American Nations: An attempt to hack (i.e., fix) American political gridlock

A thing <i>is</i> what it <i>does</i>. What you label it with isn't anywhere near as important as what it <i>does</i>.<p>In practice, these "nations" appear to be nothing more than special interest groups. Special interest groups already tend to expand well beyond their original goals in the political arena. That doesn't work because the active leadership takes over and speaks for the public; why these would avoid that, I don't know. So, the solution to too many special interest groups is more special interest groups.<p>Also, I think he uses "Tea Party" like bogeymen. To the extent the movement involves cutting government down, it will actually increase the scope of agreement within the government by cutting down the number of domains in which there is disagreement. In fact, my personal prescription for where we are right now is for a significant return of power to the states. Some things have to be national-scale policy, but the list is much shorter than you think. We don't need a national-scale health care plan. Many of our states are larger than European countries that manage. State plans already exist. We don't need national agreement on any given social issue. If we weren't centralizing all our power, we wouldn't have to spend so much time arguing what the central policy should be.<p>The other major problem these sort of idealistic ideas have is that it basically promises everybody that it will bring the world closer to their viewpoint, but that can't actually happen. Right now, for better or worse, our government is more liberal than our population, so if your plan is to push our government yet more liberal by empowering the population, err, well, you might want to rethink that plan.

Instead of donating $1 to some guy on the Internet who made a cartoon, how about running for local office in your township right now? You might be surprised how easy it is to get involved in government at the level where most real decisions are made (the school board, planning boards, etc). The overwhelming majority of people in your township pay zero attention to local governance.<p>Which "tipping point" is more interesting: the one where Internet cartoon guy gets $67,000 and a long list of names on a web page, or the one where several hundred people from Hacker News end up on school boards?<p>As I get older, I find myself making friends with more and more people who have gotten off their asses and actually done this. I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment.

THE ROLE OF FIRST NATION<p>Mancur Olson suggested offering generic benefits to attract people to his large groups.<p>The difficulty in that is where do these benefits come from? Small groups don't have the resources to put that together. So we came up with First Nation - something large and stable enough to put together core packages of benefits for any other Nation to offer to their members.<p>Then there's the problem of what groups should be able to get them? A group of 10 people? 1000? 10,000? First nation would have to set some kind of criteria.<p>It's a non-profit. There are a dozen ways you can set it up to avoid it becoming a king-maker.<p>We realized we could also use First Nation as a Watchdog group. They're not necessary for this part of the system to work, but it could be effective.<p>Congress voted on a financial overhaul bill last week, for example. First Nation would have polled the other Nations to see how they felt about what needs to be done, what they'd like to see.<p>The financial industry had lots of lobbyists involved in the bill, but there were few, if any, representatives from consumer protection groups or similar. In this scenario, I'm pretty sure at least one or two Nations would propose some new ideas or have some comment on what was passed.<p>They'd try to convince other Nations to lend support. This "encompassing coalition" of Nations could sway the direction of financial overhaul to something that's beneficial to the larger public rather than the bank lobby.<p>SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS<p>These aren't special interest groups.<p>I'd join a Science Nation, for example. What's their agenda in financial regulation? None. But I bet some of the people there might have some interesting and good perspective on what should be done. These are "general interest groups". If the bill being discussed were about funding a supercollider, on the other hand, then I think you could say they're biased. And the other Nations would know it.<p>GRIDLOCK<p>That's a terrible argument. If your car can only go 10 mph, then it might help you avoid fatal crashes, but it also makes it difficult to go anywhere. Take Immigration Reform. The system has been broken for 20 years. Did you see the bit in the comic about why negative campaigning works in a winner-take-all system? Immigration hasn't been fixed because right now all a politician needs to do is discredit an idea instead of proposing a new one. There is no "win" for anyone who proposes an idea.<p>WHAT'S THE 67,000 FOR?<p>Fair question. I'm running for office and using the campaign to pitch an idea that might help fix the system a little bit. Even if you don't buy Olson's ideas, the <i>worst</i> that happens is that you end up with groups that offer benefits similar to AARPs. I do need to fund my campaign. I didn't think asking for a dollar was so onerous that it would raise suspicion of impropriety.<p>TEA PARTY<p>Well, they really <i>are</i> bogeymen. :-)

Yes, it would start with lots of "Nations", each offering different benefits and having different ideas. Sounds great.<p>But then over time, the "First Nation" would start to think that every Nation should provide some obvious basic benefits. Obviously if a Nation doesn't provide healthcare benefits that's a pretty crappy Nation, right?<p>So First Nation would decide that all Nations have to provide healthcare benefits. Then there would be a big fight between the First Nationers and the Nations-rights-ers.<p>Then someone would come up with some crazy idea to end disagreement between the Nation's once and for all and ask everyone to donate a dollar.

note, the following is from the curmudgeonly/cynical side of my personality.<p>Gridlock is a feature not a defect. Gridlock is what keeps politicians from running roughshod over the public. Have you really considered how much damage a government unhampered by gridlock could do? I mean yes, they might slip something good in there once in a while but really...<p>ask not what your country can do for you<p>nor ask what can you do for your country<p>ask instead what can you do to keep your country from "doing" to you.<p>vote gridlock!

This loss of common ground has happened before, in the mid-1800's. Some of these issues were resolved at the end of the Civil War (e.g. states' rights [0]). But not all of them: when some state legislatures were unable to choose U.S. senators, the vote had to go to the people (the 17th amendment to the U.S. constitution) [1].<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_rights" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#States.27_ri...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#History" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...</a>

I invoke something similar to Greenspun's Tenth Rule (any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.)<p>This would be an inferior implementation of a concept of 'leave everyone the fuck alone' aka libertarianism/minarchism/what have you.

I think it's sort of interesting that the solution for the problem of all of these virtual groups splintering or again becoming polarized against each other is essentially an autocratic one. But what's to stop "First Nation" -- our virtual group philosopher king -- from becoming biased or corrupted by partisanship?

This was on HN a couple of months ago; see <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101</a> to read the previous discussion.

This cartoon is loose on the details, but I think he's just suggesting coalition governments. Lots of countries have coalition governments, and have many problems with their politics. The UK election this year resulted in a coalition government and the large parties badmounthed the idea of a coalition, claiming it was weak and unstable government. Trying to make the same thing in the USA would probably result in the same campaigning against the idea.

<i>There is no second place in the current political system.</i> That's where I see the problem. The best ideas in the world don't mean squat if you don't get elected. So if I really believed that I could make a difference I would have to beg, borrow, steal, promise, and backroom deal my way to the finish line or the other guy will. Highlander: There can be only one.<p>If I had a magic political wand, I'd make it so the top two people win with everyone getting to vote for two different people-- double sized districts represented by two people and the Senator races are for both at once. Make primaries be all party inclusive with the top four moving on to battle it out for the two winning spots.<p>More political hubub at once would compel voters to pay more attention. Extremists on both sides would look ugly in comparison to the sensible ones. And third party people with a mix of ideas might actually have a shot of getting a word in because voting for one doesn't mean risking a complete loss to your party of choice.<p>Now where did I put that magic political wand again?

Can I join more than one group? If not, does that force me to support either a Science Nation <i>or</i> a Business Nation <i>or</i> a Coffee Nation, when all might balance my opinion?<p>If I can join more than one group, does that impact the democratic principle [1] of one person - one vote? And what's to stop this becoming like the 'Like' feature on Facebook, where everyone has 100 pages they clicked to like but never think about again?<p>[1] It's a principle, though it's tough to create a level playing field in practice. For instance, in Presidential elections small states have a minimum of 3 electoral college votes, so a vote in Wyoming is worth more than a vote in Texas or New York.

Didn't we have a discussion on the dangers of tribalism just the other day <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561607</a> ? Why should it be a good idea this week just because your tribe comes with a cheap data plan and a fancy credit card?<p>And how big should these nations be? Should each be able to keep modern society running on its own, which according to some numbers cites here recently would put a lower bound of 100 million on them <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541795</a> .

there was already a war about this.<p>non-geographical based governance doesn't work unless respect for property rights is uniform...in which case the motivation to do this will be nonexistant since that is the biggest issue.

Can someone explain why his early point about having lost common ground has come about?<p>Seems likely to me that a lot of political parties might tend to come closer together over time, because they will always have the support of the extremes (ie. if the Republicans move a bit closer to centre, the hard-right conservatives might grumble a bit but won't ditch them and vote Democrat) but by shifting to more centrist policies they can potentially pick up more middle-of-the-road voters. What is happening in the US that makes the reverse true, that the parties are becoming more polarised?

So um, what 67,000 dollars actually do?

Does he really think that getting 67k people to sign up makes his proposal more significant than the tea party?<p>If so, he's too clueless to be allowed to vote. If not, he's another con man.

Gridlock is fine. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The American political system is designed to make it difficult to get anything done. In theory it works out to a limitation on the power of the government and on slim majorities.

In general when the gov't passes a bill it tries to maximize spending and minimize taxation. This generally results in a) more gov't and b) higher deficits, as long as that is the direction that congress as a whole is taking I say that gridlock is a good thing.<p>"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." - Gideon J. Tucker

So far, to fight "Special Interest Groups" we have:<p>The Bulldawg Nation.<p>The No Kill Nation (human treatment of pets)<p>Drunk Nation<p>LGBTQ Nation<p>Netroorts Nation<p>Outdoor Nation<p>A Woman's Nation<p>Elevation Nation<p>Basically Sean has created Facebook, but you give him money for his political campaign fund first.<p>That said, at least he's trying <i>something</i>.