I regularly reach out to my representatives in writing. Nothing ever comes of it. None of the issues I bring up are ever brought into discussion. Fake job postings, and interferance in labor relations have been a recent subject that only receives boilerplate responses. No action has been taken, its been 5 years since I started doing this which is an appropriate measure of sampling time to show trends and inform on larger systems, though 10 years is better.
I vote every time I have a chance. The problem with voting systems is first, the money vote (tweedism) just to get on a ballot. It's a filter and acts to make the system captive to those with concentrated wealth, by limiting those who can successfully run.
Second, the concentration of representative power in few representatives leads to dynamics where many are not represented simply because there are too many competing interests within that group (as opposed to an upper limit per representative like it used to be @80,000).
Seniority by committee limits power to only those who get re-elected regularly (further concentrating power).
Third, the voting as a plurality which is also exclusionary. You can skew any system holding at least 66 percent of the vote.
It is also an all or nothing vote (not ranked choice), where inherently when a representative can't win the majority, none of the people who voted for them technically have much representation among other competing and more favorable members of that group who voted for that person.
Finally,
> Please don't do this. Its one step below analogising petty complaints to Auschwitz.
These are not petty complaints. They are fundamental and foundational to the functional operation of any feedback system. Its based solidly in actual history, not hyperbole. Its not funny... at all. Archer is meant to be absurd and funny; its not a fair characterization or comparison.
There are many experts that are claiming the same thing because rational observable indicators are all showing that this is a growing existential problem. Rome fell largely because of corruption alongside external invasion. There are important lesson's which could be learned but are largely being ignored.
The dynamics are the same with most Empires (where a country seeks hegemony), and the majority of people have not been adequately educated to be able to even hold to rational conversation, instead putting forth beliefs in luei of observable facts being confident in their blindness.
That too is a problem because our enemies take advantage of that blindness.
If you've read any history about the Stasi, you'd know the systems they used to disunite the population, most of those system's have been used by government's today. They also enrolled others in a constant fear of betrayal by those close, and that's very similar to all the embedded devices (where a digital automata/soldier is embedded in each household spying on them).
These things are serious, and deserve rational respect and following rational rules to have any discussion.