Well I hope in the (very near) future we decide we want the executive branch to have less power, so as to protect ourselves from a unitary executive who goes rogue. Yes it may be less efficient, but more resilient.
This drive for uber efficiency can 1) make government more fragile (see toilet paper supply issues during the pandemic) and 2) be a slippery slope to dehumanization (see paper clip maximizing problem).
The problem is that we painted ourselves into a this corner long ago. Even if Congress wasn't generally paralyzed by bad-faith partisan fighting, the House and Senate are not equipped to do even a small fraction of what the executive branch does today.
If we removed much of the executive branch's power, it wouldn't be "less efficient". The government just wouldn't do anything.
Some people (current GOP) seems to think this would be a good thing.
Agreed. If government provides fewer services, companies can provide more services at a profit. Why have public (non-profit) education when you can have private (highly profitable) education? Who needs public (non-profit) health insurance when you can have private (highly profitable) health insurance?
There's probably some theory about power being like the conservation of energy, in that it doesn't get destroyed, just transformed or moved. Take power away from the government and that power doesn't just make people more free, it just goes somewhere else. Clearly the intent is to move that power from the government (which is at least nominally meant to protect citizens) to companies/the rich.
That's how I see it as well. Government in theory should protect the citizens, which I assume often means the consumers and the workers. But maybe capitalism run amok is when capitalists accumulate the power and use it to strong-arm the government into liking the corporate shareholders (capitalists?) more than the citizens.
> capitalism run amok is when capitalists accumulate the power and use it to strong-arm the government into liking the corporate shareholders (capitalists?) more than the citizens.
This is pretty much the definition of fascism.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini, famous fascist.
Mussolini used the word 'corporation' in a different sense to the modern sense of a public company. He was referring instead to different sectors of society, something like a 'guild'.
Not exactly. I'd say that is a self-serving quote to whitewash fascism.
The narrow definition of corporatism is basically just the public-private interweaving of government. Communism is just as much corporatist as fascism -- the main difference being that in communism the trade bodies are considered part of the government rather than part of the industry.
Fascism is more specific because it also encompasses fostering/breeding tribalistic tendencies (bigotry, nationalism, i.e. "othering") in society at large. In contrast, corporatism doesn't prescribe how the rest of society interacts.
Maybe you have a more positive view of corporations than me, because calling fascism a government of by and for corporations does not whitewash it at all for me.
I had the same reaction, but then some cursory searching led me to this discussion on the "Talk" page for Wikiquote's entry on Mussolini which casts some doubt on the accuracy of the attribution and/or translation of this line:
> At its core, the quoted saying is incompatible with fascism and frankly nonsensical. Under fascism, the state uses the market efficiency of capitalism to regulate and control the economy, namely by concentrating market shares to a relatively few large corporations into cartels, which in turn the fascist state has direct control over. Whereas, corporatism is state control by large interest groups, commonly pictured as large multi-national corporations with monopolistic powers. In other words, the controlling party under corporatism is the reverse of that under fascism."Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State."The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile
In Italian, corporativismo has a distinct meaning that is unrelated to the concept of commercial corporations. It refers to a system of collaboration between social groups, represented through joint associations of employers and workers. Essentially, it is a state-aligned alternative to independent trade unions, a "national syndicalism" of sorts.
Muskotrumpia may excel in performance-based state capture, but fascism it is not. The anti-state culture of the U.S. clashes with the "everything for the state" ethos that defines fascism. We're simply entering textbook Caesarism territory.
How would we protect ourselves when the rule of law is non-functional?
This definition is quite literally the only check to balance power available to the average person, at least when it worked. There is no longer equality under the law which is dependent on the other components which have also degraded.
Congress is non-responsive to their constituencies.
We are stuck in a positive feedback loop, eventually when the abuses are great society will fall back to the natural state prior to the social contract. These will not be peaceful times.
After seeing Bush in office, the sensible thing to do would have been to reduce presidential power. Nobody bothered. Then again after Trump. Biden didn't do a damn thing to reduce presidential power, knowing what happened and what could happen. Way too late. The judiciary and congress are now both subservient to the president.
Well, for his part Biden's DOJ did argue in court against the idea of blanket presidential immunity. SCOTUS disagreed, said POTUS needed more power.
For Congress' part, they did pass laws that make a lot of what Trump is doing now with impoundment of congressional funds, and firing inspectors general explicitly illegal. He's doing it anyway.
But the reason Trump is able to do what he's doing now comes down to the structure of the DOJ being an executive branch he controls. Combined with his immunity from SCOTUS. This means he can argue anything he does isn't a crime, no one will investigate or prosecute him, and he can pardon anyone acting in his direction / direct his DOJ to not prosecute them.
Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this, because at the end of the day, Republicans decided they deserve this power, and they grabbed it for themselves. It was always there for the taking, they just needed to convince themselves with words and court decisions and speeches that they had the right.
"imagination" here is an euphemism for lawlessness. Democrats believe in democracy. This whole plan requires Trump exerting full control over the DOJ and FBI rather than what is typically done which is allow them to act independently.
It's hard to unwind that clock. The next admin will may leverage that consolidated power to undo trump harms, but also see the benefits of keeping that power. I pray congress mandates the political independence of certain federal agencies (FBI, doj etc)
The supreme court sure did take power away from the executive in Sacket v EPA, Ohio v EPA, and Biden v Nebraska, but it's likely that reasoning only applies to liberal presidents for the 6-3 conservative federalist society majority.
Repealing Chevron deference implies that everything which used to be left to regulatory agencies must now be passed via legislation or litigated in court. Which of those sounds like faster change?
Because they see themselves as Democrats and Republicans more than they see themselves as Members of Congress. The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.
If they see themselves first as Members of Congress, then they should try to seek more power for Congress, not for their parties.
Too bad the bill had things unrelated to limiting the presidential power like
> requires a candidate for President or Vice President to provide copies of tax returns for the 10 most recent taxable years to the Federal Election Commission.
> establishes a program to support states and localities transition to ranked choice voting systems.
While things that I support, it frustrates me that congress can't propose bills that are hyper focused on one issue.
I don't think those line items would have made the difference either way. Until the turbo-filibuster we have today is curtailed, most legislation is DOA from the jump.
Congress has slowly abdicated its power to the other two branches of government over the decades. As a consequence, it's become more and more performative over time. This reality ends up changing the type of people who even seek high office in the first place. Legislators get replaced by social media influencers.
At this point, congress is primarily a judge appointment machine.
And civic institutions that actually want to get things done, adjust accordingly. They spend less time drafting bills and lobbying congress, and more time fighting for change through the courts or by lobbying the executive directly.
Pork Barrel is the term you're thinking of, but generally speaking that applies to spending that gets slapped onto unrelated bills, not necessarily to more general bloat like this stuff. Riders is probably the more accurate term
The vast majority of congressional seats (both chambers) are safe seats and can't reasonably be flipped to the other party unless there is massive upheaval.
The real elections for those seats happen in partisan primaries, where hyper-partisan ideologues are over represented. The electoral danger for most members of congress therefore comes from primary challengers catering to those ideological primary voters, and so incumbents have to defend their seats by being more partisan than the primary challengers. And so the partisanship keeps ratcheting up and up.
The Republican party has been totally consumed by this and is now just a hollowed out cult of personality. The only way most Republicans can keep their seats is through total loyalty to Trump. Otherwise they get primaried.
The extreme filibuster we have today also makes most legislation impossible - so the job of a member of congress has become more and more performative.
At the same time, the population as a whole is sorting itself into like minded enclaves. Red areas are getting redder and blue areas are getting bluer.
If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors, we could improve the situation. But it's all so broken already, I don't know if we can get there.
> If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors
Honestly, just fixing the absurd gerrymandering (on both sides) would help with this. In basically every other developed country the governments have no powers to draw the electoral boundaries, which seems to work better.
> The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.
It always has been. Even back in Rome there were the plebeians and the patricians.
Demagogues rose to power based on party lines, corruption grew, and then Rome fell.
What we are seeing today is what naturally happens when you fail to teach future leaders history, and instead they are taught, but this time it will be different.
The House passed this Act in 2021 to reduce the presidents power, but Biden never asked the senate to act on it. Reducing his own power wasn’t a priority for him, he spent his political capital on pushing for other laws.
In the USA the general scope for federal & state has expanded, with Federal having the most growth since about 16th Amendment. US code & regulations has expanded 1000x , cost per capita is 15000x
I only make the point that there is a broad spectrum of functional scopes for the government, and rather than looking at shifting the scope around, another possibility would be to revert the scope to sustainable levels
What about protecting ourselves from a biased bureaucracy who use their power for their own political ends? There is a history of this happening now like the IRS scandal and I am surprised how quiet people are about the mass migration event into the country from 2020-2024. It's to the point where people actually say it's just a conspiracy theory and disinformation despite it being a primary concern of most voters according to polls. It's hard to argue that DHS and other bureaucracies were completely innocent. At best they were negligent and incompetent but I think most people know they took steps to make illegal immigration and asylum claims easier to do and help fund immigration routes. This wasn't a platform Biden ran on. He did not win a democratic mandate to open up asylum claims to basically anyone who arrived and grant temporary protected status somewhat arbitrarily. I am surprised no one is concerned about un-elected people being able to do all this and escaping any responsibility.
Toilet paper supply issues were not an example of an efficiency problem, they were misinformation creating a demand shock.
Your average supermarket has limited shelf space and stocks to the level that it will reliably clear shelves before new supply turns up, or things spoil.
If a whole much of people just buy one extra pack that week, this can easily empty the shelves... Which then gets posted to social media to imply a supply problem, which then prompts people to increase their buying rate.
There's no solution to this other then education: there was no supply issue, and never was. Any "solution" would be concluding that a supermarket should devote an absurd amount of shelf space to toilet paper, just in case misinformation goes viral again.
I remember seeing a video of a person in a warehouse making fun of the panic, the warehouse was full of more toilet paper than you knew what to do with. TP companies were probably happy, and the smart move is not to send way more supply than a store can contain, because if demand dies, now you have too much just sitting there. It's much cheaper for them to keep it at their warehouses.
From my understanding, toilet paper is produced for commercial and residential purposes. As people stopped going to the office (and restaurants and malls, etc), people stopped using commercial toilet paper and started using more residential toilet paper.
What I read at the time also said that it's very hard for a plant to shift from making commercial to residential toilet paper, that the margins are paper thin (pun intended) and so it would take a lot of time and money to retool.
That's the explanation for why they couldn't just "order more toilet paper" to refill the store shelves.
But that wasn't the cause of the problem: the cause of the problem was people thinking "oh I'm not sure about a shortage, better buy an extra pack" (I know we did) for just one week...and then someone posts an "empty store shelves!!!" image on social media...which in turn prompts another group of people to do the same at another store, and then the idiot-brigade scalpers get involved. There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference and the rate at which they do is spreading faster then any conceivable supply chain adjustment. But the actual consumption rate hasn't changed at all.
The idiot-brigade scalpers are worth commenting on because IMO there's a second factor which usually turns up: it's kind of fun to "buy out the supermarket" of some good. Like there's a child-like glee of going "I'll totally buy all of it" but most people don't consider that you can do this for any one item in the supermarket for like, $300 on the spot. It's just there's no reason too - partly because it's the most expensive possible way to buy almost anything.
> There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference
You seem to have entirely missed the point of the comment you’re replying to. The consumption rate of residential toilet paper increased. Have you seen actual commercial toilet paper and considered its texture and, more critically, the size and shape of the rolls? While it’s possible for someone to awkwardly wipe using a monster roll of commercial paper at home, the commercial roll is not really a desirable substitute for residential TP.
This drive for uber efficiency can 1) make government more fragile (see toilet paper supply issues during the pandemic) and 2) be a slippery slope to dehumanization (see paper clip maximizing problem).