[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics
Juho Laatu
juho.laatu at gmail.com
Thu Mar 13 00:14:38 PDT 2008
On Mar 13, 2008, at 1:57 , Fred Gohlke wrote:
> As to any specific group, one may question the wisdom of their
> selection. To doubt the wisdom of all the groups is to doubt the
> wisdom
> of humanity.
I think humans are wise but not flawless. They tend to need some
support, e.g. in the form of good rules of behaviour, to reach the
best possible results.
> As I've said before, partisanship is
> healthy. The danger is in allowing partisans to gain power. We have
> far too much experience with the excesses of partisans in power to not
> recognize the danger. If you feel that politics should be based on
> partisanship, you should be happy with the systems extant. I
> don't, and
> I'm not.
You say that partisanship is healthy but on the other hand you say
that partisans should not be allowed in power. I interpret this so
that you are mainly like "low layer partisanship" in the discussions
of small groups but do not like some individual partisans gaining
power and e.g. use "mass manipulation of the media" to distribute
their partisan viewpoints to others. This I can understand and also
agree to in the sense that partisanship can be seen as a rich source
of ideas and viewpoints when it is not forced on anyone, but that it
may be a more destructive force when applied by someone over the
others (e.g. in a dictatorship or in a dominant party or by strong
individuals).
> I'm not sure why you resist the concept
> of a political system that allows people to consider issues,
> individually, rather than having answers, which they personally
> believe
> to be wrong, provided for them by mass marketing techniques.
Of course I don't. I'm only addressing some potential problems in the
proposed model.
As I already said I do recognise the benefits of discussions in small
groups. But small groups have also their problems.
One potential problem is that the privacy of the opinions is
partially lost. People may tend to have opinions in line with what
they are expected to have (thanks to mass marketing or society and
strong figures around them) if their opinions and vote will be
revealed in the small group discussions. Two minority opinion holders
in a room may not even recognise each others and will yield to the
assumed majority opinion proudly presented by the third member.
Another problematic scenario is one where I end up in the same room
with a drug dealer that wants to expand his influence in the city.
Should I vote against him if he seems to be determined to get that
position and tells me that I should understand that we should elect him.
I think one should try to seek a balance between the problems of
centralized power, mass marketing, privacy, mathematical properties
of different election methods etc.
> Perhaps you'd like to look my "Partisan Politics" post of Sunday,
> March
> 2nd. You may feel what it says is not commonly approved. I will
> agree
> ... as soon as someone rationally explains the flaws in the reasoning
> offered in that post.
I think I already posted some comments. I also proposed that people
need a good model to follow. I appreciate that you make a serious
attempt to do so. As you say the models need to gradually evolve. I
think the target is that people will eventually adapt something
useful as a general guideline that is worth following. Consider me as
random noise that may be useful in fine-tuning the message so that
eventually it is in a form that all can relate to.
Juho
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