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Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

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Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#81

Post by jacquesm »

tptacek wrote: post #76
jacquesm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the EU is ahead, but just like every other part of the future it is unevenly distributed. Some country in Europe will pioneer a concept, others will follow, some faster some slower. The US usually catches on long after the concept has already become normal in a fair chunk of the EU. As for your constitution, America gets it right on paper, but in practice God (the Christian one) is all over American politics, wh…

So really you mean the Netherlands are ahead of the US in LGBT rights. I'm curious about what else the US should be doing. How is the Netherlands better?

It goes much further than marriage, there is the whole decriminalization thing, which goes back to the 1930's in the case of some countries here.

As for how NL is 'better' than the US: It's a ridiculously small country and very densely populated so what works here would likely not work as well in places like Canada or the US, but as mentioned above I think coalition politics (het poldermodel) is an important part of making sure that minorities do not easily become the football of dominating majorities. Both large US parties would be considered right-wing here (roughly VVD), the US has no functional left which is a residue of the McCarthy years and the cold war. Somehow the US associates 'left' in politics with 'communism' and that has kept a very large chunk of the US population without representation.

In NL it is very hard to find any substantial chunk of the population without representation. We also don't jail 1% of our populace.

That said there is plenty of room for improvement, we still have corruption, racism, crime and so on at levels higher than what I'm comfortable with, and our government is excellent at wasting money, an area they are slowly improving on but in my opinion too slowly.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#82

Post by jacquesm »

selllikesybok wrote: post #80
tremon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But controversy in the US is similarly limited to a two-party dialog: everything in your political system (its discourse, its reporting, its policies) is geared towards this artifical (and often false) dichotomy. In my view, it is the discourse that needs to be fixed first. As long as your media keeps painting everything in black and white (and it is in their interest to do so, being part of the establishment), I don…

"All or nothing", it turns out, is really appealing to people. It may be toxic to a functioning democracy with a diverse population, but doesn't seem to lessen the appeal. We are very good at pretending that when we get "nothing", it is a temporary inconvenience.

It's more like that we are good at accepting this system as long as we're not the ones getting 'nothing'.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#83

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #69
jacquesm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing ever changes here because everything has to go through many iterations of compromises if it even wants to leave the negotiation table. That's a feature, not a bug. > I wish we had a system like the USA. You are missing the wood for the trees. The last thing you want in a country is an effective government that can push through it's majority agenda at the expense of the minority. That's why EU countries are…

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here. The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)

It's also incorrect to assert Europe is more progressive on abortion. Europe's two largest countries, Germany and France, only permit abortion during the first trimester (12-14 weeks), and have mandatory counseling. Germany has a 3-day waiting period, and France had a one-week waiting period until last year.

The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, and those are being challenged. Almost all states are at 24 weeks, and most have no mandatory counseling or waiting periods.

And on same-sex marriage: it became legal in France only shortly before Ogberfell, and and is still not legal in Germany.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#84

Post by mac01021 »

aedron wrote: post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

All the time these days I here people describe economies and political systems as "rigged".

Do you actually mean the US political system was deliberately lain out by a mastermind with the goal of preventing the emergence of alternative parties?

Or just that the system has evolved (without design) to be hostile to minority parties?

If the latter, the word "rigged" seems misleading and inflammatory to me. If the former, where should I look to learn more about this conspiracy?

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#85

Post by jacquesm »

rayiner wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here. The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)

It's also incorrect to assert Europe is more progressive on abortion. Europe's two largest countries, Germany and France, only permit abortion during the first trimester (12-14 weeks), and have mandatory counseling. Germany has a 3-day waiting period, and France had a one-week waiting period until last year. The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, a…

Germany also still has 'Kirchensteur', you'd almost think the two have something to do with each other, after all, a country where the government will happily collect the tithe for churches quite possibly has a large religious influence on its politics.

Some other countries also still have this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

And the sooner it dies out the better.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#86

Post by avar »

dagurp wrote: post #65
poshli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PP is a fringe radical party that if they somehow become the majority party in Iceland, they're not going to retain it for very long. I would not recommend that famous dissidents like Snowden move there immediately. I like visiting Iceland too, the few Icelanders I know can't wait to move though. The winter weather and high price of everything is a bit of a drag. I am not an expert on Iceland but I have read that…

There's a lot of negativity among young adults here in Iceland. I can understand them to some extent because housing has become insanely expensive because of inflation, lack of new housing and airbnb companies. What I don't undestand is the "everything is terrible" attitude that's been so poisonous in recent year. Yes, we have bad weather and most of our politicians are hopeless but it's always been like that. The gr…

As an Icelander living abroad for almost a decade now, if you think the grass isn't greener or the other side how do you explain the rapid increase in Icelanders who are expats over the last decade? Are all these people just wrong in thinking they've found a better live abroad?

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#87

Post by q-base »

There are some very interesting discussions on government and electorial constructs(for lack of better word) in different countries and pros and cons of these, in the comments here.

Can anyone point to any good documentaries, books or other reading digging a bit deeper into this subject? Given the focus on the US election at the moment and a lot of people seeing it as two bad options, then why is the US system like that and in for instance Denmark where I'm from we have multiple choices. What's the history behind each, pros and cons etc.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#88

Post by wslh »

mseebach wrote: post #49
aedron wrote: post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

> In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. But the difference is that the parties in the US and the UK aren't very powerful in their own regard. Trump wasn't even a member of the republican party until very recently, and he won the nomination -- and Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left before dropping out. On the other hand, the leaders o…

Not saying that either of these systems is better but when I look at the cost of the presidential campaigns in US, it seems almost impossible to be an excellent but poor newcomer [1].

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/111815...

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#89

Post by kriro »

rvense wrote: post #78
tremon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put that in context: that is one party per million residents.

When you put it like that, it doesn't really sound like that many parties...

To me it actually sounds like more. That would mean about 324 parties in the USA.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#90

Post by thechao »

mac01021 wrote: post #84
aedron wrote: post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

All the time these days I here people describe economies and political systems as "rigged". Do you actually mean the US political system was deliberately lain out by a mastermind with the goal of preventing the emergence of alternative parties? Or just that the system has evolved (without design) to be hostile to minority parties? If the latter, the word "rigged" seems misleading and inflammatory to me. If the former…

I've participated in Independent, Republican, and Democratic campaigns. The US system at the local level (at least Houston, Austin, and central east Texas) is actually pretty solid. Once you realize there's a fairly good sized contingent of busy-bodies who just want naked power, regardless of political position, it's pretty easy to see how things work. OTOH, the state- and federal- levels felt fairly divorced from their contingent. Except for the platform "branding" they're virtually identical. This is the reason I think it's so important to keep as many of the functions of the state at the local level, with rational oversight from the top in terms of protecting positive rights, i.e., restrictions of the powers of government.
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