The machine refuses to work against its self-preservation.
Plato wrote in his famous work on democracy that the body of citizens in a polis should not exceed 10000, else the direct democracy disintegrates, and both electing officials consciously, and keeping them accountable becomes hard.
The representative democracy in the US works with 350M people, 240M eligible to vote, is hopelessly part these confines. It's not a wonder that it works not really ideally; it's a wonder that it works at all for nearly 250 years.
The US needs to upgrade the mechanisms of its democracy to better suit its scale. Switching to Condorcet voting or other preferential voting schemes on municipal and state levels in a few states is one such upgrade. Maybe people will start electing more officials who actually care, and who might shake the inadequate equilibria, in drug-related policies, and elsewhere.
Plato wrote in his famous work on democracy that the body of citizens in a polis should not exceed 10000, else the direct democracy disintegrates, and both electing officials consciously, and keeping them accountable becomes hard.
The representative democracy in the US works with 350M people, 240M eligible to vote, is hopelessly part these confines. It's not a wonder that it works not really ideally; it's a wonder that it works at all for nearly 250 years.
The US needs to upgrade the mechanisms of its democracy to better suit its scale. Switching to Condorcet voting or other preferential voting schemes on municipal and state levels in a few states is one such upgrade. Maybe people will start electing more officials who actually care, and who might shake the inadequate equilibria, in drug-related policies, and elsewhere.