The only way this is not true is if you think the system is fundamentally failing. Here in the states, I'd guesstimate that the system is fundamentally failing somewhere around 10-15% of the electorate. That is enough to propel unusual challengers like Trump and Sanders but not enough to fundamentally change either party. I'm not sure what the percentage is in the UK, but with a more comprehensive welfare state I'd assume it would be lower. Unless it is significantly higher (I'm guessing but somewhere in the 25% range) you aren't going to have an effective party that isn't Tweedledee or Tweedledum.
]]>(1) Parties have in the past decade or two changed to being very tightly whipped (at least by historical American standards). This is particularly true of the Republican Party and is why, for example, there was not a single Republican vote in the Senate for Obamacare. (Note that the system here is not the same as that in the UK as enforcement is in large part bottom up driven, resulting in this being much more effective at preventing Republicans from breaking ranks to the left.) The clearest expression in the House was the adoption of the Hastert Rule (nothing gets done unless it has the support of the majority of the majority (Republican Party)), though this was somewhat abandoned last year to get the budget passed. The result though, of imposing Parliamentary discipline on a system that was not designed to produce a clear governing party is exactly what you describe (at least formally): a government that can't respond to changing situations except slowly or (as with Obamacare) in the very rare situation where one party has a super-majority.
(2) The Constitution is formally very difficult to amend. In practice though, without amendment, the interpretation and application of the Constitution over time has changed radically. This was most obvious in the 1930s but also true in the Civil Rights Era. What we've essentially done is created a slower moving amendment process by partial elite consensus to replace the too-difficult democratic process embedded in the document.
(3) As with 2, so with 1: Our formal system of government involving Congress doesn't work very well, so we've set up a lot of things to bypass it by delegating authority to the executive branch in very broad strokes.
(4) The effect of all of this is that a President has a lot more power than is commonly realized or used, which is generally bound by informal understanding and the need to maintain certain forms of political support - usually a President is a front man for a coalition. (And for usually, here read: I can't think of any even possible exception until I get all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt and before that Andrew Johnson (in both cases, by the way, initially un-elected Presidents).) Trump though is fundamentally different in that he is not the front man for a coalition in the traditional sense. That combined with his personality and the "our government doesn't work" stance that he is running on means that he would feel far less constrained than any prior President.
(5) In some sense, we've created something that looks a lot like an elective dictatorship to address the significant failings of the American Constitution without really realizing it and Trump has the possibility of being the first elective dictator.
]]>(a) jobs will get scarce(r); (b) our societies will have the potential to be increasingly repressive; (c) small, poor countries must conform to the wishes of powerful state and nonstate financial actors.
So far I agree. However, contra point 18, we are (at least in democracies) voters as well as units of labor.
To the extent that automation creates an unemployable underclass of 5-15% of the population there is going to be a great deal of suffering, though not necessarily repression. As that percentages rises past 50%, society is going to become increasingly redistributive, even in the United States. Automation implies an increased surplus which can be divided and a fraction of varying size used to help those who are unemployable.
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