greed feeding off and fueling fear and self-delusion

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I'd suggest it's a more subtle phenomenon than simple corruption.

Representative democracy has the general population choose a few people to specialize in deciding how to conduct the government. True democracy, where the entire population votes on everything, has a different set of problems, notably being too volatile to keep things on an even keel. The representative phase slows down feedback from the public, which does provide more stability, and at best allows legislators to dedicate more of their time to legislating than most people in society could afford, but there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. Legislators may end up spending so much of their time trying to stay in office that they don't dedicate as much time to legislating as you wanted them to, nor as much as they wanted to. Because of deliberate or even random anomalies of the voting system, their reelection may depend disproportionately on a small atypical segment of the population. They may do unpopular things and figure people will be worrying about something else by the next election. And, a favorite of mine, both lobbyists and government bureaucracy can present legislators with stuff so complicated that no single human being can understand it all no matter how much of their time they devote to the task — is it really likely that anyone in the US Congress could have read and understood the entire US Tax Code?

Pi zero (talk)12:05, 21 April 2013

Pi zero, superb synopsis of "chaotic system" behavior of political, legislative, and lobby interactions relevant to the Wikinews "Gun background checks a no-go in US Senate". Please pardon and retract the label corrupted in message of 16:58, 20 April 2013. Are the educational insights and logical reasoning you have shared sufficient to achieve a compromise in time to spare firearm-related deaths of children?

Kdarwish1 (talk)18:09, 21 April 2013

It is, as you say, a chaotic system; overall dynamics of the system don't predict specifically what will happen, which is applied politics (very daunting).

The most I can say is that the only way gun control can get past the Senate is if something changes. I see three ways something can change, going forward. (Another way it could have changed has already gone by, when the Senate did not change its rules on filibusters this past January.) The external political climate could change in a way that gives legislators more motive to act. The internal political climate of the Republican party could change, but I doubt that would happen soon unless as a result of a change in the external political climate (I find it plausible that, as someone or other suggested, the Republican party won't hit rock bottom until at least 2016). Or the midterm election in 2014 might replace some key players so as to change the prospects for gun control (and I have no clue whether that's possible; the mideterm election might make things worse).

Pi zero (talk)02:30, 24 April 2013