Subscript5676
To the “brainwashing our kids” crowd, my stance is that the kids can decide for themselves if it’s brainwashing, as long as we aren’t actually doing that, and is instead simply equipping them with the ability to think on their own. So I’m not bothered by them, and I think we should make that narrative clear enough, with experts in and out of power to have their say, and the rest can complain all they want. I do understand that that doesn’t always work well in our political climate; just look at the carbon tax, but if we hold ourselves back just because some crowd might fight back, and essentially do nothing, based on the trajectory where things are going, I fear that we’re only sleepwalking ourselves into ruin. This applies to adopting PR as well.
In other words, I’d rather we say that we’ve tried to do things that we have good reasons to believe are good and may actually steer us in the right direction, than go for something that might please more people but is no different from our current trajectory.
If a single issue is enough to make people put their vote into, why wouldn’t a larger party simply make that promise themselves, as long as it still somewhat aligns with their party goals, or is not in the way of their goals, and eat the single-issue platform’s pie?
And if anything, we already have single-issue politics, right within our FPTP system, and I don’t see why this wouldn’t happen under ranked ballots or instant runoff as well. Instead of forming a party, they lobby, and whichever party adopts their stance will win their votes, along with whoever else they can influence. There already is a subset of the electorate that are geared into thinking that way.
I don’t think there’s a good solution to mitigating single-issue politics, perhaps other than good education about our governments and institutions. It certainly isn’t solved under PR, and, as you said, could possibly lead to the proliferation of small single issue parties (though I believe larger parties will absorb their vote by promising the same while offering more), and it certainly exists even today under FPTP, just not as a party but a lobby group, and it will no doubt exist similarly as a lobby group in other winner-takes-all system.
This is somewhat unrelated but I thought it’s worth mentioning cause it’s something that I’ve recently heard from people whom I’ve met. I just need to get it out so that maybe I feel a bit better.
As much as I support this motion, the reality is that there are people who also don’t really care about humans rights or democracy, especially cause they come from countries that do not champion or even prize these concepts. And so they are either used to a world without one, or simply do not think they matter given that worldview. They too may wish for a peaceful life, but personal freedom is optional, and especially when that lack of freedom applies to everyone. They will gladly conform to whatever playing rules there is set out by the powerful so that they can live their own fulfilling lives, not (directly) helping those in power, but also not against them.
This isn’t to say that I support that notion. I think they shouldn’t think that way, as I believe personal freedom would be a better guarantee of not just their own peaceful lives, but also those of their families and especially their children, and for their future generations. It isn’t the only way to live, but it’s an easier path for humanity going forward, instead of having to rely on, in a sense, cunningness to stay alive, and that those without those smarts, or perhaps a little too much courage, to die in vain.
Here I am listening to these people talk about how life isn’t too bad back in their home country, where while they are threatened by their government should they ever say something out of line, they don’t ever plan to say or do things that are out of line and so they’ll mostly be fine. They even believe that they’ll have a pretty good chance at life migrating to Russia’s far east, where they’ll be somewhat outside of the ebbs and flows of Moscow, while having fresh new opportunities.
It’s somewhat sickening to me, so I needed to let it out. I don’t find fault with their way of thinking, but this sort of pessimistic and self-centric worldview makes me feel like the human world has no value existing or worth protecting; we’d literally be no different from animals.
I’m sure this comment will attract all sorts of unwanted attention. I may read replies, if there are any, but I’ll probably ignore them.
You’re the kind of Trudeau lover that no matter what evidence is presented, you’ll always believe that he’s just some kind of freaking god. He’s gone, good riddance. May we never hear from him again. Go cry in your cereal lol.
Quoting your comment for posterity.
I didn’t even talk about Trudeau or how much I like him or not, and literally gave you a chance to explain what you’re trying to say through the link.
But I think we all see what kind of person you are now.
How about you go back to your little hell hole?
Depends on which one of the flavours we’re talking about. I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that, in general, we could go with the urban/rural approach by breaking up the city into smaller voting districts to reach some kind of acceptable balance in both the population across the city, and the number of MLAs across the region, just to somewhat balance out the urban and rural voices. How big should the rural regions be? I don’t know, cause it’ll be up to whatever census data that we know about the region.
That said though, I never realized it but Barrie is somewhat special from what I can find online, in that it’s politically independent from the Simcoe county. So perhaps it can just continue to be independent from the county? I’m honestly not sure about what being politically independent actually entail.
Hi, I believe we’ve had a short chat before.
Your arguments, while I acknowledge them to be valid, are not something that I believe should be addressed by an electoral system.
Why do you think that we have the right to deny, say, a gun freedom advocacy group, for running for office, as much as their taking of the office could be a scary one? If you could give a reason why, how does that prevent someone else to declare that climate advocacy groups shouldn’t run for office, and try to give some reason that sounds sufficiently legitimate to enough people? And what comes next?
The guardrails that you speak of work to shut people off. Is that how a democracy should work?
If an electorate is that concerned with gun freedom, and think that it’s more important than issues such as a dilapidated public infrastructure, then sure, they can vote for whichever party that will support gun freedom, and that party will have a better chance at winning, assuming a healthy voter turnout. This applies to both winner-takes-all systems and PR systems.
But gun freedom is likely not the only issue people have in mind. The gun freedom party can’t just stay as politicians over that one issue. How would they handle foreign relations? What about our national debt? No single issue platform can give us answer to every one of those larger problems.
So I say let these people speak their minds. If enough people actually support them and they have enough support to even form government, then such is the reality of what your nation cares about, and the numbers tell you that.
Or perhaps do you not believe that Canadians are inherently good and reasonable people? Perhaps you think education has really failed this country that people can’t think sufficiently well for themselves? I’m not sure where this issue with, say, religious parties trying to voice their opinions on how they think things should be run, is coming from.
“Let’s give the CEO big bonuses instead of investing it back into our failing business that desperately needs that money.”
Says, apparently, no one at Intel.
Edit: I just realized my punchline was off but I’ll leave it as is anyways. You get the point.