Let's abolish all political parties!

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What kind of government? Government that intrudes in the most minute details of people's lives? Why not simplify government so all that it does is maintain an army, a police force and courts of law. No welfare, no minute regulation except in major areas of public safety such as communicable diseases, hazardous cargo and such like. We don't need a government whose goal is to make us Good.

ruveyn

Drove me nuts too.
Googled it.

Was thinking it was some new macabre form of "fan fiction".

But no, its the belief that if you leave an electric fan on overnight in the same enclosed room you sleep in that you will die of hypothermia ( like falling overboard in the Bering Sea).

Gotta admit- that IS pretty dumb. About the dumbest belief Ive ever heard of!
But apparantely its a common belief in South Korea.

Nope, parties are better than none, as they do allow people with limited resources to run. Without parties, only Donald Trump or someone could run for President, so our leaders would only be random rich guys. As far as the military, while I respect that...no. Being in the military is a good thing, but just making it an arbitrary kinda requirement is just as dumb as "requiring" college education to be president. Is it good? Certainly, but lack of it doesn't mean the person is unfit for leadership. The person simply must prove themselves in other ways.

But yeah, the only reason political parties exist is that it's impossible otherwise. "Parties" form naturally, even if you were to just magically abolish parties somehow, people will group up and support who they wish, and then a group becomes a party, and there you go. The only other possible solution is have ALL campaign money come from the government, but then, the government can then just theoretically pick it's next leader.

That said, I do wish we as a country could get out of the "two party" mindset, most countries are better in that regard, in having minority parties have more power, but USA seems to systematically almost disallow "minor" parties.

Ah, one of the basic ideas of the republicans (the sensible ones, not the religious nutjobs that seem to grab all the attention). Simplification of government has advantages, though that's another debate entirely and rather drifting away from the point here.

Let's say, then, that our hypothetical government is a "simple" one. As you say, it maintains an army, a police force and law. I'd rather like to include such basics as funding for, say, roads and rail networks, or the national grid, but we'll assume those are handled privately (along with healthcare, housing, financial regulation, schools, the environment and foreign trade) and I will insist that the economy is part of the simple government, otherwise it wouldn't really *be* government. If you aren't in charge of the tax rates, you can't budget for the other stuff and you're just a private army/police force for the people that pay you.

This is still very complex. Let's start with the army, and with it foreign policy. You need to keep that army big enough to be a suitable defence, but large armies are a severe drain on the economy. It also needs to have something to do. If they aren't at war (which is expensive) they need to be kept in training. You need to ensure they are equipped - and that your military technology is kept up to date, which requires a budget for research and another for maintenance. The cost to maintain a strike force of jets is enormous even when they aren't being used. And your decisions regarding the army are dictated by the rather murky view of the world as a whole. Are your neighbours aggressive, like many middle eastern or African states? The UK is unlikely to be invaded these days - Europe and the USA are rather too tied up in trade agreements and so on to throw all that away - but we're still tied up in foreign engagements, because we have interests elsewhere in the world. In any engagement, we need to decide when to advance, hold fast or retreat. We need to know what to strike with - not too hard, not too soft. We need to do all this as efficiently as possible - so decisions on the military budget or how it is spent are crucial.

And we can't just pump money into that. Domestic concerns are also key. The police force is very similar to an army, except it doesn't get to kill people except under extreme circumstances. So we have prisons and courts, and laws to enforce. These need to be monitored and adjusted, because a law can become irrelevant or positively harmful (UK libel laws are a case in point, and have become absurd since the advent of the internet). That's a complicated process even for a trained lawyer. Policing cannot simply focus on crimes that have occurred, but also on preventing them in the first place - so you need to encourage the people to take basic precautions. Where do you stand on gun control? If you have gun control, you need to enforce it. If you don't, you have an arms race on your hands where the police force needs to be able to take on an armed populace (and, preferably, not kill them in the course of their duty). What do you do with the criminals when you catch them? Locking them up is of limited use. Do you attempt to rehabilitate, get them off drugs, find them work? How do you deal with cases of innocent people being convicted, which will happen however careful you are?

But law leads to regulation. Some business practises will be illegal (say, selling dodgy goods or even illegal ones). As big businesses have huge advantages over small businesses, you need to ensure the small ones have the opportunity to grow - otherwise, you'll end up with enormous monopolies controlling everything. Some might argue this has already happened. What about advertising? What about libel/slander?

You need to consider taxation, too. What do you tax? At what rate? Too much tax will limit growth. Too little means you can't afford anything. If your tax produces a surplus, that can be a good thing - you can invest that elsewhere - but if the surplus is too high then you'll have complaints from your people. If you're spending too much you'll have a deficit, and that's bad, because you'll be paying money to service the debt. That's tax money on literally nothing. And you can't simply set a tax rate and say "keep it at that", because all your budgets are going to shift (usually upwards) over time and you won't get the same income from tax every year either.

As I say, we haven't even touched on the possible complications of education and healthcare, which complicate things even more because they have knock-on effects on everything else. Poor education limits research and economy and increases criminality. Poor health impacts on the economy and reduces the effectiveness of your armed forces.

Any one of these aspects is a complicated nightmare. Because they all interconnect, they become exponentially more complicated.

Just my $.02...

I dislike the 2 party system as it is at the moment.

As a musician, I think that public support of the arts and education is important. Dems support public arts and funding schools. But I'm against certain moral issues.

The repubs have a more conservative outlook that I can agree with, but don't as a party support ME.

If I go with dems, I compromise my principles. If I go with principles, I'm against other musicians and artists.

I don't think any party system should have to be that polarizing. Dems and repubs don't seem to exist with any more purpose than to stand against what the other proposes.

Instead of our representatives telling us what to vote for, why can't we just tell THEM what to vote for? Yeah, I know you can make phone calls and such or vote against them the next term. But what is the point of voting along party lines if the people we vote to represent us don't represent us?