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Again and again history reveals a surprising fact: you can push people really far before they finally reach their breaking point. And when that breaking point i

Again and again history reveals a surprising fact: you can push people really far before they finally reach their breaking point. And when that breaking point is finally reached, the trigger will not be what you expected.

api 8y ago
This is especially true when there are no obvious and politically viable good alternatives. In the US everyone outside the center-left or center-right seems to be an absolute lunatic of one sort or another, and even if that weren't the case the two party oligopoly system is deeply entrenched and guarantees that alternatives can't succeed. There's nobody who is both sane and electable that isn't part of the mainstream duopoly. The more polarized people become between the two major parties the more deeply entrenched the duopoly becomes. People don't dare vote for anyone but D or R because otherwise the hated other side will win. It completely rules out any third party or independent. Only two parties means there really isn't that much diversity of thought beyond a small number of hot-button issues, and it also reduces the work load for lobbyists and other influence peddlers. Fewer parties means fewer people that have to be begged, bribed, misinformed, or blackmailed to get whatever you want. It makes regulatory capture a lot easier to achieve. I really don't think the American two party system is working. We need more of a parliamentary type system where you can have many parties and a greater variety of views can get a hearing.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Even if we could just find a way to keep people from thinking about political parties the same way they do about sports we could make a lot of progress.
- existencebox 8y ago
  I'm glad this is finally being discussed cogently. For the longest time one would be painted as un-patriotic or some other slur-of-the-moment for even suggesting there were vicious-cycles of pathologies in the current incarnation of this system. (And in how human psychology/game theory plays into it) But as you summarized, all incentives are aligned to maintain the status quo. How do we break out of this? Expansion of executive/corporate/partisan power is _nothing new_ in American history, and the trends and outcomes are very clear cut. (I do not know the answer, I've been contemplating this nonstop for the last decade at least, and the best answer I have is trying to engage more people to think about it) What's remarkable to me is that very few people are even aware of the sheer mathematical/structural issues at hand: e.g. that we've expanded congressional representation from 1:(max)30000 citizens at the start, to 1:747184 as of 2017. We're engineers. We should understand scalability, and that _alone_ should be a giant red flag regarding its implications.
  - mythrwy 8y ago
    Congress has a heck of time getting anything done right now. I can't imagine what would happen if it were comprised of 20 times the members with all kinds of minor political parties each with their own narrow agendas. Personally I'm hoping at some point evidence based governance takes over. Which might mean it's not people doing it.
    - sjg007 8y ago
      I think it could work. You would get alignment of subgroups and better representation. If say Berkeley wants to be a green party they would be. So the averaging out would take place in Congress vs at the ballot box. This would get more ideas into Congress and blur party lines.
- deminature 8y ago
  In my experience living here, the majority of people are pretty sane, however the loud, insane voices are the ones that get media coverage. The media really does have a lot to answer for pursuing entertainment value over factually-based reporting. Voluntarily voting and scheduling voting on a weekday during work hours is also problematic, because largely only people with a strong motivation to vote (read: single-issue voters on the fringes) usually end up voting, which polarizes political discourse.
- FabHK 8y ago
  Yeah, it's funny - from my superficial understanding political theory predicts that a first-past-the-post system turns into a two party system with the parties getting ever more similar ("median voter theorem"). But that's not what happened in the US in the last decade or so. But agreed - proportional parliament allows for articulation of important non-majority views (such as the emergence of the Green party in Germany many years back).
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Median voter theorem ignores a lot of critical things, the most critical being that political viewpoints may not be distributed normally (or even with a single central peak) and turnout is influenced by engagement. If you assume engagement (and, thus, likeliness to vote) is driven in part by proximity of the nearest candidates positions to your own, and that political viewpoints are bimodally distributed, you'd actually expect FPTP to turn into a two-party system where parties, even if they start at some point close to each other, drift out toward the two peaks. While still a gross simplification, this seems closer to reality in the US to the premises required for the Median Voter Theorem to work.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I expect social media trying to drive "engagement" has had a major effect. It appears that in both social media, and in politics, making sure people are as pissed off as possible about the other side drives engagement, and that also means turnout. This coming election in November is going to be very interesting.

api 8y ago

This is especially true when there are no obvious and politically viable good alternatives. In the US everyone outside the center-left or center-right seems to be an absolute lunatic of one sort or another, and even if that weren't the case the two party oligopoly system is deeply entrenched and guarantees that alternatives can't succeed. There's nobody who is both sane and electable that isn't part of the mainstream duopoly. The more polarized people become between the two major parties the more deeply entrenched the duopoly becomes. People don't dare vote for anyone but D or R because otherwise the hated other side will win. It completely rules out any third party or independent. Only two parties means there really isn't that much diversity of thought beyond a small number of hot-button issues, and it also reduces the work load for lobbyists and other influence peddlers. Fewer parties means fewer people that have to be begged, bribed, misinformed, or blackmailed to get whatever you want. It makes regulatory capture a lot easier to achieve. I really don't think the American two party system is working. We need more of a parliamentary type system where you can have many parties and a greater variety of views can get a hearing.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Even if we could just find a way to keep people from thinking about political parties the same way they do about sports we could make a lot of progress.
existencebox 8y ago
I'm glad this is finally being discussed cogently. For the longest time one would be painted as un-patriotic or some other slur-of-the-moment for even suggesting there were vicious-cycles of pathologies in the current incarnation of this system. (And in how human psychology/game theory plays into it) But as you summarized, all incentives are aligned to maintain the status quo. How do we break out of this? Expansion of executive/corporate/partisan power is _nothing new_ in American history, and the trends and outcomes are very clear cut. (I do not know the answer, I've been contemplating this nonstop for the last decade at least, and the best answer I have is trying to engage more people to think about it) What's remarkable to me is that very few people are even aware of the sheer mathematical/structural issues at hand: e.g. that we've expanded congressional representation from 1:(max)30000 citizens at the start, to 1:747184 as of 2017. We're engineers. We should understand scalability, and that _alone_ should be a giant red flag regarding its implications.
- mythrwy 8y ago
  Congress has a heck of time getting anything done right now. I can't imagine what would happen if it were comprised of 20 times the members with all kinds of minor political parties each with their own narrow agendas. Personally I'm hoping at some point evidence based governance takes over. Which might mean it's not people doing it.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    I think it could work. You would get alignment of subgroups and better representation. If say Berkeley wants to be a green party they would be. So the averaging out would take place in Congress vs at the ballot box. This would get more ideas into Congress and blur party lines.
deminature 8y ago
In my experience living here, the majority of people are pretty sane, however the loud, insane voices are the ones that get media coverage. The media really does have a lot to answer for pursuing entertainment value over factually-based reporting. Voluntarily voting and scheduling voting on a weekday during work hours is also problematic, because largely only people with a strong motivation to vote (read: single-issue voters on the fringes) usually end up voting, which polarizes political discourse.
FabHK 8y ago
Yeah, it's funny - from my superficial understanding political theory predicts that a first-past-the-post system turns into a two party system with the parties getting ever more similar ("median voter theorem"). But that's not what happened in the US in the last decade or so. But agreed - proportional parliament allows for articulation of important non-majority views (such as the emergence of the Green party in Germany many years back).
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Median voter theorem ignores a lot of critical things, the most critical being that political viewpoints may not be distributed normally (or even with a single central peak) and turnout is influenced by engagement. If you assume engagement (and, thus, likeliness to vote) is driven in part by proximity of the nearest candidates positions to your own, and that political viewpoints are bimodally distributed, you'd actually expect FPTP to turn into a two-party system where parties, even if they start at some point close to each other, drift out toward the two peaks. While still a gross simplification, this seems closer to reality in the US to the premises required for the Median Voter Theorem to work.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  I expect social media trying to drive "engagement" has had a major effect. It appears that in both social media, and in politics, making sure people are as pissed off as possible about the other side drives engagement, and that also means turnout. This coming election in November is going to be very interesting.