13 ms·

The Pirate Party is now measured as the biggest political party in Iceland

437 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

alexc05 12y ago
This is incredibly interesting. I wonder what their support was in the last election? Or how long it is until the next election. I know very little about Iceland's political system but suspect some translation problems with the language in that article. Biggest would really only apply to seats won, while this reads to me as being 'most popular' Still, really interesting. I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > This is incredibly interesting. I wonder what their support was in the last election? 5.1% in the last parliamentary elections (in 2013) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland) The survey charts show a rather meteoric very recent rise: http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460 http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460
  - deong 12y ago
    The ruling coalition has adopted an interesting strategy of outsourcing both governance and PR to Wile E. Coyote in the last few months, so the current climate is as favorable to the Pirates as possible. It'll certainly revert towards the mean, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them hold 7 or 8 seats in the next elections (out of 60-ish).
- gislifb 12y ago
  Their support was 5.10% in the last elections which were in the summer of 2013. In the national elections Iceland is split up into six constituencies which hold certain amounts of seats in parliament. At the moment this (slightly) favours the four constituencies outside of the capital which also favours the 'old block' of parties which are more popular in the countryside/rural areas/small towns. This survey is showing a big backlash agains those in charge after a string of controversial decisions and corruption allegations. The thing is though that I doubt this backlash will last for two more years. But I'm quite sure that the pirate party will at least double the amount of seats (they have 3 now).
- Beltiras 12y ago
  > I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet. No, they are actually quite decent people. Birgitta has been an advocate of term limits and intends to not run again (even if term limits are not imposed). She is an artist and has been a consistent defender of the average citizen. Jón Þór is in his first term and has decided to step down mid-term to allow his replacement time to acclimate to Parliament before the next election (which is in 2017, barring public uprising). Helgi Hrafn has indicated he intends not to run again. All of them are passionate about the outcome of the next election and intend to give support to the running candidates. Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns. Grassroots for the Pirates is very active and these public servants, truly are serving the public, not the party.
  - creshal 12y ago
    > No, they are actually quite decent people. For now. They wouldn't be the first people to be corrupted by power.
    - Beltiras 12y ago
      I think you aren't reading what I wrote. Let me rephrase: When the party is peaking and could be on the cusp of being one of the majority parties, the elected officials are turning the reins over to other people. This is as antithetical to institutional corruption as is possible.
      - creshal 12y ago
        This isn't a new idea either. The German Green party did the same… during their first few years in office. Now they're as corrupt as the others.
      - learnstats2 12y ago
        I agree with you, but this only applies for a maximum of a single electoral term. Are the replacements equally immune to a power grab?
higherpurpose 12y ago
It's a shame the one in Germany blew it because of internal conflict. It would've probably reached 15 percent by now, too.
- ivoras 12y ago
  No, the wouldn't. As an ex PP-er (HR), i can say that the major problem in the vast majority of the PPs are that they are literally "too liberal." The differences in how individual members perceive what PP is and should be, are so great that they tear the party apart. From what I've seen (and I've met them), PP-IS is one of the rare which has managed to achieve enough homogeneity of core members which is needed for practical work and progress. tl;dr: You can't have an organisation where everyone wants to do things differently.
  - Vektorweg 12y ago
    I think that diversity wouldn't be the problem, when liquid feedback would work. But communication in the PP is really slow relative to their tech based democratic goals. The process to get a clear statement is too slow.
    - MollyR 12y ago
      I think this is interesting but I'm not sure I follow. So by increasing communication speed, diversity is less of a problem ? I guess my question is what is implied by communication speed ? I think I'm missing something about the implications because it doesn't seem like communication speed would change anything, if the members are really stubborn.
      - Vektorweg 12y ago
        Yes, but they would then know, that they are stubborn. Actually, there are so many individual people in the pirate party because they think the pirate party is doing what the individual does. Teaching them otherwise makes a difference. But this requires lots of communication and since we all have digital dementia and are quick to bore, we better do this quick and often. Fast communication is actually just a feature for the outer world to tell them, what we work for, in time. Too often it isn't clear what we stand for to a fresh topic. The media is complaining and the reader starts to think badly about us.
mc_hammer 12y ago
well, this is great news, im not sure weve had a real government since jfk tho. i dont think afghans were insurgants anymore, i think we were killing residents, and im really sad.
denysonique 12y ago
Where can their political programme be found? (in English)
- masklinn 12y ago
  On the party's website seems like a good bet: http://www.piratar.is/?lang=en http://www.piratar.is/?lang=en
  - zby 12y ago
    By the way - here are links to programs/statutes/manifests of many other Pirate Parties: http://wiki.pirateint.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Statutes_and_Policies http://wiki.pirateint.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Statutes_and_Pol...
amelius 12y ago
This is very interesting. I hope they can implement some of their ideas in the areas of an online democracy, where voting becomes more informed, and decisions more transparent [1,2] Iceland could be the first country with a "liquid democracy" [2] [1] http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8
- darkmighty 12y ago
  This looks like an amazing tool to fight corruption and improve politics in general. Iceland seems to be a perfect place to test those ideas on a nation-wide basis, seeing how it's small, cohesive and tech-friendly.
- undefined0 12y ago
  With online democracy, would this make it extremely easy for NSA/GCHQ to manipulate the votes? GCHQ is already known to manipulate online voting and mass install malware.
  - bjelkeman-again 12y ago
    Do you have a link to that? Would be interested in reading about online vote manipulation.
    - undefined0 12y ago
      I don't have the exact link, look through firstlook.org's documents. There was a leaked slideshow about it. As to avoid confusion, it's worth noting that it was social media vote manipulation, not general election manipulation. I think it's in the same document as the "Mass propaganda" / "Discredit an company/individual" slides.
1ris 12y ago
Meanwhile in Germany the pirate party is once again completely irrelevant. Thanks to the debate culture of mailing lists and twitter, fractionism, us-vs-them thinking and the refusal to throw trolls/idiots out of the party. And a hole lot of feminism drama helped.
- creshal 12y ago
  The German pirate party is in the peculiar spot where communists, nazis, feminists, men's rights activists, liberals and conservatives are all convinced they're too radical. That does not leave many potential voters.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Why doesn't men's rights activists call themselves masculinists? Easy way to use language to redefine feminism as a women-only thing. Easy points. And then conventional feminism could be redefined as equalism or whatever and the language pedantic in me would rest easy.
    - innguest 12y ago
      Because that's wrong derivation? pro-woman -> woman in Latin is femina -> feminism pro-man -> man in Latin is vir -> virilism (sounds stupid). That's why.
      - shkkmo 12y ago
        I doubt that's actually why, but it is an interesting fact to know.
      - LukeShu 12y ago
        But "mās" is also Latin for man? We see that used with feminine/masculine. Is there a reason it would be different in this case?
        innguest 12y ago
gislifb 12y ago
So a little background, this looks like backlash from a few very controversial decisions the government has made recently and recent corruption allegations. The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections. This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago. People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change. It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time! *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  > *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange. I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.
  - deong 12y ago
    It seems reasonably clear that the foreign minister had no legal authority to act on behalf of the parliament though. I live in Iceland, if I told the EU to bugger off, I don't expect they'd actually do it.
- yodsanklai 12y ago
  > This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.
roymurdock 12y ago
I wonder if a "transparency" or "anti-corruption" party would be successful in the U.S. I'm writing a thesis now that delves pretty heavily into the financial crisis of 2008 and the level of carelessness, corruption, and trickery on the part of the captains of finance and the leaders of this country is appalling and disheartening. The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works. I wonder if we will be able to fix things.
- zanny 12y ago
  > party would be successful in the U.S No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level. > is appalling and disheartening. For the most part American voters have demonstrated a lack of care for the aftermath of the financial crisis, given how they brought back a Republican majority in congress only four years after realizing how well that worked in the decade prior. Which is mostly disingenuous, given how politicians in America are all consistently cut from the same cloth and serving the same (private) interests. > are inheriting the current system You actually aren't inheriting anything. Youth unemployment at an all time high, average income of bachelors graduates being around 26k a year, the lowest rates of property ownership in half a century, wealth concentration as high as the roaring twenties. The aging with power and money are holding onto it to their grave, and then only their blessed decedents will inherit the means of production. There is no mechanism to disseminate concentrated wealth back into the masses, especially the youth, anymore. Economics used to promote that, and policy used to enable that, but as we approach post-scarcity both have been sabotaged by generations that want to maintain control and power perpetually.
  - Brakenshire 12y ago
    > No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level. It's interesting, the UK has a similar sort of system, but the vote share of the major two parties has been consistently declining for fifty years. After WWII, almost everybody voted Labour or Conservative, now their combined share is about 65%. Soon, FPTP is going to start delivering some extremely odd results.
llSourcell 12y ago
I think the biggest catalyst for government reform in the internet era would be bringing voting online. I'm 23 years old. My generation doesn't have the time or patience to wait in line to vote and fill out legal documents. We're used to apps that let us order delivery and message friends in a button tap. The reason big money keeps winning is because our generation doesn't vote enough. If we make local and federal voting deadlines as simple as phone notifications, we're going to start seeing a a huge array of intelligent decisions injected into the political system. The Pirate Party offers liquid democracy through online voting. I'm all for it, I hope Iceland sets an example for the rest of the world.
- ahallock 12y ago
  I think we need more power than voting. If we had more control over funding, gov wouldn't be able to be as brazen with some of its actions. We wouldn't have nearly as much war, for example. Not many would fund it. They would rather spend their money on a house downpayment or their children's education, rather than destroying people and property on the other side of the world.
- zby 12y ago
  Voting via internet is very dangerous - fortunately we can use the internet to for things better than just voting - like consensus building etc. It is much more difficult to disrupt broad channel communication that the extremely narrow channel of voting.
  - llSourcell 12y ago
    blockchain
    - Crito 12y ago
      Could be used to enforce voter coercion. Imagine an employer who demands that an employee produce proof that they voted a certain way.
      - 12y ago
jklinger410 12y ago
Iceland's Population: 323,002
mikk14 12y ago
I don't have a good knowledge about Iceland situation, but I'm a bit negatively biased against these "protest parties". I'm from Italy and I can see what kind of horrible effect Grillo's party is having on the political thinking of the average Italian. Maybe this is different, but I will need to see results in its fight against the traditional ruling class before changing my mind. In Italy, so far, there aren't.
- belorn 12y ago
  Protest party? Under what definition are you labeling the Pirate Party as such? The core principles of the pirate party is Civil rights, with the implication from living in a information society. The fight against the Bourgeoisie, while relevant for some, is not the focus of this party.
  - mikk14 12y ago
    I got the idea from the top comment [1] (in a hindsight, I should actually have replied to it instead of starting the new comment thread). Particularly this part: > This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago. I am aware of the origin of the label at the international level, but it looked to me that in this particular case the origin dynamics were closer to Grillo's. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9231591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9231591
mpasternacki 12y ago
Huh. Doesn't the fact that Pirate Party's and Independence Party's results are well within each other's confidence intervals make it a tie?
kyledrake 12y ago
I have had the privilege of meeting many of the people in the Icelandic pirate party. They are great people, have very solid ideas for improving internet law in Iceland where there are still some big issues that need reform, and I congratulate them for their success in gaining support of their fellow viking brethren.
pakled_engineer 12y ago
What I like about the PP is p2p power not vertical power structures. No more falsely heroic leaders acting as a CEO of the country or party whips to enforce the leader's decisions by threatening to backbench party dissenters and throwing away the entire idea of representative democracy by replacing it with a command structure.
peter303 12y ago
One platform parties are pretty ineffective inside the USA. The only I could think of getting any significant legislation passed are the anti-abortion people. The anti-deficit people and anti-war people have large following, but little traction.

437 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

This is incredibly interesting. I wonder what their support was in the last election? Or how long it is until the next election. I know very little about Iceland's political system but suspect some translation problems with the language in that article. Biggest would really only apply to seats won, while this reads to me as being 'most popular' Still, really interesting. I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet.

masklinn 12y ago
> This is incredibly interesting. I wonder what their support was in the last election? 5.1% in the last parliamentary elections (in 2013) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland) The survey charts show a rather meteoric very recent rise: http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460 http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460
- deong 12y ago
  The ruling coalition has adopted an interesting strategy of outsourcing both governance and PR to Wile E. Coyote in the last few months, so the current climate is as favorable to the Pirates as possible. It'll certainly revert towards the mean, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them hold 7 or 8 seats in the next elections (out of 60-ish).
gislifb 12y ago
Their support was 5.10% in the last elections which were in the summer of 2013. In the national elections Iceland is split up into six constituencies which hold certain amounts of seats in parliament. At the moment this (slightly) favours the four constituencies outside of the capital which also favours the 'old block' of parties which are more popular in the countryside/rural areas/small towns. This survey is showing a big backlash agains those in charge after a string of controversial decisions and corruption allegations. The thing is though that I doubt this backlash will last for two more years. But I'm quite sure that the pirate party will at least double the amount of seats (they have 3 now).
Beltiras 12y ago
> I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet. No, they are actually quite decent people. Birgitta has been an advocate of term limits and intends to not run again (even if term limits are not imposed). She is an artist and has been a consistent defender of the average citizen. Jón Þór is in his first term and has decided to step down mid-term to allow his replacement time to acclimate to Parliament before the next election (which is in 2017, barring public uprising). Helgi Hrafn has indicated he intends not to run again. All of them are passionate about the outcome of the next election and intend to give support to the running candidates. Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns. Grassroots for the Pirates is very active and these public servants, truly are serving the public, not the party.
- creshal 12y ago
  > No, they are actually quite decent people. For now. They wouldn't be the first people to be corrupted by power.
  - Beltiras 12y ago
    I think you aren't reading what I wrote. Let me rephrase: When the party is peaking and could be on the cusp of being one of the majority parties, the elected officials are turning the reins over to other people. This is as antithetical to institutional corruption as is possible.
    - creshal 12y ago
      This isn't a new idea either. The German Green party did the same… during their first few years in office. Now they're as corrupt as the others.
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      I agree with you, but this only applies for a maximum of a single electoral term. Are the replacements equally immune to a power grab?

higherpurpose 12y ago

It's a shame the one in Germany blew it because of internal conflict. It would've probably reached 15 percent by now, too.

ivoras 12y ago
No, the wouldn't. As an ex PP-er (HR), i can say that the major problem in the vast majority of the PPs are that they are literally "too liberal." The differences in how individual members perceive what PP is and should be, are so great that they tear the party apart. From what I've seen (and I've met them), PP-IS is one of the rare which has managed to achieve enough homogeneity of core members which is needed for practical work and progress. tl;dr: You can't have an organisation where everyone wants to do things differently.
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  I think that diversity wouldn't be the problem, when liquid feedback would work. But communication in the PP is really slow relative to their tech based democratic goals. The process to get a clear statement is too slow.
  - MollyR 12y ago
    I think this is interesting but I'm not sure I follow. So by increasing communication speed, diversity is less of a problem ? I guess my question is what is implied by communication speed ? I think I'm missing something about the implications because it doesn't seem like communication speed would change anything, if the members are really stubborn.
    - Vektorweg 12y ago
      Yes, but they would then know, that they are stubborn. Actually, there are so many individual people in the pirate party because they think the pirate party is doing what the individual does. Teaching them otherwise makes a difference. But this requires lots of communication and since we all have digital dementia and are quick to bore, we better do this quick and often. Fast communication is actually just a feature for the outer world to tell them, what we work for, in time. Too often it isn't clear what we stand for to a fresh topic. The media is complaining and the reader starts to think badly about us.

mc_hammer 12y ago

well, this is great news, im not sure weve had a real government since jfk tho. i dont think afghans were insurgants anymore, i think we were killing residents, and im really sad.

denysonique 12y ago

Where can their political programme be found? (in English)

masklinn 12y ago
On the party's website seems like a good bet: http://www.piratar.is/?lang=en http://www.piratar.is/?lang=en
- zby 12y ago
  By the way - here are links to programs/statutes/manifests of many other Pirate Parties: http://wiki.pirateint.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Statutes_and_Policies http://wiki.pirateint.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Statutes_and_Pol...

amelius 12y ago

This is very interesting. I hope they can implement some of their ideas in the areas of an online democracy, where voting becomes more informed, and decisions more transparent [1,2] Iceland could be the first country with a "liquid democracy" [2] [1] http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8

darkmighty 12y ago
This looks like an amazing tool to fight corruption and improve politics in general. Iceland seems to be a perfect place to test those ideas on a nation-wide basis, seeing how it's small, cohesive and tech-friendly.
undefined0 12y ago
With online democracy, would this make it extremely easy for NSA/GCHQ to manipulate the votes? GCHQ is already known to manipulate online voting and mass install malware.
- bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  Do you have a link to that? Would be interested in reading about online vote manipulation.
  - undefined0 12y ago
    I don't have the exact link, look through firstlook.org's documents. There was a leaked slideshow about it. As to avoid confusion, it's worth noting that it was social media vote manipulation, not general election manipulation. I think it's in the same document as the "Mass propaganda" / "Discredit an company/individual" slides.

1ris 12y ago

Meanwhile in Germany the pirate party is once again completely irrelevant. Thanks to the debate culture of mailing lists and twitter, fractionism, us-vs-them thinking and the refusal to throw trolls/idiots out of the party. And a hole lot of feminism drama helped.

creshal 12y ago
The German pirate party is in the peculiar spot where communists, nazis, feminists, men's rights activists, liberals and conservatives are all convinced they're too radical. That does not leave many potential voters.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Why doesn't men's rights activists call themselves masculinists? Easy way to use language to redefine feminism as a women-only thing. Easy points. And then conventional feminism could be redefined as equalism or whatever and the language pedantic in me would rest easy.
  - innguest 12y ago
    Because that's wrong derivation? pro-woman -> woman in Latin is femina -> feminism pro-man -> man in Latin is vir -> virilism (sounds stupid). That's why.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I doubt that's actually why, but it is an interesting fact to know.
    - LukeShu 12y ago
      But "mās" is also Latin for man? We see that used with feminine/masculine. Is there a reason it would be different in this case?
      - innguest 12y ago

gislifb 12y ago

So a little background, this looks like backlash from a few very controversial decisions the government has made recently and recent corruption allegations. The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections. This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago. People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change. It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time! *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.

johnchristopher 12y ago
> *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange. I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.
- deong 12y ago
  It seems reasonably clear that the foreign minister had no legal authority to act on behalf of the parliament though. I live in Iceland, if I told the EU to bugger off, I don't expect they'd actually do it.
yodsanklai 12y ago
> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.

roymurdock 12y ago

I wonder if a "transparency" or "anti-corruption" party would be successful in the U.S. I'm writing a thesis now that delves pretty heavily into the financial crisis of 2008 and the level of carelessness, corruption, and trickery on the part of the captains of finance and the leaders of this country is appalling and disheartening. The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works. I wonder if we will be able to fix things.

zanny 12y ago
> party would be successful in the U.S No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level. > is appalling and disheartening. For the most part American voters have demonstrated a lack of care for the aftermath of the financial crisis, given how they brought back a Republican majority in congress only four years after realizing how well that worked in the decade prior. Which is mostly disingenuous, given how politicians in America are all consistently cut from the same cloth and serving the same (private) interests. > are inheriting the current system You actually aren't inheriting anything. Youth unemployment at an all time high, average income of bachelors graduates being around 26k a year, the lowest rates of property ownership in half a century, wealth concentration as high as the roaring twenties. The aging with power and money are holding onto it to their grave, and then only their blessed decedents will inherit the means of production. There is no mechanism to disseminate concentrated wealth back into the masses, especially the youth, anymore. Economics used to promote that, and policy used to enable that, but as we approach post-scarcity both have been sabotaged by generations that want to maintain control and power perpetually.
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  > No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level. It's interesting, the UK has a similar sort of system, but the vote share of the major two parties has been consistently declining for fifty years. After WWII, almost everybody voted Labour or Conservative, now their combined share is about 65%. Soon, FPTP is going to start delivering some extremely odd results.

llSourcell 12y ago

I think the biggest catalyst for government reform in the internet era would be bringing voting online. I'm 23 years old. My generation doesn't have the time or patience to wait in line to vote and fill out legal documents. We're used to apps that let us order delivery and message friends in a button tap. The reason big money keeps winning is because our generation doesn't vote enough. If we make local and federal voting deadlines as simple as phone notifications, we're going to start seeing a a huge array of intelligent decisions injected into the political system. The Pirate Party offers liquid democracy through online voting. I'm all for it, I hope Iceland sets an example for the rest of the world.

ahallock 12y ago
I think we need more power than voting. If we had more control over funding, gov wouldn't be able to be as brazen with some of its actions. We wouldn't have nearly as much war, for example. Not many would fund it. They would rather spend their money on a house downpayment or their children's education, rather than destroying people and property on the other side of the world.
zby 12y ago
Voting via internet is very dangerous - fortunately we can use the internet to for things better than just voting - like consensus building etc. It is much more difficult to disrupt broad channel communication that the extremely narrow channel of voting.
- llSourcell 12y ago
  blockchain
  - Crito 12y ago
    Could be used to enforce voter coercion. Imagine an employer who demands that an employee produce proof that they voted a certain way.
    - 12y ago

jklinger410 12y ago

Iceland's Population: 323,002

mikk14 12y ago

I don't have a good knowledge about Iceland situation, but I'm a bit negatively biased against these "protest parties". I'm from Italy and I can see what kind of horrible effect Grillo's party is having on the political thinking of the average Italian. Maybe this is different, but I will need to see results in its fight against the traditional ruling class before changing my mind. In Italy, so far, there aren't.

belorn 12y ago
Protest party? Under what definition are you labeling the Pirate Party as such? The core principles of the pirate party is Civil rights, with the implication from living in a information society. The fight against the Bourgeoisie, while relevant for some, is not the focus of this party.
- mikk14 12y ago
  I got the idea from the top comment [1] (in a hindsight, I should actually have replied to it instead of starting the new comment thread). Particularly this part: > This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago. I am aware of the origin of the label at the international level, but it looked to me that in this particular case the origin dynamics were closer to Grillo's. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9231591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9231591

mpasternacki 12y ago

Huh. Doesn't the fact that Pirate Party's and Independence Party's results are well within each other's confidence intervals make it a tie?

kyledrake 12y ago

I have had the privilege of meeting many of the people in the Icelandic pirate party. They are great people, have very solid ideas for improving internet law in Iceland where there are still some big issues that need reform, and I congratulate them for their success in gaining support of their fellow viking brethren.

pakled_engineer 12y ago

What I like about the PP is p2p power not vertical power structures. No more falsely heroic leaders acting as a CEO of the country or party whips to enforce the leader's decisions by threatening to backbench party dissenters and throwing away the entire idea of representative democracy by replacing it with a command structure.

peter303 12y ago

One platform parties are pretty ineffective inside the USA. The only I could think of getting any significant legislation passed are the anti-abortion people. The anti-deficit people and anti-war people have large following, but little traction.