Fundamentally, rulers and politicians are human, no matter the system or justification. There is no "outside" view, and no passive voice for decisions. Politics is corrupt and hopeless. But no laws can fix it - laws are made and enforced by the same critters as the laws are intended to constrain.
The question is not about what conditions are necessary and sufficient for a representative democracy to work well, it's about what conditions (including what participants) we could likely achieve, and why would that be better than today.
This is a good first post. I recognize you, like me, are the kind of person who came on LW with a large specific mental construction that was not formed primarily on this site, and want to communicate your ideas here. You succeeded in doing something I've been thinking about doing,[1] which is writing a "teaser" style article that sets up your mental world, with the implication that more posts on the "answer" to a problem you identified are to come. I look forward to seeing them!
And also, I'd like to know your lore. I wonder how you came to focus on improving politics/the government as the way to solve society's problems.[2] You invoke the concept of "focus on solving the core and not the symptoms" within politics; have you done such an analysis on the world's problems, and concluded politics is the core?[3]
(I know you didn't imply that within this post, but I saw your comment on the pre-apocalypse post. Yes, politics is not what most of us are thinking about when we hear pre-apocalypse. You likely got downvoted because, though it's fair that LWers may be "ignoring" politics compared to the average person, you didn't explain why you see politics as a core before talking about how to fix it.)
After multiple attempts at writing a smaller post I tried throwing my hands up and just braindumping what came to mind. Currently partway through a big post that has ended up mentioning basically all my arguments/post ideas (but thinking of quitting that too and just posting a portion of it first). Can't resist noting how there's more yap to come after each non-elaborated mention (it's crazy out here*), you did that far more simply. Curious how easy it was for you to write this.
*to be having all these ideas amirite!
And also how you found LW/how well you think this community aligns with the discussions you want to have. Why here?
Personally trying to go even core-r (people reading this lmk if there's an official LW term for this concept) and focus on psychology/neuroscience; how our brains work causes all our behavior which causes all our problems after all! I'm trying to learn about the entire world and haven't focused much on politics yet.
Will this become a sequence of essays? I'd be interested to hear your take on the fundamental questions at length.
The problem with democracies is that they're based on the naive and erroneous assumption that people voting for representatives will elect people who'll represent them. In other words, democracies were intended to be democratic, but never designed to be. They were intended to derive power from citizens, but never designed to allow people to work together to influence government.
A democracy is a form of government that gets its power from its citizens. America's founders called its form of representative democracy a "Republic." In the beginning, when representatives tried to be representative, it sort of worked, but it never worked well.
Because it worked poorly, a huge political system evolved in which other players compete to control the government. Meanwhile, a culture evolved with myths that say a citizen's main responsibility is to vote. While voting is a democratic action, it has become part of our very non-democratic system. Other myths ensure people support the dysfunctional status quo in other ways.
Meanwhile, political science studies our current systems and ignores the fundamental questions:
Political science has answers to the first question, but they're very poor answers. Instead of grappling with the question, they look at what seems to make the system work less poorly, such as free and fair elections, strong institutions, a free press, an independent judiciary, a constitution, competent candidates, and a choice of parties. People who want to improve politics then work on these instead of helping create the needed foundation.
While I've written more about this on PeopleCount.org, it's almost pointless to read about the details. Almost everyone thinks they know that really:
These are all mistaken. While some reasoning can be created to support any of these, none are a solution.
Our political system was never designed to work. Our WHOLE political system has evolved to compensate for the lack of a system that allows representative democracy to work well. Many political reform bills would help, but we haven't been able to pass a single one. So the answer is not to throw out our system or build a new one, since that would be even harder than passing a political reform bill. Nor is the answer to have a "constitutional convention."
While a doable answer isn't that complicated, please be patient and first see that none the answers currently known in America's culture will work. They're all part of the dysfunctional status quo.