Hello. I know that I don't have the power to change anything in the states, however I sometimes like to think about what changes I would implement, just for fun. I will list them below to see what you think.
1. Take money out of politics. As it stands now, elections of any kind are expensive, and require a lot of money to finance a campaign, especially presidential campaigns. So what results is that candidates need to find wealthy donors to have a shot, and indirectly, this means rich people control our political system. Presidents, once they get elected, are beholden to the donors and will pass laws that are favorable to them or their businesses. I am sure we are all familiar with this phenomenon. So, to combat this, I propose that we have presidential candidates write down their platforms, their campaign promises, anything that they say to persuade the readers to vote for them, and compile a book out of it. Then this book is freely distributed both online and in paper-form in real life, so that anybody can access these writings very easily. This requires very little money (websites and paper are cheap). Then, we move to ban TVs, newspapers, radio, any other form of media, from mentioning any candidate at all. I want to do this because if we don't, then candidates that have wealthy backers will be able to buy tv time or spaces in newspaper to promote themselves and this will give them an edge over the other candidates who can't afford buying TV/radio spaces. So the end result would still be big money unfairly influencing the outcome of our elections. Another bonus with having candidates write their stuff is we get to weed out the dummies. We expect our presidential candidates to be able to write. And to prevent them from simply hiring ghost writers to ghost-write for them, we make extremely harsh punishments for the candidates and writers who conspire to deceive the public like that.
2. Currently, there is absolutely zero recourse for the public if their presidents did not fulfill their campaign promises, or otherwise did a poor job as a president. I propose that we have this system whereby, once a president is retired from his position, there be an account with all the banks in the country. We ask people whether they think the ex-president did a terrible job or not, and if they think yes, they put 300 dollars in this account. Then, if we get over half the population of the country putting in this 300 dollars, the ex-president goes to jail for an certain period of time. If the percentage of people who put the money is 60%, he goes to jail even longer. And the rate at which his jail sentence lengthens goes up exponentially. And if the percentage of people who are unhappy with him is over 90%, the ex-president goes to jail for life. My reasoning is that with any president, there will also be some people who are dissatisfied with him. However, if over 90% of people want to vote him into jail, then this is a very clear sign that he truly did a terrible job, and an extremely harsh sentence is justified. And the 300 dollars is set at such a level that it requires a not insignificant amount of money, so that people won't put an ex-president in jail lightly. But it's low enough so that most people can still realistically afford it.
I want to do this because I remember talking to someone online. He was extremely unhappy with a certain law that a lawmaker in his state passed. He said he wanted said lawmaker to think, "if I pass this law, will I make it home alive tonight?" Apparently he was so dissatisfied that he was willing to commit acts of violence. Even though I shared his anger, nevertheless I don't believe that violence is the solution to bad politicians. It's not realistic to expect people to take up arms and violently punish bad political leaders. There needs to be a way, a legal, non-bloody way for people to punish politicians for doing a poor job. Currently, there are zero consequences that politicians have to face for not carrying out the will of the people, so they do whatever they like. They know that they won't be punished in any way. I want people's anger and dissatisfaction to mean something. Stewing in anger, complaining to other people, writing angry letters, making anger phone calls are currently all that we can do, and trust me these things don't mean shit to a bad politician. This has to change.
3. Conversely, if a president did a good job, he should be rewarded. I propose that there be an account with all the banks in the country that's called the ex-president's account. Anybody can put money in this account. If they think an ex president truly did a good job, they can put in any amount of money to show their appreciation for him and to reward him for a job well done. Currently, not only are there no consequences for presidents when they did poorly, there are no rewards for them for doing well, either. This is very bad and creates a situation where presidents are pretty much guaranteed to be shitty. However, if they now know that not only will they go to jail for being a bad potus, they will also be given lots of money for a job well done, this creates an incentive for them to do a good job and generally to things that benefit the people. I mean, right now what do we people do for a good ex-potus? We might write books about him, praise him in newspapers, maybe sing songs about him, all of these things, though nice, do not benefit him in any tangible, meaningful way. And this makes it very tempting for potuses to sell out the people and to cozy up to rich donors, who can and do benefit them in tangible ways, in other words, give them money. I want to change this.
Anyway, these are my humble suggestions. Your thoughts are welcome.
This post was edited by JessiWan on Mar 3 2022 10:55am