Computer guy tries to hack the US Constitution with the American Nations

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/06/sean_tevis_to_save_america_starting_with_kansas_2nd_district.php#more

by tswicegood • 16 years ago

35 37 16 years ago

blogs.pitch.com

iamdave• 16 years ago

I truly admire his dedication to creating something people can identify with and working towards a higher cause of true nationhood, but a major contributing cause to the disarray of American politics is the polarization of the citizenry. We're too quick to take sides, regardless of issues and will gladly "drink the kool-aid" of whatever side parallels the most with what we believe is good, versus what's intrinsically right.

This is manifested even in the examples he presented; being an online entity, who's to say that foul play wont occur? What is the system for checks and balances when poisoning the wells to gain followers? Look at Digg and Reddit:

Ostensibly, both sites serve the same purpose, and on a given day you'll very likely find links to the exact same controversial article. It's also likely you'll hear two completely different sides of the issue-one pro, one against, one conservative, one progressive, one rational, one emotional.

The American Nations isn't going to address anything, further segmenting people into groups only reinforces the idea that you need to be with people who agree with you, and rally against those who don't. It's giving the middle finger to compromise and collaboration among people with opposing viewpoints, we don't need further segmentation of ideologies, we really don't.

And I get that he's wanting a microcosm of progressive individuals who want to address major issues as they are, but creating a group within a group, that's already divided and indecisive about how policies shape their day to day lives isn't the answer. It's the pot calling the kettle black.

If you want to FIX America, start by teaching people to think for themselves and dislodge themselves from the meme that everything in the political arena has to be constructed under an "us versus them" mentality, and to not base their moral compasses on sound-bites and blogger pundits. Then you need to teach them how beneficial and enjoyable it can be to actually learn what the guy on the other side of the table has to say.

Stop playing sides. It's destroying us as a people.

MichaelSalib2• 16 years ago

a major contributing cause to the disarray of American politics is the polarization of the citizenry.

What is the "disarray of American politics"? Is politics in the US more disorganized than elsewhere? Or are you saying that somehow politics in the US has changed relatively recently and that that change is bad? Or what?

We're too quick to take sides, regardless of issues and will gladly "drink the kool-aid" of whatever side parallels the most with what we believe is good, versus what's intrinsically right.

Compared to what? Are there other states in the world where people behave better in your opinion?

kiba• 16 years ago

There is no incentive to think as a rational voter.

Calling on people to teach others how to be rational won't do without some serious restructuring of the current government institutions.

But anyway, I don't care about "compromise" and "middle grounds" and neither should you. I care about the raw truth. To that end, I'll be willing to listen to my opponents just for the truth.

Then I make my decisions based on that.

stevis10• 16 years ago

> If you want to FIX America, start by teaching people to think for themselves and dislodge themselves from the meme that everything in the political arena has to be constructed under an "us versus them" mentality,

This is, I believe, not possible.

Our media has every incentive to carve out a demographic and get them angry at others. We have a winner-take-all political system with two political parties, which creates polar arguments. Duvarger's Law makes fixing this impossible.

And I think you have the wrong impression of what these are. They are very limited, but the newspaper story doesn't go into those rules. It's a way to remove differences so that one group, say people who believe Obama is the Anti-Christ, can try to achieve something for themselves free from those of us who prefer reason. In any peace process, there a few tried and true steps. One is to separate the two warring sides so that they can't escalate fear or damage.

This is a massive undertaking, but i don't see anyone trying to bring America back together. You ask good questions. Your worries about where we're headed are justified. And I'm going to add at least four answers to the FAQ based on this. Thanks!

skorgu• 16 years ago

Have you considered joining forces with Lawrence Lessig for this? His Change Congress is a drastically different mechanism but the end results seem roughly similar.

Besides the Voltron aspect he is a recognized legal scholar and might quiet some of the "this could never work" arguments if he signs off on it.

proexploit• 16 years ago

In regards to us vs. them:

I've always struggled to comprehend the 2 party system. Every human has differing beliefs and people follow along and let their political party decide how they feel about different things. You can't take over 200 million differing objects, lump them into two groups of classification and say "done!".

I'm not a Republican or a Democrat because my ideas are not so easily defined. That's what I'd like to see more of.

tswicegood2• 16 years ago

I imagine more information is going to be made available at http://seantevis.com/, but its an interesting idea.

mattmcknight• 16 years ago

His "Public Healthcare Nation" is likely to be hit with an adverse selection problem- unless you have to pass a physical to be admitted.

tswicegood2• 16 years ago

True - this is the problem with optional insurance. Those who need it are the ones who have it. That said, I think there's enough healthy people (such as myself) who would love to participate in a public option that would join to spread the risk. At least, that's my hope. Otherwise…

sbov• 16 years ago

It will also have problems because the real problem with health care costs is what hospitals charge. Health care is expensive because hospitals rip you off. They can do this because most people don't even consider the costs and will pay whatever it takes (its not their problem - its their health insurance's problem).

I had a doctor take a cotton ball out of my ear in the hallway. It took about 10 seconds. I got charged $700.

tcskeptic• 16 years ago

Wait a second, granted you may not have expected to be charged $700, but why have a doctor do something so simple? Why not just do it yourself or have a friend with tweezers do it?

CWuestefeld• 16 years ago

My wife is Manager of Budget and Reimbursement at a hospital, meaning that she budgets income and expenses (duh) as well as securing reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid (which together make up the 800-lb gorilla that dictates how the medical system works), and other governmental programs. So she's got probably a better understanding of this than anyone. This is a weekly topic of conversation in my home.

There's a lot that could be done to make hospitals more efficient. My wife's is very management top-heavy, with as many VPs as a bank. And each of these VPs has their own secretary (who has secretaries anymore?).

On the other hand, much of the waste is either directly required by the governmental agencies, or the unintended consequences of those regulations.

It's well known that Medicare/Medicaid pay below the actual cost. Other big insurance companies get good rates, but normally not that good. Somebody has to make up for the shortfall, and obviously it's not going to be the big buyers that have negotiating power. The cost controls by Medicare cause prices to rise for the rest of us. If the government program gets larger due to individual payers joining on, there won't be even that pressure release, and governmental prices will have to rise.

Beyond that, it's been observed that we get far too many tests, more than are medically necessary. In many cases these are caused by Medicare regulation. For example, it was found that many patients get urinary tract infections at the hospital, so Medicare says they won't cover those costs unless the hospital can show that the patient had the UTI prior to admission. So it's not hard to guess what happens now. Everybody gets a test for UTI upon admission, since the cost of that testing is lower than the potential lost revenue from Medicare refusing to pay for treating the pre-existing UTIs.

Expanding the government's influence over healthcare isn't going to solve any problems, and it will exacerbate many of them.

Providing some separate body offering a "public option" is not a compromise that will satisfy both sides. It still contains the ingredients necessary to cause the "crowding out" of private insurance. This is what those opposed to the public option are afraid of, and Mr. Tevis's proposal does nothing (so far as the article mentions) to address that.

stevis10• 16 years ago

Yes, so there can't be a true "universal" public option that lets in everyone at first. But a nation would have control over their membership requirements so they can control the flow. Also, many nations might join a health care alliance to increase the network size and economies of scale.

MichaelSalib2• 16 years ago

How does any of this address the adverse selection problem? Many nations joining the alliance doesn't change the fundamental problem.

openfly• 16 years ago

This is actually kind of brilliant. It's very similar to parliamentary voting systems in top down democracies ( as seen in Europe tm ). Except it's US constitution compatible. Clever hack.

I tentatively like it. Will require more research.

wrs• 16 years ago

Reminds me of the "phyles" in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Figuring out how the social contract can reasonably diverge among people residing in the same physical and economic space seems like a hard problem. It isn't obvious that health care qualifies.

mmelin• 16 years ago

I haven't read The Diamond Age, but this sounds like the beginnings of the franchise states in Snow Crash.

Gormo3• 16 years ago

Another interesting fictional example is the factions of Sigil in the D&D Planescape setting.

But there are plenty of real examples to draw on, such as Belgium's separate territorial and community governments.

sdurkin• 16 years ago

Purely illegal and unconstitutional. I admire the spirit, but this is the sort of thing that wouldn't make it past a District Court judge.

stevis10• 16 years ago

Sure, if you make the case based on the Establishment clause and try to sue your way to creating them. Legitimate Native Americans have tried to sue their way into their own nations and it's been thrown out.

But I'm not. It's based on Congress' Plenary Authority over the Indian Nations. Congress can modify the rules however they see fit, including creating a new class.

That was a good question.

sethg• 16 years ago

AIUI, Federal authority over relations with the Indian tribes comes from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”. (The idea that the Founding Fathers were concerned about defending those tribes’ “culture, identity, and rights” is very sweet; actually, King George III tried to defend Indians’ rights by not letting settlers expand further into their territory.) The term “domestic nations” came about to describe the tribes’ twilight-zone status of not exactly independent sovereign states and not exactly subject to the laws of the states in which their reservations existed either.

Tevis’s theory is that a bunch of people who are (a) not indigenous Americans, (b) not related to each other, and (c) not possessing anything resembling the semi-sovereign territories that Indian tribes used to have... that these people can get together, declare themselves to be a “domestic nation”, and have the same legal status of Indian tribes. I can’t see how one could construe the Constitution to get away with this. More importantly, I can’t see how state governments would stand for a law giving people such an easy escape hatch away from their own jurisdiction.

stevis10• 16 years ago

Yes, we've re-defined domestic nation law constantly since the Marshall trilogy in the early 1800s.

You're right. There's no way it could work that way. There'd have to be a bunch of rules to limit it and be a benefit for the states, too. Which there are, but the newspaper story only carried the introduction segment. I'd wait to see the full thing. :-)

username3• 16 years ago

AIUI == As I understand it

joejohnson• 16 years ago

Can we refrain from esoteric abbreviations like these? I don't feel like they save that much space, not that space is even an issue.

eli• 16 years ago

Seems like the same kind of thinking that says e.g. I don't have to pay my income tax.

The law does not lend itself to "hacking." It just doesn't work like that.

stevis10• 16 years ago

This has nothing in common with that. It's really just as simple as allowing enforcement of a group contract. And people look for legal workarounds all the time. The really expensive lawyers are excellent at it.

Gormo3• 16 years ago

This reminds me of the Millet system used under the Ottoman empire. The central government had very little direct involvement in what we would today call "personal law" or "social policy"; instead, these were organized into separate communities along religious lines. Muslims, Jews, and various Christian denominations each had their own sets of institutions.

A more modern example is Belgium, which has a kind of double federalism, where regional governments for Flanders and Wallonia have territorial jurisdiction, and community governments for the French-, Flemish-, and German-speaking populations have separate "social" jurisdiction.

In these cases, the social jurisdiction was determined by religious or linguistic affiliation, with only a handful of communities and very limited mobility among them. It would be very interesting to see such a system organized on a much more pluralistic and dynamic basis, in which people could charter their own communities and change their affiliations freely.

stevis10• 16 years ago

Thanks for that example, Gormo. We hadn't seen that one. Most of the other examples we'd found were separate, but geographically overlapping systems based on secular vs. religious laws.

Gormo3• 16 years ago

Out of curiosity, which was example was the new one, the Ottoman millet system, or modern Belgium?

natmaster• 16 years ago

Can someone point me to the explanation of how this will do all the things he promises? What will be the difference between the nations, etc?

stevis10• 16 years ago

It's not live yet. Probably Tuesday by the looks of it. We gave this interview hoping to flesh out the natural questions that people might have. So far, Hacker News has done the best job. We're compiling things for the FAQ and the other 80% of the comic not shown on the newspaper site.

drivebyacct• 16 years ago

Do you need someone to design/build a website for you? Your current site displays in a very thin column that is difficult and frustrating to read. Not to mention it's a bit lack luster.

Create• 16 years ago

The US Constitution is known to have failed. On several levels.

I think I should say right away an unpleasant fact which is barely if ever mentioned in American school books - the founders were not interested in founding a democracy. -- It's a nine ring circus and you'll never be bored, AC, Letter from America

http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/10...

Computer guy tries to hack the US Constitution with the American Nations

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