Scott Adams Proposes a Fourth Branch of Government

LoLobey writes "Dilbert creator Scott Adams is proposing a fourth branch of government in the WSJ. He describes it as 'smallish and economical, operating independently, with a mission to build and maintain a friendly user interface for citizens to manage their government.' It's a humorous article with some interesting ideas including internet access as a constitutional right and a constitutional ban on all election contributions for any candidate that polls above 10%. He's primarily proposing a method of getting verifiably accurate information on various issues to aid voters in making decisions, but despairs on his own blog about reader's comments on the article."

Comments

Better idea

[MrEricSir]

How about getting rid of corruption? Corporate donations, professional lobbyists, etc.

Just make it flat out illegal, and consider it treason.

Re:Better idea

[Jeng]

Isn't corruption already illegal?

Also, can you please point out an example of a government that is less corruptible than our own?

Re:Better idea

[chainsaw1]

Assuming "our own" is the United States, there are twenty according to this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_index

Re:Better idea

[Riceballsan]

How will this solve anything. Candidate approaches, gets donations from ____ corporation to help him win, makes changes beneficial to ____ corporation, finishes his term, goes to work for ____ corporation with a huge sign on bonus.

Re:Better idea

[Jeng]

Nope, all you do is turn elections into lottery's for people who are backed by corporations while also making sure that those whom get elected this way don't know enough about how the government works to be effective on their own so they end up being reliant on the lobbyists.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't corruption already illegal?

Also, can you please point out an example of a government that is less corruptible than our own?

If by "our own" you mean the government of the United States of America, then I can point to several less corruptible governments including:

Denmark
New Zealand
Singapore
Finland
Sweden
Canada
Netherlands
Australia
Switzerland
Norway

While I might be taking a bit of liberty in the interpretation (this is Slashdot after all), this is based on Transparency International's 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index (http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results)

"The 2010 CPI measures the degree to which public sector corruption is perceived to exist in 178 countries around the world"

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems rather short sighted to me.

What if you have someone who is absolutely brilliant at legislating, and does a great job of it? "Sorry, your 4 years are up, back to Kinko's you go, now it's time for some horridly corrupt and inept person to take office and undo all the good work you've done!"

How about, instead, we make it our goal to have a logical, educated, informed populace who evaluates the past performance of each candidate against his or her own goals, the requirements of the position they were in, and the capabilities of the person running against them, then choose the best person for the job? How about we require some minimal level of civic literacy before we allow people to vote?

Yeah, I know, that'd require work, and all the idiots spouting off about how shitty Obama or Bush are would have to actually know something about the government before they could take part in the election of representatives, which means that somebody somewhere will come up with a reason why the plan is racist, classist, sexist, or sexual-identity-ist, because how can you expect [poor|brown|gay|female|non-english-speaking] people to know something about the democracy before they can take part in it.

It's so much easier to just check the name with the little (R) or (D) next to it, because that's the way every member of your family has voted since your great grandpappy came back from the Great War, right?

Re:Better idea

[Sentrion]

I have the opposite idea. No term limits and no re-elections. Every politician stays in office for as long as he or she is doing the right thing. Those who believe he should be removed from office can cast a vote to remove him or her from office, but this vote can be rescinded and re-applied as often as desired, giving the official the chance to comply with the demands of his constituents. Once the number of recall votes exceeds 50% of the number of active registered voters under his jurisdiction then the politician is put on notice that he may be removed from office and replaced by any challenger that accumulates 50% of the number of eligible votes from the registered voters. There would be no planned election days. Every voter could back a candidate at any time and keep his vote behind that candidate for as long as he would choose, and could change his preference at any time. Undecided voters could choose neutrality for any office they had the right to vote for, but then they would have to accept the decision of the active voters who backed actual candidates. Voters would be required to renew their registration annually, but not all on the same date - but more like renewing the inspection sticker on an automobile. This would weed out citizens that were no longer actively engaged in the democratic process. In this sense voters would maintain and continuously update their registration more like maintaining a web based profile rather than casting ballots at the end of a campaign.

The problem with single terms is that once in office there is no incentive to follow the will of the people. Once in office a single term candidate could push his own radical agenda or the agenda of his future employer. There are already too many bureaucrats that take cushy jobs at the companies they were appointed to regulate after they leave office. The same is even true of judges that take on higher paying jobs as arbitrators working for private arbitration firms. These judges spend their years in office making decisions in favor of the businesses the judges hope to work for as arbitrators. Their decision record is more effective than any job interview alone could ever be.

Can I propose another branch too?

[characterZer0]

The Sanity Check Branch.

Composed of 251 adult citizens with college educations (5 from each state, 1 from DC) selected at random for 1 year terms. Each law after presidential signing or Congressional override must be read aloud and provided in writing to the branch. They vote on it in secret. If it does not get 60% of the votes, it dies.

Re:Can I propose another branch too?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I suspect that it would be physically impossible to read every vote aloud in a reasonable (50 hour work week) time frame.

If it can't be read aloud in 50 hours, it's almost certainly bad law.

If Congress is passing so many laws that they all can't be read aloud during the Congressional Term, then Congress is passing a lot of what are, almost certainly, bad laws.

One easy check for a bad law - the people who voted for/against it haven't read it.

you can't make voters care

[a2wflc]

Unless you can find a way to make voters care, nothing else matters. I'm afraid the UI they want has 2 big buttons "R" and "D" for voting and discussion boards where only like-minded people can post.

Re:you can't make voters care

[0racle]

Further, the R/D view is part of the reason voters don't care. It creates an US vs. Them scenario for people, I vote for my team and people who vote for the other are wrong. No thought, no discussion of issues has to occur, just keep the adversarial appearance.

The two party system in the US has broken down to not being about issues, but about the two parties themselves.

Jesus Christ

[SlippyToad]

Adams was at one time a funny guy, but he's long past his sell date. His cartoons are uniformly boring and predictable.

And his ideas about anything outside of mocking office stupidity are simply breathtaking for their sheer wilful ignorance. I've read some of his other political blatherings. I filed them in the same bird cage where I keep David Brooks' meaningless self-aggrandizing bullshit, which is piled on top of the now thank-fucking-god-that-stupid-bastard-is-dead David Broder's similar excrescences.

God save us from over-wealthy fools who think that money equals intelligence.

Re:Better idea, not

[codex24]

Legally-enforced prohibition never solved anything. Look what it has done for alcohol, narcotics, and traitors. They've been reduced, but haven't gone away. If you want to eliminate something then you need to destroy its habitat, and the natural habitat of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex predator is the unchecked flow of money that drives the current political process. As Scott alludes, Campaign Finance Reform (http://www.publicampaign.org/) is the single most important political issue in this country for any party, persuasion, or constituency. Our current system is built on the premise that money is equivalent to "speech", and that since speech cannot be restricted (1st Amendment), neither can financial support of campaigns. This is no more true than the idea that a corporation is a "person". Unlike money, speech is effective for its quality, not its quantity.

Re:We already have a fourth branch of government

[NeutronCowboy]

You know what the press does? It creates content that sells. If the public at large will only read which senator slept with which secretary, then those are the stories we will get.

The press fails us because we fail ourselves. For the same reason that in a democracy, we get the government we deserve, in a capitalist economy, we get the press we deserve.