Well, I've gone on before about how we've got a completely messed up electoral system here in Hong Kong, and in practice, it is a horrible system which ensures that big corporations controlling the government is not an aberration, but the way things are supposed to be.

But what about in theory? What if, instead of voting for a congressman to represent your home state, you voted for one to represent the economic sector in which you work? Say there was a medical representative, an investment banking representative, an education representative, and a non-profit representative? Could such a strange system ever work?

Yes, I'm aware that the only other country that has ever tried this was Mussolini's Italy. He did it as a way to co-opt the industrialists and the trade unions. But I want to start a debate, not end one.

I don't think it could work, because the workers would be left out. The interests of a business/employer are not always the interest of the employees. Just look at Wal-Mart.

Of course, the employees of Wal-Mart could very well elect a representative from CostCo (same basic idea as a Wal-Mart, except with non-exploitative business and employee policies) for the merchandising sector, thus causing more merchandising places to have to act like CostCo; but if the companies actually MADE the rules, I think the CostCos would soon be taken out by the Wal-Marts; once it became corporate policy to treat employees like dirt, the people would probably start grumbling about the government, revolt, and bring it down about it.

Hmmm... this could work if you balanced it off with workers. Equal representation from corporations and workers (and also have laws making it illegal and highly punishable for either side to force the other to vote certain ways).
But I'd do that for half the government, and have the rest be geographic representation like it is now.

The solution is obvious: let trade unions and the like have representation as well as industrial sectors. For every Pharmaceutical Sector there'd be an American Medical Association, for every industrial supply sector an industrial workers' union.

Well then, we need to stop the corporations from bullying their employees away from unions, and, for that matter, require membership in a union of all workers. There's actually more non-union than union workers.

It needn't be actual unions, of course.... Just like the industry representatives need not be companies themselves. Just an elected official to represent a given industrial sector, and an elected official to represent its corresponding labor segment.

And since I'm being forced at gunpoint to write a paper about this for work.... let me try these arguments out here.

Even if you managed to set up a system where everyone - employers and employees - were all fairly represented, wouldn't you still have this problem?
That is:

The politicians would _only_ care about appealing to their constituencies, which would be a certain type of person with a certain type of job. And they'd only think about their voters' roles as citizens in their jobs. They'd forget about the fact that employees are also consumers, investors, parents, members of their communities and taxpayers.

Is what is good for the teachers' union necessarily what is good for education? The teachers might get paid more, but it would also be harder to fire bad teachers.

Tariffs and subsidies might be good for the steel industry (both employers and employees) but how about everyone else who then has to pay higher taxes and higher prices for goods in stores?

Building a new road might create more business for bus companies and more jobs for bus drivers, but would the road really make transportation more efficient? Or would you end up with LA at rush hour? With extra smog?

All of that narrow pandering happens anyway. Still, it would be tough to get self-interest A pandered to if it inflicts a large cost on everyone else (akin to the steel tariff you mentioned); the number of people opposed would almost always swamp those in favor.

I suspect it would shake out in practice a lot like it does in real legislative bodies; a lot of horse trading, a lot of balance of power politics, almost everyone winding up with some to most of what they want. Those with no particular representation would get shafted; but that's no different than what happens in legislatures everywhere anyway.

Ehn, just playing devil's advocate here. How about this one:
If you didn't have a job because say, you were busy raising children, or you were disabled, or you were retired, would this mean that you couldn't vote?

Austria does have an informal body called Sozialpartnerschaft (social partnership). That is a place where lobbies that are important enough to make trouble if left out meet discuss matters of importance and then advise the goverment. In the past it has often been called a shadow goverment since hardly ever a goverment has done anything against the wishes of the social partnership and often goverments have waited for them before taking actions on their own. It had been going through a weak phase in the last years but seems to get come back lately.

The most important lobbies there are the Arbeiterkammer (mandatory tade union) ÖGB (trade union) Wirtschaftskammer (mandatory industry union) und Industriellenvereinigung (industry lobby)

Note that the social partnership does not have any formal power. If any lobby decides to leave it and do fight seperatly for their issues there is nothing to stop them. It's just that the lobbies agreed that it works better for everyone if they come up with a compromise before there are strikes or any other costly conflicts.

The overall effect is that changes are seldom and small, strikes are practically non existent and in general unions and buisness do talk to each other and find compromises. Some special groups (like Railroad employees) do have privileges that have no longer any justification but are nearly impossible to abolish. Some people do get shafted because they are not important for the lobbies of their side.

Overall IMO it is a good system.

Kea - there's no reason you couldn't have representatives elected by the general populace proportionally, to represent consumers and citizens in general, as well as constituency representatives to represent geographical interests alongside the industry based representatives.

Unless I am mistaken, that's what we have in the good ol' US of A. Except that lots of money and TV ads convince lazy voters that its better to prevent gay couples from getting abortions than to take fiscal care of the country and avoid disastrous foreign entanglements.

If you had rules to prevent some people from being able to vote twice, that might just work without being too much of a zoo. :P

Over here my dad gets two votes because he's a doctor. He can vote for a geographical representative, and a medical representative.

It gets worse. Corporations are allowed to have a vote. So someone who owns 36 companies effectively gets to have 36 votes. They just have to appoint some employee to go and physically cast the vote for them.