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Pirate Party Gaining Strength In Germany
bs0d3 writes "For the third consecutive regional election, The German Pirate Party has breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote in state of Schleswig-Holstein. From the article: 'The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.'"
Too easy. Mod me down.
Yo ho!
like clock radio speakers
...going on in the world that nations need to address and these fucks run for office so they can download shit for free.
Aside from the obvious position of the party concerning copyright and p2p technologies, what exactly are the Pirate Party political positions.
Tomorrow is another day...
While the assorted techie shenanigans of the previous thread are all good fun, this sort of (much more difficult, and much less entertaining) work is arguably a much better strategy to keep your intertubes open.
Dodging the man is fun and all, and certainly can beat the alternatives; but playing cat-and-mouse with state power can be a poor long term strategy. You have to get away with it every time. They only have to catch you once...
Global warming will be reduced a bit.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Germany FTW
maplight.org matches how politicians get paid by donors with how they vote and displays the correlations as nice graphics.
Cool ... Lessig thinks so too.
How to deal with this corruption?
Lawrence Lessig has a good idea about this:
search for his talk titled "How money corrupts Congress and a plan to stop it" on fora.tv and other sites.
With crony capitalism that has legalized theft by the 1% from the remaining 99%, is it not a surprise that the popularity is increasing for political parties promoting the legalization of theft for everyone else, to make it a level playing field.
Heck, even I am thinking of joining the pirate party, but I will might need to mug someone to pay my membership dues. (Just kidding!)
But we do have a serious problem on how crony capitalism has corrupted copyright and patent law. Especially when you consider DMCA, SOPA, digital locks, copyright extensions that has choked off public domain, etc.
The only real possibility to fix crony capitalism is with true democracy, which means mandatory public financing of political campaigns, banning of private political contributions and lobbying, banning of super-pacs and other groups, etc. So I won't hold my breath that enough mundane people will magically become sufficiently enlighten enough to support it. (Especially with the steady decline in education.)
Is there an American Pirate Party and can anyone provide a link?
http://us.pirate.is/
The Pirate Parties are the only parties that support unlimited non-commercial file sharing, which is the only sane position on the matter.
Personally, I think it's the most important IP issue we have, since, if we're shutting down websites for copyright infringement, we are shutting down websites. And thence, we cannot discuss anything freely.
expandfairuse.org
Stealth RIAA bombers are flying over Berlin.
This.
The problem with trying to fix the system from the inside is, once you're inside, you have a vested interest in keeping the system as is. Yes, it's broken, but the only people who can fix it are getting reelected due specifically to those campaign contributions from those high powered lobbyists and super-pacs. It's a classic case of 'who will bell the cat?'
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Just stumbled upon a great document that addresses that very topic. It's on market economies and the rule of law. Worth the ~20 minutes to read.
Here's a particularly relevant excerpt:
The second economic function of the rule of law is for the state to enforce laws and contracts in an impartial way. This can be achieved only after the government distances itself from microeconomic decisions. Defining property rights, preserving fair competition, fighting monopoly and enforcing contracts are all essential to economic development because they are necessary for establishing credible commitments among economic agents. Without the enforcement of contracts, economic agents cannot become motivated because they will always worry about opportunistic behavior of the other parties to the transaction. But how can we establish an orderly market environment? The enforcement of contracts and preservation of competition should rest on the rule of law instead of the government's discretion. For example, the government should not be in a position to define arbitrarily what unfair competition is, or what business activities need to be regulated.
It is by no means an easy task for the government to act as a impartial arbitrator. For example, errors could occur during the enforcement of law, either unintentionally or intentionally such as when induced by vested interests. Therefore, under the rule of law, it is essential that individuals and business enterprises are empowered to challenge the government on laws, regulations and judgements and to sue the government if necessary. The Administrative Procedure Law and Administrative Redress Law that we have enacted is a promising start, but we still have a long way to go.
Another substantial barrier to the effective enforcement of law is the judicial corruption. Obviously, a corrupt judiciary, which gives rise to insecure property rights and ineffective contract enforcement, forces business enterprises to resort to the traditional way of making back-door deals instead of using legal methods when there is a dispute. This is one of the factors that suffocate economic activities. A better way to tackle the problem of judicial corruption is to create better institutions rather than relying on political campaigns.
In summary, the second economic function of the rule of law is fundamentally about how the government acts as an impartial "third-party" in economic transactions.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
You raise a good point, but it seems equally apparent that representative democracies pretty much universally fall prey to corruption. I don't know the details of how Germany's government works, but in a US context where our congressional branch is split into a Senate that represents each state equally and a House of Representatives that represents each state based on population, I've often thought that the latter might be profitably replaced with a direct democracy. Or perhaps a third "House of Commons" branch could be added with any two branches being able to override the third. Or maybe just give the Commons the ability to veto and repeal laws unilaterally to keep the career folks in line.
There's lots of different ways it could be implemented, and I think now that the technology has made it possible it would be good for governments to start exploring ways in which direct democracy could be integrated into the system. Probably not replacing the existing structure, as you point out you'll have trouble getting the populace interested in a lot of the menial details of governing, but it seems like some measure of direct voice would help to counteract the creeping spread of corruption and cronyism. Even if it's largely advisorial to start with - if politicians had a central source where they could get direct information as to the leanings of their constituents who care enough to take part, perhaps even draw upon them for suggestions - I imagine something like an "Ask Slashdot" about how a bill under consideration could be improved. And I do think veto power would be a good thing, even if the bar is set pretty high to start with - say you need 60-70% of participants to vote against it, with some minimum quorum of citizens participating. Basically a leash to keep the representatives in check on specific issues rather than being limited to replacing them entirely.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I am sorry to disappoint those who think that the German Pirate Party gets their votes from their main issues like copyright, opposition to surveillance laws, etc. The vast majority are people fed up with the political parties in Germany. They are (for now?) mostly a protest party.
The People's Party. Their platform could be focused on government transparency and accountability, some candidates might even incorporate certain aspects of direct democracy to guide their voting on issues not related to their platform.
Yeah, sounds rather similar to another party with the same initials but as you say it's all in the name.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Your critique of naive direct democracy - that leaders arise, but are informal and therefore not subject to safeguards - is an excellent one. But it's not enough.
Consider that the United States today suffers under exactly this scenario. Informal unelected elites have captured the levers of power to the point where the U.S. is not looking much like a democracy any more. This was accomplished despite the excellence of the design of the American system the strength of democratic principles among the American people - a citizenry still fairly engaged, and which was formerly also relatively well educated and informed.
Democracy is often present as the mechanism through which individuals, born citizens with their own preferences and interests, express and negotiate those preferences and interests, ideally with an eye to the common good. According to many advocates of direct democracy, this is wrong. We are not born citizens. It is not citizens who create democracy: rather it is the practice of democracy that creates citizens. We do not come to politics as individuals with already developed preferences and interests. It is by engaging with others in public discourse and debate that we learn to be citizens, to reason, to participate in public discourse, and through this process we discover and develop our preferences and interests. Democracy is thus a process of education. One of the great failings of representative democracy is that instead of treating us as active and evolving partners, it relegates us to the role of disengaged consumers who occasionally choose one option over another.
Yet realistically, even if we were to provide the perfect mechanism for people to participate, most of us, lacking interest and starved of time, wouldn't: with results like those you describe. One intriguing alternative draws on the jury system and the elections of ancient Athens. Decisions would be made not by professional politicians, but by randomly-selected groups of citizens with their range of private expertise. Such groups would be charged with investigating a particular issue for a period of time, after which they would disband.
I realize juries (chosen by counsel more for ignorance than independent thought) are typically reported as dysfunctional, and I don't doubt that this is so. Yet it only confirms that we do not know how to be citizens: and when it is demanded of us, we fail. Through failure, though, we can learn, and teach others. Forming a jury today, when virtually no one has substantial experience, amounts to throwing together a bunch of greenhorns and expecting them to spontaneously become experts.
For an idealized view of how a jury can teach its participants to be jurors, I suggest the film 12 Angry Men. I admit am not convinced of the wisdom of such a system. But if I was forced to choose, I would place my fate in the hands of a court rather than a politician. I would trust a random selection of my fellow citizens over a self-selected professional of politics. For with the crises we face today, our common fate is indeed the question.
What's there that's not in other parts of the country?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
true democracy
Define it with something other than "true." Using that word in that manner is only objectively correct if you mean completely unfettered direct democracy, with no restrictions on vote topic, wherein a simple majority may command anything including servitude or death to the minority on a whim. Since you go on to talk about banning PACs, lobbying, etc, all of which would be completely allowable in a direct democracy, I'm going to assume that is not, in fact, what you actually meant. If that's not what you meant, then calling it "true" is using the word in the same way certain people use "true American" to denigrate those who do not agree with their positions.
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Proportional representation allows new ideas a chance to grow and become a political force. Often the newcomer will not stay for long or grow big but the bigger parties have to incorporate the idea in their respective programs to stay competitive.
The American political system is showing its age. The people have the right to vote but are disgusted by the ruling duopoly and thus the majority stays home on election day.
Proportional representation is not the only option. Pretty much any alternative voting scheme is an enhancement to the existing one.
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It should be noted that the German Pirate Party has strayed a little from its root of copyright criticism. It's pretty much a left-wing liberal party now that has some ideas concerning copyright and privacy, but also advocates other concepts such as free education, a citizen's income, deregulation in certain areas, voting rights for foreign citizens, sustainable energy sources, and so on.
Even in traditionally tech-savvy Germany, a party that only focuses on copyright and patents can't get 8% in parliamentary elections. An important factor in the Pirate Party's success in Germany is that it's very easy for anyone to participate in the political discourse within the party, but after 6 years and with 30k members now, that was bound to produce something more than just "copyright law is broken".
The trend is in: politicians that are not offering concrete solutions for problems, offering instead promise of change. This motley group includes protest candidates, "process" candidates, "change" candidates (I am talking about you, Mr.President). They can have their pet peeve/cause du jour as well (never meant to be comprehensive platform): green party, now pirate party. They never meant to be actual leaders, they are meant to represent a vocal minority group that attract many other people as well by populist demagoguery (tautological emphasis mine), like "clean air", "internet freedom", etc.
Those a signs of systemic fatigue of a democratic process. In the past Western democracy was more driven my synthetic approach which was represented by charismatic leaders like Roosevelt, Nixon, Reagan or Thatcher. Now we have mediocrities like Blair, Merkel, Putin, Obama and Romney.
It's like moving backwards from Pixar level CGI of puppetry towards Commedia dell'Arte.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The software used by the pirate party is representative in so far as you can delegate your vote - on specific matters - to someone you judge to be more knowledgable than you, on that topic. He will represent you.
Two obvious differences from the rythmic-vote kind of democracy are a) you can remove you vote from your representative at any time and b) you entitle them to represent you on specific matters only.
Mind you, I've not yet used the software, but that's how someone deeply involved with the pirate party has explained it to me.
Since it seems that you can keep your vote to yourself, and in that case it indeed functions as a direct democracy... I guess that's what is "liquid" about it: http://liquidfeedback.org/mission/
Two things spring immediately to mind:
The tyranny of the majority - you don't want 51% of the population to be able to casually strip the rights from the other 49%.
Manipulation of the masses - plenty, probably the overwhelming majority, of people will believe what they're told by an "authoritative" source who plays to their hopes and fears, even in the face of readily available evidence that they're being lied to. At our base we're not rational creatures, if we're wise we recognize this and safeguard against our own capricious use of power, knowing it can just as easily be used against us as with us.
As for the repeated invocation of Switzerland I've been seeing - it's wonderful that they've managed to effectively integrate direct democracy into their government, and I'd be strongly in favor of drawing inspiration from them in other governments, but we should remember that it's NOT actually evidence that it can continue to work at scales such as the US, which has ~40x the population. 40x smaller would be 200,000, not even large city size, and I think it's pretty obvious there are scaling issues between those two. Not that that's a reason not to try, but we should recognize that there is a real difference.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There's a bit of a reality disconnect there - if the 88% truly don't vote because they feel disenfranchised by the Party then they could just as easily upset the applecart by voting for every 3rd party candidate available, regardless of their stance. Figure all those competing ideologies would likely lead to near deadlock in the halls of power, but it would be a deadlock that disrupts the stranglehold of the Party. If we all voted that way for just a couple election cycles we could give the 3rd parties enough legitimacy that we could begin to take back our government.
It seems to me that a smart thing for all those third-party candidates would be to cooperate on a collective "throw the bums out" campaign stressing just this, especially in the current atmosphere of disenfranchisement. Instead of thousands of candidates running thousands of tiny doomed campaigns they could have one big organized negative campaign against the major parties just encouraging people to get out and vote for anyone else. I'd be willing to bet that the number of people that could be mobilized to vote "against the system" far outweighs the number that could be mobilized for any given fringe candidate.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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I just looked up the voter turnout figures from USA and they're quite a bit higher than 12%. In fact, they've not gone down all that much since the 60s and are way up from what they used to be in 70s, 80s and 90s. Even so, the third parties haven't gained that much more support... This means that the people find the distinction between the two parties much more important than they used to find during the last few decades.
Just because you don't want that to be true, doesn't mean it isn't true.