Juho Laatu wrote: > > > (I hope the role of public image > > > doesn't get so strong that people > > > would start thinking that their > > > whitened teeth and wide smile are > > > what they are, more than their > > > internal thoughts. :-) > > > > All of us shaking hands and kissing babies. :) > > Yes, usually that comes from the heart, > which is just a sign of health. :-)
I guess we're just bantering. If we were being serious, I'd say the necessity of the "whitened teeth and wide smile" dates from the advent of TV in politics. (Wasn't it Richard Nixon who first learned about that, back in the 60's or 70's?) So the systematic of image making is more on the side of mass media and mass voting - a problem in the status quo. And granted all is not problematic there, much is healthy too. I respect our arrangements. The problematic I would like to discuss, without quite knowing how, or with whom, is more on the social side. The proposed voting method itself has no systematic flaws, none we've been able to uncover to date (and maybe we need to wait for empirical data). But I can easily forsee social problems that may be released as an indirect consequence of it. We have tensions in our societies that are held in a frozen suspension by our political arrangements, not least by our voting methods. Some in this list who may ordinarilly be comfortable with discussing the social side of voting, may nevertheless be uncomfortable with discussing these particular tensions. Like Madison or Jefferson, who feared an unmoderated, unrestrained democracy, they might rather keep a lid on such issues. Yet, although it is simple enough to moderate and restrain discussion here in the list, it may no longer be possible to keep a lid on these issues in reality. The main axis of tension is probably the gross disparity in wealth, freedom and other goods that extends both locally (inter-class) and globally (inter-national). What will happen when that disparity is thematized in formal voting and discussion, and floated in political action? Locally, will people continue to accept the degree of inequality that our economic system seems to require, in order to keep on functioning and producing goods? And globally, if we open democracy to all the world's people, are we also prepared to open our borders to them? -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info