Eliminating Political Parties
dilbert.com
dilbert.com
"The old Italian toxicologists are said to have always arranged their discoveries in a series of three terms—first the poison, next the antidote, thirdly the drug which neutralised the antidote. The antidote to the fundamental infirmities of democracy was Representation, but the drug that now defeats it is the Caucus [political party]" http://books.google.com/books?id=42YpAAAAYAAJ&dq=Popular...
And Noah Webster eloquently states the fundamental problem with party politics:
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"...nothing is more dangerous to the cause of truth and liberty than a party spirit. When men are once united, in whatever form, or upon whatever occasion, the union creates a partiality or friendship for each member of the party or society. A coalition for any purpose creates an attachment, and inspires a confidence in the individuals of the party, which does not die with the cause which united them; but continues, and extends to every other object of social intercourse."
"Thus we see men first united in some system of religious faith, generally agree in their political opinions. Natives of the same country, even in a foreign country, unite and form a separate private society. The Masons feel attached to each other, though in distant parts of the world."
"The same may be said of Episcopalians, Quakers, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Federalists, and Antifederalists, mechanic societies, chambers of commerce, Jacobin and Democratic societies. It is altogether immaterial what circumstance first unites a number of men into a society; whether they first rally round the church, a square and compass, a cross, or a cap; the general effect is always the same; while the union continues, the members of the association feel a particular confidence in each other, which leads them to believe each other's opinions, to catch each other's passions, and to act in concert on every question in which they are interested."
"Hence arises what is called bigotry or illiberality. Persons who are united on any occasion, are more apt to believe the prevailing opinions of their society, than the prevailing opinions of another society. They examine their own creeds more fully, (and perhaps with a mind predisposed to believe them), than they do the creeds of other societies. Hence the full persuasion in every society that theirs is right; and if I am right, others of course are wrong." http://books.google.com/books?id=89QDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&...
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I agree with Webster, and disagree with Scott Adams on the reason why parties are bad. The problem with parties is not the money they raise. The problem is the polarization they create, and how each party's interpretation of events becomes warped in a way that makes their own side always right, and the other side always wrong. Overtime it means that both sides end up being half-brained - and no one has the ability to really solve problems.
That said, banning parties is a non-trivial problem. If you just ban the nominal form, they will take some other form under a slightly different name. I think you would have to go all the way and perhaps create a complete ban on campaigning and campaign promises. Rather than having debates and speeches, candidates would participate in nationally televised job interviews that would talk about the candidates background and problem solving abilities.
It may also be that integrating lotteries and randomness into the election would help with the public choice problem. I have thoughts on a better election design here: http://intellectual-detox.com/the-lottery-election-a-better-...
1. Having candidates review each other seems like a good way to have the worst candidates float to the top. If you're in a contest with your competitors, given the option to knock the best options out of the race, wouldn't you do so? It seems like you're taking an overly optimistic view of human nature.
2. Having a large portion of the election based on randomness seems like it would diminish voter turnout even further. I understand its an attempt to reduce the noise created by the surrounded hype of a candidate, and that it would cause people to research these people on their own, but I dont think that would happen. I think people would see 2 random people, have no interest in either of them at a surface value, and then not vote as a result.
3. I dislike your criteria for selecting candidates, particularly for financial value. I don't think that a wealthy person is necessarily any more qualified than a poor man. I like the idea that the common man is able to obtain a position of power, regardless of background, but maybe I've watched Mr Smith Goes to Washington too many times.
I do agree that there's an issue with polarization, but I think that at the end of the day, you'll still have two candidates, and that you'll end up with polarization anyways. At the same time, I think there are problems with having too many candidate options, as I mentioned in my other post in this thread. Maybe 2 is too few, and 10 is too many, and theres a happy medium in the middle somewhere.
In the later rounds, though, it might be a problem. One idea I thought of is that "honey pot" applications of known awful candidates get planted in the mix, and if you give a top grade to one of these awful applicants, you're vote is disqualified.
But overall you may be right - the variation in which people outside the election are allowed to vote would probably be better.
2) Here's a fundamental question - should voting and elections be viewed as a means to an end? Or an end in itself? If you view voting as an end in itself, that's essentially a religious claim, and there's no grounds for debate. But if you view voting as a means to an end, I have no problem excluding people who aren't willing to put in the time to learn about the candidates. I would much rather have people not vote at all then vote based on slogans and sound bites.
3) The financial requirement ( the median income or about $40k in net worth) is not very steep. By definition, an average person who saves 10% of their income a year will be able to meet the requirement within ten years. I want my Representatives to be competent, experienced, wise, long-term-thinking individuals. If a person cannot meet that requirement, it means that they are either a) young b) incapable or unwilling of holding down an average job c) a live-for-the-moment spender. I have no problem excluding such people from office.
Polarization happens not because of the two candidates, but because of party spirit. Party spirit is something that happens over time, its the result of agitators who cultivate a voting block by spreading and ideology, convincing people to pledge themselves in solidarity, etc.
You can have just as many problems with multiple parties. For instance, the Weimar Republic had six major parties, yet it is among the worst examples of the dangers of party politics in history. The problem with our two party system is not bi-polarization, or a lack of choice. The problem is as Noah Webster said - its party spirit. And the problem of party spirit will be bad with two, three or six parties.
A zero-information voter picking between two candidates is 50% likely to choose the better candidate. Slogans & sound-bites are designed to efficiently (i.e. at low cognitive cost) deliver a message which will inform a voter. If a slogan is totally useless, it leaves me where I was before, at 50%. If some are slightly helpful, I become a slightly better voter, e.g. 50.0001% likely to choose the better candidate.
Now let's start with a group of high-information, analytical voters who spent costly time and energy making a decision -- these people should definitely vote, as they're (say) 60% likely to choose the right person. Now, adding any number of additional 50.0001% voters only makes the better outcome more likely. So we should try to include as many low-information voters as possible.
There are some ways in which slogans could still be bad. For example, let's say that slogans are in general more easily constructed by "bad" candidates, people who are unqualified for governance (not that slogans have zero correlation with quality, they're negatively correlated). This seems very unlikely and probably requires a radical theory for the function of language. Another example, somewhat narrower: let's say sloganeering is consistently better at selling certain ideas (e.g. low taxes, xenophobia) over others that inherently require more cognitive energy. This seems plausible, but it also seems to me that both "good" and "bad" slogans can have inordinate power given certain conditions in education and culture, so flaws are likely temporary and can be remediated by work in those areas.
Have you ever been in the back office of a typical political campaign? All slogans and ads are designed foremost to elect the candidate, not to inform the voter. An ad will be as deceptive as possible without overstepping the bounds into an outright factual lie (simply because factual lies are easy to double check). This is politics 101, I'm shocked that anyone could believe that slogans and sound bites are information devices.
Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be. Also, the feedback loop is such that overtime the candidates out compete each other with the base, negative, demagoguing slogans.
The all time worst case of this Germany. Under the non-democratic, absolute monarchy of Frederick II the government invited the Jews into the country to start businesses and grow the economy. But over the course of the 1800's Germany got an elected parliament, and then a universal suffrage. Over time politicians out competed each other in blaming problems on the "other" (the Jews). The first anti-semite politicians in the late 1800's were fairly mild, but the feedback loop made things worse, culminating in Hitler. Only after World War II the did the U.S. written constitution ban jingoistic and racist speech, and restore some sanity to politics.
In general, there are far more ways to be wrong than to be right. Any selection factor which does not select for truth, will select for falsehood. Since the selection process for sloganeering does not reward truth, we can expect it to reward falsehood.
Education is a partial-remedy, but there are limits to how well you can educate anyone. Plus, it raises the new question - who chooses the educators? What if say, one political party captures the education system (which is what has happened in the U.S.)? Essentially what you end up with a hybrid between theocracy (government by the ideological/information authorities) and democracy. Since theocracy is also quite a lousy form of government, if I wanted to improve democracy by splicing in a hybrid gene, I would choose one other than theocracy.
Yes. I've had many roles including leadership positions in political campaigns, and including positions where I crafted official campaign language. I have many friends who have held state directorships or higher roles in winning presidential (and other) campaigns. However, politics has not been my main livelihood, so I think I'm informed while also avoiding extremes of idealism (and cynicism) on this front.
Slogans are certainly short-cuts (reductive), tendentious and often misleading. They are totally partisan, but they are also informative. It's certainly upset me when one candidate can spend a lot to get their misleading slogan out and we don't have the money to get our counter-slogan out. I regret the crucial role of money generally in U.S. democracy. However, "slogans" are not "money", and I do think sloganeering/ads are positive, not negative (and also not optimal). Also "slogans" are not "factionalism" -- another problem that I think you are right to be interested in and concerned with (but one that is very difficult to analyze). Also "slogans" are not negativism or necessarily fear-based even if it maybe seems like that right now; in '08, both U.S. pres. candidates emphasized mostly positive/uplifting (typically low-info) slogans.
Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be.
This is not right, for several reasons.
First, in practical terms: since outright lies (often) get caught, provocative statements that have some grain of truth are the ones that get picked up. These competing slogans are often stupid (very low signal-to-noise ratio), but the noise -- on average -- cancels out, resulting in people on average getting slightly better chances to make the right decision. E.g.: CA doesn't get every proposition right, but through the haze of slogans back and forth on -- say, prop 23 -- people make the right choice far more often than can be attributed to chance. Yet, all but the very, very few most informed voters seem to be voting based on the slogan/ad/heuristic that mysteriously resonated with them the most.
Second, from a logical perspective: in a 2-person election we start from a fair coin-flip. How do slogans make things worse? Do they "crowd out" intelligent analysis, so that what could have been 55% chance to get the right person becomes a 50% chance? Crowding-out presumes fixed amount of communication bandwidth, which seems for all practical purposes false. Or do you imagine that somehow slogans make the election worse than a coin-flip, taking a 50% chance of success down to only a 40% chance? I can't see how you'd reach that conclusion without a very elaborate and speculative theory.
I differ on Germany; that historical pathology developed through the action of intellectuals, artists, economists, and philosophers, as well as through the compliance of apathetic and ignorant people. Slogans played a role along with every other form of communication, but we can't single out that form of communication -- even though some people may know them better than they know Baeumler or Riefenstahl. Additionally, I don't think post-WWII limitations on German political speech were eliminations of jingoes or slogans: what's criminalized is all endorsements, both sloganeering and seriously intellectual, of certain ideas.
Agree with your concern about partisan capture of education; perhaps isolating curriculum development from elected officials mitigates. Culture somewhat helps, though there are few countries with strong, practical free-speech protections.
1) I think that the problem is that you've created a competition, and that as a result, people would vote against each other. You're probably correct that people do typically vote for candidates without self interest, but I think that the problem is you've pitted people against each other. If I've entered a race, I already think that I am the best option, and will take action to help my success. This is almost like the prisoners dilemna, in that voters almost assume that others will act in self interest, and as a result do the same. I think maybe you just have a more optimistic view of how people will act in this case than I do.
2) I don't think we should dismiss people from voting for any reason, or say that a lower voter turnout would be a good thing because it's focusing on the people who actually "care". I think that in some ways giving people party lines is a good thing in some ways because it allows them to vote without necessarily needing to do research into a candidate. If I personally identify myself as a liberal, I don't have to do much research before voting democrat, and in fact, researching candidates is probably only going to strengthen my opinion of them both. I'm by no means saying this is an ideal situation, and it is certainly one of the main problems with a partied system. But I think if you make voting something thats only available to those with enough time to research it then I think you run the risk of misrepresenting an extremely large portion of the country, ending up with something chosen by an "elite" and I almost feel that this is a worse option than having people vote from their gut.
3) I think this is way off base. I can think of some pretty outstanding members of our society who choose a path for ethical and moral reasons outside of financial gain. Teachers are a great example. They are educated citizens working for the benefit of society, but some of them sure as hell don't make 40k. Should we exclude people like this because they chose a path that didn't give them the most money? Having a high paying job doesn't necessarily mean that you're educated, or a frugal person for that matter.
As I hinted at above, I guess I don't mind the party line voting. I don't mind the labeling it provides because, as I said, I think it encourages voter turnout. If you're given two candidates, and you have to choose between them, without labeling them as liberal or democrat, is a person significantly more likely to choose a different candidate than they would have with the label? If hypothetically Sarah Palin ran against Obama, and we didn't label them as democrat and republican, would voters choose a different candidate than if we had?
Again, I really do appreciate your response, and I'm sorry if I seem combative, I just like the debate.
For 2) - To summarize, your objection is that only the elites would only care vote, thus the elites would oppress the masses? But if the masses noticed they were getting oppressed, wouldn't they take the time to vote? The case in which they don't care to vote is when the government is being well run, which by definition, is a good outcome. The failure case is actually that the people who have the most time to vote would end up being the lazy/idle who aren't busy working or raising a family.
For 3) filtering based on net wealth is a crude measure for sure, but the goal is results in the aggregate. In general, people with a net worth above the median income are more capable, responsible, experienced and longer term thinking. Yet the wealth requirement is not so high you're filtering out all but the wealthy. The bulk of the voters will be the responsible middle class. Will it filter out some responsible people and allow in some irresponsible people? Sure - but its only a first pass filter. As for teachers, I actually wouldn't allow any government employee to vote. Its a complete conflict of interest. But if teachers were allowed to vote, they wouldn't be prevented by income alone. Sure starting teachers often make about 75% of median income. But they do move up in pay in a few years, plus they have income during the summer. A teacher who saved 10-15% a year (which is low when you include paying down a mortgage as saving) would be able to hold office when they are around 35, which is fine with me. (I also disagree that teachers are working for the betterment of society more so than anyone else. A teacher chooses the job because it provides a secure, ample paycheck and because they enjoy the pleasure of influencing other people (or to put it more crassly, the pleasures of power))
The bigger problem is that the system assumes that people make an informed choice in the ballot, but it is quite clear that such people really don't exist. We are emotional beings who are able to react pretty strongly to abstract concepts and ideas. Whenever we believe something and make it a part of us, then it is impossible to have a rational or even a cordial discussion about it.
What's even more horrifying is that we haven't found a better way to govern ourselves than this. Everyday lives are at stakes because of decisions taken inside that system, and all I can do is stand by and stare at a computer screen.
One, to allow for local governments to account for local differences that a far-removed federal government couldn't see or understand. And two, to allow for a large number of experiments to occur with subsequent successes and failures so that the right answer can be eventually teased out.
The problem before now is no one has any idea what their local city council person or state legislator believes. Since TV is geared towards mass dissemination and that was people's primary means of being informed.
The Internet gives local citizens a way to evaluate their local government in the same way they evaluate Presidential candidates now which makes giving more power to the local governments a lot more plausible.
The last sentence seems to be the entire point of republicanism. So that ordinary people do not have to deal with the burden of these decisions every day.
I really don't think 'inefficient' is the right word there. Nor do I think 'politics' to be right word. Your points all point to the limitations and complexities of governance rather than any 'inefficiency'.
There are plenty of sources of inefficiencies within specific implementations of governance and the politics that formed around it. But those are separate from just the sheer difficulties that you pointed out.
EDIT: STV would also take power from political parties in multi-party systems, since people can vote for different candidates in different parties, and list the preferred party as the last choice.
The highly gerrymandered districts in most states (70% are safe for one party or the other) seem to be a bigger problem to me.
The only constitutional amendment I would love at this point would be something along the lines of all districts must start at the northwest corner and be as close to boxes as community and terrain allow.
Basically, I can see your scenario of a noble candidate who can only get funded by one noble wealthy patron, but I think that will basically never happen compared to outright bribery which will happen all the time.
I'm inherently suspicious of any politician that's funded by only a few people. You know they have the candidate/congressman on speed dial, and the candidate/congressman knows how important they are. It's a built in conflict of interest. Numerous small-dollar donations, on the other hand, tend to reflect actual democratic interest in a candidate -- even if it's a machine, at least they put in the work to build the machine, lots of retail politics helping lots of little people.
Right now the corporations, unions, and political parties have ways of spending large sums of money, but the individual doesn't. I don't see how allowing individuals changes the possibility of influence peddling. Do you not believe that a Congressman is currently capable of refusing to take a call from an important union boss?
"Numerous small-dollar donations, on the other hand, tend to reflect actual democratic interest in a candidate" - maybe. Funding wise the Republicans go more that way than the Democrats (strange, but disclosures sometimes tell a weird story).
Unions and political parties are collections of individuals who've organized for an expressly political purpose. Corporations aren't, and for everything they've accomplished, they have terrible incentives as regards the political sphere. The ROI is huge if, for a measly few million, you can swing a vote of congress.
RE: Republicans and Democrats, my information was that Democrats had done better in the small-donor game since 2006, but I could be wrong. Regardless, my opinion is out of small-d democratic principles, I'd feel the same way about it if it hurt the democrats -- that would just mean we had to do a better job of appealing to ordinary people and spend less time appealing to the big money people.
No, unions are bargaining groups for workers. They have as much / little right to politics as corporations. Corporations are groups of shareholders and the days of normal people not owning stock are long over. Look at the hold of certain unions in California and their pension system woes for an example of undue influence that is going to bite someone.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
People need to be able to start revolutions without the use of arms, and for US politics that means spending money. I find the preference for parties and unions to be a poor substitute for individual rights.
Theoretically, the two party system is meant to make government more agile and less risk averse. It is supposed to ensure a party is, temporarily, in charge and able to accomplish its political agenda. In multiparty systems, there is frequent political deadlock as parties must negotiate to literally "form a government", or get enough of an alliance between people to mobilize 51% of the voting power. If you read international press, you often hear about the "dissolution of the government" in various civilized countries. This means they've failed in maintaining or forming a coalition, and must go back to political dealings in order to (in most cases) elect a prime minister and get behind a political agenda. These multiparty systems are therefore risk averse, and theoretically worse at achieving widespread governmental action.
I keep using the word "theoretical" because of our obvious governmental gridlock in the United States. But to look at things like the stimulus package and the health care bill, and it's not so clear that we're unable to pass large pieces of legislation.
With no political parties, every single vote would be about political dealmaking and organizing politicians. We would never get anything done. I'm not necessarily saying we have the right system, or even a great system, just that it isn't quite so easy to say "get rid of parties".
Now, to the second point. Jefferson? Puh-lease! I can't stand the frequent popular allusions to Jefferson the saint. This man was a great part of our country and one of the most important thinkers of his time. But he also wrote anti-government propaganda from the office of the vice presidency and had a near-blood fued with George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton.
Jefferson wouldn't roll over in his grave at this political language; he would be saying things far worse. If he sprang back to life today, he would suggest dissolving the federal government, abolishing any standing military, closing down capital institutions to promote an agrarian lifestyle, and letting Virginia negotiate a peace treaty with France. Let's not even talk about just what part of our society would have a real vote and which part would have 3/5 of one. I mean, can we be a little more reasonable with this founding father stuff?
One interesting difference between the US system and the parliamentary system is how coalitions work. In one sense, US parties are themselves coalitions already. Democrats are a coalition between labor, feminists, environmentalists, minorities, leftists, civil libertarians, and various single-issue voters; Republicans are a coalition between militarists, free-marketers, right-wing Christians of all denominations, and various single-issue voters. If you're a gun-owning trade unionist, who are you going to vote for? In practice, places with a lot of gun owning trade unionists end up with pro-gun Democrats and pro-union Republicans, and then they have to dynamically form coalitions just like a parliamentary system. Likewise, you don't get huge factions of the Labour party voting against a Labour PM in Parliament unless they want to start something; whereas you do get that in the US system. There are even bipartisan coalitions, between conservative Democrats and Republicans during the Reagan years, or even single-issue coalitions across both parties (though these are diminishing--"pro-life" Democrats and "pro-choice" Republicans have become increasingly ostracized and purged from their respective parties, for instance). So in effect, the US system allows dynamic coalitions to form between individual members of Congress, while a PR-based parliamentary system (theoretically) allows dynamic coalitions to form between multitudes of small parties. (In practice, there are still pretty tight upper bounds on how many different parties you can have, for reasons best described as "brand recognition".) What's the effect? In a parliament, it's harder to form a coalition, but once formed the coalition effectively runs the table until someone decides to start over again. In the US system, every individual piece of legislation can pass or fail, and it's an errand to shove it though.
Gridlock happens for two reasons: one, the US system is designed to gridlock, two, because opposing sides are learning to fully utilize this design rather than cooperate against it. The US system is designed to gridlock by having a bicameral legislature (most parliaments are effectively unicameral) with an independent executive and veto. The rules of each house require bills to pass through committees (and, in some cases, cloture) before coming up for a vote. Then you need an executive signature, or else you have to go through the legislative system again with higher thresholds for passing. Additionally, each house, as well as the executive, is elected separately. Unless each house is controlled by the same party as the President, you have to compromise to get anything done (or, alternately, one side can choose to completely obstruct the other). Even if each house is controlled by the same party as the President, you have to get everyone within the party to cooperate.
"With no political parties, every single vote would be about political dealmaking and organizing politicians. We would never get anything done."? Every single vote is already about political dealmaking and organizing politicians. That's how the US system works.
There was never any individual who had a 3/5 vote; this is a misconception. Slaves were not allowed to vote at all. Instead, they were counted as 3/5 of a person on the census, which was used to distribute seats in the House and electoral votes.
Slave owners wanted slaves to be counted as full people, which would have increased the south's political power. Those opposed to slavery wanted slaves to not be counted, thereby decreasing the south's political power.
Those who complain that slaves were "only" counted as 3/5 of a person are (accidentally) making a statement in favor of increasing the power of slave owners.
> "the two party system is meant to make government more agile and less risk averse."
Far from it. The system with two chambers of Congress plus an executive is meant to create gridlock. It's meant to prevent a small majority from being able to ram through an agenda.
As a result of the 3/5 compromise, the South usually had an edge in the House of Representatives and in electing the President, but the North had an edge in the Senate, and therefore neither side could pass slavery-related legislation. This was intentional. The US legislative system is designed to make it difficult to pass laws without extremely broad support, because the founding fathers (despite all their flaws) recognized how dangerous it would be if a narrow edge in population could be transformed into a huge edge in legislative power.
The rough draft of the Declaration of Independence is interesting: http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/declaration/declaration.h...
"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:[11] and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."
I actually think you couldn't get away with some of that stuff today.
Imagine an election with 15 candidates. 14 of them are democrat/liberals and 1 of them is Neo-Nazi. Who wins? This might be an extreme case, but if you divide up the voting sensibilities of the majority, you risk the chance that a smaller group of like-minded people may overrun the race.
Similar instances of this have occurred in the past, such as in France's 2002 election, where Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of elections because he was running against many other candidates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2...
I'm not saying that a partied system is a good one, but it's does solve some problems that should be considered before you dismiss the idea entirely.
edit: added link to french election page
I feel like this would help make more center of the aisle candidates more successful in the primaries. Part of the problem with elections now is that people voting in primaries tend to be near the idealogical extremes resulting in someone like Christine O'Donnell (A Tea-Partyer) winning the primary in a state where she doesn't stand a change in the general election.
Additionally in states where the population is more generally liberal or conservative than there will be two candidates that more accurately reflect the general populations views instead of one that nobody will ever vote for, making the general elections more competitive.
Any block of people should have full right to form a political party to espouse their shared views, but I don't see any reason we should do their advertising and organizing for them. I take it as an affront that when I register to vote that I'm asked to declare my allegiance to private social group, just as I would take offense at being asked by the government which of two official religions I belonged to.
The Internet does not solve this; to the contrary, it only help to amplify the effect of what Freud called the "Narcissm of small differences" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences ).
We see this fact recapitulated in every domain of technology such as: - Linux v Windows v Apple - Fedora v Redhat v Debian v Ubuntu v Arch v Gentoo v ... - $OUR_EDITOR v $THEIR_EDITOR - Slashdot v Hacker News
The difference is that the political landscape isn't nearly as diverse. However this is changing already due to the Internet. Agree with their views or not, the Tea Party is sign of this.
The way forward is to partition more, not less. Trying to pretend like we can do away with partitions is flawed at inception.
Removing party allegiance as a basic component of the voter registration system would be a start. Leave the parties to administer themselves and non-affiliation with a particular party as the norm rather than the exception.
Parties are an emergent phenomenon in almost all democratic systems, because politicians work in groups -- the same as anyone else, by the way. If Scott Adams suggested a specific legal system (for example, banning pooling campaign funds) I could find the flaw in that, but he cleverly gives no details, and so makes it impossible for people to find flaws in his (non-existent) system.
The election system in the USA is mostly organized in district/state sort of way, where the winner of the state elections gets all the votes. This makes it very hard for more then two parties to participate in the election.
Since there is no choice, there is very little incentive to listen to the electorate (always vote for the lesser evil). I live in a country with no district system (and thus multiple parties). While it isn't even close to perfect, at least I can vote for people I mostly agree with.
Otherwise, there are in fact more than 2 parties, they just dont' get as much support, and the two major parties generally like to keep it that way. Occasionally though you will see minor party candidates or independent candidates win major offices.
Any third party in the USA has very little chance of winning any seat. Even if they have 10% support among the electorate it is unlikely that they'll get much seats. The nice thing about a system without districts is that smaller parties get power approximately in proportion to the votes they get. The coalitions you get in these systems are messy but more fair.
It's a bit unrealistic to forbid people from forming political parties on these somewhat vague assertions. Reforming the election system to be more fair to smaller parties should have a bigger effect I think.
/shameless plug
I know that this is a judgmental thing to say but: This is civics 101. If you vote in the United States, you should know this.