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[Elephant Parade]

How would you even rank countries objectively, anyway? America's... by some measures medium, by some low, by some very high. Which ones matter most? That's largely down to what you value.

In comparison to other first-world countries, maybe. America is better than most third-world countries in pretty much any way you'd like to name; that isn't saying much, but "low" is going a bit too far.

[Dostoevsky]

The day deadlock becomes a feature is the day this country signs its death warrant. The less the government actually adapts to a changing socioeconomic world, the less a benefit and more a burden it becomes.

The term 'deadlock' is a bit misleading, really. Congress still passes a decent number of bills a year, even when one subtracts all the silly post office naming bills and the like. The big huge policy changes often get mired in long-term negotiations, yes, but there are still a lot of bipartisan policy changes negotiated every year even in this day and age.

So it's not a question of 'deadlock' versus 'adaptable', but a sliding scale of how fluid/greased you want the process to be. I'd argue flat majorities goes too far. Right now we have one chamber running on majority, one chamber on 60, and a large administrative state that is pushed and pulled by successive administrations. It's working in some ways, less so in others, but hard to say the 'less so' situations are chiefly caused by lack of fluidity (and not, say, plain old bad decisions).

A few of our apparatuses have gotten truly deadlocked - like the FEC, I'd argue - with very bad consequences. But that's not all-encompassing in the U.S. government.

[Dostoevsky]

As much as those cites can be fun, number of bills isn't really a great way to think about things. Most bills are chaff to begin with, and one bill (such as the recent CURES Act, or iterations of the transportation bill or farm bill) can include far more policy changes than 1,000 fluff pieces.

Edit: to add/clarify, as long as there aren't rules about the content of a particular piece of legislation (there have been mild attempts to change that) then raw numbers of bills signed into law is not very meaningful. And bills signed into law are a poor indicator of changes in the administrative state (e.g. regulatory behavior).

[Neonivek]

Unfortunately there's not much of a way to search for "meaningful" legislation. The problem is that... yes, you're right, raw numbers don't mean a thing, but we're talking a gap of over 500 bills per year. I can guarantee those 500 were not all fluff pieces.

Additionally, trying to shove as much onto every bill that might have a hope in hell of passing is terrible legislative policy, goddammit. The current state of affairs should not, in any way, be considered as "normal", "healthy", or "functional".

Ohh come on! Isn't that what America is about? Sneaking stuff into bills in order to make it impossible to notice or get rid of?

[Rockphed]

The day deadlock becomes a feature is the day this country signs its death warrant. The less the government actually adapts to a changing socioeconomic world, the less a benefit and more a burden it becomes.

So the US signed a suicide pact in 1789.  Good to know.  I wonder when we will make good on it.

As for the rest, the constitution is about 10 pages long.  You can literally read it in less time than the average American commute.  We have amended it about 30 times, with 10 of those being all at once right at the beginning.  And yet, it is still the basis of one of the most stable governments in history.  In 227 years we have had a single change of power that was not peaceful.  The people responsible for that got their states burned to the ground and spent 120 years as economic and social backwaters.  Laws should be written so they don't have to worry about every change of society.  Laws should be the static things upon which society can build and flourish as it will.

Unfortunately there's not much of a way to search for "meaningful" legislation. The problem is that... yes, you're right, raw numbers don't mean a thing, but we're talking a gap of over 500 bills per year. I can guarantee those 500 were not all fluff pieces.

Additionally, trying to shove as much onto every bill that might have a hope in hell of passing is terrible legislative policy, goddammit. The current state of affairs should not, in any way, be considered as "normal", "healthy", or "functional".

Oh, I agree.  Bills, in my opinion, should be 1 - 5 pages, and be explainable to a 5th grader.  Congress should have to bring in a 5th grader to explain all bills to, and if the 5th grader doesn't understand what the bill does, then the bill shouldn't pass.  The US code is, in my opinion, about 2 orders of magnitude too large.

[Neonivek]

Unfortunately there's not much of a way to search for "meaningful" legislation. The problem is that... yes, you're right, raw numbers don't mean a thing, but we're talking a gap of over 500 bills per year. I can guarantee those 500 were not all fluff pieces.

Additionally, trying to shove as much onto every bill that might have a hope in hell of passing is terrible legislative policy, goddammit. The current state of affairs should not, in any way, be considered as "normal", "healthy", or "functional".

Oh, I agree.  Bills, in my opinion, should be 1 - 5 pages, and be explainable to a 5th grader.  Congress should have to bring in a 5th grader to explain all bills to, and if the 5th grader doesn't understand what the bill does, then the bill shouldn't pass.  The US code is, in my opinion, about 2 orders of magnitude too large.

Reminds me of this movement to have ALL Canadian laws rewritten in plain language.

When asked why our current laws were written the way they were with confusing ongoing dialog and often latin...

The actual response was: Because they were paid per word.

[Dostoevsky]

Unfortunately there's not much of a way to search for "meaningful" legislation. The problem is that... yes, you're right, raw numbers don't mean a thing, but we're talking a gap of over 500 bills per year. I can guarantee those 500 were not all fluff pieces.

Additionally, trying to shove as much onto every bill that might have a hope in hell of passing is terrible legislative policy, goddammit. The current state of affairs should not, in any way, be considered as "normal", "healthy", or "functional".

I wouldn't say it's necessarily terrible - it depends. If, say, that giant bill is an intended comprehensive approach to transportation policy for the next 5 years, that's quite different than a mish-mash collection of loosely-related topics.

As a person who works within the orbit, so to speak, of the U.S. Congress, I'd say more 'omnibus' bills v. targeted legislation can be a boon for negotiated compromises but has definitely been used to diminish accountability.

As to the '5th grader' problem, unless you're willing to cede a lot more power to agencies (which is a valid stance to take) then a lot of things would lack well-defined U.S. laws (which, again, is a valid stance to take). States could pick up the slack, but there are legitimate interstate problems that can't be defined in 5 pages, let alone solved.

[Dostoevsky]

And while I'm pretty confident Rockphed and I will disagree strongly on this one, I want to emphasize that legislation isn't the only metric of policy change / adaptability in the U.S. government.

There are a lot of laws that either require periodic agency activity (e.g. DoE must periodically update energy efficiency standards, or EPA must periodically determine whether or not the stringency of ozone pollution standards are up to date with the science) or are written broadly enough for agencies to use a fair bit of discretion (e.g. some of the many regulations that get challenged in court).

I'd argue it's about as meaningful as the 'total bills passed', but here's an image of the total number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations over time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The pace of 'pages of regulation' hasn't changed too much, despite the lower number of bills passed. There's still policy being set and changed even if one assumes that Congress has significantly slowed down.

And, beyond that, there's always judicial activity and the types of executive actions that don't show up on any of those metrics - executive orders (not terribly powerful, usually, but can be), agency guidance documents, etc. There's a lot more to the U.S. government and any metric of adaptability than just Congress.

[Dostoevsky]

Executive orders are not a great example, as I said - their power is pretty limited in any situation beyond internal operation of executive agencies.

Edit: no disagreement here on the 9th justice issue.

[Dostoevsky]

I suppose my point isn't to say that 'oh, everything else picks up the slack fine'. More that a) legislative activity isn't easily quantified, and b) agencies are pretty productive at advancing and adjusting policy already. There are always new technologies that lack proper existing legal frameworks (e.g. drones), and the increasing rate of such technologies can indeed pose a problem for the pace of legislation in the U.S., but the fundamentals are pretty decently covered.

And I suppose I lost sight of one element of my argument: there's deadlock by procedure, and deadlock by the makeup of Congress. The tea party / moderate R fights in the House for the past several years (somewhat on topic, some there have argued that a lack of passing bills is a sign of a productive Congress) have screwed a lot of things up, but that's a ongoing problem with the party as opposed to a problem with majority rule.

(Though I suppose one could argue that House majority leadership still has too much control over what gets a floor vote for an ostensibly 'majority rules' chamber.)

Edit: and, getting back to my initial argument, if things really were greased, considering some of the fundamental differences between the parties these days we could end up seeing entire functions of government be torn down and rebuilt every few years. I'd rather things be a bit ossified than be smashed into dust.

[Rockphed]

If we're relying on executive orders to supercede what should be the job of Congress, how is that not a problem? As for judicial activity, we just hamstrung SCOTUS for several months by having Congress refuse to appoint a 9th judge.

Alternatively, we are hamstrung by a President who refused to nominate a judge who congress would appoint.  If Obama had nominated Ted Cruz, say, we would probably have 9 justices serving right now.  But because he decided to nominate somebody to the left of the senate, the senate decided to roll the dice that the next president would nominate somebody else.  The quorum for the supreme court is 6 justices, so congress isn't stopping the court from functioning.  If we had 7 justices or were missing a chief justice, then I would agree that congress should get a move on.

As for my 5 pages to a fifth grader, it is largely a response to things like Obamacare that were 2000 pages long.  Mostly, it was used as a grand-standing prop by republicans.

Finally, not every law needs to be passed yesterday.  I am a firm believer that laws should be designed such that we do not need to constantly change them.  One of the major failings of Obamacare is that not one republican voted for it.  It was not a compromise between the two major political parties so much as a ram-rod to the throat.  As such, Republicans have been able to point out all the horrible things in the law (that invariably make it in to every law) and haven't had to answer for and good things in the law.  What is that phrase doctors use?  "First do no harm?"  A bad law is worse than no law at all.

I suppose my point isn't to say that 'oh, everything else picks up the slack fine'. More that a) legislative activity isn't easily quantified, and b) agencies are pretty productive at advancing and adjusting policy already. There are always new technologies that lack proper existing legal frameworks (e.g. drones), and the increasing rate of such technologies can indeed pose a problem for the pace of legislation in the U.S., but the fundamentals are pretty decently covered.

This is the argument I was trying to make about laws.  A good law defines things in such a way that when somebody comes out with a related, but not identical, thing, the law still covers it fairly well.  Then things like "flying in US airspace" can be controlled by an executive agency interpreting what the current laws want them to do, rather than needing a new law every few months.  Then said agency sends reports to Congress who can debate in committee whether the law is working as planned.

I mean, I'm not saying that it's not okay for Congress to fail to reach a conclusion, or disagree on a bill, or what-have-you. I'm saying it's a problem when they can't even fund the goddamn government due to how much they'd rather fuck over the country than appear weak.

Well, in the case of Republicans, especially the hard-core fiscal hawks, getting spending to be less than tax receipts is paramount to staving off a looming national disaster.

[Shadowlord]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/09/trump-transition-team-for-energy-department-seeks-names-of-employees-involved-in-climate-meetings/

^Climate Change We Can^'t Believe In

[Dostoevsky]

This is the argument I was trying to make about laws.  A good law defines things in such a way that when somebody comes out with a related, but not identical, thing, the law still covers it fairly well.  Then things like "flying in US airspace" can be controlled by an executive agency interpreting what the current laws want them to do, rather than needing a new law every few months.  Then said agency sends reports to Congress who can debate in committee whether the law is working as planned.

In that case, sounds like my assumption on disagreeing with you about the role of agencies was wrong. I would say, though, that it can be difficult enough to predict the next major technologies that writing a law to cover future ideas while not being too expansive for the present field can be challenging unless you cede a lot of interpretation/control over to agencies. And both parties these days are afraid of looking like allies of 'DC unelected bureaucrats'.

As to budget drama and shenanigans, I'd suggest these two CRS reports (among others). Even when there isn't the sort of polarized opposition we see these days on appropriations levels it's honestly just hard getting those appropriations bills properly drafted and passed in a reasonable timeframe. That is an area where some procedural reform (like a two-year appropriations process) could be more helpful.

[Rockphed]

This is the argument I was trying to make about laws.  A good law defines things in such a way that when somebody comes out with a related, but not identical, thing, the law still covers it fairly well.  Then things like "flying in US airspace" can be controlled by an executive agency interpreting what the current laws want them to do, rather than needing a new law every few months.  Then said agency sends reports to Congress who can debate in committee whether the law is working as planned.

In that case, sounds like my assumption on disagreeing with you about the role of agencies was wrong. I would say, though, that it can be difficult enough to predict the next major technologies that writing a law to cover future ideas while not being too expansive for the present field can be challenging unless you cede a lot of interpretation/control over to agencies. And both parties these days are afraid of looking like allies of 'DC unelected bureaucrats'.

As to budget drama and shenanigans, I'd suggest these two CRS reports (among others). Even when there isn't the sort of polarized opposition we see these days on appropriations levels it's honestly just hard getting those appropriations bills properly drafted and passed in a reasonable timeframe. That is an area where some procedural reform (like a two-year appropriations process) could be more helpful.

I think that executive agencies should be using discretion and wisdom to enforce laws in the spirit that they were passed.  I think that where something is far enough outside the bounds set by congress that it is a grey area, the agencies should maintain the status quo and send urgent missives to congress to get on passing legislation about how the law should work.  I am getting tired and need to finish my homework, so examples are sparse on the ground right now.

[Rolepgeek]

Those were actually state capitalism. So they weren't even communism.

Definitions are evil, or something.

Zig-zag... damaged... barracuda. Wtf?

Anyway, give a definition. Your favorite definition of communism, your choice. Then we'll see if the USSR/China counts.

I'd say that socialism is when the people own the means of production, not when the government does so. But that's a bit of a quibble, honestly. The main reason why the USSR doesn't DISPROVE COMMUNISM is that they did it wrong - if there's still a government at the end, you messed up. Social anarchism has never been tried before.

Additionally, my "revolution often creates dictators" point still stands. The USSR doesn't refute Communism anymore than an awful capitalist country refutes capitalism.

Actually, social anarchism has been tried before. It's called 'way in ye olden times before large governments and agriculture'. There's a couple reasons we stopped doing that, first of which is the military. Both the commanders liking power and not liking getting raided all the goddamn time by your neighbors. Or invaded, in non-nomadic communities.

It was likely to be more pleasant than life once agriculture and governments came around, though, to be fair. Less disease, more of what we're rather built to survive in...population density's a mite too high for no agriculture, and agriculture needs to be able to be counted on for people not to kill each other over food, and for it to be able to be counted on you either need a very good distribution network or a means of ensuring it doesn't get stolen or both...

Rockphed, from what I can recall, the ACA as passed was by and large written, effectively, by Mitt Romney. 'It was shoved down our throat' doesn't seem entirely accurate for such a case. It's not great(as in jeezus christ is it distorted) yeah, but still helped quite a few people, from what I remember. Hell, the principles of the thing were certainly a compromise, though in the worst way.