<story><title>Confessions of a Congressman</title><url>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7978823/congress-secrets/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IkmoIkmo</author><text>Agreed, the US doesn&amp;#x27;t rank first in virtually any metric that citizens would consider to be desirable (like healthcare, education, safety, freedom of the press etc). And it&amp;#x27;s no more democratic than say most European states.&lt;p&gt;Taking into context its size is a whole different matter, though. It&amp;#x27;s relatively easier to build an awesome small country (say the Netherlands where I&amp;#x27;m writing from) than a massive union of states spanning multiple time zones and climates. Perhaps if the US is compared to the entirety of the EU, then Congress and the American system of governing can be said to be one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, experiment in government in history &lt;i&gt;at that scale&lt;/i&gt; (although I&amp;#x27;d much prefer Europe to the US even on average). But that&amp;#x27;s more a function of it being the only 300m+ country in the world that is also rich than it being the best among many of them.</text></item><item><author>KwanEsq</author><text>&amp;gt;We are still, despite our shortcomings, the most successful experiment in self-government in history.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to know what metric they are judging that by.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bostik</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;no more democratic than say most European states&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I may get flamed or burned for saying this, but I believe we (in Europe and US) are currently pretty close to the ancient form of Greek democracy.&lt;p&gt;In the ancient Greece, the vote was a privilege of the free men. The definition of &amp;quot;free man&amp;quot; on the other hand was not quite what we think of in a modern society. To start with, only a few percent of the population actually was eligible to participate. [0] To qualify as a free man, you needed to have position and&amp;#x2F;or wealth. Usually the two came together.&lt;p&gt;After all, what good would it do to allow plebs to vote? They could vote against your agenda! Better to control the access to the vote by simply ensuring that at least majority of the voting people already share a certain appreciation for the status quo.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But, but but... We can vote however we want&amp;quot; you say. Sorry, no you can&amp;#x27;t. Thanks to the nature of the system, you get to vote between two or three nearly identical alternatives. Outliers will not be even put on the ballot. (I think California is an exception, which introduces its own downsides.)&lt;p&gt;The choices on the vote are in practice dictated by those with the most power or money. Lawrence Lessig outlined this situation with his only slightly satirical TED talk - a country of Lesters. [1, 2]&lt;p&gt;But back to terminology. If the power is held by those with wealth, and decisions are made purely among the people who have the most to financially gain from them, what do you call such a system? Is there even a descriptive term for a mix of oligarchy and plutocracy?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The True Greek Democracy&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;0: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Participation_and_exclusion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Athenian_democracy#Participatio...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/03/how-we-can-make-elections-about-the-people-not-just-funders-an-excerpt-of-lawrence-lessigs-new-ted-book-lesterland/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.ted.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;how-we-can-make-elections-abo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Confessions of a Congressman</title><url>http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7978823/congress-secrets/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IkmoIkmo</author><text>Agreed, the US doesn&amp;#x27;t rank first in virtually any metric that citizens would consider to be desirable (like healthcare, education, safety, freedom of the press etc). And it&amp;#x27;s no more democratic than say most European states.&lt;p&gt;Taking into context its size is a whole different matter, though. It&amp;#x27;s relatively easier to build an awesome small country (say the Netherlands where I&amp;#x27;m writing from) than a massive union of states spanning multiple time zones and climates. Perhaps if the US is compared to the entirety of the EU, then Congress and the American system of governing can be said to be one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, experiment in government in history &lt;i&gt;at that scale&lt;/i&gt; (although I&amp;#x27;d much prefer Europe to the US even on average). But that&amp;#x27;s more a function of it being the only 300m+ country in the world that is also rich than it being the best among many of them.</text></item><item><author>KwanEsq</author><text>&amp;gt;We are still, despite our shortcomings, the most successful experiment in self-government in history.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to know what metric they are judging that by.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theiostream</author><text>I wouldn&amp;#x27;t say the US being rich is a question of government organization, rather of not having been a colony whose sole purpose was to export raw materials.&lt;p&gt;Higher dimensions also means more tax collection, which could be perfectly invested into making the standard of living of Americans better (it seems absurd to me that you don&amp;#x27;t have any public universal healthcare). The government prefers to invest 50% of it in Defense though. Consequence (also) of arms industry lobbyists and geopolitical strategy etc. but certainly not of size.</text></comment>