Quote from: Fallowfox
You don't think tweaking [the government structure] is a good idea, but provide no reason or evidence why.
I'm not saying tweaking is a bad idea, I'm saying it's impossible. Whoever has the most interest in power will put the most money and effort into controlling the monopoly on power. Voters simply don't have as much of an incentive to change and control things as those who's goals are to control things. I wouldn't call that a very good system. At most it's a system with oligarchs in complete control, where, like kings, they understand that the general population should be kept fairly pacified to prevent a full scale uprising. But they're starting to fail miserably, and I think 2008 was just the beginning.
The way I finally came to this conclusion is by examining the way the incentives are structured in our government, regulatory, and financial system. And the outcome, with the way the incentives are set up now, is always the same. Government and corporations working closely together (fascism) is like the equilibrium point, or the point of lowest energy in this system, with a constant energy input required on behalf of voters to keep the system in check. As soon as the voters become apathetic and content, the system collapses into what we have now.
So the only viable solution I am aware of is to get rid of the central power incentive altogether, and distribute/decentralize it among the people. Though simply getting rid of the current power is not enough, as it will simply create a power vacuum that some other power hungry psychopath will step into. The solution is to make power nearly impossible to grab, by making finance, transactions, and contracts distributed, decentralized, and as anonymous as needed (a central power can't impose currency controls, or tax, or restrict whom people deal with and for what, if it can't pysically stop the process from working, or even find out who is involved), and as an extra measure, put a negative cost on amassing power by creating a distributed bounty system that, like bitcoin, doesn't exist anywhere in particular, can't be shut down, and anyone can anonymously fund and take payments from (so anyone who considers taking centralized power for their own means, will have to take into consideration that their life and property may be threatened if they do).
In this way, the incentives are to produce as much of what people want as possible - free trade will be inevitable, since there would be no way to prevent it, and the only way to make money will be by getting people to give it to you voluntarily. And do as little of what people don't want as possible - negative actions put a real cost on you that can not be legislated away or gotten rid of in any way.