These are good ideas.

The Steve’s alphabet option is intersting but has a significant downside: it nationalizes elections in every district. Every candidate would have to advertise and campaign across the country to reach every voter in her alphabet district. This would be far more expensive than local campaigns in individual districts or states, greatly increasing the power of money. All other options that ignore geography face the same problem.

There are many redistricting techniques used today to protect incumbents or benefit one party or the other, too many to mention. Overcoming these devices is straightforward if redistricting is taken away from state legislatures and given to independent commissions constrained by requirements to make districts of equal population and compact, with boundaries following natural geographic and administrative boundaries, and prohibiting gerrymandering.

Steve is correct that the goal should be to increase diversity and the competitiveness of districts.

Sure, you could change all of those situation. But would it be a good idea to remove this practical bundle of contracts and default arrangements that serves most people quite well, most of the time?

I always appreciate your level-headedness on these kinds of issues. I am a libertarian with streaks of both traditionalism and utilitarianism derived, possibly, from my Christian faith. I have also argued, much to the dismay of my Christian friends, that if marriage were strictly a private affair with no sanction by the state, then the arguments for or against would be moot and that such a state of affairs would probably be the best condition to promote a peaceable society.

The problem is that not only is marriage sanctioned by the state, it is an institute that is deeply embedded in the laws at the federal and state level and across the spectrum of civil, criminal, tax, employment and family law. Those that strongly favor “gay marriage”, in essence, want to win the argument about what, semantically, marriage is. And they want to force individuals and institutions to conform to that definition.

As an example, I have a friend that is the founder of a multi-billion dollar corporation and is also a deeply committed Christian. He provides generous pro-family benefits such as flex-time, education grants, health care, etc to his employees. What would my friend do if the government required that his company extend benefits equally to all civil unions? I have posed this question to my friend. He said he would conform to the law by eliminating any benefit that would require him to conform to a definition of marriage that he believes is false. He expects that corresponding wages would have to rise but without the benefit of the tax deduction on health care expenses. On net, it would negatively affect his bottom line.

Regards,

Steve

Reduce regulations, make it easier to get a Doctors licence, set caps on malpractice lawsuits, and eliminate existing entitlement programs in order to let market forces reduce costs.

Or

Institute a single payer system similar to the NHS or Canada health.

I would be happy with either, but I think politically the second option is more probable in the long run.

The first two are quite simple

When it comes to tax law, we should stop discriminating against people because of marital status. Single people should be taxed the same as married couples.

Immigration law should be severely overhauled, and having marriage as a ‘ticket to immigration’ should be removed. Please note, I married a Canadian and used this system. It’s a mess, and marriage shouldn’t be a part of it.

Inheritance law could be easily fixed without marriage. Simply having a will negates any marriage contracts claim on property. In absence of a will, inheritance would just follow the genetic lineage.

Couples that wish to share joint property can form a contract to do so, just like non-sexual partners do today.

The legal concept of marriage is an anachronism, and needs to be put out to pasture.

In the case of my friend, of course, I believe I have a lot of relevant information that isn’t easy (or appropriate) to include in a blog post.