If we take it as read that for someone to want to be in a position of power over others (ie a 'politician') is a form of mental abberation then maybe parliaments should be more like jury duty.
Random selection, serve for five years, no extended terms.
Countries are run by civil servants anyway, politicians just set the direction. Power to the people!
@AlisonW While I like the idea in principle, a five year term limit may be too short for the legislators to understand what they're doing. (The California lege ran into this as a problem with an 8-year term limit: legislators hit the buffers within 1-3 years of figuring out what they were doing—the learning curve was protracted.)
Also, random selection places a large proportion of utter dipshits in a complex situation where they can fuck things up horrifically for everyone else.
/1
@AlisonW Consider the havoc a conspiracy-theory-addicted anti-vaxxer could cause if they're given legislative input on public healthcare. Or just a typical twitter troll, fucking around for shits and giggles.
You'd also get some useful people deliberately avoiding service. Five year time-outs are a career-killer for professionals (pilots? surgeons? anyone with ongoing professional requalification requirements), never mind artists or authors. *I'd* run a mile.
And finally: corruption problems!
@cstross
Quite. Every option has problems, so maybe a level of pre-qualification to weed out those who would do damage? But we don't do that currently and it could be seen as censorship, so debatable.
Prime example of the S&G problem was, of course, Truss.
@AlisonW - that's the attitude I take, but the difference between voting and chess is that votes only matter collectively. A lot of people think an individual vote makes no difference practically.... so it might well be a symbolic confession of love for the candidate. And this is hard to argue against because it requires changing someone's attitude to embrace collective action.
That's my theory anyway.
This is true, there is a major accountability problem when voters continually give a blank check to the 2nd worst candidate for the virtue of not being the absolute worst. When emboldened politicians take advantage of this, democracy suffers. In the article below which discusses this topic, Malik quotes Ralph Nader as saying "if you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less"
@AlisonW this is such utter garbage. Not your post, but the fact that what you’re saying, while entirely ridiculous on its face, is the only “reasonable” way to “vote.”
“If your candidate won’t get enough votes to win…” is exactly anti-democratic.
We have to have more serious conversations about how voting and campaigning, while they sometimes happen to work to stave off some certainly horrible things, are part and parcel of the general, overarching horror
@seanwithwords @AlisonW >> voting and campaigning, while they sometimes happen to work to stave off some certainly horrible things, are part and parcel of the general, overarching horror
This sounds unhinged and I’m not even a die-hard electoralist
@AlisonW @seanwithwords
I think we mostly agree, but FPTP is not just making things worse. It is the main problem.
I dont think there exists a well functioning democracy with FPTP. And I am having difficulties imagining one.
@asbjornn @seanwithwords
Indeed. It forces the existing Parties to be broad churches and to welcome everyone they can. Ideally they'd all split to provide better representation for the differing opinions they currently try - and fail - to organise under. But FPTP is a difficult wall to climb for new groupings generally.
I hope we eventually move to multimember 'constituencies'. The theoretical 'local connection' of MPs disappeared years ago and few people know who their MP is.
@AlisonW @seanwithwords
I am far from an expert in election systems, but I think that the one we use i Denmark is perhaps the least bad in the world.
If you know even better one, please let me know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Denmark?wprov=sfti1#
@AlisonW
“Every method has its problems.”
Exactly. Thats why I wrote least bad. The Danish system allows parties to choose the priority ( also to not have one). So, some parties allow voters to select from the list.
I do not know what write-ins is.
@AlisonW
Thank you for explaining. This is not an option in Denmark. You have to announce, that you are a candidate to get on the list.
The need to reduce the power of party machines is significantly reduced, when you have 11 or 13 of them running for seats in the parlament.
In the vast, vast majority of cases that means voting for Labour. The pro-Brexit, Tory-continuation party with Wes "Lets fully implement that Cass Report" Streeting as Health Secretary and led by Keir "Section 28 v2" Starmer.
And parties have, in the past, totally ignored anyone's actual reason for voting for them and taken it as total support for them and their policies.
You good with that?
@AlisonW I'm Trans.
So vote for Christmas in the faint hope they decide to go veggie rather than follow through on all their promises and long standing traditions of having a big fat turkey?
Or is this one of those "I don't have to run faster than the tiger just faster than you" situations because you realise their aren't any lesbians in the world their funders want either right?
Some people juuuuuuust don't get the stakes. I'm not voting for Biden because I think he's perfect. I'm not voting for Biden because I'm a fan of even most, let alone all, of his policies. I'm voting all blue, in 2024, because I want to continue to have opportunities to vote in subsequent years (and not "vote" in a context similar to how Putin or Kim Jong Un are "elected in landslides").
@AlisonW politicians can, and do exploit that kind of behaviour in their own interest. Run a smear campaign against the "progressists", with the help of mainstream media, lthen you become the only reasonable alternative in front of the fascists. Even if your political agenda is pure conservative crap and promotes far right ideas.
This is what Macron did twice in France. And now the fascists are about to gain power.
So my advice is: stop playing chess and vote for what you really beleive in.
Rich
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