> It's not possible to design a system that the participants themselves can't destroy if they decide to.
You can raise the bar arbitrarily high, though. Make the destruction of the system require lots of coordinated effort, and then make coordination difficult. Coordination is hard for humans as it is, even without a system that actively subverts it. That's why we have lots of issued labeled together as "tragedies of the commons".
You can, but then you run head-first into another problem: this "bar-raising" undermines the legitimacy of the system in the eyes of the people and, not unjustifiably, makes them feel that it is undemocratic. Worse: this is a positive feedback loop. The more you raise the bar, the angrier people get and the more radical they will get in their attempts to tear it down, and so the more bar-raising is needed.
This is the unfortunate paradox that Matthew Yglesias highlighted in "American Democracy is Doomed" [0]: people are raging against horse-trading, organized parties, and 'elites' poo-poohing the "will of the people". This is totally defensible, but to some extent horse-trading and elite rule are the only things that make governance possible. I don't know any solution to this problem.
>This is the unfortunate paradox that Matthew Yglesias highlighted in "American Democracy is Doomed" [0]: people are raging against horse-trading, organized parties, and 'elites' poo-poohing the "will of the people". This is totally defensible, but to some extent horse-trading and elite rule are the only things that make governance possible. I don't know any solution to this problem.
Well, I think a parliamentary system with proportional representation would help a lot. In those systems, the parties/lists might trade horses, but you know that your vote bought some measure of strength for a platform you actually believe in. Oh, and real civil-service protections to keep government staff from being fired for political reasons, including for security and military officials.
I used to think that, but based on recent events I'm not so sure: European Parliamentary governments seem to be having the same populist uprisings based on perceived illegitimacy and disconnect from of government that we are. All things being equal, I'd rather the US had a Parliamentary system, but I don't think it's a silver bullet.
gov't is currently optimized with only two of three core primitives (literacy+numeracy). Gov't like all institutions will be re-developed with the relatively (50years) new primitive, computeracy. Nothing like automation and disagregated decision making exists in the corporate bureaucracy of government today. If you want more outcome, you literally have to hire more ppl. There is no software leverage in government. Changing that changes everything. Our problem is we are alive at a time similar to when literacy became possible for everyone. It's very obvious that institutions not built on literacy would change, but it took nearly 100 years.
Not only that but given there are 318 million people in the US it costs 2.5 billion dollars to buy everyone lunch one time. Good luck bribing that many people into complacency without running out of GDP.
These days, it feels like that effort is well coordinated by a combination of voluntary ignorance, poor foresight, and targeted messaging. Tools like social media sure make it easier.
You can raise the bar arbitrarily high, though. Make the destruction of the system require lots of coordinated effort, and then make coordination difficult. Coordination is hard for humans as it is, even without a system that actively subverts it. That's why we have lots of issued labeled together as "tragedies of the commons".