51–53 of 53 posts
There's no democracy only a shadow of it. We are pushed and shoved and most of the time did it ourselves voluntarily after listening patriotic brainwashing. We are ruled by elites, by big money, period. Worse is some really think that they own the country. I remember in a movie (can't remember now) a guy asks Matt Damon, Italians has this, that owns this, what you own? And he answers "we own the country". Those NSA p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you expand on why it's important to vote, because at the moment I can't see it. Arguably, lots of voting has got us to where we are now. The main problem I see is that the winning party uses voting numbers to claim a mandate.I'm currently reaching the conclusion that the only way to get meaningful change is for enough people to avoid voting that any idea of mandate becomes ludicrous and the disillusion has to b…
From the perspective of who wins, voting does seem pretty pointless if you disagree with all candidates who have a chance. People will often claim that to vote for a candidate who can't win is to throw away your vote. I disagree. Voting for any person that you don't want to see in office is throwing away your vote because no matter what happens, you'll be unhappy with the outcome. Not voting at all will mean politici…
In other words, you go thru the motions at the polling place, then some official announces some numbers as the result. What assurance do you have that the numbers announced have any definite relation to what people did in the voting booths?
If you can't show, or the government officials can't prove that deterministic relation to the public, then the talk about how voting affects political outcomes is fallacious. The last vestige of democracy was abolished when computers replaced paper ballots in an electorally significant fraction of districts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have trouble finding any candidates I can believe in. If the issue is important enough to enough people, why aren't any of them becoming candidates?
Unfortunately in the UK we have a system where you have to post a "deposit" of quite a large amount of money in order to stand. If you don't get a certain percentage of the vote you lose this deposit. This is designed by the major parties to discourage left-of-field candidates from even appearing on the ballot. I'll admit that this frustrating bit of ballot rigging does make it harder to vote for the throwaway candid…
Sure, there'll probably be some elections in which the deposit is lost. If the approach to government is even a little bit important to more than a tiny handful of people, it doesn't seem like that should be a significant barrier.
I mean, really, I can't believe that the risk of a couple weeks wages for a single person per constituency is a substantial barrier to finding candidates who hold a view that is held as important for even a modestly substantial part of the electorate.
Historically, people who hold political views strongly have been willing to risk a lot more than that for them.