7 ms·

The BNP have a percentage of the voters, they should get a percentage of the say. The fact that I consider someone to be utterly despicable doesn’t give me the

by omouse 16y ago

The BNP have a percentage of the voters, they should get a percentage of the say. The fact that I consider someone to be utterly despicable doesn’t give me the right to disenfranchise them. I completely disagree with that. Anyone that would deny you the right to do something should not be allowed to have that right. They wouldn't give immigrants and non-British citizens a right to vote, so why should they be allowed to have a say at all? Democracy and freedom need to be defended. Allowing people who actively subvert it to win an election would be absurd.

lucasjung 16y ago
Put another way: marginilization of fringe positions could be considered a desireable quality of a voting system, as long as sufficient free speech protections are in place. In a sense, elections act as a sort of filter between ideas and actions. Freedom of speech can be used to disseminate ideas, and some truly awful ideas will disseminate rather widely. However, they won't usually gain enough adherents to get enough votes to make it past the "filter." That's why there's little harm in letting people espouse "dangerous" ideas with their speech[1]: most people will recognize bad ideas for what they are, and the proponents of the worst ideas generally will not be elected to positions where they can influence policy directly. This "filter" is far from perfect: some bad ideas will become laws nonetheless, and some good ideas will get blocked. More of the former than the latter, though: if an idea is good enough, it will eventually garner sufficient support to become a significant factor in elections. There have been cases in history where entire societies did adopt bad ideas (e.g. fascism). However, I think that when an entire society takes such a dramatically wrong turn, even the most perfect voting system will not save it. [1]It's important to draw a line between espousing ideas and encouraging actions.
- omouse 16y ago
  You're revising history a bit; when fascism was rising there were a lot of people that were fighting against it such as the socialist and the communists and the anarchists. Unfortunately, other societies were trying to contain those socialist forces and this reduced their power to counter the fascists. You can see this happen in Spain and Italy as well (there were a large number of collectives in Spain and Italy has had anarchists and communists for a long time, in the 1970s they were quite the active movements). The "filter" shouldn't be just at the voting booths. We should be reminded before and after election day why the ideas of those fringe positions is a bad idea. Espousing ideas in such a way as to hide the true nature of them is something that political parties are getting good at. If there are dangerous ideas, they're hidden behind nice language or buried in the back of the political party's plans. So it's harder for people to recognize those bad ideas. I think we would do well to learn from the past and be more active in denouncing ideas such as those of the BNP and other fringe parties.
  - lucasjung 16y ago
    I don't see how a statement as brief as mine could be seen as a revision of history: fascism was a dangerous idea that took over entire countries (so was communism). That leaves out a lot of details, but hardly constitutes revisionism. I also wasn't trying to suggest that we shouldn't denounce dangerous ideas, in fact such denunciation is one of the primary mechanisms which prevents bad ideas from garnering enough support to make a difference in elections. Rather, I was trying to say that censorship is not the proper way to marginilize dangerous ideas. Only after reading your post and then re-reading mine did I realize that I never specifically mentioned censorship, but that's what I was thinking about.
jacques_chester 16y ago
The most reliable way to defend against fringe politics from becoming overly influential is to make voting mandatory, as Australia does. See Hotelling's Law for why. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotellings_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotellings_law
- omouse 16y ago
  What do you consider fringe politics? And why would forcing people to vote keep them from becoming overly influential?
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    > What do you consider fringe politics? Politics considered unendorsable by the median voter on in a "central" position in the hyperspace of all issues in play at an election. > And why would forcing people to vote keep them from becoming overly influential? Median voters are generally poorly motivated to turn out. Fringe voters are generally highly motivated. Consequently they become influential out of proportion to the actual preferences of the population taken as a whole. When voting is mandatory, the better strategy is to aim your policies at the median voter (Hotelling's Law), which helps to create sustainable reforms because parties will converge on consensus policies. When voting is voluntary, the better strategy is the motivate/demotivate approach. Motivate your followers with a shiny geegaw, demotivate the other guy's with dirt. I'm generalising, of course. But the long-term principle holds fairly well.

by omouse 16y ago

lucasjung 16y ago

Put another way: marginilization of fringe positions could be considered a desireable quality of a voting system, as long as sufficient free speech protections are in place. In a sense, elections act as a sort of filter between ideas and actions. Freedom of speech can be used to disseminate ideas, and some truly awful ideas will disseminate rather widely. However, they won't usually gain enough adherents to get enough votes to make it past the "filter." That's why there's little harm in letting people espouse "dangerous" ideas with their speech[1]: most people will recognize bad ideas for what they are, and the proponents of the worst ideas generally will not be elected to positions where they can influence policy directly. This "filter" is far from perfect: some bad ideas will become laws nonetheless, and some good ideas will get blocked. More of the former than the latter, though: if an idea is good enough, it will eventually garner sufficient support to become a significant factor in elections. There have been cases in history where entire societies did adopt bad ideas (e.g. fascism). However, I think that when an entire society takes such a dramatically wrong turn, even the most perfect voting system will not save it. [1]It's important to draw a line between espousing ideas and encouraging actions.

omouse 16y ago
You're revising history a bit; when fascism was rising there were a lot of people that were fighting against it such as the socialist and the communists and the anarchists. Unfortunately, other societies were trying to contain those socialist forces and this reduced their power to counter the fascists. You can see this happen in Spain and Italy as well (there were a large number of collectives in Spain and Italy has had anarchists and communists for a long time, in the 1970s they were quite the active movements). The "filter" shouldn't be just at the voting booths. We should be reminded before and after election day why the ideas of those fringe positions is a bad idea. Espousing ideas in such a way as to hide the true nature of them is something that political parties are getting good at. If there are dangerous ideas, they're hidden behind nice language or buried in the back of the political party's plans. So it's harder for people to recognize those bad ideas. I think we would do well to learn from the past and be more active in denouncing ideas such as those of the BNP and other fringe parties.
- lucasjung 16y ago
  I don't see how a statement as brief as mine could be seen as a revision of history: fascism was a dangerous idea that took over entire countries (so was communism). That leaves out a lot of details, but hardly constitutes revisionism. I also wasn't trying to suggest that we shouldn't denounce dangerous ideas, in fact such denunciation is one of the primary mechanisms which prevents bad ideas from garnering enough support to make a difference in elections. Rather, I was trying to say that censorship is not the proper way to marginilize dangerous ideas. Only after reading your post and then re-reading mine did I realize that I never specifically mentioned censorship, but that's what I was thinking about.

jacques_chester 16y ago

The most reliable way to defend against fringe politics from becoming overly influential is to make voting mandatory, as Australia does. See Hotelling's Law for why. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotellings_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotellings_law

omouse 16y ago
What do you consider fringe politics? And why would forcing people to vote keep them from becoming overly influential?
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  > What do you consider fringe politics? Politics considered unendorsable by the median voter on in a "central" position in the hyperspace of all issues in play at an election. > And why would forcing people to vote keep them from becoming overly influential? Median voters are generally poorly motivated to turn out. Fringe voters are generally highly motivated. Consequently they become influential out of proportion to the actual preferences of the population taken as a whole. When voting is mandatory, the better strategy is to aim your policies at the median voter (Hotelling's Law), which helps to create sustainable reforms because parties will converge on consensus policies. When voting is voluntary, the better strategy is the motivate/demotivate approach. Motivate your followers with a shiny geegaw, demotivate the other guy's with dirt. I'm generalising, of course. But the long-term principle holds fairly well.