this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Showerthoughts

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[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I like CGP Grey and all, but power dynamics is an important aspect of poltics. An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.

Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one and it ended up with a conservative party making concessions to far right crazies to form a coalition. Sure minorities are in the parliament, but they have zero power because the only thing that matters is the backroom negotiations between parties to form a coalition.

The biggest problem with FPTP is the name. Really we should call it a community representation system (which is what it is) and call proportional representation system a "party coalition" system, which is what it actually is. In a party coalition system the negotiations between party leaders to form coalitions is all that matters, everyone else is just there to fill seats which are owned by the parties.

In a community representation system each seat is own by a representative of the community who can vote against their party or leave their party. Parties are incentivized to keep the community leaders happy or they could lose seats.

If you want third parties, it's better to go with a ranked choice system. That gives people more choice over who represents their community, and allow them to have compromise options in case their top choice doesn't get enough votes. You don't actually have to give parties full ownership of the seats (making them redundant) to have more options.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.

That's bc he explains each concept mostly in isolation of others, leaving other concepts for separate videos themselves. But in e.g. Rules for Rulers, he very much discusses power dynamics. And I thought he had another one - in addition to the more mathematical one - illustrating FPTP using the animal kingdom, where technically people might assume one thing to be true, but based on power dynamics in practice it never is.

So watch Rules for Rulers yet if you haven't - it may change literally everything about your understanding, as it did mine.

Edit - references:

  1. FPTP explanained mathematically

  2. gerrymandering explained separately

  3. rules for Rulers, outlining necessary considerations involved with any path forward - i.e. it works against anyone and especially those who ignore this principle

[–] bss03@infosec.pub 11 points 3 months ago

I also generally prefer a Condorcet Method (ranked choice, single winner) over mixed-member-proportional, but either one would be a massive improvement over our current system.

I'll take Approval voting, even.

[–] freeman@feddit.org 1 points 3 months ago

Switzerland has a good system, just copy it. (Yes, not the same country, size difference and so on and on but its still a thousand times better than the US system)

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 months ago

Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one

If you're going to use a genocidal cult as your counter-example to democracy, why not just talk about the nazis?