Posted by
Chris Feola on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/WARNING-Political-Argument-in-Progress-tp5060628p5068174.html
Hi Steve,
Good points, all. But I'm afraid it's a pick your poison situation-each set
up has trade-offs, and one is not necessarily better than the other. For a
real world example, please take a look at Israel. The Knesset has 120
seats; proportional representation means that there are a zillion little
parties that can only capture a seat or two. In our system that would make
them powerless; in Israel, it makes them king makers. Because one party
rarely captures 61 seats on its own, these little parties can demand -- and
get -- pretty much anything in return for putting a major party into power.
>From Wikipedia: Golda Meir, a former Israeli Prime Minister, joked that "in
Israel, there are 3 million prime ministers". Because of the proportional
representation system, there is a large number of political parties, many
with very specialized platforms, often advocating the tenets of particular
interest groups. The prevalent balance between the largest parties means
that the smaller parties can have disproportionately strong influence to
their size. Due to their ability to act as tie breakers, they often use this
status to block legislation or promote their own agenda, even contrary to
the manifesto of the larger party in office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Israelcjf
Christopher J. Feola
Follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/cjfeola-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 4:46 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WARNING: Political Argument in Progress
Chris -
> This is why libertarians believe in divided government. The donkeys and
> elephants both steal and abuse power, but they have somewhat different
> constituencies. Keeping the government at least partly divided between
them
> guarantees the honesty of thieves.
> That's why I'm hoping our president will
> soon be blessed with a worthy opponent, the way Clinton had Gingrich and
> Reagan had Tip O'Neil. And I think Bush -- and all of us -- would have
been
> much better off if Pelosi had taken the Speaker's gavel in 02.
>
And I would like more division, not simple (bi)polarity. I want
Libertarian and Green and ??? candidates on the ballot and in the
offices. I want the Dems to spin off a Progressive branch and the Pubs
to spin off a Hard-Core Conservative branch. And I want our election
rules to support this, not suppress it. I want run-off elections so we
can vote for OUR favorite candidate first, then vote for OUR lesser evil
candidate second, making it obvious when there is no "mandate", when
there is strong opposition to the lesser of evils when finally
installed, etc.
I'm not that up on other forms of election rules in the world and how
well they work, but I have to believe there is a better mode than ours
which seems to guarantee wild oscillations between polar opposites (or
worse yet, the illusion of this while the opposites are merely
brightly-differently colored variants of the same damn thing).
- Steve
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org