Adversarial Legislatures
Is there a better way?
In a democracy the courts and the legislatures are adversarial systems. I'd say that the civil service and military are not. We wouldn't want the army to be competing with the airforce in the same way that political parties compete, for instance
We live in a competitive capitalist society where it's normal for businesses to treat each other as adversaries. For all its flaws (and there are many) adversarial capitalism is known to drive technical innovation that is quite beneficial.
In a legislature we get adversarial political parties that struggle for political power. Often they don't struggle on the basis of good ideas but rather they play legislative power games. As recent USA history shows this can be less than productive.
Courts are adversarial too but in a different way. In a court you have a prosecution and a defense trying to persuade a jury with a judge as a referee. This is not a pretty process either but in general I think people accept the verdict when it comes as fairly reached.
Speaking idealistically here ( glances with disapproval at SCOTUS) I'd say that courts try to arrive at some sort of objective truth about a matter. Perhaps we could use the court model for legislatures.
The actual legislators would have a role like that of a jury in a court. They might be elected (but without a party affiliation) or they might even be selected at random. The various parties would lay out their case in respect to whatever is being considered. Then the legislators would vote.
The idea is just coming to me as I write so there are holes. Who would be the judge? Who would hear appeals?
The idea though is to push politics towards being a competition about what policy is best in our circumstances, which of course requires a clear presentation of just what our circumstances are.
The problem of migration is huge. Some places become intolerable and unlivable and people flee to places where things are better. Our attempts to mitigate that natural flow remind me of Canute commanding the tide. We know that that way doesn't work. Let's try something else. But we can't just try something else at random. We need to look at evidence.
We need legislators who look at evidence.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.