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The problem is political parties at all. People should vote for good people that they believe will do the best possible job. Parties instead confuse and obfusc

The problem is political parties at all. People should vote for good people that they believe will do the best possible job. Parties instead confuse and obfuscate the issue as the parties abandon responsibility in favor of scoring points. I mean England, Germany and France all have more than 2 parties yet the people there have similar complaints and arguments as the people in the US. The problem is parties themselves. Good, wise and just men and women should be chosen to govern, not people who tell us what we want to hear.

JohnFen 3y ago
I agree. Interestingly, so did the founders -- even the ones that started the first political parties. So it seems that even though political parties are a disease, it's one that's very hard to avoid.
hgsgm 3y ago
That's obvious. That's like saying cancer or hurricanes are the problem. The question is what causes them (FPTP, transaction costs favors coordination and consolidation, power tends to increase itself) and how causes can be changed. > Good, wise and just men and women should be chosen to govern, not people who tell us what we want to hear. 2016 elected US President who cannot reasonably be considered part of a party. He was a "host unto himself". He flipped-flopped affiliation over decades, and steamrolled over the Republican party international power structures to win the voters in primary and general.
ajmurmann 3y ago
While I'm not a big fan of all of them, Germany saw the rise of three different new parties in the last 40 years (Green, Linke, AFD). They are all relevant political players and came out of the existing parties not representing sentiment felt by substantial portions of the electorate. I hate the AFD and Linke, but gotta say this is awesome and how the system should work. I'm not sure what would happen without parties entirely. I expect you'd see some natural alliances between politicians arise and you are back to parties. There is a somewhat related learning from German history. During the Weimar republic Germany had many very small parties represented in there parliament. This led to it becoming very hard to make progress which led to high churn of who was in power and allowed weird candidates to rise and take a shot at it. The criticism was that three parliament is just debating and debating and nothing ever happens. Weimar cycled through an unreasonable amount of politicians and eventually ended up with Hitler. This is why Germany now requires a minimum of 5% of votes for a party before they get any seats. If you'd somehow manage to keep parties from emerging, I'd expect a worse form of this problem to happen.
winstonewert 3y ago
Except that without parties, its really hard to tell who stands for what. In the local elections where I live, there aren't parties. Voting requires researching each candidate carefully to determine what they stand for. Now, I'm nerdy enough to do that research. But the general population isn't.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  So parties are good because they make it easy for people to vote without doing any work?
  - winstonewert 3y ago
    Yes. The same way that review sites are good because they help people buy products without doing work. Or Hacker News is good is because it finds news stories that interest us without us doing the work.
luxuryballs 3y ago
George Washington pointed this out in his farewell address and it’s almost prophetic to read in 2023, skip to the last paragraph if you’re in a hurry: “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. … The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. … It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”
petsfed 3y ago
Parties exist to solve a collective action problem: getting your face and message out to enough people to win elections means that in the absence of political parties, the odds that a non-oligarch will achieve high office becomes even smaller than it is right now. Plebians very rarely held high office in ancient Rome. Doing away with political parties is advantageous to the status quo, because, in the absence of parties pooling resources to promote an individual, gaining sufficient power to change the status quo requires first leveraging the status quo to acquire sufficient resources. There is also the issue that exercising the kind of power that goes with these high offices requires a sort of moral ambivalence that I think precludes "good" people pursuing, let alone holding, these offices.
- jfengel 3y ago
  Arguments for ending political parties always seem to come down to "the government should do more of what I want it to do". They solve the collective action problem by making sure I get more of what I want, somehow without anybody else getting less of what they want. Your problem is never your political party. It's the political part of the people who oppose you. They don't cease to exist just because you've divided them into more political parties. No change to the voting system will alter that without making you a dictator. I think people imagine that if you stir the pot around enough suddenly they'll find a huge pool of people who agree with them. That's just not the case. The political system is intended to do the will of most people, without trampling the rights of minorities. That's an inherent conflict, and nothing you do will ever get around that. It would sure be nice if people at least adhered to some semblance of reality when forming their preferences, but no voting system can fix that. The whole point of voting is to avoid having to determine who actually knows what, and count on the wisdom of crowds. If the crowds have deliberately made themselves unwise, we're in trouble, and it won't be fixed by the voting mechanism.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
But good, wise, and just men and women cannot effectively win races in our current political system. Instead, power-hungry, hyper-wealthy sociopaths willing to form unconditional alliances with powerful groups and sacrifice any moral principles to 'win' debates, bury controversy, and gain advertising dollars will instead get selected at every first-past-the-post race above the hyper-local. When you write: > People should vote for good people that they believe will do the best possible job. The most important part of that sentence is the "that they believe" part. The actual goodness, wisdom, and justice of the people who form the set of all eligible candidates has almost nothing to do with the distributed beliefs of those eligible to vote; the process of disseminating information about the former to the latter is EXTREMELY lossy. And power-hungry, hyper-wealthy sociopaths can successfully exploit that.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I'm honestly not convinced that good and wise men or women can effectively rule. I'm not sure how to get around the necessity to occasionally make decisions that will cause suffering and death, either through violence or neglect. Occasionally, the most well-intended of decisions will cause death or suffering by accident. And the reality of the situation is that we need leaders who while trying to minimize the harm of their decisions, keeps making clear decisions even after their decisions cause enormous harm. Ordering a missile strike that kills 100 people, even if they are evil to the last, requires a certain kind of callousness, a certain amount of seeing the bad people as bad first, and people last. I think a lot of folks in the military square that spiritual cost as their obligation and find strength in being the one to make that sacrifice. To win elections, you have to want to be that kind of person from the jump.
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    I'd argue that someone unwilling to choose the lesser of two evils is either not good, not wise, or not good and not wise. Sure, if you believe that your goodness, wisdom, and competence are less than that of your likely successor, even after you recruit advisors who can help you be more competent, surrender that mantle... but that's an unlikely level of humility to find in someone who needs to win a popularity contest.

JohnFen 3y ago

I agree. Interestingly, so did the founders -- even the ones that started the first political parties. So it seems that even though political parties are a disease, it's one that's very hard to avoid.

hgsgm 3y ago

That's obvious. That's like saying cancer or hurricanes are the problem. The question is what causes them (FPTP, transaction costs favors coordination and consolidation, power tends to increase itself) and how causes can be changed. > Good, wise and just men and women should be chosen to govern, not people who tell us what we want to hear. 2016 elected US President who cannot reasonably be considered part of a party. He was a "host unto himself". He flipped-flopped affiliation over decades, and steamrolled over the Republican party international power structures to win the voters in primary and general.

ajmurmann 3y ago

While I'm not a big fan of all of them, Germany saw the rise of three different new parties in the last 40 years (Green, Linke, AFD). They are all relevant political players and came out of the existing parties not representing sentiment felt by substantial portions of the electorate. I hate the AFD and Linke, but gotta say this is awesome and how the system should work. I'm not sure what would happen without parties entirely. I expect you'd see some natural alliances between politicians arise and you are back to parties. There is a somewhat related learning from German history. During the Weimar republic Germany had many very small parties represented in there parliament. This led to it becoming very hard to make progress which led to high churn of who was in power and allowed weird candidates to rise and take a shot at it. The criticism was that three parliament is just debating and debating and nothing ever happens. Weimar cycled through an unreasonable amount of politicians and eventually ended up with Hitler. This is why Germany now requires a minimum of 5% of votes for a party before they get any seats. If you'd somehow manage to keep parties from emerging, I'd expect a worse form of this problem to happen.

winstonewert 3y ago

Except that without parties, its really hard to tell who stands for what. In the local elections where I live, there aren't parties. Voting requires researching each candidate carefully to determine what they stand for. Now, I'm nerdy enough to do that research. But the general population isn't.

kneebonian 3y ago
So parties are good because they make it easy for people to vote without doing any work?
- winstonewert 3y ago
  Yes. The same way that review sites are good because they help people buy products without doing work. Or Hacker News is good is because it finds news stories that interest us without us doing the work.

luxuryballs 3y ago

George Washington pointed this out in his farewell address and it’s almost prophetic to read in 2023, skip to the last paragraph if you’re in a hurry: “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. … The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. … It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

petsfed 3y ago

Parties exist to solve a collective action problem: getting your face and message out to enough people to win elections means that in the absence of political parties, the odds that a non-oligarch will achieve high office becomes even smaller than it is right now. Plebians very rarely held high office in ancient Rome. Doing away with political parties is advantageous to the status quo, because, in the absence of parties pooling resources to promote an individual, gaining sufficient power to change the status quo requires first leveraging the status quo to acquire sufficient resources. There is also the issue that exercising the kind of power that goes with these high offices requires a sort of moral ambivalence that I think precludes "good" people pursuing, let alone holding, these offices.

jfengel 3y ago
Arguments for ending political parties always seem to come down to "the government should do more of what I want it to do". They solve the collective action problem by making sure I get more of what I want, somehow without anybody else getting less of what they want. Your problem is never your political party. It's the political part of the people who oppose you. They don't cease to exist just because you've divided them into more political parties. No change to the voting system will alter that without making you a dictator. I think people imagine that if you stir the pot around enough suddenly they'll find a huge pool of people who agree with them. That's just not the case. The political system is intended to do the will of most people, without trampling the rights of minorities. That's an inherent conflict, and nothing you do will ever get around that. It would sure be nice if people at least adhered to some semblance of reality when forming their preferences, but no voting system can fix that. The whole point of voting is to avoid having to determine who actually knows what, and count on the wisdom of crowds. If the crowds have deliberately made themselves unwise, we're in trouble, and it won't be fixed by the voting mechanism.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

But good, wise, and just men and women cannot effectively win races in our current political system. Instead, power-hungry, hyper-wealthy sociopaths willing to form unconditional alliances with powerful groups and sacrifice any moral principles to 'win' debates, bury controversy, and gain advertising dollars will instead get selected at every first-past-the-post race above the hyper-local. When you write: > People should vote for good people that they believe will do the best possible job. The most important part of that sentence is the "that they believe" part. The actual goodness, wisdom, and justice of the people who form the set of all eligible candidates has almost nothing to do with the distributed beliefs of those eligible to vote; the process of disseminating information about the former to the latter is EXTREMELY lossy. And power-hungry, hyper-wealthy sociopaths can successfully exploit that.

petsfed 3y ago
I'm honestly not convinced that good and wise men or women can effectively rule. I'm not sure how to get around the necessity to occasionally make decisions that will cause suffering and death, either through violence or neglect. Occasionally, the most well-intended of decisions will cause death or suffering by accident. And the reality of the situation is that we need leaders who while trying to minimize the harm of their decisions, keeps making clear decisions even after their decisions cause enormous harm. Ordering a missile strike that kills 100 people, even if they are evil to the last, requires a certain kind of callousness, a certain amount of seeing the bad people as bad first, and people last. I think a lot of folks in the military square that spiritual cost as their obligation and find strength in being the one to make that sacrifice. To win elections, you have to want to be that kind of person from the jump.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  I'd argue that someone unwilling to choose the lesser of two evils is either not good, not wise, or not good and not wise. Sure, if you believe that your goodness, wisdom, and competence are less than that of your likely successor, even after you recruit advisors who can help you be more competent, surrender that mantle... but that's an unlikely level of humility to find in someone who needs to win a popularity contest.