The difference is in cases where the parliament chooses the executive is it leads to it's own collusion and corruption in terms of excessively growing govt... not that it's barely held the US from doing so. The point is to be in an adversarial context in order to resist overreach of govt.

For better or worse, our system today isn't quite what it was originally designed as... The Senate was originally selected by the state govts, not direct election... the Vice President was originally the runner-up, not a paired ticket and generally hamstrung as a result. The VP didn't originally participate in the Senate either, that came after WWII.

The good part about the constitution is there is a reasonable set of ground rules for changing said constitution with a minimum that should clearly represent the will of the majority of the population. (corrupt politicians not-withstanding)

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lhopki01 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Almost every country ranked for having the least corruption is a parliamentary system. Actually proportional parliamentary seem to be even better in terms of little corruption.

The reasonable set of ground rules seem to favor states over the will of the majority of the population. It is possible to change the constitution with states representing only 25% of the population. And remember you'd only need a majority in each of those states so could be way less of the population.

Overall the system seems flawed in that instead of having clearly delegated areas of responsibility to states and then doing the federal system as based on the population of the whole country it muddled areas and then made a federal system that couldn't respond to the population.

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tracker1 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I include legislative anti-liberties as corruption. If you can be jailed for reposting a meme on twitter, for example... If you post a picture of your dog with a paw up, and make a nazi joke about it and risk winding up in prison as a more specific example.

There are clearly delegated responsibilities to the states... the 10th amendment specifies as much... that the govt has grown beyond this wouldn't have been stopped by a parliament any more than the current system.

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lhopki01 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I can understand your point in terms of negative liberty but I tend to hold positive liberty to be just as important. It is not sufficient to me that there is no law preventing me from having healthcare, I expect that the government should ensure I have the ability to have a healthy life.

The 10th amendment isn't clear. Too many areas are dual responsibility. That's never going to be clear.

	▲	tracker1 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So if there is nobody willing to be a doctor for the pay rate the govt is offering, what happens? Does your "right" to healthcare extend to literal slavery? I'm being a bit hyperbolic only to make the point... I don't think anyone's "rights" should include forced labor of anyone else. So certain things, even food cannot be a right... I would think that public lands and a right to hunt/gather or even some level cooperative gardening/farming might be okay as a middle ground though.