poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (10/30/84)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA> Poli-Sci Digest Tue 30 Oct 84 Volume 4 Number 96 Corsair, n. A politician of the seas. --Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil's Dictionary Contents: Deficits Politics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tuesday, 23 October 1984 14:59:30 EDT From: Hank.Walker@cmu-cs-unh.arpa Subject: Re: deficits In a quadrillion dollar economy, our $169B deficit would be 0.0169% of the GNP instead of the maybe 3.7% of the GNP it really is. Clearly the size of a deficit doesn't matter nearly as much as its percentage of the GNP. Historical data other than GNP percentage is irrelevant (the current percentage is higher than most previous deficits). ------------------------------ Date: 25 October 1984 00:37-EDT From: James A. Cox <APPLE @ MIT-MC> Subject: republicans and taxes Spending would be lower if Reagan had gotten all the spending cuts he wanted. Also, you have to realize that Congressional (mainly Democratic) opposition to spending cuts has had a "chilling effect" in Reagan's budgets. Remember how the Congress reacted when Reagan proposed entitlement cuts in 1981? Remember how the Democrats exploited it in the 1982 election (the commerical showing the Republicans slicing up a Social Security card)? How do you think that affected Reagan's later actions? Actually, total spending is no greater now than it would have been under Carter's proposed budgets. But under Carter, you wouldn't have gotten the tax cut (okay, so it only offset other tax rises under Reagan--but you would have been /worse/ off without it). - James Cox ------------------------------ Date: 23-Oct-84 22:39 PDT From: William Daul - Augmentation Systems - McDnD <WBD.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA> Subject: The Candidates.... ...I wonder if they vote for the lesser of two evils? --Bi\\ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Oct 84 23:53:34 cst From: Mike Meyer <mtxinu!ea!mwm@Berkeley> Subject: Write-in Votes In V4 #95, someone mentioned "You an always write-in..." Sad to say, but this isn't true. In the state of Oklahoma, any marks on the ballot other than check marks in the appropriate area are considered to be "mutilation", and invalidate the ballot. The reason I bring this up is that I'm curious if any other states have similar (and unconstitutional, in my view) practices. Could you let me know (by MAIL!) if write-ins are illegal in your state? Thanx, <mike mtxinu!ea!mwm@berkeley.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 29 Oct 84 13:48:22 PST (Mon) Subject: Re: electronic democracy??? From: Martin D. Katz <katz@uci-750a> the whole POINT of a tax system is to spend your money on things that you don't want it spent on. I agree with you, but would word it differently: I thought that the whole point of a tax system is to charge everybody to support projects for the common good. This includes many things which one might support directly, but equalizes the contributions and reduces the overall amount of decision making effort. To expand on the issue: It is my belief that "republican" systems of government (not party politics) is based on this reduction of effort. It turns out that concentration of decision making effort reduces the total amount of decision making and the total communication necessary. Some quantitative political models indicate that the size of a representative body should be about P^(2/3) for an adult population of P in order to minimize the communication problems in government. With electronic communication, it becomes possible for each of us to have more input because the communication costs are reduced. The problem is that the communication costs for debate increase with the square of the number of representatives. It might be possible to double the size of the house of Representatives, but a much larger body would find it very difficult to communicate internally. Other possibilities, such as questionaires are practical. If there are issues which each of us has an opinion on, then we can each notify our representatives of our views. The problem is cost: Assuming that it takes only one hour a week for me to peruse the important news, an additional hour to peruse the important governmental questions, and a quarter hour to vote, this is a total of a quarter billion hours each week for 100 million people to run the country. On the other hand, with our representative system, the federal government policy level (senate, house, the immediate staffs of senators and representatives, and assistant secretaries and up in executive branch) is only 2000-3000 people, for a total of less than 125000 hours, a savings of a factor of 2000 over direct democracy. In California we have 20 or 30 ballot measures put before the public each year. For the most part, these are poorly drafted, and complicated. Many of them are placed on the ballot by petition and opposed by the state legislature. I oppose those who want to eliminate the initiatives, but feel that there has to be a better way. The problem is that most voters have too little time and training to properly study these measures before voting. The result is private interests spending tens of millions of dollars in advertising to coerce the public into voting one way or the other. I don't see much success in expanding this system. I aggree that a proxy system would give the individual more clout, but relative to the automatically assigned proxies, this clout is not significant. In fact, you probably have about 5000 times as much clout now (if you consistently write your representatives) as you would with a proxy system. As to the individual assigning the fraction of his (or her) tax dollars to go to each program, this could become like the California propositions. Can you imagine DoD running television ads: "Vote for a Strong US -- put all of your tax money into defense." We would wind up spending Billions on advertising to try to convince the public that various services require funding. On top of that, just think of the effort to decide where to put the money ... It's hard enough to fill out our taxes now, any serious attempt at deciding how much to pay for each of dozens of programs would take weeks. One final point (I have been too long winded already): paying taxes to an organization which then doles them out to programs is exactly what we are doing now, except that we can't individually decide on the organization. In practice proxy system would probably be very similar to this scheme. [If you simply want to reduce the communications costs, you should pick a dictator at random and have him make all the decisions... The greater communications costs of a direct vote system would in my opinion be a boon, not a bane. The point is to reduce logrolling for pork-barrel projects. Any representative body the size of Congress, however selected, would logroll as badly as it does. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Oct 84 12:37:36 pdt Subject: Re: No vote option From: decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdchema!randy@Berkeley Rather than simply vote against candidates, I wonder how many of you would be willing to run for office yourself? I prefer to program computers myself, so the point is not that you should go out there and run for office if you don't like the candidates (although that may be what some of you should and will do). Rather, I suggest that the problem starts with the people (yup, you and me) who don't participate more in government. This newsgroup is a great way to get started, and my attack is less directed against the members of this group, since it is a wonderful way to engage ourselves. What if people volunteered more of their time to the local government offices (which would be difficult at first because they are not set up to use volunteers for the most part except during elections)? To the degree that our governments don't work, it is because we gave up the running of our government to professional politicians and then stopped supporting them. I am interest in your responses, ideas, and thoughts about the above. Please send mail to ...!sdcsvax!sdchema!randy [Personally, I consider running for office one of the most despicable forms of human behavior. The reason that our governments don't work is that they are based on a fundamentally evil premise, that some people should be placed in a position of coercive control over others--essentially slavery writ large. No social system based on this premise can prosper. To run for office is to lie, cheat, and steal in quite a literal sense. --JoSH] ------------------------------ End of POLI-SCI Digest - 30 - -------