Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
The bad news is twofold: One, the public doesn't always find out when a bill or subject is being discussed; and Two, their opinions are usually overruled by corporate influence (i.e., lobbying and outright bribes), or the subject of pork barrel politics and thereby rendered beyond the scope of debate (like burying the outlay of money for a new public golf course into the pork for a federal bridge repair spending bill that is 100% sure to pass).
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I'm pretty disheartened with politics and the public and it's a catch-22 problem to solve. You need an aware public to make the system work and only a working system will give enough incentives for the general public to be aware (approximately..).
As stated before, I live in Switzerland which is why I want to comment. Switzerland is tiny enough make a direct democracy feasible. Furthermore or maybe therefore, bills and other issues are debated quite a lot before votes are passed and there's even a dedicated and very poplular "show" specifically for debating political issues. This show is called arena (and it quite literally is...) and the center stage is taken by top politicians or otherwise central figures for the problem at hand. Around the central people, other "important" people are present. These are actual discussion and not like the US system for presidential debates. Unfortunately, you're not really accountable for what you claim to make a point and usually, the loudest person wins. Rhethoric >> content but it's better than nothing and makes more people interested in an issue.
Yet with all this, there is
still a lot of misinformation and deliberate spin. Not limited to misnaming bills to give them a different first impression, being untruthful to the press, etc. But even more importantly, it's still party-centric and not issue-centric. And party-centric means slogans over content.
With all the potential Switzerland has, it only takes a single party (SVP/Swiss People's Party) to almost ruin the system. Switzerland also has a special ruling system called
Concordance[wikipedia.org] for governing the country. For "real world" and popular topics this makes the process very resistant to industry wants (such as the moratorium for genetically-enhanced products until a government funded study completes in 2009) but if you add fear mongering, the system fails again. For virtual things, this is even more the case.
You'd need a watchful public, strict laws regulation politicians (max cap for donations and money spent, accountability, ...) and some form of authoritative source of information to counter bullshit-statistics and the like. Sort of a "ministry of truth", independent of the government like the data protection departments are. Tasks would be:
- Basic validation that some statistic or report quoted by a politician followed established scientific rules (there were horrendous bullshit "statistics" used by the SVP in Switzerland last year...). This only establishes, that a study is professional and "valid"; the contents "should" be irrelevant. Political version of the peer review system in science.
- Providing some form of an introductory and unbiased collection of information to a given topic. This would serve as starting point for a balanced discussion.
- "Monitors" claims of politicians. The point here is to make it harder for politicians to claim whatever they want to push their agenda. Classical topics would be crime rates of foreigners vs natives, immigration, claiming billions in lost revenues by industries (bold since this is relevant to the topic), etc
Some of the above may be naive to hope for and may even turn out to be dangerous if corrupted. Still, if the current system sucks enough, the above may still be a better approach, even if too idealistic.