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Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

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Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#371

Post by theodric »

hunterpayne wrote: post #282
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already get this in the UK, and also in other countries, most of which have royal families and associated aristocrats. There are also - notoriously - foreign-funded influencer, lobbyist, and donor operations. And the traditional industries - fossil fuels, property, finance, arms - also have a huge say. The reality is most decisions aren't made in Westminster. Parliament is a device for packaging and legitimising…

371 x 250 days is about $100k...in London...that's pretty middle class if you ask me. Just look at how Congress makes out in comparison. They legalized insider trading for themselves and only themselves. What you describe is quaint by comparison.

If you are in a position to be appointed to the House of Lords, it is reasonable to assume that you were not hand-to-mouth before that happened. At worst, you had a good job in one of the classes that gets you access to British Costco. At best, you have an estate and staff.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#372

Post by theodric »

keybored wrote: post #86
theodric wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides an additional check. Much like a monarch, a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself. Without the country, they're just a toff with some money and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

The usual elitist slop. Every single citizen has a skin in the game of their country. They live there.

Your fortunes are not inextricably tied to your country any more than mine are. I've lived in four countries; am now a citizen of two. I have no passive incomes or sociolegal status which is tied to an estate or a title in a country that must continue to prosper or that status and wealth will diminish. If I see shit going sour, I'll sell my farm in Ireland for twice what I paid for it, move somewhere else, and still be a commoner.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#373

Post by TheCoelacanth »

hunterpayne wrote: post #232
xp84 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's in my opinion one of the great tragedies of our time that some of our established countries are so hard to change. I don't mean this as the policy needs change, everyone will differ on those. I just mean the technology of government like you're saying. Efficient and more fair ways of voting on laws and electing representatives do exist. For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in ambe…

Do you not understand why PR isn't a state? Seems like you don't. Support for PR statehood is only about 50% (on the island). That largely has to do with the fact that their taxes would increase if they became a state. Additionally, they would have to switch to English (along with Spanish) which makes things a lot more complicated. They are already US citizens and can move to anywhere in the US if they want to vote i…

27th amendment was about congressional salaries and had basically no effect on governance.

26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18 for state and local elections and had no effect on national elections (statute already set the national voting age as 18, but courts prevented it from applying to state and local elections).

25th clarified presidential succession to work exactly how everyone had already assumed it to work for over a century, so for practical purposes did nothing.

24th in 1964, which outlawed poll taxes as a criteria for voting, was the last amendment with any effect on national governance.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#375

Post by TheCoelacanth »

npunt wrote: post #42
kbelder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?

Read/watch this interview [1] with Ada Palmer on her new book about the Renaissance. Florence did this for a time. > You put names in a bag. You examine all of the merchant members of guilds. You choose which ones are fit to serve, meaning not ill and dying, not insane, not so deeply in debt that they could be manipulated by the people whom they owe money to. Their names go in a bag. You choose nine guys at random. T…

Venice's system also involved random selection, though in a very convoluted way.

There were multiple repeated iterations where they selected a random group of eligible people and then that group voted to select a group who would then have a random selection taken who would then elect another group and so on.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#376

Post by Amezarak »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #369
Amezarak wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coalitions are pretty static in most parliamentary democracies except sometimes when forming governments post-election. The 51% is for the coalition , not the party. That’s what you’re missing. CoC Republicans for example have temporarily sacrificed their immigration policies to retain legislative influence - and they are a check on the Trumpist wing passing whatever anti-immigrant legislation they want, because they…

> Coalitions are pretty static in most parliamentary democracies except sometimes when forming governments post-election. The "except when forming governments post-election" is a major difference. It also presumes that a coalition in the legislature is required to persist for an entire election cycle rather than being formed around any given individual piece of legislation. You don't have to use a system where an ind…

All countries have these problems which vary by the local political environment and history. Multiple European countries are facing particularly absurd varieties of these dilemmas because of their refusal to form coalitions with the second or third largest party in their country.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#377

Post by Latty »

cbeach wrote: post #366
Latty wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a separate argument. No, you can do things that benefit you electorally, but are also just the right thing to do. Changing the voting system from FPTP would obviously benefit parties other than the major ones, but that doesn't mean it'd be wrong for those parties to do it if they got into power. So the question is if it's good policy, and so I argue it is, if someone can be living by themselves, working in t…

> No, you can do things that benefit you electorally, but are also just the right thing to do. Changing the voting system from FPTP would obviously benefit parties other than the major ones, but that doesn't mean it'd be wrong for those parties to do it if they got into power You're reinforcing my point. Minor parties (who might collectively be popular with the electorate) will never be able to change the voting meth…

This "logic" doesn't track at all. Enfranchising women may have benefited the party, does that mean we shouldn't have given women the vote and doing so hurt democracy? Of course not.

Just because something benefits a singular party doesn't make it antidemocratic. Expanding the franchise is more democratic, not less. A party being rewarded electorally for doing something good is the system working, not failing.

There are reasonable arguments to be made (in my opinion) that 16 is too young but you aren't making that argument, the one you are making is completely invalid.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#378

Post by tpmoney »

IAmBroom wrote: post #358
LadyCailin wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might take this argument seriously, if not for the fact that the party of “state’s rights” are pushing for a national ban on abortion. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn...

Exactly! What the Constitution /says/ and how it is interpreted... The Tenth Amendment is written (IMO) incredibly short to underscore its importance AND breadth: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But I've very seldom heard the phrase "states rights" uttered by anyone who isn't pro-gun and…

While the American left has largely ceded the term “states rights” to the American right (and was/is well on the way to ceding the term “Free Speech”) they have their own share of “states rights” issues. Medical and recreational marijuana is a “states rights” issue. “Sanctuary cities” are a “states rights” issues. The fact that the Trump administration can’t (yet) force California schools to drop teaching certain things is a “states rights” issue. California deciding they’re goin to just gerrymander the heck out of everything in response to the current administration is a “states rights” issue. In fact basically every state level opposition to the current administration is a form of a “states rights” issue.

It’s immensely frustrating to me that what should be a huge lesson in the importance of limited government power and diffusion of that power across multiple governmental levels isn’t likely to result in that lesson being learned. I have a real fear that in history Trump will have been an inflection point on the road to an ever more powerful federal government in general and executive branch in particular, rather than a historical anomaly at the high end of that same power dynamic.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#379

Post by nephihaha »

Nursie wrote: post #348
nephihaha wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appointees are even worse. We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.

They really aren't. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather some real democratic reform of the Lords, but there's no chance of that any time soon. In the mean time getting rid of as many people as possible who have no democratic legitimacy whatsoever is a good thing. And at least appointees were in general appointed by someone who had the democratic mandate. People who were born into it are so far from accountable it's not fu…

I am not a fan of the Lords and would have it abolished completely, and replaced with an elected second chamber.

That said appointed peers have no more legitimacy than hereditary ones and that is what we're getting. It allows politicians to stuff the chamber with their own. We're already run by committees and QUANGOs, let alone the United Nations NGOs, none of which have any democratic oversight.

"MPs ... who are elected? Seems like they do have democracy behind them, no?"

There is the whole issue of whether the First Past the Post system does the job or not, and proper representation of minor parties in the press. In fact the British state even punishes minor parties with electoral deposits if they do not get a big enough vote.

But what does it matter if they just enact the same World Economic Forum/COP/WHO etc policies? The UK is gradually getting the same policies as elsewhere on everything from smoking to digital ID and then pretendinf we voted on it.

There is barely a cigarette paper between the current Labour government and the previous Tory government. They are so close on so many issues it's laughable. They just take turns to get into power.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#380

Post by nephihaha »

Lio wrote: post #352
nephihaha wrote: post #312

There are so many errors in this headline: * Britain has not had a parliament for seven hundred years. The current parliament dates back to 1707 or 1801 depending on your POV. This is the usual conflation of England with Britain. * If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time. On a different note, it is worth saying th…

> There are so many errors in this headline: > If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century . So not the first time. Which was a neat trick considering he died in 1658... :P

Correct and my typo.

But the point stands. The House of Lords has not been running for as long as the article claims. A substantial break during the Commonwealth.

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