They simply shouldn't be able to trade individual stocks. Requiring them to tell the world the exact second they're buying a stock doesn't change that that purchase was made to make money. If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates corporate winners and losers, we should not merely have to hope that your rule benefits us more than it does you. The job description is clear - you're a civil servant. If doing your job as a senator is unappealing to you because you can no longer invest in individual companies, then don't let the door hit you on the way out. Goodbye
Full reform: Select representatives randomly like jurors to prevent maligned motives. If selected there is temporarily a freeze on their assets and they move to dormatories on a political campus built around the White house with a panopticon of cameras 24/7 live streaming the political process with ads to generate revenue to pay down the debt. All communication during this period is public record and searchable, ads will be included in the results. Run it like the reality TV show it has become and pay them current per capita gdp, they can get a raise by increasing it.
also to keep it like Singapore, let's deport all people illegally (but beat the crap out of them first), execute all drug dealers, execute all drug addicts, and most other criminals - beat the crap out of them and release.
the nice thing about common sense beatings is the cost of prison, housing, food, etc. is all zero, and the whole prison political topic is a non-issue. beatings are in fact extremely efficient, effective, and cheap, which is why lee kwon yew adopted them
I dunno about you, but the USA has never been known for non-violent treatment of immigrants, and if anything, 2025 is not the year to claim such a high ground.
I assumed OP’s point was coming from a place of admiration for Singapore, not trying to claim the moral high ground. It’s remarkable what Singapore has been able to achieve through a disciplined society.
Singapore was a poor, backward c country within my parents’ lifetime. Harsh punishments is a tool they use to change the culture to make it more amenable to development.
I'm curious why a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that create its own problems? We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? Enough to live on while still driving your own car and buying your own groceries is, i feel, the right pay balance for congress, lest they detach even further from the lived experience of civilians.
Their finances should be monitored and heavily restricted. No one should think of money as a benefit of civil service
> We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right?
That's actually probably the best reason for someone to get involved in civil service. If the salary is lucrative enough, the incentive to stay in office will be high and, importantly, money won't be a factor keeping people from getting into office.
The problems we currently have is:
- Money is an incentive to get into office, but that money comes from interaction with wealthy individuals.
- Nothing stops congress people from leveraging their public actions into lucrative private industry.
- Independently wealthy individuals have a much easier time getting elected than an average citizen.
Think of it this way, if the salary is 0, then you effectively lock out all but the wealthy from office. If the salary is just enough to get by, that still locks out potentially qualified people simply because they can get better jobs out of congress. But if it's a lucrative salary, then you not only make it so people can make it in congress, they can be more competitive against a wealthy competition. They also don't need things like "contributions" to stay afloat. You'd simply be less tempted to take a $10k bribe if it jeopardizes your $1m salary. That alone significantly raises the barrier for bribery.
But we should do that in tandem with cutting off obvious corruption routes. Being a representative should mean you can't work in private industry for 10 years. You should only be allowed to trade 2 ETFs, an all stock and all bond ETF. And the insider trading laws should result in immediate expulsion from congress.
You’re saying finding the people most incentivized by money is the feature we should be optimizing for?
If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents?
Maybe a better system for selecting civil servants is…I dunno…a system that optimizes for that “service” part? It’s shocking how in the last few decades we’ve convinced ourselves that money is the only filter that motivates people and is the inherent driver of all human action.
There are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.
Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.
> To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.
Only because that's become the normalised way of 'winning', ironically where society generally loses because being 'friends with every important person in your state' generally means you pander to them in a way that costs everyone else.
Having had that rant, I don't know a better way, and your description is what US politics has (d)evolved to over time; water finding its own level.
Sounds like we should federally fund campaigns and place strict limits on non-federal campaign funding/PACs/etc.
There's a very thorny line we'd have to draw there re: speech and protection--what's a forbidden PAC and what's a citizen who chooses to use their time and resources to support a candidate they like? I happen to believe that we as a country should trace that line rather than falling back on constitutionally-protected-speech absolutism, but I'm aware that's a minority opinion and unlikely to ever bear fruit.
Something that people think will happen if you pay a guy a lot of money is that he will then not try to get more money. In fact, Martha Stewart insider traded for a few hundred k. She's worth half a billion.
A question to ask yourself is "How much money would I have to pay Trump as the President for him to not launch a cryptocoin in his name?"
And a similar question is "If we paid the dockworkers to stay home so that we could containerize, would the guys staying home consider themselves striking when we consider automating?"
There is an answer, and it seems that if you pay a guy who had a large appetite for money a lot of money it doesn't diminish his appetite for more money all that much.
Once you have paid him the Danegeld
You never get rid of the Dane
Martha Stewart was convicted of obstruction of justice. The securities fraud (inside trading) charge was thrown out by the judge.
It seems entirely reasonable to me that an individual could mis-remember their dealings of ~49k when they're worth billions.
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> And a similar question is "If we paid the dockworkers to stay home so that we could containerize, would the guys staying home consider themselves striking when we consider automating?"
Alternatively, if we went back to the optimal point of the Laffer tax curve (roughly 75% for top bracket). Then it doesn't need to be the Port of LA paying people to sit at home, it can just be the government providing paid job training and etc so the workers aren't on the streets when they're fired.
<edit>You're right. That's a bad example. Here's a better one.</edit> Michael Mindlin was making millions a year when he was convicted over an insider trade he made $60k in. Really, the idea that if you give the bank robbers more money they'll stop robbing has to be this pervasive belief.
Michael Mindlin isn't Martha Stewart. Use him in your example next time.
It's like saying you should wear a rain coat because it's 60 degrees outside. And then when I point out they're unrelated you go "it's also raining". No duh wear a raincoat but you didn't say that at the start.
