American Spring
startupboy.com
startupboy.com
It remains a surprise to me that third parties do not raise the adoption of either score voting [1] or approval voting as their pinnacle issue. Until it is plausible to cast a vote for third-party candidates without "splitting the vote," third parties will remain far distant stars that exert the smallest of gravitational pulls on the two dominant parties.
The curiosity in all of this is that approval voting (effectively a binary-scale score voting) is the natural behavior of group decision making. Even children use approval voting.
"What movie do you want to see?"
"Well, I'd see A, B, or C. You?"
"I like C, D, or E."
"Great, we'll see C."
As long as gerrymandering and laws that make it harder for third party candidates to even get on ballots exist (here's the first article about it that I found: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-07-0... ) then I will be skeptical about a real change in the political process in the USA.
Mass media still plays a large part in most people's decisions - especially the elderly who tend to vote more.
I stand in Lessig's camp that the profound change must come from campaign finance reform. Good luck there.
The internet does play an interesting new role that no one has quite figured out but it is more of a mob mentality. Debatable whether that better than the status quo. The arab spring certainly didn't make things better for the regions it affected.
But people consistently make the mistake that established money and influence can buy you control. It does not. It will get you a seat at the table, make it so they can't ignore you. But it cannot and never could actually give you the ability to, among other things, change the political narrative unilaterally.
First off, there are too many other people out there with wealth and influence that will move to counter you. No one controls everything in America. Otherwise-smart people think nothing of invoking "the elites" like they're all one big, shadowy Illuminati-type construct. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
Second, the masses form a giant bloc of influence that can just completely overwhelm attempts to co-opt the narrative. It's really, really easy to throw millions of dollars at a campaign and still bomb at the polls. Candidates have to play ball with this, and it's not always pretty.
As an example, George W. Bush's image has been carefully crafted to give off that folksy vibe, because Americans simply do not respond to intellectuals. (until they do, Obama changed all that.) Bush Jr. is much much smarter than anyone gives him credit for. He went to Harvard and Yale. He did not just sit on a barstool in the National Guard, he flew fighter jets. People with stories of meeting or serving with him that underestimate him consistently report that he just totally schools them.
He did not hide these things out of some duplicitous agenda, it was simply to fit America's ideas of what it's presidential candidates should be. His biggest failing was that he did not exercise his judgment and intelligence enough, and allowed the neo-cons to set his policy agenda, not that he didn't have any.
One sign that we are at least on the way is that we wouldn't be declaring victory because candidates can raise billions from the masses. We would instead be celebrating that it doesn't take bilions to run.
As long as it does, then the "elite" will always have the advantage.
Sure, plenty of corruption exists and the election cycles are psychologically brutal (why does it take 18 months to pick someone??). But I don't share the same optimism about people being driven by social media.
Because in that case, a few loud voices with incendiary positions can ruin the chance for any real debate. Donald Trump scares me.
From TFA:
> YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook let one human broadcast to billions, without permission, without censors, without delay. Social media makes mass organization and resistance possible.
There is plenty of censorship on all of the above media. For an overview, Wikipedia yields:
"YouTube blocking occurs for a variety of reasons including:[2]
Limiting public exposure to content that may ignite social or political unrest;
Preventing criticism of a ruler, government, government officials, religion, or religious leaders;
Violations of national laws, including:
Copyright and intellectual property protection laws;
Violations of hate speech, ethics, or morality-based laws; and
National security legislation.
Preventing access to videos judged to be inappropriate for youth;
Reducing distractions at work or school; and
Reducing the amount of network bandwidth used.> Social and alternative media dominates and disintermediates mass media.
Mass media became social and alternative media. On steroids.
>YouTube killed TV and Twitter ate the news.
TV became YouTube, and the news became Twitter. On steroids.
> [...] the elites have lost control.
The same elites that own Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.?
Trump hasn't said a single thing that would lead me to believe that he will disrupt the establishment elites. He doesn't talk about the ethics of the elite and how they need to be opposed. Effectively he says, "Give me the Presidency and I'll do their job better than they do." Trump is an elite, he just hasn't been in elected office previously. He will use and increase the levers of power as best he is able.
The article is an interesting concept to ponder and I'll definitely be looking out for some type of critical mass where the power of the Internet and democracy have overcome the entrenched inevitability of the elites... but for now it's jumping the gun.
Barack is not a magic bullet. Neither is Cruz, nor Trump, not even Sanders. It isn't just the players, it is the game itself, for the game's rules are what the players make decisions by.