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There are plenty of people who would like to participate in citizenship in America, but because our FPTP voting system creates a two-party system and extreme pa

There are plenty of people who would like to participate in citizenship in America, but because our FPTP voting system creates a two-party system and extreme partisanship, too many people believe the system is rigged and they wouldn't have much of an influence. And judging from recent elections, their belief is pretty reasonable.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
Some would argue that belief (no influence) is always reasonable. Guess it depends on how cynical you're feeling. V = pB − C + D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting
huxley 10y ago
Voting systems aren't a panacea. Italy and Greece don't have FPTP voting but people there feel pretty disenfranchised even if they theoretically have more representation in government than an American or Canadian would.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  Italy historically had a close to purely proportional electoral system and very high electoral participation for a western developed country (it is still higher than most). In the last 20-30 years there has been an attempt to move Italy to a two party system, first with an almost purely FPTP electoral law, then with a proportional system with large majority bonus and minimum thresholds. The results have been an unmitigated disaster. Not only the two party system didn't materialize, major parties have disintegrated, and the population has felt increasingly disenfranchised and participation has been falling down election after election. The electoral law and constitution have been tweaked so many times that now, in a perfectly bicameral system, is is pretty much impossible to get the same majority on both chambers.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Voting systems aren't a panacea. Among modern democracies, there is a very strong positive effect of proportionality of results produced by the electoral system and all of electoral participation, degree of satisfaction with government, and number of supported dimensions of public policy debate. It's certainly not the only factor, but it's a clear, strong factor. See, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.
ThomPete 10y ago
Denmark have 9 parties and only 7 million people. People feel pretty much the same there and I believe many other places no matter how many parties there are. The real problem IMO is that the political parties aren't able to really influence what way the world moves anymore. It's now mostly in the hands of technology and it's tendency to force change no matter who gets exposed to it. I wrote many years ago that technology is like a tsunami which can't be stopped. The only thing we can do is learn how to surf the wave.
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  IMHO the political parties are full of people representing their own interest and not the electors'. We are living in an illusion of democracy where the kings are spending our money (tax) brainwashing our neighbours into reelecting them.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Could you elaborate? What changes has technology brought about that people dislike and can't be stopped? Not saying there aren't any, just trying to get a better idea of your point. My impression is that this kind of general dissatisfaction with government is more a result of the globalism brought about by technology, rather than the technology itself. I think the reason governments end up doing things people don't want, even before you consider blatant corruption, is that global companies are too important for individual economies to ignore. So governments end up in a race to the bottom to attract global business.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Technology moves faster than legislation and so it dictates a lot of what the politicians have to make decisions about. Any country, company, organisation who is not using technology and trying to catch up the to progress of it is loosing. Any country, company and organization who is trying to catch up is seeing itself needing less and less to do the same things. Technological jobs are more or less the only jobs that pays really well and have some sort of a future and anyone who want to make money in todays economy have to use technology to scale their business even if it means undermining their own value. The companies who are really transformative today and disrupting aren't just disrupting industries they are disrupting the legal system. Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, self driving cars, drones all push the legal boundaries politicians are represented by special interest groups, these are at odds with the advantages tech brings to consumers. AI in pushes the need for humans to relearn at an ever increasing speed sooner or later we can't re-educate ourselves fast enough. Globalization is a byproduct of technology, we can't not have globalization if we want progress, countries who don't want progress aren't going to be able to compete with countries who do. There are of course many other factors than just technology but it's my belief that today technology is at the core of any human progress. Without it we can't progress and and so we have no choice other than one that ultimately leads to our extinction. Technology is natural. It's part of evolution. If we don't adapt we perish.
MisterPC 10y ago
I feel the party system completely corrupts the democratic process. I'm not sure how it works in other countries but in Britain, MPs pretty much have to vote as they are told by the party (it's even called the whip!). Here the 2 main parties are so similar that you can barely tell the difference when there is a change in government.
yourapostasy 10y ago
The extremism emerges from a citizenry whose primary notion of civic duty is voting, and trying to get out of jury duty. The fastest way to reform a political party is swamp it with majority newcomers who vote in rough lockstep for about 10-20 years. This is surprisingly easy to do in the US, where for example, if you want to start moving the Republicans away from a war posture, show up with enough of your friends around all the precincts in all the states that key Republican party members are in (like parliamentarians and committee chairs), and you squeeze them out before they can even get into the regular annual/bi-annual/quadrennial machinery, and vote out the remainder who get into leadership from convention votes. Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties get into the cray cray like loyalty tests at most levels of party machinery, so showing up is all it takes. Loyalty oath demands are common, but as politicians lie all the time, I don't feel sorry for those who administer those oaths when the oaths don't count in the voting turnout. Actions, not words count. Currently, attendance at most precincts/wards/etc. in both Democratic and Republican parties is fractions of a percent of eligible voters. This yields the emergent behavior you see today: the ones controlling the levers of political parties are the "true believers" who simply showed up, and as an aggregate tend towards more extreme positions. It is Yeats' "the centre cannot hold" and "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" come to life. Not everyone who shows up even needs to spend all that much time participating at the precinct level. Just enough to send onwards to the next level of the party machinery those you trust to vote similarly-enough to your own interests. It works out to about 2-3 hours per year at most: you mount an effective DDOS upon the party establishment, then go home if you want. Say you spend about another couple day's worth of due diligence each year to suss out who you vote to send onwards to the next level of participation. Participating at the higher levels of both parties' machinery takes more time and adds money to the requirements, but not all that much in the grand scheme. To represent a county-level/senatorial-district-level/etc. at a state convention, generally about the highest most people will get within a handful of years of starting participation, is once every two years spend 4 combined days in a couple major cities in your state, split into a one-day and a 3-day meeting spread across several months. If you pack your own meals or similar (grocery store run and cook your own), drink only water, drive to the cities, and stay with a bunch of like-minded citizens who split the tab on a house-share, usually about a day's worth of accumulated logistics organizing, about $120-200 total expenditures. If you eat out, order drinks out, stay at a hotel and do some tourist activities, about $600+. The state conventions do fall on a weekday, so you'll give up a vacation day once every other year. Say you spend another couple hours a week discussing and reading about issues of the day, so call it about 17 8-hour days every year of participation. However, not many people really know how this all works, and give up within 2-3 years of participating. They think that showing up, organizing and kibbutzing with like-minded citizens for a year or two should yield perceivable results. It realistically takes closer to 10-20 years of sustained effort, starting only from the year where the numbers are on your side. The Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders supporters learned this lesson to their disappointment. Most who attend for the first time do not cotton on that they need to show up, find enough like-minded to effectively caucus, study how the current leadership maintains and loses their power in their internecine knife fights, devise their own strategy and tactics, then make their bid to seize power of the leadership posts, a process that takes many years, failures, and setbacks that teach along the way. Politicians are money-driven because most voters' civic duty starts and stops at voting (when in an active civic civilization, casting a vote is actually the endpoint of an involved process), and most voters are highly susceptible to media-based messaging in such a low-information decision-making environment. Politicians pay more attention to giant majority voting blocs over money; no amount of money can win against overwhelming votes of aware citizens. We simply don't have enough aware citizens.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

Some would argue that belief (no influence) is always reasonable. Guess it depends on how cynical you're feeling. V = pB − C + D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting

huxley 10y ago

Voting systems aren't a panacea. Italy and Greece don't have FPTP voting but people there feel pretty disenfranchised even if they theoretically have more representation in government than an American or Canadian would.

gpderetta 10y ago
Italy historically had a close to purely proportional electoral system and very high electoral participation for a western developed country (it is still higher than most). In the last 20-30 years there has been an attempt to move Italy to a two party system, first with an almost purely FPTP electoral law, then with a proportional system with large majority bonus and minimum thresholds. The results have been an unmitigated disaster. Not only the two party system didn't materialize, major parties have disintegrated, and the population has felt increasingly disenfranchised and participation has been falling down election after election. The electoral law and constitution have been tweaked so many times that now, in a perfectly bicameral system, is is pretty much impossible to get the same majority on both chambers.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Voting systems aren't a panacea. Among modern democracies, there is a very strong positive effect of proportionality of results produced by the electoral system and all of electoral participation, degree of satisfaction with government, and number of supported dimensions of public policy debate. It's certainly not the only factor, but it's a clear, strong factor. See, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.

ThomPete 10y ago

Denmark have 9 parties and only 7 million people. People feel pretty much the same there and I believe many other places no matter how many parties there are. The real problem IMO is that the political parties aren't able to really influence what way the world moves anymore. It's now mostly in the hands of technology and it's tendency to force change no matter who gets exposed to it. I wrote many years ago that technology is like a tsunami which can't be stopped. The only thing we can do is learn how to surf the wave.

NumberCruncher 10y ago
IMHO the political parties are full of people representing their own interest and not the electors'. We are living in an illusion of democracy where the kings are spending our money (tax) brainwashing our neighbours into reelecting them.
aninhumer 10y ago
Could you elaborate? What changes has technology brought about that people dislike and can't be stopped? Not saying there aren't any, just trying to get a better idea of your point. My impression is that this kind of general dissatisfaction with government is more a result of the globalism brought about by technology, rather than the technology itself. I think the reason governments end up doing things people don't want, even before you consider blatant corruption, is that global companies are too important for individual economies to ignore. So governments end up in a race to the bottom to attract global business.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Technology moves faster than legislation and so it dictates a lot of what the politicians have to make decisions about. Any country, company, organisation who is not using technology and trying to catch up the to progress of it is loosing. Any country, company and organization who is trying to catch up is seeing itself needing less and less to do the same things. Technological jobs are more or less the only jobs that pays really well and have some sort of a future and anyone who want to make money in todays economy have to use technology to scale their business even if it means undermining their own value. The companies who are really transformative today and disrupting aren't just disrupting industries they are disrupting the legal system. Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, self driving cars, drones all push the legal boundaries politicians are represented by special interest groups, these are at odds with the advantages tech brings to consumers. AI in pushes the need for humans to relearn at an ever increasing speed sooner or later we can't re-educate ourselves fast enough. Globalization is a byproduct of technology, we can't not have globalization if we want progress, countries who don't want progress aren't going to be able to compete with countries who do. There are of course many other factors than just technology but it's my belief that today technology is at the core of any human progress. Without it we can't progress and and so we have no choice other than one that ultimately leads to our extinction. Technology is natural. It's part of evolution. If we don't adapt we perish.

MisterPC 10y ago

I feel the party system completely corrupts the democratic process. I'm not sure how it works in other countries but in Britain, MPs pretty much have to vote as they are told by the party (it's even called the whip!). Here the 2 main parties are so similar that you can barely tell the difference when there is a change in government.

yourapostasy 10y ago

The extremism emerges from a citizenry whose primary notion of civic duty is voting, and trying to get out of jury duty. The fastest way to reform a political party is swamp it with majority newcomers who vote in rough lockstep for about 10-20 years. This is surprisingly easy to do in the US, where for example, if you want to start moving the Republicans away from a war posture, show up with enough of your friends around all the precincts in all the states that key Republican party members are in (like parliamentarians and committee chairs), and you squeeze them out before they can even get into the regular annual/bi-annual/quadrennial machinery, and vote out the remainder who get into leadership from convention votes. Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties get into the cray cray like loyalty tests at most levels of party machinery, so showing up is all it takes. Loyalty oath demands are common, but as politicians lie all the time, I don't feel sorry for those who administer those oaths when the oaths don't count in the voting turnout. Actions, not words count. Currently, attendance at most precincts/wards/etc. in both Democratic and Republican parties is fractions of a percent of eligible voters. This yields the emergent behavior you see today: the ones controlling the levers of political parties are the "true believers" who simply showed up, and as an aggregate tend towards more extreme positions. It is Yeats' "the centre cannot hold" and "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" come to life. Not everyone who shows up even needs to spend all that much time participating at the precinct level. Just enough to send onwards to the next level of the party machinery those you trust to vote similarly-enough to your own interests. It works out to about 2-3 hours per year at most: you mount an effective DDOS upon the party establishment, then go home if you want. Say you spend about another couple day's worth of due diligence each year to suss out who you vote to send onwards to the next level of participation. Participating at the higher levels of both parties' machinery takes more time and adds money to the requirements, but not all that much in the grand scheme. To represent a county-level/senatorial-district-level/etc. at a state convention, generally about the highest most people will get within a handful of years of starting participation, is once every two years spend 4 combined days in a couple major cities in your state, split into a one-day and a 3-day meeting spread across several months. If you pack your own meals or similar (grocery store run and cook your own), drink only water, drive to the cities, and stay with a bunch of like-minded citizens who split the tab on a house-share, usually about a day's worth of accumulated logistics organizing, about $120-200 total expenditures. If you eat out, order drinks out, stay at a hotel and do some tourist activities, about $600+. The state conventions do fall on a weekday, so you'll give up a vacation day once every other year. Say you spend another couple hours a week discussing and reading about issues of the day, so call it about 17 8-hour days every year of participation. However, not many people really know how this all works, and give up within 2-3 years of participating. They think that showing up, organizing and kibbutzing with like-minded citizens for a year or two should yield perceivable results. It realistically takes closer to 10-20 years of sustained effort, starting only from the year where the numbers are on your side. The Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders supporters learned this lesson to their disappointment. Most who attend for the first time do not cotton on that they need to show up, find enough like-minded to effectively caucus, study how the current leadership maintains and loses their power in their internecine knife fights, devise their own strategy and tactics, then make their bid to seize power of the leadership posts, a process that takes many years, failures, and setbacks that teach along the way. Politicians are money-driven because most voters' civic duty starts and stops at voting (when in an active civic civilization, casting a vote is actually the endpoint of an involved process), and most voters are highly susceptible to media-based messaging in such a low-information decision-making environment. Politicians pay more attention to giant majority voting blocs over money; no amount of money can win against overwhelming votes of aware citizens. We simply don't have enough aware citizens.