And here we have the problem with our political duopoly...

[kickaha]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/23/scotus.property.ap/index.html

Repubs: God knows best.
Dems: Government knows best.

You, the individual? You don't know. You're irrelevant.

But golly, we'd love to have your vote.

Comments

Re: Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

Re: Statist/The State--I'd a thought that was what you meant, but I didn't figure on taking a chance. Should've just said 'man-ists', and I would've understood 'The G-Man'. ;-)

Frankly, I'm still rather confused how this country hasn't had the political system fracture into dozens of parties, by this point. Sometimes I wonder if it's the homogenizing influence of TV, that's kept us locked into a bipolar system.

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's the pluralist vote. Think about it - start with any number of parties > 2, and consider them as entities vying for resources (voters). The entity with the most resources wins. A resource is 'owned' completely by one entity only (one vote is all you get to cast). Entities can combine to pool resources.

Mathematical end result: 2 parties, split 50/50, desperately scrabbling for a thin margin in between, the swing voter.

Until pluralist voting is tossed out, this is what we're going to be stuck with.

Re: Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

So, you're waiting for other pluralist-based democracies (i.e. most of Europe) to degenerate into two-party systems, at some point in the nebulous future? It just seems that for now, they've been very successful in maintaining multi-party systems, esp. as some parties come and other parties go. The feeling there seems to be that absolutely everyone has a right to get their particular voice heard--something we're sorely lacking here.

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

That's because they have parliamentary bodies that divvy up the seats based on vote diversity. We don't.

Also, I don't think that's the way to do it - it *still* reduces the voter's intelligence and opinion to "only one!", which offends my sense of decorum. Instead, it replaces the voter's inner spectrum with a spectrum chosen by... tada, the gummint.

I'd rather have our system of legislative bodies, but with a ranked voting system. Best of all worlds in my opinion.