Government 2.0, Part 1

I think the way that countries are governed is fundamentally broken. Political parties, presidents and elected officials might have made sense a hundred years ago, but it's now hopelessly inefficient.

For example, I am fiscially conservative and socially liberal. However, the party system requires you to vote for a complete package of policies; there's no way to "unbundle" them and vote just for the things you believe in.

This kind of bundling creates huge distortions in the political system, since a party can sometimes win an election simply due to a single divisive issue such as abortion or gay marriage. The idea that a country's fiscal or foreign policy can be decided based on whether a candidate believes in illegalizing abortion is ridiculous.

In the next part of the series I'll describe an alternative system of government that doesn't have this kind of problem.

Comments

[Dave Jones]

Your proposal will be interesting, I'm sure!

It can be frustrating. Politically, I would be described as a progressive populist. The last progressive populist politician to have significant influence in the U.S. government was Theodore Roosevelt! So, even though I vote, I feel disenfranchised.

At least, here in the U.S., politicians will occasionally vote against their party's line, and the head of government is often not a member of the "ruling party" -- so that helps the U.S. a little bit. As I understand it, in your homeland, politicians almost never vote against their party, so voters are really voting for a party, not a person -- is that correct?