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Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

reuters.com

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Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#441

Post by eru »

dylan604 wrote: post #420
Lanolderen wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It proba…

Good gawd that's a nightmare system. Election by mood based polling. So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled? Do you then set a minimum amount of time to keep the polling below that threshold. 0s? 24hrs? 1 week? You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with…

> You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended

Calling them ATM cards was probably just a short cut in describing how the system would work. Not a suggestion to connect with the banking system.

In any case, it might actually be an interesting idea to perhaps give everyone a base vote for free and then let them have some bonus votes in proportion to actual net taxes paid. Gotta give those billionaires an incentive to not dodge their taxes so hard after all.

> So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled?

That's a relatively simple flaw to fix, if you'd actually want to fix it. You already made some suggestions, and there are other ways.

In general, I would suggest trying these kinds of innovations out more locally before you go for the federal government.

That could either be in states or counties, or even for running local clubs and cooperatives and companies.

There's some standard ways for shareholders to vote on the board of directors etc. But it's relatively easy for willing companies (especially new startups) to experiment with alternative forms of governance.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#442

Post by eru »

smcl wrote: post #414
eru wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitler was a foreigner who caused trouble in Germany, to put it mildly. You are right however, that he wasn't a puppet.

Wait so the real issue you have is with foreigners, or what's the point here? If he was born in Germany it would've been ok? Don't dance around your point, just be explicit.

If you go back up the thread, you will notice that I originally (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43407532) brought up the point that restricting who Americans can vote for is a bit silly, and that includes banning them from voting for foreigners. If the voters want a foreigner, they should get a foreigner. (As long as the foreigner is willing.)

I have no issues with foreigners. I think voters should be free to vote for any willing candidate, and people should also be free to move and work wherever they feel like, as long as they find a willing landlord (or house seller) and as long as they find a willing employer. I myself am a foreigner in my adopted home.

Now to your question:

In this subthread we were looking at the question of any actual examples of foreign born leaders causing trouble for their host country.

In the interest of intellectual honest, I have to admit that a US-style banning foreign born leaders might have conceivable stymied Hitler's rise to power in Germany.

Especially because by the time Hitler entered government in the Weimar Republic, the economy had already started to recover, unemployment was going down. So any roadblocks and delays might have conceivably gotten us over the limited time window where inviting the extremist to share power was even seen as a good idea to try.

Now obviously I could argue against this point; or argue that Hitler would have just put a local-born puppet to be his front man in government, etc.

But that's a more nuanced and fragile argument than the one I would have liked to make: that the US-style ban on foreign leaders is silly and never ever hindered any would-be bad guy.

Is that explicit enough for you?

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#443

Post by eru »

gunian wrote: post #161
dylan604 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you? With that restriction, it has taken quite some time for a foreign adversary to have a puppet elected vs just shipping in some carpet bagger. Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.

Singapore seems to be doing fine without that requirement is what that comment said i think talking about different things

Singapore has lots of other crazy requirements, though.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#444

Post by eru »

toyg wrote: post #342
eru wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How big of a difference is it if an infant is born on Monday and their parents immigrate to the US legally on Friday? I don't think your parents even have to be legally in the US for you to become an American. You just have to be born in the US, legally or illegally.

And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, promoting it all over the world, instead of continuously attacking its legitimacy. We have long rejected the idea that blood should dictate your social position in the tribe; but somehow we cling to the idea that it should dictate whether you belong to the tribe at all. Why? It's not with this mindset that we will reach the stars.

> And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, [...]

Well, as far as I can tell, it's only in your constitution sort-of by accident.

They didn't put this 'advance' in original, it was just the simplest and most face saving way to free the slaves without directly mentioning slaves in the text. (Compare the 3/5 compromise for 'other persons', which also avoids mentioning slaves by that term.)

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#445

Post by echelon »

eru wrote: post #356
echelon wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates. It's not like other countries aren't protective. Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan? Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set i…

> Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies. And in a democracy that means that voters should be able to set the policies. Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour. We don't need to further restrict who voters can and can…

If voters care so much, they can change the policy. Everything is mutable with enough will.

America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor. The fact that the rules are so strong here is a testament to the bloody and deep scars we gained from overthrowing our foreign oppressors.

It's a direct consequence of our nation's founding. There was a lot of pain felt at the hands of foreign powers, so we encoded it into the DNA of our governing rules.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#446

Post by ClayShentrup »

Lanolderen wrote: post #375
kelnos wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think recent events in the US make it quite clear that voters don't really consider the things that actually matter when electing a president.

Choose your evil: Elect a dynasty to rule forever Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes Remain with the rule of the majority system Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt

do approval voting now.

fight for election by jury tomorrow. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#447

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #411
Lanolderen wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choose your evil: Elect a dynasty to rule forever Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes Remain with the rule of the majority system Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt

Well, you could at least move to Approval voting instead of first past the post. Or you could try sortition, which you haven't even considered at all.

i co-founded the center for election science, which promotes approval voting.

my alternative proposal to simple sortition is election by jury. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#449

Post by Lanolderen »

eru wrote: post #440
Lanolderen wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It proba…

That's a nice dream. Let me shatter it: what you suggest might make policy reflect public opinion better, yes. But alas, public opinion is crazy and we can be lucky that policy by and large isn't quite as crazy. Have a look at Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter" for more background.

But now you have a system where the general public still decides who leads the caravan but a potential leader can straight up lie about what they're gonna do and it'll be a pain to replace them before their term is over.

To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings. Maybe education but then you'd have to make reeducation camps for those of incorrect opinions and understandings since educating the entire populace will mostly just move the average bar higher.

I'm not talking about doing referendums on every single issue direct democracy style and I am aware that to correctly implement something like this you'd need to do it gradually so that the populace has time to adjust to their increased political power which will hopefully increase their interest in politics in general.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#450

Post by rapind »

bawolff wrote: post #437
rapind wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own. This is what I find so surprising. Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me, gross even. I don’t care if you’re the Unabomber. It’s silly for a university to be policing that. I guess I’m naive. To be clear, so there’s no temptation to move the goal posts, I’m talking about a degree…

> Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me The conduct in question happened pre-degree even if the punishment was after. I think that is a pretty important distinction. most contracts cover conduct during the contract even if it only comes to light after the end of the contract, so that wouldn't be so unusual.

Sure I hear you. I agree that this distinction matters.

What annoys me is that revocation is even an option at all. I think this scenario is such an edge case that it really doesn't need an exception, and if supporting it means having the power to revoke a degree, then in my mind it's a lever for abuse and not something we'd want to normalize. It seems, to me at least, like a petty abuse of power that they shouldn't even have.

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