At 10:52 AM 3/18/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Is there any standard/efficient way to elect a cabinet directly ?
There is certainly no *standard way*. There may be an "efficient" way, in fact there are many. But a stupid thing efficiently accomplished is still a stupid thing. In fact, one of the great protections we enjoy by default is that the stupid are usually inefficient.... unfortunately, not always.... Cabinets are best hired, not elected. In fact, I think direct elections, without any clear deliberative process, which choose officers based on public image and without the public actually knowing the candidates well (by which I mean personally, with ample opportunity to observe the individual), are a formula for deception and delusion. And history, I think, confirms this thought. Sometimes a good person is elected through this process. However, a stopped clock is still right twice a day. Elect a parliament or legislature directly, if you must (delegable proxy is better, but until the revolution....), and then let this body hire the managers, to serve at their pleasure. Cabinet officials are managers, like department managers in a business. Once you have directly elected officials, they have terms during which it can be extraordinarily difficult to remove them. You essentially create kings-for-a-few-years. Whether or not they actually are functioning as the servants of the public that they should be. No sane set of shareholders in a corporation would hire managers this way. So what in the world would make us think it would be better in politics? Parliamentary systems -- I'm no expert regarding them, but I think -- frequently assign cabinet posts as a power-sharing device, negotiated between political parties. That makes some sense, and does broaden representation in government, more than the winner-take-all insanity that is the U.S. process. But it can also result in assignments based only on party loyalty rather than on competence in the particular area of the ministry. However, how the general public is supposed to be able to do better is completely beyond me. We don't have the information and even if we did, we don't have the time to analyze it. And we are missing something huge: personal contact with these people. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
