7 ms·
> What's wrong with politicians paying more attention to the needs of more people? It may encourage the discrimination against minorities.
by brink 7y ago
> What's wrong with politicians paying more attention to the needs of more people?
It may encourage the discrimination against minorities.
- delecti 7y agoDon't urban (and thus more dense dense) centers of population trend less white? Wouldn't it discourage discrimination against mionorities?
- brigandish 7y ago"Minority" does not always mean skin colour. John Stuart Mill wrote about the tyranny of the majority[0] in 1850's England∗, which I'll hazard a guess was 99% white, even with steamboats and the British Empire reaching right around the world. ∗and he appears to refer to it as a well established idiom so I suspect it goes further back [0] On Liberty https://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html https://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html
- hannasanarion 7y agoWhy do you think that tyranny of the majority is a bad thing?
- nostrademons 7y agoMost people are minorities in at least one aspect that they hold dear to their identity. Under tyranny of the majority, they risk finding that aspect made illegal.
- hannasanarion 7y agoWhy do you think that tyranny of the minority is better?
- nostrademons 7y agoWhy do you assume there's an excluded middle, and that tyranny of one group over another is inevitable?
- hannasanarion 7y agoThe Electoral College lets the minority choose the president against the will of the Majority. That is called tyranny of the minority. I want to know why you think that's a good thing.
- nostrademons 7y agoSo, for one, I don't - I'm mildly in favor of direct popular votes combined with some form of runoff voting (either IRV, STV, or approval voting). But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem. You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.
- geggam 7y agoDo you think you are represented by the current system ? You get to complain about being in jail when you are in jail but when you are innocent and complaining does that make it better ? Ballotpedia's congressional approval polling average: 20% (August 21, 2019) Cambridge Analytica has shown the method to manipulate any political system. We are in for an "interesting" future.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
- brigandish 7y agoBecause, without embarrassment at the facetiousness of the straightforward answer, it's a tyranny i.e. it (possibly) restricts or removes the liberty of individuals, sometimes with a big dollop of direct harm like violence. Do you disagree?
- hannasanarion 7y agoAnd why do you think that tyranny of the minority is better?
- ascorbic 7y agoThat's a false dichotomy. The alternative isn't tyranny of the minority, it's a system that takes account of the views of everyone, by forcing candidates to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate.
- vkou 7y agoIf you want a system to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate, there are a large number of dimensions that are far better then geographic address. Gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. For some reason, though, I never see supporters of the electoral college feel that it's right and proper to give equal political power to social minority groups (Only geographical minority groups. As if where you live is more important to your interests than who you are.)
- your-nanny 7y agostates, not geographical units.
- brigandish 7y agoBecause states are political units. If you don’t like the laws of one state you can move to another, and this extends to the state's voting power when choosing a president. As to your innovation in voting, if you accept immutable aspects of identity as the basis for voting rights you're opening the door to some terrible ideas, like ethno-states and Jim Crow laws. Again, without embarrassment at the facetiousness, I'm also not sure how actually making the Jews have more power in 1930s Germany would've solved their problems. Would've probably fuelled grievances: "Hey, Adolf, you know that Jews really do run Germany?" Eeek! The best way to protect minorities is by the protected freedoms of speech and to bear arms, not by weighting votes by arbitrarily chosen characteristics.
- hinkley 7y agoThis guy is a witch. We should burn him. All those in favor?
- hannasanarion 7y agoIt's an Electoral College witch burning, the majority said "no", but a lot of them live on the same street, so we're going to do it anyway, sucks to be you.
- tripzilch 7y agoNo it's against the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Also, no witch burning.
- oblio 7y agoWell, there's that Constitution you Muricans keep harping on about :D On a more serious note, really, your Constitution should help with that.
- brigandish 7y agoWell, I'm British, and it should and does :) As to it being their constitution, we're really talking about the Bill of Rights, and that was an updated version of the 1689 British Bill of Rights. It's sad how we no longer have it, and that people in the past had more rights than we have now. American Constitutionalists are right to dig their heels in over anything that looks like it will encroach on their rights.
- notSupplied 7y agoYou can be a minority because you live in a small state, or because you are LGBT, or because you are black, or because you have a disability. But the small-state kind of minority seems to be the only one who deserves electoral protection from tyranny of the majority. Oh what a coincidence then, that these minorities also happen to be mostly white, christian, and straight.
- brigandish 7y agoAny of those minority groups can move to a small state (states being the usual voting boundary). White, christian, and straight cannot become those groups. Would a register for who is LGBT be a good idea? Would you support laws and voting based on ethnic background and/or skin colour? Why do these ideas sound dangerous?
- pnw_hazor 7y agoNot Seattle and Portland.
- delecti 7y agoSeattle is still less white than the country as a whole, and Oregon has a weird history that makes it an outlier. In any case, a couple exceptions doesn't change that cities trend less white.
- beepboopbeep 7y agoThat's wrong.