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I myself don’t know much about the candidates I vote for on election day because I read articles like this and think more in terms of big-picture ideas instead of political personalities.

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I'm the same. I tend to vote for parties rather than individuals, because I'm far from practical politics, so I can and should only vote for somewhat abstract ideas. But at some point, ideas need to become policies, and then policies need to become laws, and then the laws need an enforcement mechanism, and often a law will need a funding mechanism, and then also the funding will need auditing and oversight. In other words, at some point ideas must translate into actual governance. And it is a problem to think that ordinary citizens can study the process of government sufficiently that they can understand how to translate ideas into actual governance. So we need some people who can specialize in the process of converting ideas into governance -- this has always been the argument in favor of representative government, and at least since the dawn of modern representative systems, back in the 1600s, it's been understood that representative government can help with this process of conversion. But I think now, in the 21st Century, another layer of representation is needed, something between the public and the legislature. Modern advertising has transformed modern politics into a system of manipulation. Modern marketing has converted citizens into consumers of government services. To get back to the old ideal, wherein citizens can keep a watchful eye on their elected representative, would nowadays be easier if we had another layer of specialization. Achen and Bartels suggest that less than 10% of the public really keeps track of what is going on in politics. That suggests that a subset of that 10% should be empowered to play the traditional role of watchful citizen, keeping track of what the elected representatives are actually doing.

Many of the essays on this Substack suggest that the modern world is complex and highly specialized, and so our politics need to adapt to this modern world by allowing more specialized roles for voters. This essay is the same, suggesting that further layers of specialization is the answer that can fix one of the problems that exists with our modern democratic process.

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