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Monkeying around with small knobs and switches to make marginal changes with how government is run and how people are represented is not going to change the fac

Monkeying around with small knobs and switches to make marginal changes with how government is run and how people are represented is not going to change the fact that large swaths of the population have ideas and values that are fundamentally incompatible with other swaths of the population. That said, I can see ranked choice voting being a huge improvement to state and local elections in one party states where you basically can't run as the other party without taking a huge hit right off the bat which disadvantages moderate candidates who want to challenge incumbents.

manholio 4y ago
That's an overly simplistic perspective that ignores how the political process itself shapes the choices and opinions of people. For an extreme example, in the democratic part of his rise to power, Hitler never called for war with Europe. As soon as he gained power, he instituted mass propaganda and suppressed any dissent, so by the time he started annexing and invading Austria and Poland he was enjoying real and massive popular support. A very similar story with Putin unfolded in the last 20 years, a crescendo of democratic erosion, stifling of dissent, revisionist nationalism, militarism and finally mass murder. The Russian people went alongside Putin every step of the road. The hope here is that by tinkering with subtle features of the political system, it's less politically profitable to push extreme "us versus them" narratives; that is, candidates that are palatable to the majority gain the upper hand against those that have the support of the most extreme, well organized and motivated minority.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > As soon as he gained power, he instituted mass propaganda and suppressed any dissent, so by the time he started annexing and invading Austria and Poland he was enjoying real and massive popular support. He was enjoying real and massive popular support before he gained power, otherwise he never would have gained power democratically in the first place. He didn't have majority support, but no political party in Germany at the time had majority support.
viraptor 4y ago
> have ideas and values that are fundamentally incompatible with other swaths of the population. Do they though? If you have a system making another party practically impossible, and make it in the interest of the parties to create division whenever needed (bathrooms...), it's not really clear how incompatible the views are. We could find that a lot of the division was manufactured so that people are strongly against something because they don't have good reasons to be for the other group.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  On the top of my head all of the big issues aren’t ones really manufactured but held extremely by everyone involved. Amplified ? Sure. Manufactured ? No.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    I believe there's a mixture of things that people actually really care about, things people care about but have been polarised/amplified, and things they never cared about but now think they do because it became the issue they "should" care about. I'd call the last one manufactured, because people who never cared about the issue don't have a deep understanding of it and only got exposed to some absurd interpretation of it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

manholio 4y ago

That's an overly simplistic perspective that ignores how the political process itself shapes the choices and opinions of people. For an extreme example, in the democratic part of his rise to power, Hitler never called for war with Europe. As soon as he gained power, he instituted mass propaganda and suppressed any dissent, so by the time he started annexing and invading Austria and Poland he was enjoying real and massive popular support. A very similar story with Putin unfolded in the last 20 years, a crescendo of democratic erosion, stifling of dissent, revisionist nationalism, militarism and finally mass murder. The Russian people went alongside Putin every step of the road. The hope here is that by tinkering with subtle features of the political system, it's less politically profitable to push extreme "us versus them" narratives; that is, candidates that are palatable to the majority gain the upper hand against those that have the support of the most extreme, well organized and motivated minority.

lapcat 4y ago
> As soon as he gained power, he instituted mass propaganda and suppressed any dissent, so by the time he started annexing and invading Austria and Poland he was enjoying real and massive popular support. He was enjoying real and massive popular support before he gained power, otherwise he never would have gained power democratically in the first place. He didn't have majority support, but no political party in Germany at the time had majority support.

viraptor 4y ago

> have ideas and values that are fundamentally incompatible with other swaths of the population. Do they though? If you have a system making another party practically impossible, and make it in the interest of the parties to create division whenever needed (bathrooms...), it's not really clear how incompatible the views are. We could find that a lot of the division was manufactured so that people are strongly against something because they don't have good reasons to be for the other group.

Jcowell 4y ago
On the top of my head all of the big issues aren’t ones really manufactured but held extremely by everyone involved. Amplified ? Sure. Manufactured ? No.
- viraptor 4y ago
  I believe there's a mixture of things that people actually really care about, things people care about but have been polarised/amplified, and things they never cared about but now think they do because it became the issue they "should" care about. I'd call the last one manufactured, because people who never cared about the issue don't have a deep understanding of it and only got exposed to some absurd interpretation of it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]