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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25853 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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My proposal. We should solve this. My best guess is we need to add mini-legislatures somehow. Congress finds a way to delegate rule-making to smaller focused legislatures that will retain the legitimacy of congress and being Democratic.

It's called the committee system and it has existed since the first Congress.

Subject matter committees allow Congressmen to specialize and the institution to begin to develop durable, institutional knowledge. The problem is that Congress is far too small to allow Congressmen to specialize, given the size and scope of the Federal government, and they're too busy fundraising these days to do a good job of it, anyway.

Still happens, though. Mike Gallagher's China committee is a good example.

Yes I thought about that.

My opinion probably lies on the spectrum of the Chevron Deference shouldn’t exists or if it does be extremely limited. The power of the Presidency should be small.

Is it rational that if we get rid of these things that congress is capable of governing? Even if we need to increase its size?

Maybe. There's probably still more going on than just those particular problems. The theoretically correct answer is that the virtue of the people themselves has declined, so we elect men to Congress who will not govern well regardless of the structure you place them in. This is an appetizing enough answer, although certainly not itself complete.

The problem is that Congress is far too small to allow Congressmen to specialize

A tangent, but you brought up one of my favorite hobby horses. I'm fully in favor of dramatically increasing the amount of parasites we have in Congress. More congressmen = far more people you have to bribe in order to succeed at regulatory capture, and citizens will feel a stronger sense of control over their individual representatives creating more trust and legitimacy.

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