Service Cogs

Earlier this month, I found that I had to get a new cell phone.  My carrier was Sprint but since they got bought out, or “merged with”, by T-Mobile, I was going to have to get a SIM card or face no phone coverage.  And coincidently, my current phone was too old to accept the newly updated SIM cards that T-Mobile was offering.

So I found myself shopping for a new phone at a brightly colored phone store (I think Lovecraft’s Colour Out of Space was actually magenta) and dealing retail salesfolks whose formal training usually involved a fifteen minute video on diversity and an index card of things to say.  Fortunately, the people I was dealing with were slightly more intelligent than your average retail store worker.

I found out that I did qualify for an upgrade and that I would get 50% off a new phone.  Considering that I had my phone for over four years at this point (a personal record with modern “smart” phones), I felt like I should have gotten more, but I’ll take it, especially considering how expensive cell phones are.  I’d rather buy a gaming PC.  In fact, you practically are these days when you buy a cell phone.

Anyhow, I had to wait a couple of days for them to get the phone in stock.  I found out that my wife qualified for a full upgrade, even though her phone was newer, so we had to wait for her phone to come in stock as well.

So the day the phones arrived, I showed up and started the whole paperwork process because you can’t just buy a phone and sign up for a service, you have to buy into a contract and sell a piece of your soul.

But then a problem occurred.  On the final page of the digital app that processed the paperwork, the program crashed before I could sign and submit it.  When the retail worker (let’s call her Donna) brought it back up, we found that my account was now in “Tentative” status.  No big deal, right?  All Donna has to do is approve my account and continue the process, right?

Yeah, that’s not how things work in the real world.  Donna had insufficient permissions to do so.  So she had to make a call to T-Mobile tech support.  Except this wasn’t a common problem for tech support to handle.  So for the next five hours or so, Donna made calls to various departments and people to see if someone, anyone, could solve the problem we had.

And, of course, no one could solve the problem and half of them couldn’t understand the problem at all.  This is because like Donna, they’re training consisted of a 15 minute video about diversity in the workforce and an index of steps to solve the problems they would face.

In essence, they were all cogs in a large corporate bureaucratic system with little room for flexibility or fluid functionality.  Hell, I suspect that if someone could fix the issue, he would’ve been fired for overstepping authority.

So at the close of business that day, I went home with no phone service, my current cell phone having been reduced to nothing more than a small tablet.  And no, WiFi Calling wasn’t an option either.

I didn’t mind the situation, actually.  I wasn’t mad at Donna or the many tech support operators she talked to.  It’s not their fault that their system was utterly incapable of handling a problem.  If anything, I’d blame the software architects and project manager who designed the system in the first place, who were probably either an outsourced software company or a bunch of H1B Visa recruits whose competence was way below the average skilled American worker.

And, to be honest, I’m not important enough to anyone to merit a phone call.  And yes, 911 calls will still work even without any viable SIM card or working phone service.  So if I had any medical emergencies, I would’ve been fine.

In any case, the situation was resolved within 24 hours and I got my new phone.  But at the end of it all, I realized that our technocratic society is probably doomed to failure, like ever other society, but human beings simply aren’t going to be allowed the freedom or trust to maintain it.

For a Better Republic

The American Republic is broken.  Too much power has been centralized to the top with little representation from the bottom to hold those in power accountable in any way.

There are several solutions to this problem.  Unfortunately, most of them involve violence, usually initiated by the FBI and ending in your arrest at the hands of the very assholes you’re trying to hold accountable.

So, instead of advocating for armed insurrection, which is coming sooner than most people think but not soon enough for most, I’d like to suggest some tweaks to our existing system in order to prevent some of the major issues we’re seeing these days.

For one thing, representation isn’t just limited to popular representation.  This is where elected representatives are representative of a certain proportion of the population.  Popular representation is a basic form of representation is very palatable for the dumb masses.  It makes sense in our minds and even midwits think of themselves as sophisticated when advocating for it.

But there is another form of representation that is arguably more important.  It’s called regional representation.  This is where a representative represents a particular region, and necessarily a population.

The best way to break this down is to look at Congress.  You have the House of Representatives, which is (in theory) where popular representation happens.  And you have the Senate, which is where regional representation happens.

The idea is that the House is where the popular voices happen and the Senate is where the regional voices happen.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case because in both houses of Congress, our representation has been twisted and diluted by power-hungry maniacs who don’t give a flying rat’s ass about the people they are supposed to represent.

The problem doesn’t stop at the Federal level either.  Each and every State government is a mess when it comes to proper representation.

Ideally, you see, we should have a popular representation with a small ratio of representative to populace.  For the House, this was originally supposed to be 1 in 30,000 people.  Now it’s closer to 1 in 800,000 people.  Do you think your House member really represents you when he’s got hundreds of thousands of other people to represent, many of whom don’t or can’t vote?

As for the Senate, originally they were chosen by the State legislatures but that was switched to the popular vote with the passage of the 17th amendment (at least they bothered to pass an amendment to take away your representation).  So now Senators only represent the most populous region of their state and not the whole state, or at least as much of the state as they can.

The same can be sadly said for most State legislatures.  They follow the same pattern of a higher popular ratio of representation and diluted regional representation.

So how do we remedy this?

At the State level, the popular representatives need to have a proper ratio.  I’d say that one elected official must represent no more than 10,000 eligible voters.  The eligible voters part is the key because if you are not eligible to vote, for whatever reason, then you shouldn’t have a voice anyway.

As for a State Senate, there should be one State Senator per county in each state.  Or two per county in each state.  But each county would have equal say in this chamber.  Said senator would be elected by the popular vote of the county.  This ensures that the more populous areas don’t rule over the less populous areas and these regions can come to some sort of compromise.

The Governor, or whoever happens to be the State executive, should be chosen either by the State legislatures or by wining the most counties, as executives must represent as much of the region they are to govern.

At the Federal level, the changes are simpler.  Increase the House representative count to meet the 1 in 30,000 ratio where those 30,000 are eligible voters only.  For the Senate, either repeal the 17th amendment or create a kind of electoral system where the Senator has to gain the majority of county votes, not popular votes.  At least then he is representing the majority of his state and not one or two large cities.

The Electoral College must be changed to be similar in that it’s chosen based on the counties, not the people.  That way, a single populous county can’t simply change the Electoral system based solely on it’s virtue of having a ton of people living there.

This does, more or less, follow the spirit of the original Constitution.  Popular representation was confined to a single chamber in Congress while regional representation took care of the other chamber and the President.

Now there are flaws in my design, mostly because the design is about managing people and people are corrupted from the start, especially those who seek power.  I’m sure if everything I outlined was implemented perfectly, there were be tons of people who find a way to game the system to their advantage.

The idea here is not to strive for perfection, but to strive for a better system that will hopefully mitigate the inherent problems in our own system.  And our own system has some big, gaping problems that allowed a handful of people to basically take power.