#democracyreform — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #democracyreform, aggregated by home.social.
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RE: https://bsky.brid.gy/convert/ap/at://did:plc:4sivhpo2an6off6obxrbc3oo/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3mem2agghb42h -
Surviving the 21st century according to John MacGregor https://bsky.app/profile/johnmacgregor.bsky.social #auspol #democracyreform #democracy
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I'm thinking of doing my own poll to see how people feel about their city councilmembers. Do they even know who they are, have they ever heard from them, and maybe whether or not they represent our values? Maybe approve or disapprove if their handling of the city budget (we are ~$10M deficit).
Can I just do a Google form and send the link to groups that I know? I can probably reach a couple hundred people (City population is 80k).
Any advice?
#Indivisible #CityCouncil #DemocracyReform -
Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and US senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.
Jimmy Carter, 39th US president (2015) #anarchism #democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol -
The alliance of money and the interests that it represents, the access that it affords to those who have it at the expense of those who don’t, the agenda that it changes or sets by virtue of its power, is steadily silencing the voice of the vast majority of Americans.
Senator John Kerry (2013) #anarchism #democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol -
American democracy has been hacked... [Congress] is now incapable of passing laws without permission from the corporate lobbies and other special interests that control their campaign finances.
Al Gore (2013)
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol -
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president (1912)
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol -
Of the two great 20th Century forces to escape obsolescence in the 21st, it’s the corporation that has come to dominate democracy, and not the reverse. This is probably because one has been allowed to evolve, and the other has not.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
The alliance of money and the interests that it represents, the access that it affords to those who have it at the expense of those who don’t, the agenda that it changes or sets by virtue of its power, is steadily silencing the voice of the vast majority of Americans.
Senator John Kerry (2013)
#anarchism #democracy #democracyreform #politics #uspolitics -
The global polling organisation Worldpublicopinion.org found the belief that government is run by and for ‘a few big interests’ is pervasive in France (59%), Britain (60%), Argentina (71%), Nigeria and South Korea (78%), the United States (80%), Mexico (83%), and Ukraine (84%)—all ‘democracies’.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
For a well-functioning society, we need not to swing right or left: we require a political system by which informed majorities can craft a policy mosaic. Our present, inefficient form of democracy is likely to be replaced by authoritarianism, which is increasingly efficient. Reinventing democracy is not only desirable: it’s a condition for its survival.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
Western voters now understand that the currency in which corporations support
politicians is money, and the currency in which they are repaid is policy. The result is a disenchanted populace, and a professional political class that rules the democratic void.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
The hallmark division in modern society is probably not ‘left-right’, but the gap between ‘public preference’ and ‘public policy’—what the public wants from government and what it gets.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
Self-government was innate to human societies for hundreds of millennia. It’s the human norm. We now have the tools to do it at scale. Democratic reform should top the list of every reformer, activist and idealist, as it carries within it the seed of all reform.
John MacGregor
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
A tool like direct democracy begins as a rather dull technical matter, but downstream (so a lot of data tells us) it manifests as prosperity and health; as less war and inequality; as happier societies and stronger families.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
Thanks to the labors of many, there are democratic tools at our disposal by which to make the sprawling Earth governable. One of these tools is direct democracy. Just as deliberation cuts the Gordian knot of dispersion, so does direct democracy undo the iron law of oligarchy.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
The world's three most populous countries - China, India and the USA - now all seem to have authoritarian rule. I choose to believe that democratic reform could blossom in a young country like Australia. We already have a few safeguards in place in our system, like compulsory and preferential voting, but it needs a wholesale reform. I hope it doesn't take the threat of a local trump to force change, but it might.
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics -
The record of our time on Earth tells us that, under the right conditions, we’re a co-operative, egalitarian and amiable-enough species. We are highly social; we value individual autonomy; we don’t have much time for leaders.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
'I would argue that four spheres—monopoly media, political money, skewed electoral machinery and civic alienation—are democracy’s present-day choke points. They’re not the only impediments to a happy society; they may not even be the most important. But they’re at the top of the chain of causation.'
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
The value of Swiss direct democracy lies not in granting every citizen’s every wish, but in assuring the citizen that, even if she disagrees with it, the collective will Is being realised. … The Swiss motto is that government should be ‘as centralized as necessary—and as decentralized as possible’.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that ‘corruption is widespread throughout government in this country’. … The same perception is shared throughout the world’s democracies—France (64%), Israel (74%), Taiwan (77%), Poland (78%), Czech Republic (83%), Spain (84%), Portugal (86%) and Lithuania (90%).
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
'Representative government—what we have been taught to call democracy—was, in short, an industrial technology for assuring inequality. Representative government was pseudorepresentative.' Alvin Toffler,
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
... A long book could be written on what the Founders got wrong
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
In the democratization of our societies, proportional representation will play an essential part. Smaller groupings of voters will find representation; smaller parties will get a chance to prove their mettle; and people of great value, who would otherwise have remained unknown, are likely to take the political stage.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
'When I was a graduate student in the 1960s, I was an admirer of the British electoral system—first past the post or FPTP. But I have gradually come to the conclusion that proportional representation, or PR, is the better option. This has also been the trend among political scientists generally. And the empirical evidence is now overwhelmingly strong in support of this conclusion.' Arend Lijphart
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The goal of proportional representation is for the proportion of seats a party gains in a legislature to be as close as possible to the proportion of votes it gains from the electorate. If it wins, say, 33% of the votes, it should win about 33% of the seats.
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
Politics need not, indeed must not, be a zero-sum game. The idea that ‘winner takes all’ has no place in a democracy, because if losers lose all they will opt out of the democratic
game. - Margaret Stimmann Branson, Center for Civic Education
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
The notion of a single person being the head of all branches of government is inimical to democracy itself. Democracy is about sharing power, not concentrating it.
John MacGregor
The Mechanics of Changing the World
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/ -
A study of fifty-three democratic countries conducted in the early 1990s found that democracy survived sixty-one percent of the time in parliamentary systems and twenty percent of the time in presidential systems. In other words, a parliamentary democracy was roughly three times more likely to survive. Oona Hathaway
The Mechanics of Changing the World by John MacGregor
#democracy #democracyreform #politics #auspol #uspolitics
https://fantasticalfiction4.wordpress.com/2024/09/15/democracy-re-drafted/