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"I've heard many times that although democracy is an imperfect system, we somehow always muddle through. The message I want to give you, after long and hard reflection, is that I'm very much afraid it is no longer possible to muddle through. The issues we deal with do not lend themselves to that kind of treatment. Therefore, I conclude that our democracy must grow up. I'm not going to give you a magic recipe on how that will happen—I wish I had one—but I offer some thoughts that I hope will stimulate your thinking.
What's principally lacking on the federal scene, it seems to me, is the existence of respected, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary teams that could at least tell us what is possible and something about the pluses and minuses of different solutions. Take energy, for instance. What I would love to see established, with the National Academies or any other mechanism to confer respectability, is a team that will ... say, 'Okay, there are lots of suggestions around, and most of them won't work. But here are six different plans, any one of which is possible. We'll tell you what each one costs, what's good about it, what's bad about it, how dangerous it is, and what its uncertainties are.' At least each option would be a well-integrated, clearly thought-out plan. I do not trust democracy to try to put together such a plan by having each committee of Congress choose one piece of it. Suppose Congress designed an airplane, with each committee designing one component and an eleventh-hour conference committee deciding how the pieces should be put together. Would you fly on that airplane? I am telling you we are flying on an energy plan, an inflation plan, and so on that are being put together in exactly that way.
Unfortunately the original 1980 article that this was excerpted from is paywalled.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:32PM
This is exactly it. Look at the last US election. One of the candidates wanted the best thing for the US (whether it would have worked or not is up for debate, but I think Bernie Sanders intentions were never in doubt), while others wanted either power or fame. Look how well that worked out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:39AM
He would never have supported Clinton and would either have requested to be put back on the Independent ballot, or agreed to the Green party offer and joined up with Stein to offer a third party solution.
While I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for most of the election cycle, that choice eliminated any respect I could have had for the man, just like the DNC/Hillary not shifting to support of other candidates when the full brunt of her controversies began unravelling at the beginning to middle of the year.
At the same time I hold the Republicans accountable for letting Trump win rather than at least voting for the libertarian candidate and actually showing the party that they would rebel rather than people a 'Republican Rebel' who flipflopped parties more than a hollywood movie star flipflops sexual identity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:48AM
I don't agree with all of Scott Adams' political tripe, but his bit about persuasion is pretty good - persuasion is most effectively accomplished with:
1) Identity (does your target identify with you, are you "one of their people"?)
2) Analogy (can you make an analogy that the target "gets" at a gut level?)
3) Reason (logic, data, facts, proof)
The first type of persuasion "Trumps" the other two combined. The second type is o.k. and can strengthen the first, and the third type is basically useless in political transactions (popularity contests decided in voting booths.)
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