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0 points__MatrixMan__1y ago0 comments

To be listened to, rather than to be told what to care about, and to have those concerns make it to competent people with the power to do something about them.

But it's not really compatible with a system where one person represents millions. You'd need something recursive such that no person represents more than a hundred or so, that way there's time to circle back and explain why certain complaints aren't being addressed this cycle and such. You know, responsibility of leadership to the people.

It's also not really compatible with a system where your representative for foo-type issues must also be your representative for bar-type issues, because "competent people" is too broad of a category to be useful.

How to get there from here? I'm not sure but it seems like it'll require a more significant discontinuity than we've seen so far.

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disgruntledphd21y ago· 4 in thread

Repeal the act capping house representatives to 435. The house then expands massively and you get more representative government.

__MatrixMan__OP1y ago

I think the fix is a more drastic refactor than that. We need more depth in this tree. Much more depth.

I imagine a sort of cultural "open enrollment" period during which anyone can mark anyone else as their representative. Perhaps we create four or five categories that we need representation in (foreign policy, infrastructure, education, monetary policy... something like that), so you gotta then find four or five representatives which you personally know and trust.

Then we follow the directed representation graph to its terminal nodes (or cycles) and those are the representatives that we ask to get together and get things done. Those are our leaders. They meet only sometimes, the rest of the year they spend working with their constituents.

chgs1y ago

So you have 6,000 representatives, which is about the same ratio as the population back in 1790.

What does each one do? What agency does each have?

They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000 hour working year.

panick21_1y ago

What would happen is that representatives are more locally focused on their districts and would vote in larger 'sub'-parties.

In a single seat district system, increase in seats its also proven to improve representation for minorities.

I don't think the expansion by itself is a fix-all solution.

One of the issues is that you have many single issue districts and those that get elected can vote whatever they want on everything else. That is both good and bad in some situations.

> They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000 hour working year.

Congress isn't about making public speeches, its about legislating in congress. Turning congress into a TV show is part of the issue in the first place.

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disgruntledphd21y ago

The point is to make it easier for people to hassle their representative, and to make it feasible for them to actually understand what the people they represent actually want.

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