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Cobind Desktop Reviewed, With Interview
An anonymous reader writes "Cobind Desktop takes a remarkable turn from other Linux distributions by being one of the first to include Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla Thunderbird in their first release. Though Cobind Desktop only uses XFce and not the more popular KDE, its entire design is based on a clutter-free workspace. Flexbeta.net took the time to write up a review and conduct an interview with David Watson, Co-Founder and President of Cobind Desktop. He mentions how the entire design concept of Cobind Desktop is based on a book called the Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz, who is a professor at Swarthmore. David Watson believes that this concept can be applied to software design, and produce more usable products as a result." (We mentioned Schwartz's book earlier today.)
One alternative is a one-party system -- we all learned in school in the U.S. on how terrible the Soviet system was that they had only one party, and I grew up in Chicago, which with many other big cities really only had one party. Apart from the anti-Communist propaganda telling us how bad it is, what is does a political party even do when there is only one party? In Chicago, the one party was both a political party as well as a kind of social welfare system: kind of like Hamas.
In Soviet Russia (please, no "in Soviet Russia" jokes), I don't have any direct experience, but as far as I can tell it worked like some kinds of committee structures in an American university. The Party was not the government, it was not the military, it was not industry nor agriculture, and it was not a labor union, but it supervised all of those institutions to make sure that they were run according to "scientific socialist" principles. I imagine the Party was resented by people in government, military, industry, and other places just trying to do their jobs because it was a kind of oversight that a lot of people dedicated to their jobs could do without -- a lot like what takes place in universities.
The multi-party system, however, would have a Liberal Party, a Conservative Party, a Green Party, a Libertarian Party, a Labor Party, a Civil Rights Party, and so on. The problem with a multi-party system is forming a majority government -- think Israel where they have two major parties but they have to suck up to religious parties to form a government.
The two party system means that you stack the deck against minority parties to narrow it down to just two parties so one or other party is sure of having a governing majority. The two parties don't really offer much in the way of choice unless you think Coke and Pepsi represents choice. But on the other hand, the two parties compete for the center of the voting electorate, and the two parties act as critics of each other to expose gross wrong doing. Kerry and Bush are not really that different because they are all part of the same political culture, but they represent themselves as polar opposites to rally their respective core supporters, but they are careful to position themselves for the middle when they govern so having Kerry in office or Bush in office is not going to change all of that much. But that is the goal, to have a stable equalibrium of two parties competing for the center rather than the anarchy and travails of a multi-party democracy.
Well, that is the whole point of a 2-party structure, that if you vote for a 3rd or 4th party (Green Party, Pat Buchanan Party), your vote isn't going to count for nothin' and you might get "the other guy" elected.
What you want is the multi-party system, your Greens would get their 3 percent of House seats, which might mean the Democrats could get the House back, but they would have to form a coalition with the Greens and anytime the Greens didn't like it that Tom Daschle voted for some logging deal because a union in his home state wanted the jobs, they would be in a snit and threaten to fracture the coalition.
Under the 2-party system, everytime some member of the coalition under the tent of a major party feels a minor slight, they tend to suck it up because they consider the opposition party to be far worse.
Under your multi-party system, think of what Jim Jeffords did to the Republicans by switching to "Independent" -- yeah, your Greens would get their 3 percent, but they would be pulling a Jeffords on the Democrats all the time instead of just sticking flyers on people's front doors.
The 2-party system is not meant to afford equal representation -- it is meant to provide stable government without being too stable in the manner of a 1-party system.