Suppose we had that system right now. What do you think the GOP would be doing about ObamaCare? Because they likely have the votes to repeal it in that system.

You might even wind up with stalemates, where every time one group gets together and manages to pass a law, the other gets together the votes to repeal it. So you’d wind up with the kind of deadlock and low-quantity-passage scenario for the Fed which the founders actually envisioned.

The current system is no guideline at all — repealing a law is easily tied up in committee, and still takes majority support. The whole point of this version of bicamerality is that it makes it EASY to remove laws from the books. The kind of individual that attracts is the minimal government type. Hell, that chamber might be dominated by libertarians and small-government conservatives, more of whom would actually run for office than currently. More critically, the lower the number of people required to agree with something, the easier it is to obtain agreement.

Further: If I have a group of 10 people, and delegate a subgroup of them to decide where to get lunch from — is it easier to get 3 people make the decision or 6? Because that’s the difference involved. “A committee is the only known form of life with six or more legs and no brain”. The bigger a committee gets, the more of a slow-witted dinosaur it becomes. Most such bodies wind up making a decision ONLY through the efforts of a dominant leader who pushes and prods the other members into going along with what said leader has decided…

Workable? Not sure. I can see/feel there are subtle possible problems with it that you aren’t commenting on, if you’re seeing them at all.
But it’s one of those ideas that is certainly worth discussing in detail to see what the potential problems might be, and if there are ways around them.

Even more respect. Three ideas about systemic political reform, each of which would greatly improve the process and thereby -eventually- the overall outcome. My remaining question, of course, is: how do we get you to be in charge of making these reforms?

Thank you for making my day

so that’s *3* laws repealed out of, say, 5,000,000 passed…..carry the “2″….and we get a percentage of……

i think i see the problem.

Two other ideas I like –

One from Robert Heinlein: Two houses, one of which passes laws with only with a 2/3rds majority, and another house which repeals laws with only a 1/3rd minority. The idea being that if a third of the people dislike it, it probably has no business being law anyway.

Another, just to deal reasonably with the “incumbent” issue. The first time you get elected, it’s by the now-standard 50% majority. The first re-election, in order to get elected you have to win your primary with a 55% vote, or else you’re out and not eligible for that office again (if you fail the 55%, but no one else has 50%, then a runoff is scheduled with you eliminated). The second time through, you need a 60% majority to get re-elected. Each time, it increases by 5% up to a max of 75% (if you can get 3/4ths of the people to vote for you, you must be doing something right). This allows people who ARE getting real widespread approval to get re-elected, while preventing the casual “Vote For The Name You Know” re-elections which have become so prevalent somehow.

Congrats – you’ve made a suggestion (a vote against that prevents candidates from running again) that if implemented would actually get our maladjusted political system working again.

Respect.

If you look at the history of health insurance, the problems start during the FDR/WWII era when there were ham-fisted attempts to control employees who might leave a vital war contractor for better money elsewhere. This is where health care as an employment perk first got entrenched, then tax laws were passed in the 50s that unfairly gave large employers an advantage over smaller companies vi tax breaks. It has snowballed ever since. The very concept of health insurance for every contact with medical personnel is broken at its root. As has been said, it’s like expecting your car insurance to keep your gas tank filled and your homeowner’s policy to keep groceries in the fridge.

The insurance industry has, in the health care sector, become a monster that is far more deeply involved in our lives than any such entity should be. The government programs like Medicare were just a natural reaction once the citizenry became trained to believe they needed some entity between them and the doctor handling the financial side. If we want the government to help fund charitable health care organizations, that is one thing. A bad thing but at least less market distorting.

What we need is a way to to kill the health insurance monster without creating an NHS-like entity that replaces it.