Isn't this what they call a "secret law"? UK citizens should be in the streets over this. Completely unacceptable for any democracy.
So the media narrative is basically just 'sore losers on the left', and there is some justification for that - a lot of people in the country clearly support these kinds of policies.
I would suggest that part of the difficulty here is that while the Conservatives won a majority of seats and the largest single share of the popular vote, they did not win anywhere near a majority of the popular vote.
However you choose to look at our electoral system, the fact is that roughly 3/4 of those entitled to vote did not choose to vote for the Conservatives (or roughly 2/3 if you prefer to look at only those who chose to vote at all).
So even if you believe that voting for a party gives a mandate to every policy in their manifesto -- which clearly not everyone does -- in this case, a heavy majority of the electorate did not vote for a party that has these controversial policies.
It is therefore not surprising that when the new government have picked a series of big fights within a week of taking office, they are already encountering widespread concern about or outright opposition to their actions. Given their narrow majority, I don't expect the new Cameron administration to get much of a honeymoon period or any sort of free ride over controversial policies like this.
That's not how proportional systems work. The parties choose themselves what alternative they want to negotiate. You will often find "natural" coalition partners shying away from each other to look towards the centre because the risk of indulging fringe parties in a coalition is that you get eaten alive at the next election as your more centrist voters decide "anything but" next time to prevent the same next time.
While Tory/UKIP might have happened, first of all we don't know how proportional systems would have altered who people would have voted for, secondly a Tory/UKIP coalition would require the right wing of the Tory party to be firmly in control, and little indicates they are, and secondly would require the Tory party to be willing to risk exactly that kind of implosion. A Tory/Labour coalition would also be very much possible, as would a minority government with a supply agreement with one or more parties (e.g. you'd find Labour and SNP and pretty much everyone else would be willing to stretch far to appease a Tory minority government to avoid a coalition that included UKIP)
> and frankly I am quite happy to accept the downsides of FPTP if it keeps UKIP out of government.
I'm tempted to say the same, but as horrendous as such a government might be, it would still be more representative of the will of the people. It would also have the bonus of tearing the Tory party to shreds next election.
That seems unlikely.
For one thing, as a matter of fact the Conservatives and UKIP did not achieve a majority of the popular vote between them at the general election. Under a fully proportional system, the result on the day would not have given them a working majority to form a government alone. Some sort of minority Conservative government would have been a more likely outcome.
For another thing, you're assuming that people would have voted the same way under another system, which is far from a safe assumption. This was probably the most negative campaign we've had in generations, and a lot of the arguments in the final weeks were about how to vote tactically to block one outcome or another. Knowing that every vote counted could easily have significantly changed voting patterns.
frankly I am quite happy to accept the downsides of FPTP if it keeps UKIP out of government.
That is a very dangerous, short-termist position.
Whether you like it or not, millions of people did vote for UKIP at the election, as is their right in a party-based representative democratic system. Those people have effectively been disenfranchised.
For that matter, so have millions who supported the Lib Dems or the Greens. Along with UKIP, these three parties between them attracted popular support on a similar scale to Labour and the Conservatives (roughly 24%, against 30% for Labour and 37% for the Conservatives) yet have only 10 seats between them in Parliament compared to Labour's 232 and the Conservatives' 331.
National parties are also heavily over-represented now. The DUP (0.6% of the popular vote) has the same 8 MPs as the Lib Dems (7.9%). The SNP (4.7%) has 56 MPs, while UKIP (12.6%) has only a single MP.
There are pros and cons to having a "clear winner" and first past the post does provide that, but the idea that the system has generated a government that is anything close to representing what the people as a whole want this time is even less credible than it was five years ago.
Following your assumption, though:
2. The Tories would have to choose coalition with UKIP (and vice versa).
3. Even if they managed to do that, they would not strictly have a majority at 49.5%. Tories currently have 50.9% of MPs alone.
So a much less stable government that would threaten to split off and destroy the Tory left. It's not even likely that Cameron or Johnson could agree to those terms.
But, if they were able to agree, I'd far rather have that government than the one we have now.
I am concerned by this attitude in general. Although I don't agree a lick with UKIP, they should have fair representation.
What you are suggesting is literally authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism I'd personally rather have a democratic UKIP government than that.
They would have also almost certainly got the DUP, who had 0.6%, taking them to 50.1%, and the opposition would need to take off Sinn Fein's 0.6% as they don't take their seats.
The problem with extrapolating how the result of a proportional vote would have gone from the results of a first past the post election is that people would vote differently. e.g. someone might vote tactically for lib-dem to get a conservative out under first past the post whereas they might vote labour under proportional representation.
Edit: I'm in favour of proportional representation.
Our system is hopelessly broken and getting the politicians to fix it would be like getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas.
The Tories got a larger proportion of the total vote than Labour did in 2005 (35.2%), and I don't remember hearing much uproar about that.
FPTP is demonstrably unfair but as I said turkeys voting for Christmas.
Perhaps it's intellectual laziness, or perhaps it's a trait inherited from a time when a single person's voice still made a difference because communities were only a few hundred or thousand people.
Buckminster Fuller said something that I'm sure will resonate with many HNers, and that seems more likely to bring about positive change:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, design a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
The big winners are the big corporations world-wide, because they know how to play the game or at least how to pay the people who know.
It even goes beyond that. The corporations use policies that benefit them to enrich themselves. Some of that enrichment can then be paid out to the politician. What do ordinary citizens do with policies that benefit them? For the most part, they just live their lives in peace. Even when those policies make the people wealthier, it is much harder for the politician to get paid because the new wealth is so disbursed.
Really, it's just the market interacting with the politics. I have come to believe that, far from being natural allies (as is commonly held), democracy and market economics are actually quite incompatible for this reason.
It's like Rod Blagojevich said, to paraphrase, if you've got this incredibly valuable thing (the ability to make policy), why would you ever give it away for free?! You sell it to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder will always be a "special" interest, because, as I pointed out in my last comment, they are the only ones who can afford it (because they will use the policies to make the money back).
The Koch brothers understand this, they came right out and said that they view campaign contributions as investments. As long as we delude ourselves into believing that the system can be made to work with just the right combination of rules and checks (in other words, as long as we delude ourselves into thinking that markets aren't dynamic and don't route around damage), nothing will change.
You could replace "markets" with "people pursuing their personal gain" there. Of course they will adapt to changes, much like a businessman will just leave the country if he gets tax-raped too hard.
We all pursue our personal gain all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that per se. That's just the way we're biologically programmed to operate.
But go back to what Rod said and take it to its logical conclusion: as long as there is political power, people with it will always be bribed.
But then again, that's pretty much the point of having political power. We're all pursuing our personal gain, and political power is just another means of doing that. The solution, then, is for no one to have political power to begin with.
To look at it another way, in a market economy (at least a capitalist one), the possession of money and property is a form of political power. "If you do what I say, I'll give you a bunch of money", the "Prank Monkey" episode of The Simpsons comes to mind, etc.
My ultimate point is that there are conflicts between the market economy and the democratic political structure. This is contrary to "conventional" wisdom, and I think it is important to start recognizing these conflicts openly (recognizing that they are fundamental) and coming up with some kind of solution (whatever it looks like).
The choices we make can be moral, amoral, or immoral. Incentives aren't really relevant there.
For example, imagine you're walking out alone at night, and for some mysterious reason come across a little old lady on the street. She'll probably have a purse with her, and that's your incentive for robbing her.
But assuming you're not a psychopath, you won't even think of doing that. Even a psycho would be more likely to just mind his own business than rob her.
> the possession of money and property is a form of political power
Why would it be? Political authority is the perceived right to impose your will on others by force. Political power is the position to do that. Asking someone to do something in exchange for money is a potential trade.
There's nothing immoral about offering a woman $500k for a blowjob. She'll probably do it too. But it's her choice - she'll have to figure out if the $500k would be worth any loss of dignity she would experience as a result of selling you that blowjob. As long as it's voluntary, there's no problem. It's just a choice she'll make, and be responsible for.
> My ultimate point is that there are conflicts between the market economy and the democratic political structure.
I'm not sure what that means. But again, as long as there's political power, people with it will be bribed, regardless of what else happens in the economy. The solution is to abolish political power. You might note that coercion is immoral anyway, and perhaps start a line of questioning from that premise.
Yep, incentives that lead to better outcomes, from my perspective. For example, less incentive toward corruption. Chinese emperors supposedly used eunuchs as court officials so that they wouldn't be tempted to favor their children in official dealings. I don't know if that was such a great idea, but it certainly improved the incentives of the public officials from the point of view of the emperor (and possibly the people who had official dealings with the government).
> Political power is the position to do that.
Great wealth is functionally equivalent to political power.
> Asking someone to do something in exchange for money is [always] a potential trade.
I disagree vehemently with this statement. Asking someone who is dangling from a cliff for all their money in exchange for pulling them up, for example, is not a trade I am interested in promoting. Yet this is precisely the kind of trade upon which capitalism is built. It is clear to me that we will never agree, we have completely different moral codes and outlooks on the world.
> As long as it's voluntary...
This is the entire problem. Under capitalism, many / most exchanges are not voluntary. Check out the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) and the writings of Kevin Carson if you would like to learn more. Regardless, I never said anything about morality.
> But again, as long as there's political power, people with it will be bribed...
There is always power, regardless of whether you consider it strictly "political" (you can define away almost any problem if you try hard enough). If I'm rich and I hire a private army to coerce you into doing something, does it really make any difference whether I call myself a king? From your standpoint we haven't really "abolished" political power. In fact, the idea of abolishing (political) power is actually rather absurd to me, I would sooner expect us all to join hands and implement full communism...
You're still behaving as if you didn't understand that it is very much possible to refrain from accepting trades, even if your counterparty is stinking rich. If you don't consider five million dollars worth the loss of dignity from a blowjob, then you won't do it. I can imagine someone choosing to not accept that trade. Maybe they're doing just fine and don't need the money that bad?
> Asking someone who is dangling from a cliff for all their money in exchange for pulling them up, for example, is not a trade I am interested in promoting.
Sure, that would be highly scumbaggy of you, but that's not the kind of deal I was suggesting either.
> Yet this is precisely the kind of trade upon which capitalism is built.
Now there's a claim that requires backing.
> Under capitalism, many / most exchanges are not voluntary.
Complete nonsense. We all go through voluntary exchanges every day, any time you go shopping for groceries for example.
> If I'm rich and I hire a private army to coerce you into doing something, does it really make any difference whether I call myself a king? From your standpoint we haven't really "abolished" political power.
Coercion is immoral, and what you'd be doing is irrelevant to capitalism. But yeah, political power is basically thuggery - it's just that people don't see that from underneath their brainwashing.
Hoppe's solution is a benign monarchy, or anarchy. What do you propose?
I propose accepting that aggressing against others is immoral, and applying that principle consistently. Can you guess where that would lead us?
How could this system be anything but bad for us?
The problem isn't big evil corporations - it's the fact that there are people in positions to hand out favours in exchange for bribes.
Of course that assumes that people can be corralled together into groups. The experience of the last ten years suggests that society is dividing into small sub-cultures that don't understand each other, or talk to each other.
If not, how would democracy make them any less willing to wage wars?
This isn't true equally across democracies, its most true in "democracies" that feature political systems that structurally limit practical choices for the electorate, because that mitigates the ability of the public to effectively check influence peddling. And, unsurprisingly, these limited-choice features also correspond to systems, among established democracies, in which the public has the least satisfaction with their government.
(Note that among the worst systems in this regard among modern, first-world democracies here are those in the United States, United Kingdom, and France.)
Edit:typo