Good Afternoon, Juho Curses!! When I returned Friday, ready to resume our discussion, I found a communications failure. A report to my "service-oriented" telephone company elicited a promise to repair the problem before 8 p.m. Monday. I didn't think they'd take nearly every minute of that to finish the job. Ohhh, the blessings of science ... no telephone ... no internet! If we ever have a hurricane, I'll be incommunicado for a month.
Ah, well, the kids came for a visit and that's better, anyway. re: "But trying to find better solutions (not just push one's own solutions that one might consider to be the best) ..." A cogent assertion. It will happen naturally when one's solution is rationally shown to be unsound. re: "The decisions that politicians make do involve large sums of money, and there are nice job opportunities and also publicity etc. In these circumstances it may be difficult to get through the buzzing crowd and meet the original intention of politics, to improve the system." But, as you said, "... this is how the system typically works". When such circumstances are deeply woven into the fabric of our political existence, they tend to be seen as 'inevitable', That dissuades many from believing it possible to correct them. In addition, the symptoms of corruption become so common we waste ourselves battling the symptoms instead of curing the disease. re: "In politics the dependences to various directions may easily get too strong." And THAT'S a fact ... but knowing it is not enough ... the question is how do we use the knowledge? We know these things work to our detriment and we lament them vigorously. We would do better to weaken the bonds that make them possible. It occurs to me you may think me one of those who pushes their own solution. It's a valid perception. I live in a once-great nation suffering the evils of an incestuous political system that long-since lost touch with the people. Yet, when I look among my peers, I don't find people carefully analyzing the causes of our system's breakdown. I find proposals for electoral methods like "delegable proxy" which will see votes sold on eBay before the ink is dry on the enabling legislation. The only proposal I've heard that would improve our political system is mandatory single-term limits for all elective offices. That will not eliminate the corruption inherent in partisan politics, but it will prevent the long-term rot that currently pervades our political infrastructure. Every impropriety in our system is traceable to acts of our legislatures, enacted by individuals whose obligations are to their party rather than to the people who elected them. That is the origin of our political plight. Clearly, the method by which our legislators are chosen is deficient. Studying the deficiency shows that allowing external entities to insinuate themselves between the people and their legislators is wrong. As we've seen in my country, it's more than wrong, it's devastating. You feel my estimate of 200 years to make a significant change in our political system is pessimistic. Perhaps, but so far it looks like it will take 199 of those years for the people to recognize the kudzu-like effects of partisan politics. By then, perhaps we'll have gained the wit to design an alternative that selects the best of our people and raises them to positions of leadership in our government. Fred ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
