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People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians

People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments. In the US, the deficient voting system is structured such that third-parties practically cannot emerge. When you fix the voting system, third-parties immediately will emerge, at least in some states, and coalition governments will have to be formed at the national level. Coalitions will require a compromise on positions, being less susceptible to extremism and tribalism. Unfortunately, the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen, not realizing that one of them risks losing permanently to a one-party system due to a partial judiciary. It's a core structural flaw. For democracy to thrive, the information content extracted from a voter has to be higher in terms of votes cast, points voted on, and the data type of the vote. Currently it is too low in the US. Imagine if you had to do all your programming with a handful of booleans without the freedom to implement any higher data structures.

sixbangs 2y ago
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oldpersonintx 2y ago
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qsdf38100 2y ago
Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? It seems to me that one party is trying to turn the US into a dictatorship while the other is trying to prevent that to happen, and failing.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  > Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? Even though I agree with the points in your second statement, the counterintuitive conclusion is that the Democrats are slightly more to blame because even after realizing that they're in a losing position, that democracy is at stake, that one-party rule is risked, they still fail to want to fix the voting system, preferring instead to risk losing everything forever.
- NotACop182 2y ago
  I probably agree with you on many things but I feel the current party has also abandoned the people, to a lesser extent, for big money interest. We live in an effective oligarchy and that’s the sad truth of things.
- Lichtso 2y ago
  Both parties contributed to and maintained the status quo, because they both profit from it. Game theory works out and both try to balance their power roughly 50/50 and keep everybody else out of the game. All topics are polarized to the extreme to fit into the 2 party divide. If a third party would emerge it would be slightly closer to one of the poles. Then it would immediately make that side lose even if more people voted for that position. That is because there is no percentage voting but a cascaded threshold voting. Thus, suppressing underdogs is in the interest of both. Abstract example: 44% vote party A for X 10% vote party B for X 46% vote party C against X 44% + 10% = 54% for X, but 46% is the biggest party so they win Question is why the Grand Old Party suddenly quit that century old cartel.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    For the record, the equation you noted makes sense only in a first-past-the-post system such as what we have in the US. It does not behave as such in a more advanced voting system, e.g. a ranked-choice system. Also, in a coalition party system, the 54% win.
- Vinnl 2y ago
  They're saying the two-party system is to blame. Although one could've hoped that the current situation would've pushed the Democratic Party to work to open it up.
peppertree 2y ago
If democrats doesn't win next election and balance the supreme court there won't be another fair election in us for a long time.
- lolinder 2y ago
  That's certainly what the Democrats keep saying. As OP points out, though, they have an incredibly strong incentive to get you to vote for them, just as much as the Republicans do. They are not your friends, they are complicit in creating and maintaining the system that entrenches only two parties in power forever. It would behoove us to temper their apocalyptic rhetoric with a little bit of healthy skepticism. I don't look forward to another four years of Trump and I am particularly nervous about what it will mean for geopolitics in general and the Ukraine war in particular, but based on my observations of the behavior of both parties I would be shocked if it's even 1/100 as catastrophic as internet rhetoric would lead you to believe. Watching both parties, I don't believe the Republicans have in mind anything approximating what the Democrats want you to believe, and I don't believe that the Democrats believe their own fearmongering.
tromp 2y ago
> due to an impartial judiciary Did you mean a partial judiciary?
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Fixed. Thanks.
rahton 2y ago
Maybe the main difference with other democratic countries is that the US is currently losing the absolute domination they had on the world for the last few decades? The societal impact of this turnaround seems massive for the locals and apparently not easy to digest.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
I’m really confused by this line of reasoning. If someone had the power and popular and/or oligarchic support necessary to overturn the entire current system of government and transition to being some kind of emperor, couldn’t they just stage a military coup right now? Why would they wait for an election to take place? And given that no coup has been executed, what is everyone so worried about? Why would that person even bother campaigning? If they don’t have the necessary military support, then any coup attempt would just be put down by the military. Simply declaring oneself emperor does not make it so. I feel like people have watched too many movies.
- derdi 2y ago
  That person might want to become constitutional commander in chief and hope that the executive will follow their unconstitutional orders.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  The answer is simple: US politicians excel at legalizing corruption. They follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of law and order. As such, there is no need for a coup at all for a one-party system to exist. To set the background, a one-party system is now gravely risked due to a partial judiciary, especially at the Supreme Court level. The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President. To list examples of legalized corruption, gerrymandering is done in clever ways to win states. Rights to vote are often unfairly denied to groups of people. Third-party candidates are cleverly added to take away votes where they matter, such as in Florida, etc. As such, the military cannot come into the picture because everything remains neatly legalized.
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    Sure but the thing US politicians are good at doing is by definition the status quo. So we have backed down from "we are in danger of losing democracy" to "the status quo is bad". I don't disagree that the status quo is bad. There is a lot of hysteria in the media right now about the court. It is doing a lot of things that were avoided for political reasons in the past, and the reasons it isn't avoiding them now are also political. But it's not like it's operating outside of the law. For example Roe v Wade was always on shaky ground legally, it just aligned with people's (and my own) sense of morality so they liked it. If there is massive popular support for nationwide abortion legalization, Congress is free to pass that amendment, the court can't stop them. I am personally pro abortion but also pro Roe v Wade overturn because I think the rule of law is more important than any individual right. I would support an amendment on abortion, but obviously that isn't going to happen because not enough people do. > The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President. Erm, can you explain how? There is zero legal basis for this. Supreme Court bad?
lolinder 2y ago
> the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen This is the thing that so many on HN don't get (as evidenced in the replies so far): neither party is your friend. Neither party actually wants solutions because both parties thrive when government is perpetually bad. The Republicans can't actually accomplish their stated goal of completely dismantling government at the federal level because if they did then there would be no federal bogeyman to rally their base against. They can't actually close the border because then there would be no more immigrants to hate. Likewise, the Democrats don't actually want Trump's popularity on the right to fade because then they'd lose the most effective rallying cry they've had in years. The policies they've chosen to focus on are unpopular outside of the far left and have cost them a lot of support from the moderate voters, so their only chance of success is to persuade the moderates that this will be the last fair election if Biden doesn't win. Everyone in Washington knows that the supposed threat to democracy is nonsense. If they believed otherwise they'd have booted Biden out of the race for an electable candidate a year ago. But it's part of the game that they play to get your vote and stay in power. So, to your point: I agree wholeheartedly. The two existing parties are corrupt to the core and there's nothing left to salvage. We need to dismantle the two-party system, and for that we need to fix the voting system. First past the post has to go.
- theossuary 2y ago
  I will never understand this take. Go look at a map of states implementing/banning ranked-choice voting[1], now go look at a map of states political affiliation[2]. Every state that bans RCV is Republican; every time it's passed it was done so by Democrats or a direct vote. If you want any chance at all of breaking the two party system, it's clear you must vote for Democrats. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_... 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_...
  - lolinder 2y ago
    You're correct on the banning front, but Alaska is one of only three states that use RCV in any state-wide elections and Utah is one of only four states that offer it state-wide as an offical option for local elections. The blue-coded states use it in some local jurisdictions but don't encode it at all at the state level. There's definitely a Democratic slant to the 7 states that have some sort of statewide policy approving RCV's use. But then again, Utah has more municipalities listed on that article as actually using it at the local level than all 5 Democratic states (Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Maine, Hawaii) combined. In other words, the issue isn't as cut-and-dry in your sources as you make it sound.
Animats 2y ago
> People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments. Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  > Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions. Coalition governments are intended to fail fast, then for new replacements to be wiser, to not repeat the old mistakes. Coalitions may make the government slightly more inefficient, but as soon as there is a hint of extremism, the coalition is bound to fail. It protects against real extremes. Factions can emerge, but they can't get carried away with instituting too many crazy ideas.
  - nerdix 2y ago
    How do you explain the rise of Hitler with this theory? The Weimar government was a semi-presidential system with multiple parties that required coalitions for the legislature to function. The Nazi party won a plurality but never a majority of the vote in any election during the Weimar years. They formed a coalition with the right wing German National People's Party through which Hitler was able to rise to the position of Chancellor. Of course, we know that the Nazis quickly seized power shortly after that and banned all political parties including, including the German National People's Party, were banned with a few months. The German National People's Party was a radical anti-democratic party as well. Between the two parties, they received around 44% of the vote in 1932. If that many people in your country either openly or tacitly support the dissolution of democracy then your republic's days are numbered. The particular flavor of democracy that your government uses doesn't matter. That's the situation the US is currently facing.
    - OutOfHere 2y ago

sixbangs 2y ago

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oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

qsdf38100 2y ago

Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? It seems to me that one party is trying to turn the US into a dictatorship while the other is trying to prevent that to happen, and failing.

OutOfHere 2y ago
> Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? Even though I agree with the points in your second statement, the counterintuitive conclusion is that the Democrats are slightly more to blame because even after realizing that they're in a losing position, that democracy is at stake, that one-party rule is risked, they still fail to want to fix the voting system, preferring instead to risk losing everything forever.
NotACop182 2y ago
I probably agree with you on many things but I feel the current party has also abandoned the people, to a lesser extent, for big money interest. We live in an effective oligarchy and that’s the sad truth of things.
Lichtso 2y ago
Both parties contributed to and maintained the status quo, because they both profit from it. Game theory works out and both try to balance their power roughly 50/50 and keep everybody else out of the game. All topics are polarized to the extreme to fit into the 2 party divide. If a third party would emerge it would be slightly closer to one of the poles. Then it would immediately make that side lose even if more people voted for that position. That is because there is no percentage voting but a cascaded threshold voting. Thus, suppressing underdogs is in the interest of both. Abstract example: 44% vote party A for X 10% vote party B for X 46% vote party C against X 44% + 10% = 54% for X, but 46% is the biggest party so they win Question is why the Grand Old Party suddenly quit that century old cartel.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  For the record, the equation you noted makes sense only in a first-past-the-post system such as what we have in the US. It does not behave as such in a more advanced voting system, e.g. a ranked-choice system. Also, in a coalition party system, the 54% win.
Vinnl 2y ago
They're saying the two-party system is to blame. Although one could've hoped that the current situation would've pushed the Democratic Party to work to open it up.

peppertree 2y ago

If democrats doesn't win next election and balance the supreme court there won't be another fair election in us for a long time.

lolinder 2y ago
That's certainly what the Democrats keep saying. As OP points out, though, they have an incredibly strong incentive to get you to vote for them, just as much as the Republicans do. They are not your friends, they are complicit in creating and maintaining the system that entrenches only two parties in power forever. It would behoove us to temper their apocalyptic rhetoric with a little bit of healthy skepticism. I don't look forward to another four years of Trump and I am particularly nervous about what it will mean for geopolitics in general and the Ukraine war in particular, but based on my observations of the behavior of both parties I would be shocked if it's even 1/100 as catastrophic as internet rhetoric would lead you to believe. Watching both parties, I don't believe the Republicans have in mind anything approximating what the Democrats want you to believe, and I don't believe that the Democrats believe their own fearmongering.

tromp 2y ago

> due to an impartial judiciary Did you mean a partial judiciary?

OutOfHere 2y ago
Fixed. Thanks.

rahton 2y ago

Maybe the main difference with other democratic countries is that the US is currently losing the absolute domination they had on the world for the last few decades? The societal impact of this turnaround seems massive for the locals and apparently not easy to digest.

pfannkuchen 2y ago

I’m really confused by this line of reasoning. If someone had the power and popular and/or oligarchic support necessary to overturn the entire current system of government and transition to being some kind of emperor, couldn’t they just stage a military coup right now? Why would they wait for an election to take place? And given that no coup has been executed, what is everyone so worried about? Why would that person even bother campaigning? If they don’t have the necessary military support, then any coup attempt would just be put down by the military. Simply declaring oneself emperor does not make it so. I feel like people have watched too many movies.

derdi 2y ago
That person might want to become constitutional commander in chief and hope that the executive will follow their unconstitutional orders.
OutOfHere 2y ago
The answer is simple: US politicians excel at legalizing corruption. They follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of law and order. As such, there is no need for a coup at all for a one-party system to exist. To set the background, a one-party system is now gravely risked due to a partial judiciary, especially at the Supreme Court level. The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President. To list examples of legalized corruption, gerrymandering is done in clever ways to win states. Rights to vote are often unfairly denied to groups of people. Third-party candidates are cleverly added to take away votes where they matter, such as in Florida, etc. As such, the military cannot come into the picture because everything remains neatly legalized.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  Sure but the thing US politicians are good at doing is by definition the status quo. So we have backed down from "we are in danger of losing democracy" to "the status quo is bad". I don't disagree that the status quo is bad. There is a lot of hysteria in the media right now about the court. It is doing a lot of things that were avoided for political reasons in the past, and the reasons it isn't avoiding them now are also political. But it's not like it's operating outside of the law. For example Roe v Wade was always on shaky ground legally, it just aligned with people's (and my own) sense of morality so they liked it. If there is massive popular support for nationwide abortion legalization, Congress is free to pass that amendment, the court can't stop them. I am personally pro abortion but also pro Roe v Wade overturn because I think the rule of law is more important than any individual right. I would support an amendment on abortion, but obviously that isn't going to happen because not enough people do. > The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President. Erm, can you explain how? There is zero legal basis for this. Supreme Court bad?

lolinder 2y ago

> the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen This is the thing that so many on HN don't get (as evidenced in the replies so far): neither party is your friend. Neither party actually wants solutions because both parties thrive when government is perpetually bad. The Republicans can't actually accomplish their stated goal of completely dismantling government at the federal level because if they did then there would be no federal bogeyman to rally their base against. They can't actually close the border because then there would be no more immigrants to hate. Likewise, the Democrats don't actually want Trump's popularity on the right to fade because then they'd lose the most effective rallying cry they've had in years. The policies they've chosen to focus on are unpopular outside of the far left and have cost them a lot of support from the moderate voters, so their only chance of success is to persuade the moderates that this will be the last fair election if Biden doesn't win. Everyone in Washington knows that the supposed threat to democracy is nonsense. If they believed otherwise they'd have booted Biden out of the race for an electable candidate a year ago. But it's part of the game that they play to get your vote and stay in power. So, to your point: I agree wholeheartedly. The two existing parties are corrupt to the core and there's nothing left to salvage. We need to dismantle the two-party system, and for that we need to fix the voting system. First past the post has to go.

theossuary 2y ago
I will never understand this take. Go look at a map of states implementing/banning ranked-choice voting[1], now go look at a map of states political affiliation[2]. Every state that bans RCV is Republican; every time it's passed it was done so by Democrats or a direct vote. If you want any chance at all of breaking the two party system, it's clear you must vote for Democrats. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_... 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_...
- lolinder 2y ago
  You're correct on the banning front, but Alaska is one of only three states that use RCV in any state-wide elections and Utah is one of only four states that offer it state-wide as an offical option for local elections. The blue-coded states use it in some local jurisdictions but don't encode it at all at the state level. There's definitely a Democratic slant to the 7 states that have some sort of statewide policy approving RCV's use. But then again, Utah has more municipalities listed on that article as actually using it at the local level than all 5 Democratic states (Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Maine, Hawaii) combined. In other words, the issue isn't as cut-and-dry in your sources as you make it sound.

Animats 2y ago

> People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments. Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions.

OutOfHere 2y ago
> Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions. Coalition governments are intended to fail fast, then for new replacements to be wiser, to not repeat the old mistakes. Coalitions may make the government slightly more inefficient, but as soon as there is a hint of extremism, the coalition is bound to fail. It protects against real extremes. Factions can emerge, but they can't get carried away with instituting too many crazy ideas.
- nerdix 2y ago
  How do you explain the rise of Hitler with this theory? The Weimar government was a semi-presidential system with multiple parties that required coalitions for the legislature to function. The Nazi party won a plurality but never a majority of the vote in any election during the Weimar years. They formed a coalition with the right wing German National People's Party through which Hitler was able to rise to the position of Chancellor. Of course, we know that the Nazis quickly seized power shortly after that and banned all political parties including, including the German National People's Party, were banned with a few months. The German National People's Party was a radical anti-democratic party as well. Between the two parties, they received around 44% of the vote in 1932. If that many people in your country either openly or tacitly support the dissolution of democracy then your republic's days are numbered. The particular flavor of democracy that your government uses doesn't matter. That's the situation the US is currently facing.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago