On Democracy and Accountability

[Soleron]

First of all, democracy is not perfect but it's the only way accountability has genuinely happened that is also stable.

I feel accountability comes through media pressure. If a huge issue is front page news for days on end, politicians will do anything to fix it unless they're ideologically fixated (which is why we should not vote those people in). Also they do listen to calls to senators etc. but only en masse - see the SOPA retraction that went from near full support to 50 senators dropping it like it was toxic within 24 hours.

The way we can deal with lobbyists is to make every hour of contact written down and public, put much harsher limits on donations, and generally make it very hard for people to be bought without it being very obvious.

I also favour putting nearly every government document in the public domain, on an easily searchable web interface, so that in theory everyone but in practice journalists can look up exactly how decisions were made and whether the motivations were as expected. Currently much of the corruption or incompetence can be easily hidden with the excuse of 'terrorism' or 'confidentiality'.

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For accountability, the power of government needs to be central and direct (that means no QUANGOs, no private partnerships, no subcontracting). When some state function screws up, the Minister responsible needs to be feeling the media heat every second until they fix it, not be able to say: 'oh it's the FCC's fault'.

As for representation, I do feel representing a smaller number of people is important, but when the number of representatives gets too high and in particular when borders are allowed to be gerrymandered so everything is a safe seat like in the House right now, the pressure on individuals is lost and therefore the only good mechanism for overcoming personal biases.

I agree the structure of government is bad for accountability right now, but I don't think it's the centralisation that makes them unaccountable. To the contrary, if a thousand Boards of Education decide the curriculum, there's more scope for one denying evolution in science classes than if Washington set a national one.