change the one design decision without undermining the whole architecture

'Sokay, the architecture is fundamentally flawed, in part because it was designed when less was known about the pragmatics of representative democracy because of less extensive experience and no systematic research and analysis, but also because in some parts it was designed with bad purpose (notably, entrenching chattel slavery.)

Undermining the whole architecture ought to be the goal.

⬐ lkrubner

Designing a new architecture should also be a goal, otherwise we will end up in that limbo where the old system has been destroyed but the new system has not yet been built. From what I've read in history books, such transitions are uncomfortable.

⬐ hobs

The claim is that civil servants are the bad guys and yet somehow people we make into civil servants would somehow "fight for us" - its the same line of bullshit that politicians have been hawking for decades in America.

I'm an outsider! They yell, as they have private meetings for billions.

Pelosi has been in office for 18 terms... so how hasn't she been able to "fix the system"?

⬐ throwaway6734

Because one individual rep has limited power? This is a positive thing and not a negative

⬐ tharne

Pelosi is the Speaker, not some backbencher with one vote. She has enormous power, perhaps only second to the President.

⬐ dariusj18

It depends on what you mean by power. She has only as much power as her caucus will afford her. The role of Speaker has it's limits, and she's not really popular enough in party politics to sway the zeitgeist.

⬐ dariusj18

No, the claim is that civil servants are not directly responsible to the constituency. Like it or not, Representatives are elected every two years by their constituents. Representatives get to do what they want as long as their constituency is ok with it (within the bounds of their own body's rules, which they get to vote on)

⬐ hobs

Gerrymandered districts and two party politics where the other guy is the worse guy conspires pretty well to make sure this never happens.

⬐ dariusj18

Gerrymandering is an issue, but it's actually the solution to greater problems. Gerrymandering itself is performed by elected officials who, again, are responsible to their constituency. The practice can be seem undemocratic, but the two party system is an eventuality, if one party starts gaining too much power and popularity then people will just start joining that party which will create a schism which will in turn create another party. We cannot guard against a two party system.

⬐ bumby

That implies what, though? That the people get the government they deserve due to their unwillingness to learn and vote people out of office?

⬐ dariusj18

Or they get the government they want, or they don't get the government that they don't want. The later seems more often to be the way people vote.

⬐ skeeter2020

Right now we get that with the huge advantage incumbents have over any challengers.

⬐ lkrubner

If legislators need long terms to provide good government, but they have unfair advantages at re-election, then the solution would be very long terms that are also single term. Perhaps a legislator is elected for 18 years (the amount of time that the top judges serve in Britain), but is only allowed to serve one term. So there are no re-elections. The legislator has one long term to do some good, and then they are gone.

Some people dislike the idea of legislators serving long terms. I've always wondered why, exactly, we are comfortable with judges serving long terms, but not legislators.

⬐ mindslight

Long single terms would remove the lone check of the ballot box. Get in, and then shamelessly profit for an 18 year term. Maybe it would be better because a newcomer might produce a year or two of honest work at the start of their term, but more likely they'd be coming from a lower office where they learned to be thoroughly corrupt.

What's really needed is an end to backwards plurality voting and monopolistic primaries - have one big runoff vote. Make voting for better candidates not be at odds with accepting the safe option. Of course no politician is going to support this, as marketing themselves as the lesser of two evils has become the entirety of their promotion.

Furthermore, get rid of terms and have every single office on the ballot every single year, or better yet every quarter. This would make it much harder to spend overwhelmingly on campaigns (since the campaign would never end). It would also provide a stage for challengers to gain momentum organically rather than this long-iterated process where a challenger becomes viable in one cycle only to be forgotten the next time.

⬐ JJMcJ

It also tends to empower lobbyists, not in the sense of elected officials needing money for campaigns, but the officials and their staffs lack knowledge and sophistication on many issues.

⬐ mcguire

Is this based on real data, or is it just theoretical?

Electing Senators for life is essentially what we have now, and that seems to be working spectacularly.

⬐ lkrubner

The research on this has built up over the last 120 years and Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels survey most of that, starting with the critics of Progressive Era reforms, and moving up to modern studies of situations where the public has made poor choices because the voters do not understand the issues.

⬐ Wistar

Well, it'd certainly reduce the amount of time spent by politicians on getting re-elected.

⬐ lkrubner

Which could be a good thing. See the book "10% Less Democracy":

https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/15...

⬐ 0xdeadbeefbabe

40 to 50 years is still greater than 15 though isn't it?

⬐ lkrubner

True, though the ratio of 15 to 45 is better than the ratio of 2 to 45. I'm assuming there is some law of diminishing returns here, that hasn't set in at 2 or 4 years, but has set in by 15 years. In other words, a politician who has to run for office every 2 years is powerless in the face of civil servants, whereas a political who runs for office every 15 years definitely has the time needed to force a showdown with civil servants, whenever civil servants are acting in a rogue manner.

⬐ dragonwriter

> True, though the ratio of 15 to 45 is better than the ratio of 2 to 45.

Senate terms are 6 years, not 2.

⬐ bumby

Are we still talking about Pelosi? She’s not a Senator

⬐ dragonwriter

> Are we still talking about Pelosi? She’s not a Senator

We’re talking about the suggestion “if every Senator were elected for 15 years...

Which, yes, was an odd suggestion in this thread for the reason you point out, sure.

⬐ bumby

Thanks for clarifying, it was a bit hard for me to follow on mobile

⬐ dragonwriter

> If you want democratically elected representatives to be able to gain power over the machinery of government, then you should advocate for longer terms, without limits

Sure, but long terms make the democratically elected representatives are less representative of the public will because of lack of immediate accountability.

What would be better is current terms, absence of term limits, and candidate-centered proportional—e.g., by single transferrable vote (STV)—elections in multimember districts (say, up to 5 member districts for the House, two-member for the Senate by putting those from the same state in the same class and electing them together), so that typically there is some choice at the general election within parties (e.g., a party with an incumbent but not all the seats available would usually be incentivized to run at least one more candidate to contest for a potential additional seat) and more viable parties, so that you have both accountability and representatives that are durable in office if they retain popular support.

> If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get better government.

If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we get government even more detached from the popular will, both legislatively, executively (because of the Senates veto of top executive appointments), and in judicial selection.

And the reduced accountability would supercharge corruption, too.

⬐ lkrubner

"we get government even more detached from the popular will"

Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels present an abundance of evidence that there is no popular will. The public does not understand the issues. The voters do not know what they want. Achen and Bartels also make the interesting argument that when there is more than one issue (more than one dimension) it becomes difficult to build a 51% coalition that also has 51% support on every issue, and where there are, say, 100 issues, it becomes almost mathematically impossible to build a 51% coalition that also holds the popular position on every issue. Put differently, to win elections, politicians must advocate for some deeply unpopular issues. This is the most important thing to understand if we are going to understand "Why elections do not bring about responsive government." (the subtitle of the book).

⬐ dragonwriter

> Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels present an abundance of evidence that there is no popular will.

If one takes that seriously, the solution is to abandon elections and the pretense of democracy entirely.

Arend Lijphart, on the other hand, has shown that there is a public will, people do know what they want, and that democratic systems with greater electoral proportionality deliver it to them better and make them happier with government.

⬐ lkrubner

"the solution is to abandon elections and the pretense of democracy entirely"

That does not follow at all. The benefits of democracy have been well-documented -- as well documented as the fact that the voters don't understand the issues and do not know what they want. The evidence on both points is overwhelming. Those facts are not in contradiction to each other, rather, it is clear that the benefits of democracy do not come from the voters. The benefits must come from somewhere else:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...

⬐ lkrubner

Of course, it would be possible to solve this particular problem (multi-issue voting lacking a 51% equilibrium) if voters had one vote for every issue. Not that there is any way to know how many issues a voter might regard as important, but giving voters more than one vote, and allowing the election of more than one candidate, does solve some of the mathematical problems that Achen and Bartels raise.

On the other issue, that the public is ignorant of most issues, remains a real concern.

I too grudgingly, fitfully made the worldview transition from "platforms" to "identity".

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691178240/

--

The silver lining is that issue-based efforts have risen to fill the vacuum. I'm as partisan as they come, and I think this is a huge leap forward.

If we (USA) replace FPTP with Approval Voting and Proportional Representation, perhaps the policy-based coalition forming will transition back from 501c3's to campaigns & caucuses.