Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover | Hacker News Reader

Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

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202 pointspetethomas139 comments

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties.

I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. This acts as a vent when the people are fed up to their neck with the powers that be - they don't have to storm the palaces and chop off heads but can engage in political activity. Unless the political system in the U.S. changes, how long before Americans will have to resort to this?

Definitely agreed re. the inflexibility of the US system, but "Europe" contains a multiplicity of different parliamentary systems.

The UK for instance is sadly almost as stuck in a bipartisan world as the US, which makes change a slow and painful process (or quick and painful wrt this year's referendum!)

That's true for the Westminster elections but Scotland has a proportional representation system for its devolved parliament.

Yes, but most of the mainland countries have multi-party systems. Hell, the parliament of the Netherlands at one point consisted of 16(!) parties.

To put that in context: that is one party per million residents.

When you put it like that, it doesn't really sound like that many parties...

To me it actually sounds like more. That would mean about 324 parties in the USA.

I like the sound of that.

When that happened, there were fewer residents, so it was more like one party per half million.

Ah, I thought the GP was referring to when the LPF split into individual fractions.

If I count correctly, the 2003-2006 Tweede Kamer had 9 party fractions in it at the start and had 5 split-off groups, so there were 14 fractions in the end. Maybe there were more somewhere in the meantime?

But of course I don't know what xenobioticants was thinking about.

17; that was in 1918. They quickly increased the electoral threshold to 75% of a seat then. Then, in 1933 when there were 14 parties in parliament again, they increased it to 100%. After that, it has always hovered around 10 parties, and it's still one of the lowest electoral thresholds in the world; most countries have it at 5%-10% of the total vote.

Dutch here. We need at least 5 parties to make a government in the next election. Nothing ever changes here because everything has to go through many iterations of compromises if it even wants to leave the negotiation table. I wish we had a system like the USA.

A system where you'd only have two prepackaged choices for ALL the possible complicated state issues? O.o

Those proportional system compromises aren't half as bad.

> Nothing ever changes here because everything has to go through many iterations of compromises if it even wants to leave the negotiation table.

That's a feature, not a bug.

> I wish we had a system like the USA.

You are missing the wood for the trees. The last thing you want in a country is an effective government that can push through it's majority agenda at the expense of the minority.

That's why EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion, euthanasia, LGBT rights and so on.

It's also a way to keep religion out of government as much as possible, you won't see the separation between state and church in a country where the dominant political parties all have to nominally support the dominant religion.

So please, no system 'like the USA' in Dutch politics, though, you may get your wish soon enough. Personally I'd much rather have us adopt the very opposite, the Swiss system which requires a much more active electorate and a much more educated one too.

>That's why EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion, euthanasia, LGBT rights and so on.

Except those are controversial with Americans. I'm not seeing how the system is to blame. Making the electoral process 'more democratic' isn't going to change that. It might make things worse ...

But controversy in the US is similarly limited to a two-party dialog: everything in your political system (its discourse, its reporting, its policies) is geared towards this artifical (and often false) dichotomy.

In my view, it is the discourse that needs to be fixed first. As long as your media keeps painting everything in black and white (and it is in their interest to do so, being part of the establishment), I don't think any electoral reform is useful.

"All or nothing", it turns out, is really appealing to people. It may be toxic to a functioning democracy with a diverse population, but doesn't seem to lessen the appeal.

We are very good at pretending that when we get "nothing", it is a temporary inconvenience.

It's more like that we are good at accepting this system as long as we're not the ones getting 'nothing'.

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here.

The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights?

On the whole, not really. 11 European countries constitutionally ban same-sex marriage for example, and less than half the countries offer any sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples.

Of course the problem when talking about 'Europe' is that you have a very wide spectrum of opinions. For every country that is ahead of the US on LGBT rights you have another that is very far behind.

Yes, the EU is ahead, but just like every other part of the future it is unevenly distributed.

Some country in Europe will pioneer a concept, others will follow, some faster some slower. The US usually catches on long after the concept has already become normal in a fair chunk of the EU.

As for your constitution, America gets it right on paper, but in practice God (the Christian one) is all over American politics, whereas even in Ireland it seems to be less of a day-to-day influence.

So really you mean the Netherlands are ahead of the US in LGBT rights. I'm curious about what else the US should be doing. How is the Netherlands better?

How is the Netherlands better?

From a purely legal perspective not in any significant ways. However from a public opinion perspective the difference is more significant. Same sex marriage has ~90% approval rating in the Netherlands compare ~55% in US. I cannot imagine that those sorts of differences don't greatly affect the day-to-day reality living as a same sex couple.

Comparing the Netherlands to the entirety of the USA is just weird. What are the approval ratings in New York state for instance? That is closer in population to the Netherlands (and potentially more rural & thus more conservative but still likely closer).

On most day-to-day reality issues (for same sex couples or anyone else) local norms are probably much more important and I can assure you there are lots of parts the United States that have 90% approval rates for same sex marriage.

So if we are discounting the legal perspective (which just as a personal opinion, I wish the US federal law was more progressive), cherry-picking public opinion to match the more progressive parts of the sample seems like the US comes out about the same.

It is weird, and of course you're right, but to be fair: that's the question I asked. I'm setting the bar high for us. I'll be happy when we're as socially liberal as the most socially liberal country on the planet. :)

It goes much further than marriage, there is the whole decriminalization thing, which goes back to the 1930's in the case of some countries here.

As for how NL is 'better' than the US: It's a ridiculously small country and very densely populated so what works here would likely not work as well in places like Canada or the US, but as mentioned above I think coalition politics (het poldermodel) is an important part of making sure that minorities do not easily become the football of dominating majorities. Both large US parties would be considered right-wing here (roughly VVD), the US has no functional left which is a residue of the McCarthy years and the cold war. Somehow the US associates 'left' in politics with 'communism' and that has kept a very large chunk of the US population without representation.

In NL it is very hard to find any substantial chunk of the population without representation. We also don't jail 1% of our populace.

That said there is plenty of room for improvement, we still have corruption, racism, crime and so on at levels higher than what I'm comfortable with, and our government is excellent at wasting money, an area they are slowly improving on but in my opinion too slowly.

Sorry, of course there's a lot of things we could obviously be better at, things that NL is already far better about. I was asking specifically about LGBT rights.

Define "long after." Gay marriage became legal in France in 2014, the UK in 2014, the US in 2015, and is still not legal in Germany.

Abortion was legalized in the U.K. in 1967, abortion bans were made illegal in the US in 1973, in France and Germany in the mid 1970s.

Sure some Scandinavian country might be ahead in those issues, but if Vermont was a separate country the US still wouldn't be behind. Also, this is really a great example of why the EU is such a terrible idea.

It's also incorrect to assert Europe is more progressive on abortion. Europe's two largest countries, Germany and France, only permit abortion during the first trimester (12-14 weeks), and have mandatory counseling. Germany has a 3-day waiting period, and France had a one-week waiting period until last year.

The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, and those are being challenged. Almost all states are at 24 weeks, and most have no mandatory counseling or waiting periods.

And on same-sex marriage: it became legal in France only shortly before Ogberfell, and and is still not legal in Germany.

Germany also still has 'Kirchensteur', you'd almost think the two have something to do with each other, after all, a country where the government will happily collect the tithe for churches quite possibly has a large religious influence on its politics.

Some other countries also still have this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

And the sooner it dies out the better.

Europe might be more progressive on abortion. Ever notice the rhetoric on the "rare" part of "safe, legal and rare" is entirely limited to preventing unwanted pregnancies? Presumably abortions should be rare because they are intrinsically bad in some way. We use the tax system to influence all kind of behaviors, many of them health related, but we're not willing to use the tax system to make abortions more rare...

Using the tax system to discourage abortions must be the worst idea I ever heard.

Why? We discourage smoking with the tax system. And I'm not talking about a regressive tax, like on smoking. It can be purely for rich healthy women.

If abortion should be rare, than why not tax it.

Abortion should be rare the same way that heart surgery should be rare: not by stoping people from having one when they need it, but by preventing the unwanted condition (unwanted pregnancy, heart disease) in the first place.

People who say that abortion should be rare aren't saying that the procedure itself is bad. They're saying that unwanted pregnancies are bad.

Wow! I always thought the "rare" part was added because what happens to the fetus is, let's say, unsavory. Now I see it's one of those genius phrases where you can read your own feelings into it.

Whatever your feelings about it are, you can safely assume that most people who say "safe, legal, and rare" are saying that the state should have no role at all in women's reproductive choices. It's a pro-choice slogan, coined by pro-choice activists.

I think we're all a lot better off not getting any further into the details on this.

I don't think a purely legal view is a sensible way to look at this. In much of Europe, abortion is not a major political issue that motivates the voting patterns of a significant chunk of the electorate and hasn't been for a long time. In that sense, Europe is more progressive on women's reproductive rights.

That's a strange way to present the argument. In the early 1800s the electorate of the US South was unified in support of slavery. Not a motivating political issue. I would not say the south was particularly progressive on the issue of slavery.

You're reading what I wrote as some sort of weird 'therefore, Socrates was a cat' syllogism. Was the point I was trying to make unclear? Because I don't see how your analogy is at all related or even much of an analogy.

I don't see how "people don't care" -> "they are progressive". The logic of that escapes me.

FWIW my reading of your comment was the same as tedunangst's. Perhaps you meant something different from what you wrote?

>Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here.

Europe got their through politics, US through courts. How long do you think that would take if it was left up to politicians?

> EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion

EU (esp. Scandinavia) has much, much more tight regulations of abortion, compared to English world, esp. Canada, which has none. As a socially conservative I consider this good.

Has a democratic version been tried that fluctuates between duopole and multipole party systems?

> In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties.

But the difference is that the parties in the US and the UK aren't very powerful in their own regard. Trump wasn't even a member of the republican party until very recently, and he won the nomination -- and Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left before dropping out.

On the other hand, the leaders of european parties are mostly selected through opaque backroom deals and yet are very powerful (through "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties). Policy is made by these leaders (or their appointed nominees) meeting each other and negotiating a compromise, and then (except in very rare cases) every MP of the parties in this negotiation defends in the media it as a solid and credible response to the issues faced by the country (despite, often to great hilarity, the compromise being orthogonal to several very firm positions and red lines drawn by that very same politician just days before) and then votes for it.

The mechanism for this power is that few individual MP carry their own seat, they're assigned proportionally, according to the national share of votes won by the party. Party leadership wields significant influence over who runs where (especially who runs in "safe" seats), and thus who gets in. MPs who cause too much trouble will find themselves campaigning in a difficult district, or next to a more popular/well-known candidate.

> But the difference is that the parties in the US and the UK aren't very powerful in their own regard. Trump wasn't even a member of the republican party until very recently, and he won the nomination -- and Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left before dropping out.

True in the US, not true in the UK -- May and Corbyn had been MPs and members of their parties for years before becoming leader.

> "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties

Again, not true in the UK

Indeed, the whip.

That is one of the problems with PR its bugging's turn and there is no direct relationship between the MP and there constituency.

And collective responsibility is not undemocratic in its self.

Why is party discipline undemocratic?

If you want to get the benefit of the support and branding of a political party it seems reasonable that you should have to follow their rules. The discipline only extends so far as removing that support. That seems fair to me. Does it not to you?

I personally have issues with the idea that having to conform/fit into a political party being the only/most effective way to gain political popularity

Why is party discipline undemocratic? Why is party discipline undemocratic?

Can you explain why you think it's not? I think party discipline is simply autoritarianism applied within a political party. If anything, it advertises to me that said party doesn't really believe in democratic principles.

You can still pick which parties to support or even create a new party and that choice seems to me to be the foundation of representative democracy.

The "foundation of representative democracy" is to have a representative in the decision making process (-cracy) for every part of the populace (demos). Political parties are not essential to that premise. Representatives that can have their voice heard are.

Sorry for being unclear, but it's having a choice that is essential, not parties themselves. It is a representative democracy, you just choose a party instead of a person but it's the exact same concept.

This answer does not reflect reality in the UK. Party discipline is extremely important in the UK system, maintained by the "whips". Few UK MPs carry their own seat as an individual, although good constituency work can be worth a few thousand votes. One or two have managed to run as independents; Peter Law (ex-Labour protesting against all-women shortlists), Richard Taylor (Kidderminster Hospital).

Tony Blair was notorious for imposing ideological coherence from the top on the Labour party with pagers in exactly the way you are talking about: MPs were expected to keep exactly to the media line agreed by Blair and Campbell, and hide all dissent to avoid "PARTY SPLIT" headlines.

Note how the conservative party managed to campaign against itself for the Brexit referendum and has now seemingly zipped that right up again. Although the three Brexit ministers keep issuing daft announcements that have to be countermanded by the PM (this is called "cabinet collective irresponsibility").

It's worth comparing UK parliamentary elections with the regional parliament elections, which are all run on different systems with very different results.

US parties have traditionally been extremely strong. What has happened is that the US rightwing media "bubble" has taken over doctrine and thrown away the doublespeak. Trump is winning because he can say all the unpleasant things that other Republicans feel they have to dogwhistle or hint at.

Not saying that either of these systems is better but when I look at the cost of the presidential campaigns in US, it seems almost impossible to be an excellent but poor newcomer [1].

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/111815...

> through "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties

Is that really true? Wikipedia's article on the subject says:

"Party discipline tends to be extremely strong in Westminster systems such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India...."

In the American Congress, votes are now almost entirely along party lines, which seems like more or less the same thing:

http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2015/04/24/poli...

> Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left

Not sure about it. Words are cheap.

> through "party discipline", another throughly undemocratic concept

I disagree, it's more democratic because I know the party platform is what I'm voting for. I don't have to know the individual positions of everyone.

Depends where in Europe. In France, it's the same two party since a long time. One of them just change name from time to time (UDF, then RPR, then UMP, then Les Republicains).

All the time these days I here people describe economies and political systems as "rigged".

Do you actually mean the US political system was deliberately lain out by a mastermind with the goal of preventing the emergence of alternative parties?

Or just that the system has evolved (without design) to be hostile to minority parties?

If the latter, the word "rigged" seems misleading and inflammatory to me. If the former, where should I look to learn more about this conspiracy?

I've participated in Independent, Republican, and Democratic campaigns. The US system at the local level (at least Houston, Austin, and central east Texas) is actually pretty solid. Once you realize there's a fairly good sized contingent of busy-bodies who just want naked power, regardless of political position, it's pretty easy to see how things work. OTOH, the state- and federal- levels felt fairly divorced from their contingent. Except for the platform "branding" they're virtually identical. This is the reason I think it's so important to keep as many of the functions of the state at the local level, with rational oversight from the top in terms of protecting positive rights, i.e., restrictions of the powers of government.

The impression I got from studying the subject is that it is actually rigged, as in deliberately designed like that. Unfortunately I usually don't remember the details, only my takeaway, but I read very good objective treatise on the subject, I think it was in A People's History of the United States. I highly recommend it for a balanced and critical look at American history.

There are advantages and disadvantages to all systems.

In European PR systems where many parties routinely end up in parliament, the real governing is done by elites stiching up a deal between themselves and all the proportinal voting just slightly alters the barganing chips brought to the table.

The biggest case of this is Germany, which will be ruled by the grand-coalition for the forseeable future, more or less regardless of what happens at elections.

This has worked OK in countries where people mostly trust their elites. But it is still not particularly democratic.

To be honest, it's quite similar in the US too. That's why there isn't much difference between the Obama administration and the previous Bush administration - there was a real continuity in most respects. And even if Trump got elected, not much would change either.

Dunno, if "drain the swamp" passes, that'de be a very significant change.

But I am talking about a different thing.

In any place where the big parties are old and "respectable", there will be a lot of similarities between them. But even if they are identical, they still compete with each other for power.

In a PR system, they compete less intensely. Indeed in Germany, with Merkel so firmly on top, the SPD leadership seems to be evolving to maximise its power as #2 rather than trying to win outright.

This could easily happen in the US if a preferential ballot were adopted. (Rank candidates in order of preference.)

The Republican Party would immediately split into at least three parties and the Democratic Party would probably follow by splitting in two not long afterward.

It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

I love Iceland. I truly do. My wife and I visited twice last year. I think it would be a wonderful place to live. Given a choice between Russia and Iceland I would pick Iceland without hesitation (although I have to admit that I have never been to Russia). However, I do not believe that they would be able to protect Snowden from the CIA. I hope Snowden sees this the same way and stays safe in Russia.

I hope he goes there and there then they run another poll which determines he should be extradited to the US to be held accountable for his actions.

The people of Iceland are intelligent, as evidenced by their jailing of bankers and election of the Pirate Party, so would not hand him over. If small-minded people cared 1% as much about holding their own government accountable as they did whistleblowers, imagine how much better society would be?

You are mistaking "in accordance with my personal preferences and political views" with intelligence.

I don't think there's anything personal or political about corrupt people getting punished for their crimes instead of being bailed out without taking any individual responsibility.

See, I do believe from what I have read that the icelandic banker's convictions were mostly a political move to keep the very small (and thus very easily rally-able) Icelandic population happy after their savings (which always do carry a risk - that's why you get interest) were lost in the icesave collapse.

Just like them essentially declaring bankrupcy and not paying their debts afterwards was.

And I do not think criminal cases should be influenced about what result is politically preferable.

Iceland did not "jail their bankers", where do you get your news from?

Hmm, did you try searching for it before posting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...

I don't understand. There were 15 people jailed who took part in illegal activities. But the vast majority of Icelandic bankers did not take part in illegal activities. They just did a really really bad job. Therefore they weren't jailed.

Unless you think that Iceland only had 15 bankers?

Sure, as long as the criminals who illegally spied on millions of Americans are held responsible for their actions as well and sent to jail.

The prisons would be overflowing. Not a bad pitch for the reintroduction of private prisons! :)

When a system of government becomes so corrupt as to allow actual criminals to run for the highest office, there is something severely wrong.

The hoi polloi, unwashed masses, etc are becoming politically conscious, but it's too late. We've all traded our freedom and privacy for fleeting digital experiences that ultimately have no meaning. We all chose this path collectively when we chose not to speak up for what is good and just. But hey, it's all relative anyway, right?

In the end, the 21st century will be marked by nihilism and cynicism.

The PP is a fringe radical party that if they somehow become the majority party in Iceland, they're not going to retain it for very long. I would not recommend that famous dissidents like Snowden move there immediately.

I like visiting Iceland too, the few Icelanders I know can't wait to move though. The winter weather and high price of everything is a bit of a drag.

I am not an expert on Iceland but I have read that it's really controlled by interests behind the two main industries of fishing and smelting. Iceland is really pushing tourism these days, since flights to Iceland are incredibly cheap.

I recommend reading The Grapevine

http://grapevine.is/

PP is a new party, but is it fringe and radical? Using social-liberal political philosophy[1] to focus on issues arriving from the digital Revolution[2], it seem like a very similar party to the green party but with a different focal point.

We still have political parties today that focus on questions that arrived from by the industrial revolution. Unless we want to just delegate the digital revolution as a minor footnote in society, it might be time to view the changes in society as a reason to look at government and ask if it too should change.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution

I would guess that it isn't so much the winter weather and the price of goods that is making folks want to leave: I'm in Norway, which traditionally has expensive goods and bad weather. Everyone complains about their weather, but from my experience, the locals don't find it to be all that detrimental to life - I've had to learn to dress better for the weather and stuff like that. (of course, I don't know how strong the icelandic currency is at the moment, so that could be an issue for buying those goods). The second one - that it is really controlled by interests behind the two main industries - is likely much more key. Having a small island country with only two main industries makes it so that folks don't have as much opportunity as they would in mainland Europe or Canada. Not only that, but one of the main industries - fishing - can be rough work in itself. The place being an island also prevents some of the options for avoiding the high prices for goods: Here I can take a (free!) bus just over the Swedish border and buy things more cheaply, but they'd have to take a flight somewhere.

There's a lot of negativity among young adults here in Iceland. I can understand them to some extent because housing has become insanely expensive because of inflation, lack of new housing and airbnb companies. What I don't undestand is the "everything is terrible" attitude that's been so poisonous in recent year. Yes, we have bad weather and most of our politicians are hopeless but it's always been like that. The grass isn't greener on the other side.

The grapevine is great but often let themselves down with clickbait and hyperbole.

As an Icelander living abroad for almost a decade now, if you think the grass isn't greener or the other side how do you explain the rapid increase in Icelanders who are expats over the last decade? Are all these people just wrong in thinking they've found a better live abroad?

Plenty of people have left and found a better life, I'm not trying to say otherwise. I just hate it when people use the weather and the government as reasons to move because every country has its problems. A large number of Icelanders move to another country sometime during their lifetimes but a large percentage of them move back at some point. That tells me that maybe things aren't so bad over here.

For plenty of people something like the weather or the government really is the reason they moved.

The government was a major reason for my move. I moved after the collapse, which was entirely caused by Iceland's dysfunctional government policies (none of which have really changed), and the measures put into place post-collapse largely benefited homeowners at the expense of the rest of us.

I didn't want to spend the next decade paying for other people's bad financial decisions at the cost of the currency & my purchasing power having fallen around 1/2.

Similarly people move from say the UK to Spain for the weather. As I'm sure you know Iceland doesn't just have "bad" weather, it's on a whole different level where working around the weather often becomes a major logistical difficulty. Whole towns often become snowed in during the winter.

So it's hardly a surprise that someone would move just to be rid of that.

Since you said flights were so cheap I got a bit curious and did a search for a 7 day trip (admittedly from the airport near, which is small). I was not expecting the drastic difference in prices there though.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ To: KEF, RKV March 1 2017, 7 days Unlimited stops/airport changes.

http://imgur.com/a/X3KYr

Some of those flights are ridiculously cheap though so you were right.

The flight cost is almost negligible!

British Airways, and possibly other airlines, offer packages where you do a short layover in Keflavik or Reykjavik, then they provide you transportation to Blue Lagoon, then get you to your plane from Blue Lagoon.

Hotel and Airbnb and hostel costs are very high compared to everywhere else in the world.

Last time I went, I brought a small tent.

Yeah, I wouldn't, if I was Snowden. http://grapevine.is/news/2014/12/21/mfik-urges-investigation...

Having said that, we don't really know on what terms Snowden is enjoying impunity in Russia. I doubt it has come as a free lunch.

It's extremely naive to think that Snowden would move somewhere out of Russia. It's very obvious why he went there in the first place.

> It's very obvious why he went there in the first place.

Please enlighten us.

He went there because it was the safest route to Equador, once in Moscow, the US state department cancelled his passport.

And just to drive home the dire situation he is in, when rumours were spread of Snowden being aboard the Bolivian president's plane headed for latin america, the US pressured european countries to deny airspace and have it directed to Austria where it was searched.

So you have no idea what is Gluggaveður then=)

"They know what they’re against. But it’s difficult to find out what they’re really for."

Well, reading what the Pirate Party wants to be, it makes sense they don't have things to be 'for'. They want to give the people more room to decide. The pirates just want to give the people that space. They don't care about all the topics traditional politics discuss and promote. They just want the people have have more of a say in it, instead of a once-in-four-year vote.

The political party shouldn't decide on the largest decisions, the people should make that decision (through matters as referendum).

With current technology, the people could even represent themselves. "We need your decision on this political matter: swipe left for yes, right for no."

The more I've tried to learn about issues, the more I've learned that they are often very complicated & require a lot of research. I feel this is to hard & time consuming for the average citizen. Electing people to represent your interests makes more & more sense to me every day.

I do wish they were more open & transparent though in an easy to understand & honest method. Unfortunately it seems that is very difficult for them to do.

Representative democracy would work much better without lobbyist that, for reason that should be discussed, are represented much more than voters. Like the Utopian dream of communism, Representative democracy that actually represent their citizens seems to be one of those government types that people talk about but never actually achieve.

Take copyright law (since this is about the pirate party). were your interest represented when the elected people let Disney lobbyist buy a law that extended copyright? Somehow, a company that "give" millions to a political party is not a bribing and completely not doing so with any expectation of returns. One could ask why they spend those money, or why historically it is so effective to spend so much totally-not-a-bribe money.

From the representative politician view, issues are often very complicated & require a lot of research, which is too hard and time consuming. Easier to just choose the highest paying lobbyist and have them decide for you. That way, you picked the politician, and they picked the lobbyist, and the lobbyist decide the law.

That's a high-risk approach, because big referendums have a lot of downsides. They are expensive, polarizing and put a lot of responsibility on the average citizen, who is expected to both understand and balance correctly the tradeoffs on the table. In some societies that is really too much to ask, but I don't know Iceland well enough.

Experiments are important too, though. I would be watching really closely what happens if the there is a real tilt towards the Pirates.

It's nice to see that libertarian ideas are winning at least in some counties when in most of the world governments get more and more control over people's lives.

I wish that Johnson had been better prepped for some of his interviews. I really don't like where the democons are headed in this country.

I'm holding hope for an actual political act to happen - there is remarkably much for the alt-right and the left to agree on, if the ideas can be put forth in such a way that they aren't wedged against each other. If the democratic party becomes the moderate republican party then you'll see a lot of the left break away.

No amount of prep was going to help that train wreck -- Johnson never had a reputation as a particularly smart politician (he was rather proud of his ignorance, actually), but he showed less knowledge of world affairs than the average evening news viewer. And he's still the most credible candidate the Libertarian party has posted!

If you want libertarian views to gain political credibility, you'd probably be better advised to try to start within the GOP, especially given the state of factional conflict likely to follow Election Day. Libertarian, moderate and the few remaining Rockefeller-style Republicans are the only ones who have kept their hands clean when it comes to Trump, and who have an arguable basis for reconstructing the party -- though it would be a long slog to do so.

The GOP has made it clear they don't want a libertarian a la the Pauls. I don't think it can happen with the hard push to the social right they've made in the past 8 years.

The Mark Ames Media Empire are not big fans of Johnson

https://pando.com/2016/01/08/interview-weed-nazi-mark-ames-a...

The pirate party is actually pretty socialist.

Half the libertarian position is typically about being very socially liberal (privacy, freedom of speech, religious freedom, marriage equality (via removal of the state from that equation), drug decriminalization/legalization, et al). The pirate party tends toward socially liberal based on what I've read over the years. Correct me if I'm wrong.

They originated from Sweden's Pirate Party, which to a large part is social liberal (a mix of socialist and advocating individual freedom). While not all "copies" of the party abroad necessarily has adopted the same position, it seems many of them did.

Libertarian has different meanings: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Yes, but since Iceland is geographically part of Europe, it is better to use the European definitions to avoid ambiguity.

I'm not sure what you're referring to; I live in Europe, and the Center of Libertarian Culture near my house is socialist. And if you read the link, it explains that the term originated in Europe and meant left-wing anarchist. I think right-wing libertarianism is mostly an US thing.

Very cool experiment. It's easy being the opposition. Governing is hard. Let's see how they handle it.

There are some very interesting discussions on government and electorial constructs(for lack of better word) in different countries and pros and cons of these, in the comments here.

Can anyone point to any good documentaries, books or other reading digging a bit deeper into this subject? Given the focus on the US election at the moment and a lot of people seeing it as two bad options, then why is the US system like that and in for instance Denmark where I'm from we have multiple choices. What's the history behind each, pros and cons etc.

I'm really curious about a lot of the more nuts and bolts of their government. Things like the economic policy. As a small nation that relies heavily on importing they are particularly susceptible to changes in the exchange rate, and they are all aware of this because of their financial crisis. But this party is focused on technology, which is wonderful unless there's no bread on the shelves.

Could Iceland become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin (or an alternative crypto) as its national currency? If the Pirate Party wins, this could be one of the numerous cool experiments in government to take place.

Not having control over your own currency is a death sentence for your economy. Not to mention, cash realistically offers more freedom than any crypto-currency, as it's untraceable.

Not having your own currency (especially a crypocurrancy - where it's essentially dividable to millionth or billionth) is not a death sentence to an economy. The U.S. didn't have direct control over its currency until the early 1900's. And once they got direct control, it caused the great depression.

A treasury can offer bonds and control the amount of liquidity in a market. It's not direct control, but all countries used to not have direct control over their currency and they managed (used to trade in gold/silver by weight).

Finally, there are places - such as China which literally peg their currency to other countries. They don't have control either (at least until it's unpegged).

I do agree with you on the traceability, but you can limit traceability via crypocurrancies. Given the pirate party is probably more interested in less government control, they might be willing to compromise traceability for lack of government control

I'd rather my groceries, gas, bills, et al not cost 50% more/less day to day like the crazy Bitcoin swings we still see.

A cryptocurrency for a nation state as of right now is still a pipe dream.

I'm not sure how this would benefit Iceland. Just about everything needs to be imported.

If the Grapvevine is to be believed, they're importing ice cubes!

http://grapevine.is/news/2016/10/20/imported-ice-cubes-in-ic...

Grapevine is one of the better journalistic medium in the country. I (an Icelander) often trust Grapevine more then the traditional media. Especially when covering politics or other serious matters (like refugees), Grapevine shines over the traditional media.

But most of Grapevines content belongs to this cute or fun news category. In this instance, they source the government radio (RÚV)[http://www.ruv.is/frett/flytja-inn-klaka-i-tonnavis], which is definitely a trusted source.

So yes, apparently we do import ice-cubes "by the tonnes". Although, personally, I didn't even know they sold ice-cubes in a plastic bags at the store.

Bitcoin can't handle the number of transactions required. It's simply not technically possible for the blockchain to be used as a country's (or medium sized city's) primary currency.

With techniques like Lightning Network you can use networks of "payment channels" to effectively compress many transactions into a few, so it isn't impossible. You just won't have everything included directly in the blockchain individually.

Really? I always thought it was very powerful. Any place to read up more about this?

You can read up on bitcoin scalability here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

By direct analogy physical paper dollars cannot handle the transaction velocity in the NYSE financial markets or even the M1 / M2 accounts like checking and savings accounts, therefore the paper dollar cannot be the currency of the USA. I mean paper money at the small denominations currently issued would literally catch on fire if it moved fast enough to keep up with HFT.

You could get away quite easily with BTC only as a partial M0 currency or more interestingly as a (partial?) M3 reserve.

By partial M0 I mean we can abstract this "physical money currency" thing into paper bills and metal coins. Issue paper money down to thousandths of BTC as BTC certificates where theoretically one BTC worth of paper can be exchanged for one electronic BTC. Much like American Dollars used to be precious metal certificates.

People will have plenty of fun wat the expense of the BTC as M3 idea but fact of the matter is you stick something volatile and non-volatile together tightly enough and it averages out a bit. So the real question isn't what happens to Icelands M3 when it becomes as volatile as BTC, but what happens to BTC when its welded to comparatively non-volatile Icelandic economy. If that kind of welding happened, BTC prices couldn't vary more than a percent per month or whatever. That's likely to drive BTC traders nuts because they make piles of dough off volatility so the people most in tune with BTC will very loudly hate the idea for self interest reasons, even if it would be a good idea for a mere 99.999% of the rest of the population. As for the partial idea, much as large banks keep literal tons of gold tied up in vaults, its quite possible for the Icelandic treasury to keep a pile of BTC tied up as one of numerous forms of reserve and that would certainly kill price volatility of BTC or at least drag it down to precious metals levels of price volatility.

There's also the issue of putting on a show. The US Mint issues plenty of legal tender gold and silver coins, but those coins are not a major part of commerce. It would be trivial for the Icelandic treasury to allow payment of income tax in BTC or something similar that doesn't really change anything but makes some nice BTC related headlines. Frankly this is the most likely outcome. Perhaps you'll be able to buy a ticket for a tour of the Icelandic Dept of the Treasury with BTC, and this will be trumpeted very loudly, not much further real world impact. Yet it is a baby step along a path, and the result of buying tickets today might be in a decade everyone will pay taxes with BTC, who knows.

I'm a crypto currency hater, but there are other types of crypto coin that reach consensus in seconds.

Interestingly, control over it's own currency is why Iceland has managed to come out of it's recession so quickly compared to other European countries.

It may not be a death sentence, but as eurozone countries are now realizing, giving up that control is a major downer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/17/the-m...

The Pirate Party are not going to win the election. They are radical extremists.

Well this is just my opinion, but lets check back next week after the vote.

Why should we trust your opinion more than the polls?

You shouldn't, but they only got 15%, and that outcome was obvious. The newspaper articles were absurd wish fulfilment.

What is your definition of 'win'? They're currently polling at around 20-25%. The traditional conservative party is polling at similar numbers and other parties have less.

Obviously no party will take the majority of the vote. So what is your criteria for winning or losing? Even if the pirates election results were 5-10% less than the polling numbers they'd still have 'won' by some measurements since they'd have more seats in parliament than they did last time.

They got 15%, it was an easily predictable failure.

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