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A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
221–230 of 343 posts
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because there are so obvious, provable distinctions it the items you list Really? It seems to me like you either agree or gave a kind-of-not-really example for each point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_sequestra... "By Republicans in Congress" The Republican House had narrowly passed a bill on December 20, 2012,[15] which would have replaced only the defense side of the sequester with cuts to programs including food stamps, Dodd-Frank and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "By Democrats in Congress" Patty Murray, Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Bud…
Your argument is that a democrat proposed a dead-on-arrival bill to cut military spending while this happened a few years later: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/09/18/91-of-se...
See my point?
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming votes are public, which is not usually the case. If there's no way to check someone else's vote, there's no way to enforce a voting block.
If the votes aren't public enough to see the ballots, how do you know if a voting district cast the correct number of votes for the number of ballots cast? How do you know if the number of quadratic votes match the sum of sqrts of the individual votes? How do you check to see if anyone's cheating? If you can see the ballots, you can filter for the ones that match the cartel platform, and count to 100. There may be a…
If there are enough candidates, you can encode a unique ID in the pattern of your individual votes to prove who you are to somebody reading anonymous ballot papers. I've heard this is possible in Australia with a huge list of candidates and multiple votes.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, why not choose all representatives by lottery? I don't think representatives need to have any particular competencies beyond being representative of the interests of the population. Hired staff can take care of things that require particular abilities. I reckon that a wholly random set of representatives would act like a direct democracy where every voter is free to fully focus on the issues, is allowed an…
Would this have a similar outcome as the "lottery" for jury duty? What happens if somebody who really doesn't want to do it is chosen?
Use a tax incentive. It should be set high enough that most people will consider it worth their time, but low enough that anyone who really doesn't want to be in politics won't be financially harmed.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#225I always hate the framing as “polarized”. There’s tons of things Democrats and Republicans agree on. Military spending goes up every year. Save for Dodd-Frank, deregulation has been common across presidencies for 30 years along with corporate tax cuts... The establishment gets things done, they really do, it’s just not things that help everyday people. I’m not sure how this would help that.
Basically they disagree on how to treat their fellow citizens. Democrats are against outright hostility and blatant marginalization of certain classes. But both have largely been ok with everyone being exploited by feudal trade economics, bombing other nations to satisfy global political norms, and swindling developing nations out of their resources, while emotionally coddling elites. It means something to not be out…
> not be outright hostile to the truly marginalized
No popular party can do this or they wouldn't be truly marginalized. By definition, it's impossible.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very good point. I currently lean towards requiring every citizen to register for the lottery once every ten or so years (for one year of service). If they are picked, they have to go, except for serious unforeseen circumstances, but at least they would be able to plan for it to some extent. This might also require a cultural shift for people to accept it, but maybe not a radical one.
> If they are picked, they have to go, except for serious unforeseen circumstances If I was "forced" into a political position, then what I would do is purposefully sabotage the position I was in, out of spite. What are you going to do? Arrest me because I voted a certain way? That doesn't sound easily enforceable. Be careful what kind of slavery you force people into. Those slaves might just fight back (in this case…
I mean, if you want to be a sociopath about it, that's part of the risk in the system. As long as we can confidently establish that a supermajority of people would take the job seriously and would be happy with the compensation, we can afford a few bad apples.
Either way, I can imagine that if you were to pledge to purposefully vote against the population's interests in front of a judge, and the judge bought it, they may be allowed to disqualify you on these grounds (and probably slap you with a fine). I wouldn't want to make it impossible to get out of this duty, just difficult enough that most people wouldn't do it.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this kind of thinking dangerous, because it falls into the "they're just 2 sides of the same coin" mindset. Not to mention, it is also false. The DoD budget for 2019 is below the budget for 2008, and much lower as a percentage of total expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Yes, there are things the parties agree on, but that minimizes the huge, material differences betwe…
The two parties are functionally identical for the handful of issues I really, really care about. Those issues you've mentioned are not among them -- furthermore they are not as black-and-white as you imply. As a relatively high income earner the only significant tax increase I've ever seen was under Trump.
All that’s telling everyone is that you are not caring about a lot of very important stuff and caring way too deeply about the wrong things. When one party is blatantly anti-science, doesn’t believe in the value of professional expertise, and 2/3s of their voters believe the world is 6000 years old (10 years ago- if anything its much worse now), the two parties couldn’t be more different. If none of that stuff matters to you, then I can only conclude that the stuff that does matter to you doesn’t matter at all.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we are able to reduce the question of no reelections to the question of whether we should have term limits, I believe we will find that no reelections will have the same drawbacks as term limits[0]. Lawmaking is a profession, and needs to be done by professionals. If it is not, studies show that power shifts towards other existing power structures, such as the head of state and to lobbyists[1], which would make a…
You are absolutely right about lawmaking being a profession, but in a lottery system, I reckon these professional lawmakers would simply be hired by the representatives, and they could stay on for as long as they are deemed useful. The representatives would act more like full-time overseers on the executive and legislative branches, if that makes sense.
Junior lawmakers are also perfectly capable of hiring senior lawmakers yet the balance of power still shifts towards lobbyists, so I would assume that the same issue would exist for lottery-drawn representatives.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_sequestra... "By Republicans in Congress" The Republican House had narrowly passed a bill on December 20, 2012,[15] which would have replaced only the defense side of the sequester with cuts to programs including food stamps, Dodd-Frank and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "By Democrats in Congress" Patty Murray, Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Bud…
Your argument is that a democrat proposed a dead-on-arrival bill to cut military spending while this happened a few years later: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/09/18/91-of-se... See my point?
This logic is completely nonsensical. Her bill was "dead on arrival" because it was opposed by Republicans. Want to change that, then elect Democrats.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#230What if we took this idea, applied it to wealth instead of votes, and called it something like "progressive marginal tax rates"? Seems like it would be a more effective way to fight zealotry than to attack the democratic principle of all people getting the same amount of votes.