Yeah, it's designed to be revenue neutral. The whole thrust is greater transparency. Instead of having income tax pre-paid for you by withholding (sorta dishonest how millions of people say they make $X a year but only ever actually see about 70% of that), it is made very obvious how much tax you pay every time you pay at the register.
I'm all for making it clear how much money gov't is taking from us. Maybe we'd be a little more critical of how it spends (or wastes, depending on your POV) what it is taking from us, and whether it is really necessary.
There are plenty of people who think income shouldn't be taxed at all.
If you look at Robin Hood again, he was robbing from the government and giving (back) to the taxpayers. It's not a rich-vs-poor class struggle, it's a powerful-vs-powerless freedom struggle. Then, "rich" equated to "I run the government here", e.g. King John.
I care about the quality of my community. That's why I would like to keep gov't involvement as far away from it as possible.
You'd trust the media to be completely faithful and honest gatekeepers between the citizenry and the politicos? Pretty soon you'd see legislation limiting press access to only those outlets favorable to incumbents, etc.
Make the candidates get out and work for votes, I say: travelling, shaking hands, kissing babies. Yeah, that's gonna take money. As flawed as that might be, I'd take the method that gives me "direct" interaction with a candidate than one that only allows media-filtered access.
If you're trying to move a huge boulder, it makes sense for several people to work together on it. Pool resources. That's all. As long as this is true, we will have political parties.
What you actually do with that combined power, that's another issue.
Personally it's the anti-religious (not just areligious) types in the Democratic party that bother me. People that don't believe in a supernatural for whatever reason, OK, whatever, it's your life. People that have zero respect/tolerance for those that do, that want to stomp out expressions of faith just because they don't agree (such as yourself, it appears), are more worrisome.
It's not so much the primary system. The parties have the right to determine who their standard-bearer will be.
The problem is the use of plurality voting in the general elections. This assures the fact that only two parties will be seen as relevant. A single vote can only unambiguously choose between two things. The media shapes your opinion beforehand which two are the "real" choices, and you go pick between them - TweedleDum or TweedleDee.
We desperately need voting reform. I'm in favor of Condorcet methods, myself.
Reduce the power of government, and you'll immediately reduce the number of people trying to "buy" it and the amount of money flowing around for that purpose.
First, term limits are not a restriction on politicians, they are a restriction on people's freedom. If someone is doing a good job in office (difficult concept, I know!), why should we arbitrarily throw them out?
What we really need is a more expressive voting system, instead of common plurality voting. There are more than two points of view in any political system, yet we are stuck with a mere two parties because of it. Give people more freedom and implement Condorcet! The ballot box is the term limiter.
Second, politicians have to campaign, and if they don't get money from private interests, they'll have to get it from themselves (so we become a plutocracy) or they'll get it from government (and I don't think it's wise for government to be effectively choosing who its own successors will be if we want to maintain a democratic system).
IRV is about the only voting system I have found worse than simple plurality.
I haven't actually seen that many places where any alternative voting system is in use, so my objections to Approval (and Range voting in general) are mostly theoretical. If everyone is honest, it's not a bad system. But you can find many articles about "strategic voting" under an Approval/Range system. From my research, Condorcet is the least susceptible to strategic voting in practical use, and that is a major criterion, IMO. If you can't be honest with yourself at the ballot box, what's the point of democratic elections?
The flaw of what we have isn't as much that it allows or encourages a two-party split-down-the-middle system, but that it punishes anything else.
Isn't that the same thing, just stated differently?
I'd like to support alternate parties, but we suffer from the wasted vote syndrome.
This is a result of the above. When everyone sees that there are two dominant parties, because the system itself discourages anything else, they will "naturally" come to see other alternatives as a "waste". Change the voting method, and you change the dynamics. Change the dynamics, and you change the perception.
A degenerate form of approval is plurality, you're right. But everyone already is just voting for their one fave, anything we do seems to be better.
I see a lot of effort being expended on a switch to Approval, only to have it be ineffective because of the degeneracy factor. You'll likely only get one shot at major voting reform...you have to push for the very best option and make the jump.
I'd like to keep the paper voting and hand counting. [...] Condorcet is a bit better, but is it enough so to make it worth explaining ranked pairs to people, to be reliant on a computer-counted voted, etc?
Paper voting, aye. But I have nothing against machine tabulation as long as it is verifiable by hand. Granted, Condorcet could be tedious and time-consuming to hand count...but for a matter as important as who is leading our government, I think it is worth the effort. If the effort can be efficiently and accurately done by machine, great—as long as it can still be independently verified without machines.
And for the most part, I don't think one needs to go into a whole lot of detail about how counting works. Most people won't care. You only have to explain casting...and "put them in order, starting with 1 for first choice, tied ranks are OK" is very simple. So much so that most people will "get" that this can be used to determine a winner, even if they don't fully understand the process themselves. If you do try to explain Condorcet vote counting and use the term "pairwise matrix" or any of that, you'd taking the wrong tack. What you need to say is something as simple as, "We use the rankings to see if any given candidate could beat all the others head-to-head. Obviously that's the winner." Again, everyone can "get" this.
Basically, I agree with you. If you don't like the product then don't buy it. I was just trying to explain the plaintiff's rationale (which I believe I understand) to Mr. Underbridge.
The "problem" is that no one person is getting squeezed all that badly. I have to pay $25 for something that I think only ought to cost me $20. I'm getting other stuff for that extra $5, albeit undesired stuff. Still, $5 isn't that heavy a burden, so I put up with it. (Well, maybe grumble a little to family and on web boards.)
But when you think of how much extra money the cable company rakes in from this, it seems unjust. They can "spread the misery" as it were. $60/year of discontent is not so much, but if you look at it as maybe $5,000,000/year in (aggregate) discontent then maybe something should be done!
Personally, I'm in favor of just about anything that makes the true costs apparent to the end user. That's why I'd abolish the income tax (especially onerous when combined with automatic withholding, as it makes the high cost of gov't nearly invisible) and replace it with a sales tax.
Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?
It's more like suing the grocery store for selling you 4 eggs and 8 muffins in a carton for $1, when all you really want is the 4 eggs (even if you still have to pay $.75) and the $.25 candy bar--which you usually can't get without buying the $3 "upgrade" that includes another dozen muffins. I don't want the muffins, I don't need the muffins, I shouldn't have to pay for muffins!
That was Geo. Washington's hope, too. But the reality is that pooling resources makes too much sense, in almost every endeavor. One hopes that individuals don't disengage their brain cells upon joining a party, but human nature being what it is, that's almost too much to expect.
Members of any organization have to keep their minds open enough to criticize their own organization when needed. I have a healthy respect for whistleblowers.
Approval is easier to "game" by dishonest voters. It's very simple to just non-approve a guy you like in order to lower his standing relative to the most favored candidate. For example, if you like A and B in a field of A-E, you can vote for just A to make him look the best relative to the others. If everyone realizes this, we're back to exactly what we have now!
I don't think that Condorcet is actually that much more complex. The fact that you have to make your relative preferences explicit is its advantage over Approval. (It is possible to "game" Condorcet, but you have to have a very good knowledge of everyone else's preferences...and not just who the favorites are, but how the entire slate of results may come out.) Vote casting is very simple, and vote counting isn't that complex either...just laborious if you are going to do a hand count. Hopefully the need for hand counts would be limited to "spot checks" to verify accuracy of the machines.
Well, that's the reality of a fiat currency. It doesn't mean anything except someone else's willingness to accept it. Hard money (gold) always has some intrinsic value. It has valuable properties in and of itself.
Take a different issue (say, gun rights - you know, the one with which you can theoretically protect your other rights) and it's just the opposite - Dems violating the Constitution at nearly every turn. Fact is, both major parties routinely ignore it whenever convenient. If you're not voting third party, you're wasting your time. The country needs a reboot, and we won't get that by voting status quo.
Voting reform would be a great start. Anyone want to discuss the Condorcet method?
At the state level (both state and Congressional elections), the districts have been so gerrymandered, you get extremist after extremist.
Only in some states. Iowa, for example, has a state law against gerrymandering. The districts follow county lines as much as possible, and pretty much resemble simple convex polygons as much as that allows.
At the presidential level, any sane people get culled out even before the primaries. It's the media's fault here. Any sane person will occasionally suggest a solution that is diametrically opposed to the status quo, and the media will make that person out to be a lunatic when the exact opposite is true. What were left with is a choice between a small number of sociopathic megalomaniacs.
This much is (almost) completely true. There are the third parties. If you're not voting third party, just to try to dislodge the entrenched incumbent apparatus, you're wasting your vote.
No kidding. I've been hanging on to an older version of JOnAS just because I can't find a modern Java to run the newer ones with. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with some of the additions in Java 5, but the JVM continues to be refined and optimized, regardless of the language evolution.
Yes, that is precisely it. You wanted to keep HI money in HI, AK money in AK, etc. If we still had the truly federal system the Founder designed, that would probably be the case. But since the 17th (and other things) have destroyed that system, we have the mess we do, with wealth redistribution, federal pork, Federal Bureau Of What Kind Of Grass I Can Seed My Yard With, etc.
No, the legislatures always voted for the Senators prior to the 17th. ("Vote for me and I'll vote for Senate candidate X" was a common campaign promise of legislative candidates. The ethics of that may be dubious, but it makes it very apparent that the people did indeed—albeit indirectly—elect Senators.) You may be thinking of presidential elections, where pres. electors have (since about 1830, mostly) have been chosen by popular vote. Voting for Senators in the general election is what the 17th instituted.
There is more to the "balance" of gov't than just the internal divisions of Legi vs Judi vs Exec branches. Power is also balanced externally through federalism - the people are governed directly and simultaneously by two different entities, the state gov't and the federal gov't. Neither is superior or subordinate to the other, per se, because they have different realms of authority. There are certain areas of governance that the states cede to the USGov so that it can do its job effectively, but in theory, those responsibilities could be taken up again by the state if it were to secede.
This balance is seen directly in the structure of the federal gov't, by looking at how the Legi and Exec are chosen. In the Leg, Congress is bicameral. One house is enumerated proportionally by population and is chosen by directly popular vote so that We The People have a voice, but with a short (2-year) term knowing that people's opinions are fickle. The other is also selected by the people, but by proxy, through the legislatures of the states, and with every state having equal representation. That is, the state selects them, and the senators are accountable to the state government. Furthermore, state governors have the power to appoint a senator if there is a vacancy while the state legislature is in recess. Since the pool that selects them (state legislatures) should already represent "the best and wisest" of the general population, in theory the people elected Senators are rational, staid types that think long-term, not given to controversies of the moment, and for this reason are given longer (6-year) terms.
It's the nature of gov't to expand and perpetuate itself. Throughout history, virtually everyone realizes that gov't is a necessary evil. The philosophy at the time of the Founders believed that mankind had generally evil tendencies, so you needed to implement some kind of power establish rules and dole out punishments. But they realized that gov't is run by people who have the same evil tendencies, so gov't itself needs to be checked. How to do this? Federalism! Set two governments "against" each other. The people and the states see a mutual advantage in allying together in a Union, but that Union could itself become a detriment to any single state, and to protect against this the states have a voice at the table (in the Senate). No state is going to willingly sacrifice an equal seat at the table, and possibly become subordinated to another state or the national gov't, and no gov't is going to willingly give up any of its own authority over its citizens. This "tug of war" between the two, it was thought, should adequately protect the individual citizen from the excesses of either.
So when the 17th comes along and kicks one leg off the three-legged stool, the whole thing begins to topple. With Senators now a kind of super-representative, the state has no effective representation with which to counteract federal growth - the senators are now directly accountable to the populace. But they are not really accountable, because their district is the entire state - a Rep/Sen can be effectively held accountable by the 35k people in a House district (that was the original proportion), or the couple dozen (maybe a hundred or so) in a state legislature, but who honestly thinks that a Senator hears what any individual (out of the hundred thousands, or millions, in his state) says? A Senator knows that people have short memories (that's why the House has 2-year terms) so when election time comes around again, he goes on "good behavior" for the last 9 months and suckers us to vote for him again. Campaigning in a district with that many people takes a lot of time and money - this is why Senate races are disproportionately more expensive than House races. Where is that money coming from? Special interests and lobbyists, who take advantage of the 6-year term to get their will enacted. So if you want to get "big money" out of politics, if you see a "corporate stranglehold"
This is a case of the feds usurping state-level responsibilities and generally mucking about in state affairs. The 16th and 17th were the primary two changes to the federal structure that led to this kind of thing. They allow the fed to act virtually unchecked by the states (17th) and give it virtually unlimited money to do it (16th). Want to reign in the USGov? Repeal these two.
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And abortion is a death sentence.
I thought it was the name of the engineer who invented transparent aluminum.
Dude, where are you getting your Fair Tax info?
Yeah, it's designed to be revenue neutral. The whole thrust is greater transparency. Instead of having income tax pre-paid for you by withholding (sorta dishonest how millions of people say they make $X a year but only ever actually see about 70% of that), it is made very obvious how much tax you pay every time you pay at the register.
I'm all for making it clear how much money gov't is taking from us. Maybe we'd be a little more critical of how it spends (or wastes, depending on your POV) what it is taking from us, and whether it is really necessary.
There are plenty of people who think income shouldn't be taxed at all.
If you look at Robin Hood again, he was robbing from the government and giving (back) to the taxpayers. It's not a rich-vs-poor class struggle, it's a powerful-vs-powerless freedom struggle. Then, "rich" equated to "I run the government here", e.g. King John.
I care about the quality of my community. That's why I would like to keep gov't involvement as far away from it as possible.
You'd trust the media to be completely faithful and honest gatekeepers between the citizenry and the politicos? Pretty soon you'd see legislation limiting press access to only those outlets favorable to incumbents, etc.
Make the candidates get out and work for votes, I say: travelling, shaking hands, kissing babies. Yeah, that's gonna take money. As flawed as that might be, I'd take the method that gives me "direct" interaction with a candidate than one that only allows media-filtered access.
If you're trying to move a huge boulder, it makes sense for several people to work together on it. Pool resources. That's all. As long as this is true, we will have political parties.
What you actually do with that combined power, that's another issue.
Personally it's the anti-religious (not just areligious) types in the Democratic party that bother me. People that don't believe in a supernatural for whatever reason, OK, whatever, it's your life. People that have zero respect/tolerance for those that do, that want to stomp out expressions of faith just because they don't agree (such as yourself, it appears), are more worrisome.
It's not so much the primary system. The parties have the right to determine who their standard-bearer will be.
The problem is the use of plurality voting in the general elections. This assures the fact that only two parties will be seen as relevant. A single vote can only unambiguously choose between two things. The media shapes your opinion beforehand which two are the "real" choices, and you go pick between them - TweedleDum or TweedleDee.
We desperately need voting reform. I'm in favor of Condorcet methods, myself.
Reduce the power of government, and you'll immediately reduce the number of people trying to "buy" it and the amount of money flowing around for that purpose.
First, term limits are not a restriction on politicians, they are a restriction on people's freedom. If someone is doing a good job in office (difficult concept, I know!), why should we arbitrarily throw them out?
What we really need is a more expressive voting system, instead of common plurality voting. There are more than two points of view in any political system, yet we are stuck with a mere two parties because of it. Give people more freedom and implement Condorcet! The ballot box is the term limiter.
Second, politicians have to campaign, and if they don't get money from private interests, they'll have to get it from themselves (so we become a plutocracy) or they'll get it from government (and I don't think it's wise for government to be effectively choosing who its own successors will be if we want to maintain a democratic system).
IRV is about the only voting system I have found worse than simple plurality.
I haven't actually seen that many places where any alternative voting system is in use, so my objections to Approval (and Range voting in general) are mostly theoretical. If everyone is honest, it's not a bad system. But you can find many articles about "strategic voting" under an Approval/Range system. From my research, Condorcet is the least susceptible to strategic voting in practical use, and that is a major criterion, IMO. If you can't be honest with yourself at the ballot box, what's the point of democratic elections?
Isn't that the same thing, just stated differently?
This is a result of the above. When everyone sees that there are two dominant parties, because the system itself discourages anything else, they will "naturally" come to see other alternatives as a "waste". Change the voting method, and you change the dynamics. Change the dynamics, and you change the perception.
I see a lot of effort being expended on a switch to Approval, only to have it be ineffective because of the degeneracy factor. You'll likely only get one shot at major voting reform...you have to push for the very best option and make the jump.
Paper voting, aye. But I have nothing against machine tabulation as long as it is verifiable by hand. Granted, Condorcet could be tedious and time-consuming to hand count...but for a matter as important as who is leading our government, I think it is worth the effort. If the effort can be efficiently and accurately done by machine, great—as long as it can still be independently verified without machines.
And for the most part, I don't think one needs to go into a whole lot of detail about how counting works. Most people won't care. You only have to explain casting...and "put them in order, starting with 1 for first choice, tied ranks are OK" is very simple. So much so that most people will "get" that this can be used to determine a winner, even if they don't fully understand the process themselves. If you do try to explain Condorcet vote counting and use the term "pairwise matrix" or any of that, you'd taking the wrong tack. What you need to say is something as simple as, "We use the rankings to see if any given candidate could beat all the others head-to-head. Obviously that's the winner." Again, everyone can "get" this.
Basically, I agree with you. If you don't like the product then don't buy it. I was just trying to explain the plaintiff's rationale (which I believe I understand) to Mr. Underbridge.
The "problem" is that no one person is getting squeezed all that badly. I have to pay $25 for something that I think only ought to cost me $20. I'm getting other stuff for that extra $5, albeit undesired stuff. Still, $5 isn't that heavy a burden, so I put up with it. (Well, maybe grumble a little to family and on web boards.)
But when you think of how much extra money the cable company rakes in from this, it seems unjust. They can "spread the misery" as it were. $60/year of discontent is not so much, but if you look at it as maybe $5,000,000/year in (aggregate) discontent then maybe something should be done!
Personally, I'm in favor of just about anything that makes the true costs apparent to the end user. That's why I'd abolish the income tax (especially onerous when combined with automatic withholding, as it makes the high cost of gov't nearly invisible) and replace it with a sales tax.
It's more like suing the grocery store for selling you 4 eggs and 8 muffins in a carton for $1, when all you really want is the 4 eggs (even if you still have to pay $.75) and the $.25 candy bar--which you usually can't get without buying the $3 "upgrade" that includes another dozen muffins. I don't want the muffins, I don't need the muffins, I shouldn't have to pay for muffins!
That was Geo. Washington's hope, too. But the reality is that pooling resources makes too much sense, in almost every endeavor. One hopes that individuals don't disengage their brain cells upon joining a party, but human nature being what it is, that's almost too much to expect.
Members of any organization have to keep their minds open enough to criticize their own organization when needed. I have a healthy respect for whistleblowers.
Approval is easier to "game" by dishonest voters. It's very simple to just non-approve a guy you like in order to lower his standing relative to the most favored candidate. For example, if you like A and B in a field of A-E, you can vote for just A to make him look the best relative to the others. If everyone realizes this, we're back to exactly what we have now!
I don't think that Condorcet is actually that much more complex. The fact that you have to make your relative preferences explicit is its advantage over Approval. (It is possible to "game" Condorcet, but you have to have a very good knowledge of everyone else's preferences...and not just who the favorites are, but how the entire slate of results may come out.) Vote casting is very simple, and vote counting isn't that complex either...just laborious if you are going to do a hand count. Hopefully the need for hand counts would be limited to "spot checks" to verify accuracy of the machines.
Wish you hadn't posted that AC. It was a very good comment.
Well, that's the reality of a fiat currency. It doesn't mean anything except someone else's willingness to accept it. Hard money (gold) always has some intrinsic value. It has valuable properties in and of itself.
Take a different issue (say, gun rights - you know, the one with which you can theoretically protect your other rights) and it's just the opposite - Dems violating the Constitution at nearly every turn. Fact is, both major parties routinely ignore it whenever convenient. If you're not voting third party, you're wasting your time. The country needs a reboot, and we won't get that by voting status quo.
Couldn't possibly be because the music is crap, could it? Naaah...pirates!
No kidding. I've been hanging on to an older version of JOnAS just because I can't find a modern Java to run the newer ones with. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with some of the additions in Java 5, but the JVM continues to be refined and optimized, regardless of the language evolution.
Yes, that is precisely it. You wanted to keep HI money in HI, AK money in AK, etc. If we still had the truly federal system the Founder designed, that would probably be the case. But since the 17th (and other things) have destroyed that system, we have the mess we do, with wealth redistribution, federal pork, Federal Bureau Of What Kind Of Grass I Can Seed My Yard With, etc.
No, the legislatures always voted for the Senators prior to the 17th. ("Vote for me and I'll vote for Senate candidate X" was a common campaign promise of legislative candidates. The ethics of that may be dubious, but it makes it very apparent that the people did indeed—albeit indirectly—elect Senators.) You may be thinking of presidential elections, where pres. electors have (since about 1830, mostly) have been chosen by popular vote. Voting for Senators in the general election is what the 17th instituted.
There is more to the "balance" of gov't than just the internal divisions of Legi vs Judi vs Exec branches. Power is also balanced externally through federalism - the people are governed directly and simultaneously by two different entities, the state gov't and the federal gov't. Neither is superior or subordinate to the other, per se, because they have different realms of authority. There are certain areas of governance that the states cede to the USGov so that it can do its job effectively, but in theory, those responsibilities could be taken up again by the state if it were to secede.
This balance is seen directly in the structure of the federal gov't, by looking at how the Legi and Exec are chosen. In the Leg, Congress is bicameral. One house is enumerated proportionally by population and is chosen by directly popular vote so that We The People have a voice, but with a short (2-year) term knowing that people's opinions are fickle. The other is also selected by the people, but by proxy, through the legislatures of the states, and with every state having equal representation. That is, the state selects them, and the senators are accountable to the state government. Furthermore, state governors have the power to appoint a senator if there is a vacancy while the state legislature is in recess. Since the pool that selects them (state legislatures) should already represent "the best and wisest" of the general population, in theory the people elected Senators are rational, staid types that think long-term, not given to controversies of the moment, and for this reason are given longer (6-year) terms.
It's the nature of gov't to expand and perpetuate itself. Throughout history, virtually everyone realizes that gov't is a necessary evil. The philosophy at the time of the Founders believed that mankind had generally evil tendencies, so you needed to implement some kind of power establish rules and dole out punishments. But they realized that gov't is run by people who have the same evil tendencies, so gov't itself needs to be checked. How to do this? Federalism! Set two governments "against" each other. The people and the states see a mutual advantage in allying together in a Union, but that Union could itself become a detriment to any single state, and to protect against this the states have a voice at the table (in the Senate). No state is going to willingly sacrifice an equal seat at the table, and possibly become subordinated to another state or the national gov't, and no gov't is going to willingly give up any of its own authority over its citizens. This "tug of war" between the two, it was thought, should adequately protect the individual citizen from the excesses of either.
So when the 17th comes along and kicks one leg off the three-legged stool, the whole thing begins to topple. With Senators now a kind of super-representative, the state has no effective representation with which to counteract federal growth - the senators are now directly accountable to the populace. But they are not really accountable, because their district is the entire state - a Rep/Sen can be effectively held accountable by the 35k people in a House district (that was the original proportion), or the couple dozen (maybe a hundred or so) in a state legislature, but who honestly thinks that a Senator hears what any individual (out of the hundred thousands, or millions, in his state) says? A Senator knows that people have short memories (that's why the House has 2-year terms) so when election time comes around again, he goes on "good behavior" for the last 9 months and suckers us to vote for him again. Campaigning in a district with that many people takes a lot of time and money - this is why Senate races are disproportionately more expensive than House races. Where is that money coming from? Special interests and lobbyists, who take advantage of the 6-year term to get their will enacted. So if you want to get "big money" out of politics, if you see a "corporate stranglehold"
This is a case of the feds usurping state-level responsibilities and generally mucking about in state affairs. The 16th and 17th were the primary two changes to the federal structure that led to this kind of thing. They allow the fed to act virtually unchecked by the states (17th) and give it virtually unlimited money to do it (16th). Want to reign in the USGov? Repeal these two.