Comments Posted By Thon Brocket
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THEY JUST CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES
It's the fundamental problem of democracy - legislators bribing electors with their own money, and electors voting themselves state handouts. It's always the same - though the manifestations are enormously different in different countries - and always will be.
I believe that the only way to solve the problem while maintaining democracy is to separate the powers of taxation and general legislation by electing two separate legislatures - one solely to legislate (without the power to tax to pay for it - so the voters can only elect them on their legislative promises and record) and one solely to raise taxes (without the power to spend any of it - so the voters only elect them on their taxing intentions).
This idea is just a combination of two thoroughly well-tested constitutional arrangements - bicameralism and the separation of powers. The explicit purpose of the doctrine of separation of powers is to prevent the domination of a single political faction in the government of the nation. It's pretty clear that in almost all Western democracies the tax-and-spend, big government, statist faction dominates and will continue to dominate (Is Old Europe becoming less Socialist, or America less porkalicious?). Separating the powers, so that a politician got elected not on promises of pork to his constituents, but on either his pledge to legislate responsibly or his pledge to tax responsibly (not both - there's the rub) would move the balance of power towards the citizen and away from the state.
There are plenty of suggestion for adjusting the mechanism ( term limits, graded priorities, various ideas for tax reform, a hundred others, some of which may have real value in reducing the problem), but they're only addressing the issue at the edges. The ability of power-seekers to make the standard corrupt bargain with the electorate lies at the root of the problem. End that, and you solve the problem.
This isn't just an American problem. I'm British, and though we don't have the spectacular pork-o-rama of American politics, we have the even-more-pernicious aspect of the same problem - the pervasive intrusive welfare state, whose fundamental MO is "Vote for me and I'll get you lots of lovely skools 'n hospitals 'n government jobs. I might have to raise your taxes just a teeny wee bit to help pay for it, but I'm really going to soak those rich stockbroker bastards for most of the money." So I'm interested in looking at this idea wherever it might apply, not just in America.
Comment Posted By Thon Brocket On 22.02.2009 @ 02:11
