Money's Influence in Politics - Who is to blame?

[The dane]

So basically you are saying that rather than trying to design a system that works for the current population, we should try to change the population to make the current system work ?

That kind of reminds me of communist or libertarians arguments. Both lovely systems, if only the population behaved in a completely different way than what we know to be reality.

[Philly]

[Libertarian602]

I don't see any easy fixes as well.

I think pinpointing the root causes of how we ended up at this point, is just as complicated.
Could it be apathy, or is that too generic of an explanation?

Is the political system rigged? Seems to me that voting for the lesser of two evils all the time is still going to get you the same resul, no matter what.

Maybe folks are convicted that their vote doesn't matter.

Maybe it's all these factors, maybe not. Sure wish I had a good answer.

[Saz]

[Philly]

[Libertarian602]

Seems to me that this country is becoming less democratic every day, so what democratic aspects have to be stripped away too get this theoretical functioning government?

[Philly]

How are we any less democratic than we've been in the past? You get to vote for candidates and whoever wins gets the job. That (representative democracy) is the same as what we've always had in the past.

[Saz]

[Libertarian602]

[Philly]

Saz, It sounds like you're saying the problems in America are unique to our structure and would not exist in a Parliamentary system. I think the country would function better with that model as well, but I never really thought of parliament style election systems as less democratic. Combining the head of the executive and legislative branch is not undemocratic IMO, though I'm sure someone will come in here and whine that Americans need the sacred right to elect a guy president and then immediately undercut his entire agenda by putting the other party in charge of congress. That notwithstanding, a parliamentary system would be better all around and people who love democracy shouldn't even have an objection to this.