Thus spake Steve Smith circa 10/06/2008 10:46 AM: > That said, I'm not offering a better plan, though I agree that big campaign > contributions are a problem in almost every case.
But big campaigns (and big campaign contributions) are just a symptom of non-local (big) government. As long as we have a single government that governs 3.5 million square miles, we will have complex laws with lots of loopholes and aggressive special interests who drive campaigns (with money). The problem, in my view, lies with the way government accumulates upward to a peak. Granted, we have a decent system so that government accumulates upward to 3 (or 4, if you include the free press) peaks. But, it's still going from 300 million humans and 3.5 million mi^2 up to 3 peaks and 68 mi^2. I would suggest that the myriad problems with our government don't lie in any one identifiable cause, but are instead peppered throughout the accumulation... the way household government accumulates to neighborhood associations, villages, cities, counties, states, feds, etc. I'm totally ignorant of political science; but I wonder how much coherent work is out there on various objective-satisficing methods for accumulating government? I'm not talking about silo'ed research like "methods of state government" or "methods of county government", but methods for accumulating all the way up from (psychological) self-government of the individual to President, Congress, and the courts. Surely there exists some (by now, half-insane) systems theory people out there who've been ranting about this sort of accumulation, eh? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
