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The problem with England / Britain / UK is representation. Every time we make any big political decision 50% of the electorate is marginalised and ignored for 5

The problem with England / Britain / UK is representation. Every time we make any big political decision 50% of the electorate is marginalised and ignored for 5 years. We need a better system, one where representation is proportional.

k__ 10y ago
In other countries too. I live in a big city in Germany and most of the people in rural areas of my state vote conservative, only the people in big cities vote liberal. It already feels like the cities are different than the rest of the country.
lucozade 10y ago
I'm not sure I follow. We've just had a very proportional vote (assuming you're over 18 and not in prison). 48% just got marginalised for somewhat longer than 5 years. What would a proportional general elections have helped with other than making Nigel Farage deputy prime minister?
- sjclemmy 10y ago
  PR doesn't work for binary questions, it works for electoral representation. Referendums are a blunt instrument. In the general election the winner takes all and the losers are marginalised. Big majorities in first past the post are bad for democracy. If there was a decision making process that took into account all who voted we might have a more engaged electorate.
jerf 10y ago
"We need a better system, one where representation is proportional." Well, keep seceding from things and you'll get there. Back in the 1990s, a lot of technoutopians thought that in the future, polities would tend to break into smaller pieces naturally. Computers would tend to reduce the scales necessary to make services work, by lowering the number of administrative personnel needed. Big government has had a pretty good run in the past 20 years and people forgot about the idea, but maybe that was just a big government bubble. Silicon Valley makes a lot of money on disintermediation. Who's to say government itself isn't something that can and should be disintermediated? I think people subconsciously assume that if the system holds together, their side will naturally win out, due to sheer rightness. (And won't it be fun to rub your power in the loser's face?) One of the things Brexit ought to be doing to a lot of HN posters here is reminding them quite concretely that that is not true. You may just bind everything and everybody into one big polity, only for it at the last moment to be taken over by the very people you didn't like. It's all fun and games to increase Federal power and jurisdiction over a lot of life to show those racist everything-phobic bumpkins in the flyover states how they are supposed to live life... then you wake up one day and the entire apparatus is at Trump's fingertips. Maybe building that big apparatus wasn't as good an idea as it seemed at the time. Maybe we'd all be better off leaving each other alone a bit more.
- RickHull 10y ago
  I'm reminded of Gerald Gaus' On The Difficult Virtue of Minding One's Own Business[0] 0. http://www.gaus.biz/scrooge.pdf http://www.gaus.biz/scrooge.pdf
dmix 10y ago
> We need a better system, one where representation is proportional. Besides changes to the system itself, doesn't having a smaller country equal better representation for their constituents? Being part of the EU created a further layer of disconnect from decision making. I read that the UK only represented 3% of EU voting boards. It's not surprising that people feel disconnected and left out from the political process. That's a natural outcome of attempting to manage the interests of 500 million people (EU) instead of 65 million (UK) with a centralized system. I also see a correlation between the size of a country and the apparent dysfunction of their governments. Living in Canada and seeing other similar countries like Australia, Sweden, Denmark, etc with healthy economies and governments, it seems that smaller is better. Accountability, progress/innovation, and appeasing members is far easier with a small organization than a large corporation... the same must apply to countries at some level. The larger a state becomes, the more top heavy they become with bureaucrats trying to appease various sides of the greater and greater diversity in political bases, where no-one ends up being happy with the result. One of the big factors in US politics that is often not mentioned is how much larger the US is now compared to early years that everyone harks back to when it had healthier and stronger governance, economic growth, and national identity. There is quite a bit lost in between in the exchange for an economies of scale style bloc arrangement like the EU.

k__ 10y ago

In other countries too. I live in a big city in Germany and most of the people in rural areas of my state vote conservative, only the people in big cities vote liberal. It already feels like the cities are different than the rest of the country.

lucozade 10y ago

I'm not sure I follow. We've just had a very proportional vote (assuming you're over 18 and not in prison). 48% just got marginalised for somewhat longer than 5 years. What would a proportional general elections have helped with other than making Nigel Farage deputy prime minister?

sjclemmy 10y ago
PR doesn't work for binary questions, it works for electoral representation. Referendums are a blunt instrument. In the general election the winner takes all and the losers are marginalised. Big majorities in first past the post are bad for democracy. If there was a decision making process that took into account all who voted we might have a more engaged electorate.

jerf 10y ago

"We need a better system, one where representation is proportional." Well, keep seceding from things and you'll get there. Back in the 1990s, a lot of technoutopians thought that in the future, polities would tend to break into smaller pieces naturally. Computers would tend to reduce the scales necessary to make services work, by lowering the number of administrative personnel needed. Big government has had a pretty good run in the past 20 years and people forgot about the idea, but maybe that was just a big government bubble. Silicon Valley makes a lot of money on disintermediation. Who's to say government itself isn't something that can and should be disintermediated? I think people subconsciously assume that if the system holds together, their side will naturally win out, due to sheer rightness. (And won't it be fun to rub your power in the loser's face?) One of the things Brexit ought to be doing to a lot of HN posters here is reminding them quite concretely that that is not true. You may just bind everything and everybody into one big polity, only for it at the last moment to be taken over by the very people you didn't like. It's all fun and games to increase Federal power and jurisdiction over a lot of life to show those racist everything-phobic bumpkins in the flyover states how they are supposed to live life... then you wake up one day and the entire apparatus is at Trump's fingertips. Maybe building that big apparatus wasn't as good an idea as it seemed at the time. Maybe we'd all be better off leaving each other alone a bit more.

RickHull 10y ago
I'm reminded of Gerald Gaus' On The Difficult Virtue of Minding One's Own Business[0] 0. http://www.gaus.biz/scrooge.pdf http://www.gaus.biz/scrooge.pdf

dmix 10y ago

> We need a better system, one where representation is proportional. Besides changes to the system itself, doesn't having a smaller country equal better representation for their constituents? Being part of the EU created a further layer of disconnect from decision making. I read that the UK only represented 3% of EU voting boards. It's not surprising that people feel disconnected and left out from the political process. That's a natural outcome of attempting to manage the interests of 500 million people (EU) instead of 65 million (UK) with a centralized system. I also see a correlation between the size of a country and the apparent dysfunction of their governments. Living in Canada and seeing other similar countries like Australia, Sweden, Denmark, etc with healthy economies and governments, it seems that smaller is better. Accountability, progress/innovation, and appeasing members is far easier with a small organization than a large corporation... the same must apply to countries at some level. The larger a state becomes, the more top heavy they become with bureaucrats trying to appease various sides of the greater and greater diversity in political bases, where no-one ends up being happy with the result. One of the big factors in US politics that is often not mentioned is how much larger the US is now compared to early years that everyone harks back to when it had healthier and stronger governance, economic growth, and national identity. There is quite a bit lost in between in the exchange for an economies of scale style bloc arrangement like the EU.