Scenario: We get rid of every single member of the existing government

Okay, so let's say people finally succeed in changing the government. We get rid of every existing politician in the house, presidency, supreme court, senate, every branch of the government.

Now we replace them with younger politicians who aren't democrats or republicans, since they're more likely to listen to the people, right?

What happens? Suppose everyone finally got the change they wanted, then what? I don't like speculative questions, but I think people need to think through this before they start shouting things like "Down with the government" or "Down with the banks!"

What happens if people get what they want? How much better off would they really be?

So, "same shit different day" is the logical argument here.

Nothing changes. Because we've done nothing to curtail lobbying or other methods of businesses having more political clout than citizens.

edited 20th Oct '11 11:33:35 AM by Midgetsnowman

But you need polititcians to do that.

Yep, and now you have new ones with less individual money. They'll probably be easier to buy off, too.

I'm sure the South East voters would be happy because the Liberals in office are just Tory pet boys who do what their Eton masters say.

Young SCOTUS justices would be much more likely to be socially liberal and economically left-wing, so things would improve.

Ah, true, canning and replacing the SCOTUS like this would change far more than replacing all the executive and legislative branch.

How do you know that?

It would all be too unpredictable...

It would be rather unpredictable.

Instead of people in office who actually know what to do to run a nation, you get a bunch of scrubs in there who have possibly never managed anything larger than a few dozen co-workers or a PTA meeting.

How will be negotiate with other countries? Can we be taken seriously by other nations after this? How will we negotiate with each other? cna I trust that noob to make the right balanced decisions on national policy? Commerce? Taxes? Where's the continuity? I would then have no idea what sort of person is then in office. Think that's beneficial for businesses?

At least with our current crop of politicians, you more or less know what you're going to get and can deal with it.

Might as well have Anarchy from the get-go.

Well, on the one hand, everyone in the new government would be absolute, utter shit at running anything for awhile.

On the other hand, new people with new views, all at once, instead of having them trickle in and then losing themselves in the murder machine.

~shrug~

I think we could wipe the Supreme Court, as Savage so astutely noted, and replace everyone on it with 20-something fresh lawyers, and the results would be... interesting, just on their own.

Without a good leader (probably of the Magnificent Bastard kind) or politicians who actually start a trend (unlikely), basically we end up with Meet the New Boss.

Meet the New Boss if you're lucky.

I assume the same old lobbyists would stay though.

The new guys would just be bought out by them too.

Yeah, the lobbyist crowd would exert their influence and we'd end up with much of the same, after the newness wore off.

A government full of young Jimmy Carters. Whoooaaa...

Well, first they would make Book-Burning illegal because this is the Information Age, and information is not just valued, it's treasured like the jewel it is; second, they would institute ways to keep themselves in power, because otherwise they might as well declare it unconstitutional to throw purple shoes on top of a house on Wednesday for all the effect they're going to have; and third, they would do nothing important to the economy because the economy is like Cthulhu: You cannot control it.

Would "every single member" include civil servants and others who aren't in their position due to winning an election or being a nominee that's been confirmed by the Senate?

The politicians get the attention, but bureaucrats matter as well.

It would actually be a huge cultural change more than anything. It would indicate that.

1. 1. People are pissed at the status quo

2. 2. People are willing to act on that anger.

It would actually change drastically the way politicians would act. Most of them are focused on keeping their job, and as such the best way to do it right now is to not rock the boat. This would change. You'd have to be focused on actual results for the public.

It would be a change from an ideological-centered government to a results-centered government, at least in the US. This would be a massive change in and of itself.

It actually doesn't require every single member being voted out. It doesn't even require new parties. It probably requires the more extreme party (in the case of the US, the Republicans) being voted out en masse.