Political Preference?
1.What country are you from?
2.What is the name your political party?
3.What is the parties ideology(left, right, centrist, libertarian, authoritarian, 3rd position)?
4.Explain in a rational, adult manor, why you choose to vote this way.
Although I'm firmly seated in my beliefs (especially fiscally), I find different points of view from various cultures extremely interesting.
This isn't a thread for teenage emotional angst, edgy remarks and/or mudslinging. I hope this ends up being informative.
Go
2.What is the name your political party?
3.What is the parties ideology(left, right, centrist, libertarian, authoritarian, 3rd position)?
4.Explain in a rational, adult manor, why you choose to vote this way.
Although I'm firmly seated in my beliefs (especially fiscally), I find different points of view from various cultures extremely interesting.
This isn't a thread for teenage emotional angst, edgy remarks and/or mudslinging. I hope this ends up being informative.
Go
1. United States
2. I lean more towards libertarian, as I see it as a balanced party that focuses on personal liberties rather than anything else.
3. Libertarian, as stated before.
4. I would choose to vote this way because, to me, it seems more logical that personal freedoms should be more protected.
(Note: I just woke up when I typed this, so it's not as detailed as I would like it to be. Also, I still have a few years before I can actually vote, as the previous election happened before I was a legal adult. This means I have more time to carefully gauge what I want in a political party rather than being swayed by false promises.)
2. I lean more towards libertarian, as I see it as a balanced party that focuses on personal liberties rather than anything else.
3. Libertarian, as stated before.
4. I would choose to vote this way because, to me, it seems more logical that personal freedoms should be more protected.
(Note: I just woke up when I typed this, so it's not as detailed as I would like it to be. Also, I still have a few years before I can actually vote, as the previous election happened before I was a legal adult. This means I have more time to carefully gauge what I want in a political party rather than being swayed by false promises.)
1. United States
2. Democrat
3. Left, though this is something I don't really get yet.
4. I vote this way because the Democratic party is actually trying to HELP the country, while the other party does everything they can to not let that happen.
I'm not really that involved in politics yet, but I just really hate the two party system. It's doing way more harm than good.
2. Democrat
3. Left, though this is something I don't really get yet.
4. I vote this way because the Democratic party is actually trying to HELP the country, while the other party does everything they can to not let that happen.
I'm not really that involved in politics yet, but I just really hate the two party system. It's doing way more harm than good.
There's always alternatives, such as the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, or whatever else is there.
1.This is self-evident.
2.I am a swinging voter, but tend to prefer the Liberal party.
3.The swinging party's ideologies vary between communes.
4.The Liberal party are nominally right-wing. I prefer them as a rule because they have a stronger focus on law and order and they maintain the country. The Labour party squander much money and try to buy the favour of the masses, but they are the innovators of Australia. Together, the two major parties manage to run a relatively successful Asian country. The swinging voter floats between parties depending on their policies and term goals and thus helps sustain political balance and keeps the polls guessing!
2.I am a swinging voter, but tend to prefer the Liberal party.
3.The swinging party's ideologies vary between communes.
4.The Liberal party are nominally right-wing. I prefer them as a rule because they have a stronger focus on law and order and they maintain the country. The Labour party squander much money and try to buy the favour of the masses, but they are the innovators of Australia. Together, the two major parties manage to run a relatively successful Asian country. The swinging voter floats between parties depending on their policies and term goals and thus helps sustain political balance and keeps the polls guessing!
While this essay probably won't convince anyone of anything, I don't have anything better to do at the moment, so I'll write it anyway. Enjoy. 
1. Netherlands
2. You wouldn't understand it, but (in English) it sounds a lot like something it isn't, so I shall refrain from writing it here.
3. We call it left, but I'm not sure if those terms mean the same everywhere.
4. Here we go:
Table of contents:
- How does an electoral democracy work?
- Why will there always be multiple parties?
- What are the main differences between parties?
- What are taxes good for?
- The problem of companies.
- What does this mean for me?
- Beyond electoral democracy.
Obviously, all of this is highly subjective; I'm writing my opinion here, not hard facts.
How does an electoral democracy work?
There is a group of people living together on a limited piece of land. There need to be some rules for what is and what isn't acceptable. Politicians are appointed to make those rules. Of course the question then is who is allowed to vote, and what is the weight of everyone's vote. The answer to this is a choice: in ancient democracies, there was some sort of elite (nobles, men, any limited group) with voting rights. Nowadays, most countries have chosen to give a single vote to every citizen. This implies that we, as a society, consider every citizen's opinion equally valuable. This may seem like a silly observation, but it is in fact important; read on.
The elected politicians are then expected to do whatever they think is good. Hopefully the voters will elect the people who are indeed going to do that (as opposed to being corrupt and filling their own pockets). Independent media have an important role there; they must show the voters what the politicians are really doing.
Why will there always be multiple parties?
For the moment, let's assume that all politicians are trying their best to do their job. Then there are several questions: is it their job to make the country as a whole (all citizens being equally valuable) flourish as much as they can make it, or should they only represent their own voters, and let the others be represented by the other politicians? And regardless of the answer to that, what is the best way to do this? Answers to that last question are choices, based on evaluating the value of certain outcomes (if the total money in the country increases, but the balance shifts so the poorest become poorer, is that a positive or a negative total effect?)
What parties should do, I think, is clearly state their position on this first question ("are they going to try to make life better for people who didn't vote for them?") and on a case by case basis, explain why they choose a certain option as the best possible path given a political situation ("Why should we (not) send our army to this place?", etc.)
Then the people can choose which party is closest to how they think society should be organized, and vote for it.
Again, all this assumes that politicians are all trying their best to do a good job, and journalists are trying to be as objective as they can, without pushing the vote one way or another by misrepresenting the facts. Unfortunately, both these assumptions are highly questionable in many countries.
What are the main differences between parties?
So let's talk about the Netherlands. There are many parties and many of them have some influence over the final decisions. However, I'll focus on the two main streams, which are called left and right. The left parties are trying to make a better world for all, so they will try to represent people who didn't vote for them. While concrete cases are always complex, the main way they evaluate a situation is by looking at the low end: something is an improvement if the people who have it bad are getting a better life. The main philosophy behind this is that the mighty (rich) people can take care of themselves; they don't need the government for making their lives better.
The right parties, on the other hand, seem to only represent their own voters (but I'm not entirely sure about that). They usually consider the sum of money when evaluating a situation: something is an improvement if the total amount of money in the country increases. This usually means that the differences increase, but they don't consider that a problem.
What are taxes good for?
The next thing to consider are taxes, because they are a main point of dispute between left and right parties. The government pays for everything it does from tax money. If you choose to have a big and powerful government, you automatically choose to have high taxes. Similarly, if you choose to have low taxes, you automatically have a government that is incapable of doing much.
So an important question for politicians is what the government should do, and what it should leave for private individuals and companies. Left parties generally say that everything which is for the common good should be done by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure (including roads and railroads, post, telephone and electricity), police and military, etc). Other things (farms, transport, shops, etc; things where one bad company only harms its own customers, and customers can reasonably choose a different company) are left to the market.
On the other hand, the right parties claim that the government is incapable of doing anything at all, and want as much as possible to be given to the free market, which does it all better. But there is a problem: companies don't really like the market to be free; they much rather have a monopoly and demand ridiculous amounts of money for things that people can't get elsewhere. Or they can try to confuse the information that people get, so they cannot properly compare different suppliers. When this happens, the good things of the free market (prices going down and quality going up) are not happening. So there must be an organization for checking that all the companies are playing fair. Obviously, only the government can run this organization; it can't be a private company. And running this organization is not easy: they have to know all the ways that companies might try to cheat, and see through all their dirty tricks. Running this organization is actually much harder than just doing the work yourself... But they claimed that the government was too stupid for that. Then they must certainly be too stupid for properly running the inspection as well. However, this is an insight that the right parties don't share. If anyone believes my logic is wrong, please comment.
The problem of companies.
But there is another problem with giving private companies control over common good services, and it's representation. If a company decides what to do with the railroads (or any other service), then every shareholder gets an equal vote, which is fundamentally different from every citizen. Moving all decisions for common good services to companies means that rich people get to choose what the country is doing, and poor people don't. Considering that every citizen's opinion is equally valuable, this is a very bad thing.
What does this mean for me?
If you've read all the above, it won't come as a surprise that I'm in favor of a strong government, which organizes all common good services. This automatically means significant taxes; I support those too (if they are used for such things, not for crazy projects like buying fighter planes for much more money than they're worth). But high taxes don't mean people will all be poor: public services paid for by taxes are free to use, so you save money there. Of course it's not really free; you're just paying in a different way. Taxes you pay are not "lost" money; it's used for good things, that you don't have to pay for when you use them.
As for who should pay the taxes, I think rich people should pay more than poor people. There should be a lower limit to income; even if you don't do anything, the government should give you that money, so you don't starve. There should also be an upper limit: if you manage to get more than that somehow, I want 100% tax over the excess. This upper limit may be very high, of course, but I think it is a good thing that income is eventually limited. Nobody is worth a million times more than somebody else, not even if that somebody else seems to be doing nothing all the time. So the upper limit could be a million times the lower limit.
Beyond electoral democracy.
So now it's time for some controversial statements. (Wasn't the former controversial? It's nothing compared to what's coming.
)
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. This is funny because it's true. Electoral democracy attracts people who want to rule the country, and the ones who survive their way to the top are often the worst you can get. This is why the assumption above, that all politicians are trying their best to do a good job, is so questionable.
A different system would be random selection; just randomly select a group of people each term who will have to drop whatever it is they were doing and rule the country for a while. Similar to how jury duty works in many countries. This would probably work much better than the current system, but it would still suffer from the problem that they know their term will end, and they may not care too much about what happens after that (although I have more faith in them than in power-hungry politicians in that respect).
There is yet another way to rule a country, which is not democratic at all: just randomly appoint someone, and let him rule the country until he dies (or decides to stop). Random selection could be as simple as "First-born son of the previous ruler", saving lots of money on administration; it doesn't really matter who it is, so there's no problem if it's all in one family. Good thing about knowing in advance who will be the ruler is that they can prepare themselves.
And for those who didn't notice yet, that person would be called a king. That's right; I have more faith in a king to rule my country than in elected politicians. How's that for controversy?
1. Netherlands
2. You wouldn't understand it, but (in English) it sounds a lot like something it isn't, so I shall refrain from writing it here.
3. We call it left, but I'm not sure if those terms mean the same everywhere.
4. Here we go:
Table of contents:
- How does an electoral democracy work?
- Why will there always be multiple parties?
- What are the main differences between parties?
- What are taxes good for?
- The problem of companies.
- What does this mean for me?
- Beyond electoral democracy.
Obviously, all of this is highly subjective; I'm writing my opinion here, not hard facts.
How does an electoral democracy work?
There is a group of people living together on a limited piece of land. There need to be some rules for what is and what isn't acceptable. Politicians are appointed to make those rules. Of course the question then is who is allowed to vote, and what is the weight of everyone's vote. The answer to this is a choice: in ancient democracies, there was some sort of elite (nobles, men, any limited group) with voting rights. Nowadays, most countries have chosen to give a single vote to every citizen. This implies that we, as a society, consider every citizen's opinion equally valuable. This may seem like a silly observation, but it is in fact important; read on.
The elected politicians are then expected to do whatever they think is good. Hopefully the voters will elect the people who are indeed going to do that (as opposed to being corrupt and filling their own pockets). Independent media have an important role there; they must show the voters what the politicians are really doing.
Why will there always be multiple parties?
For the moment, let's assume that all politicians are trying their best to do their job. Then there are several questions: is it their job to make the country as a whole (all citizens being equally valuable) flourish as much as they can make it, or should they only represent their own voters, and let the others be represented by the other politicians? And regardless of the answer to that, what is the best way to do this? Answers to that last question are choices, based on evaluating the value of certain outcomes (if the total money in the country increases, but the balance shifts so the poorest become poorer, is that a positive or a negative total effect?)
What parties should do, I think, is clearly state their position on this first question ("are they going to try to make life better for people who didn't vote for them?") and on a case by case basis, explain why they choose a certain option as the best possible path given a political situation ("Why should we (not) send our army to this place?", etc.)
Then the people can choose which party is closest to how they think society should be organized, and vote for it.
Again, all this assumes that politicians are all trying their best to do a good job, and journalists are trying to be as objective as they can, without pushing the vote one way or another by misrepresenting the facts. Unfortunately, both these assumptions are highly questionable in many countries.
What are the main differences between parties?
So let's talk about the Netherlands. There are many parties and many of them have some influence over the final decisions. However, I'll focus on the two main streams, which are called left and right. The left parties are trying to make a better world for all, so they will try to represent people who didn't vote for them. While concrete cases are always complex, the main way they evaluate a situation is by looking at the low end: something is an improvement if the people who have it bad are getting a better life. The main philosophy behind this is that the mighty (rich) people can take care of themselves; they don't need the government for making their lives better.
The right parties, on the other hand, seem to only represent their own voters (but I'm not entirely sure about that). They usually consider the sum of money when evaluating a situation: something is an improvement if the total amount of money in the country increases. This usually means that the differences increase, but they don't consider that a problem.
What are taxes good for?
The next thing to consider are taxes, because they are a main point of dispute between left and right parties. The government pays for everything it does from tax money. If you choose to have a big and powerful government, you automatically choose to have high taxes. Similarly, if you choose to have low taxes, you automatically have a government that is incapable of doing much.
So an important question for politicians is what the government should do, and what it should leave for private individuals and companies. Left parties generally say that everything which is for the common good should be done by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure (including roads and railroads, post, telephone and electricity), police and military, etc). Other things (farms, transport, shops, etc; things where one bad company only harms its own customers, and customers can reasonably choose a different company) are left to the market.
On the other hand, the right parties claim that the government is incapable of doing anything at all, and want as much as possible to be given to the free market, which does it all better. But there is a problem: companies don't really like the market to be free; they much rather have a monopoly and demand ridiculous amounts of money for things that people can't get elsewhere. Or they can try to confuse the information that people get, so they cannot properly compare different suppliers. When this happens, the good things of the free market (prices going down and quality going up) are not happening. So there must be an organization for checking that all the companies are playing fair. Obviously, only the government can run this organization; it can't be a private company. And running this organization is not easy: they have to know all the ways that companies might try to cheat, and see through all their dirty tricks. Running this organization is actually much harder than just doing the work yourself... But they claimed that the government was too stupid for that. Then they must certainly be too stupid for properly running the inspection as well. However, this is an insight that the right parties don't share. If anyone believes my logic is wrong, please comment.
The problem of companies.
But there is another problem with giving private companies control over common good services, and it's representation. If a company decides what to do with the railroads (or any other service), then every shareholder gets an equal vote, which is fundamentally different from every citizen. Moving all decisions for common good services to companies means that rich people get to choose what the country is doing, and poor people don't. Considering that every citizen's opinion is equally valuable, this is a very bad thing.
What does this mean for me?
If you've read all the above, it won't come as a surprise that I'm in favor of a strong government, which organizes all common good services. This automatically means significant taxes; I support those too (if they are used for such things, not for crazy projects like buying fighter planes for much more money than they're worth). But high taxes don't mean people will all be poor: public services paid for by taxes are free to use, so you save money there. Of course it's not really free; you're just paying in a different way. Taxes you pay are not "lost" money; it's used for good things, that you don't have to pay for when you use them.
As for who should pay the taxes, I think rich people should pay more than poor people. There should be a lower limit to income; even if you don't do anything, the government should give you that money, so you don't starve. There should also be an upper limit: if you manage to get more than that somehow, I want 100% tax over the excess. This upper limit may be very high, of course, but I think it is a good thing that income is eventually limited. Nobody is worth a million times more than somebody else, not even if that somebody else seems to be doing nothing all the time. So the upper limit could be a million times the lower limit.
Beyond electoral democracy.
So now it's time for some controversial statements. (Wasn't the former controversial? It's nothing compared to what's coming.
)In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. This is funny because it's true. Electoral democracy attracts people who want to rule the country, and the ones who survive their way to the top are often the worst you can get. This is why the assumption above, that all politicians are trying their best to do a good job, is so questionable.
A different system would be random selection; just randomly select a group of people each term who will have to drop whatever it is they were doing and rule the country for a while. Similar to how jury duty works in many countries. This would probably work much better than the current system, but it would still suffer from the problem that they know their term will end, and they may not care too much about what happens after that (although I have more faith in them than in power-hungry politicians in that respect).
There is yet another way to rule a country, which is not democratic at all: just randomly appoint someone, and let him rule the country until he dies (or decides to stop). Random selection could be as simple as "First-born son of the previous ruler", saving lots of money on administration; it doesn't really matter who it is, so there's no problem if it's all in one family. Good thing about knowing in advance who will be the ruler is that they can prepare themselves.
And for those who didn't notice yet, that person would be called a king. That's right; I have more faith in a king to rule my country than in elected politicians. How's that for controversy?
The obvious bias is strong in this thread
The obvious bias is strong in this thread
I had hoped for a more insightful reply than a cryptic remark (which I don't even understand... I think the stated opinions are distributed about evenly; only I used way more words than anyone else).
I expect people who claim to like libertarians (that would be TheRainmaker and KrisKnox, I think) to quite strongly disagree with my statements. However, I have never really understood what is the basis of this disagreement, so I am very interested to hear what you guys think is incorrect in my analysis, or what values that are implicit in my statements you do not share.
You asked for an interesting discussion (well, strictly speaking you didn't ask for a discussion, but I'm assuming you meant it); please do share your own thoughts as well!
I had hoped for a more insightful reply than a cryptic remark (which I don't even understand... I think the stated opinions are distributed about evenly; only I used way more words than anyone else).
I expect people who claim to like libertarians (that would be TheRainmaker and KrisKnox, I think) to quite strongly disagree with my statements. However, I have never really understood what is the basis of this disagreement, so I am very interested to hear what you guys think is incorrect in my analysis, or what values that are implicit in my statements you do not share.
You asked for an interesting discussion (well, strictly speaking you didn't ask for a discussion, but I'm assuming you meant it); please do share your own thoughts as well!
I vote this way because the Democratic party is actually trying to HELP the country, while the other party does everything they can to not let that happen.
That's whats wrong. I want to learn, not hear that the opposite party is trying to destroy the country.
That's whats wrong. I want to learn, not hear that the opposite party is trying to destroy the country.
Yeah, the two party system is ducked up. It's causing too much harm to our country. Our education system sucks, and all our money goes to the military, which is why we're tens of trillions of dollars in debt. George Washington saw this coming, the two party system is ruining us. One is looking out for the people, while the other...isn't.
I hate politics
I hate politics
Ehhh, I don't think either party is really "looking out for us".
I hate politics too.
I hate politics too.
Well, the Democratic Party is actually trying to pass some laws and other things that could potentially help our economy, help the people, etc., and the Republicans are just blocking everything just because they can. They have no interest in helping anyone but themselves. And it's just ducking stupid.
Haha that was great. And sadly true for the most part. Again, I hate politics.
1.What country are you from?
Australia
2.What is the name your political party?
I support Labor.(ALP)
3.What is the parties ideology(left, right, centrist, libertarian, authoritarian, 3rd position)?
Various factions: left, right and centre.
4.Explain in a rational, adult manner(sp), why you choose to vote this way.
My Dad is a long time member of the party. Even had official positions while being a trade union organiser. He even ran for Federal politics, increased the vote in his electorate, wanted to recontest but the party prefered another guy. That kinda soured his attitude but he would NEVER vote any other way. Same with me. The alternative, conservative parties don't represent my interests.
Like my Dad i would call myself centre left. He has instilled this position into me and my siblings.
Now what does this have to do with Dink lol?
Does it mean according to my political preference I will play differently? lol
Australia
2.What is the name your political party?
I support Labor.(ALP)
3.What is the parties ideology(left, right, centrist, libertarian, authoritarian, 3rd position)?
Various factions: left, right and centre.
4.Explain in a rational, adult manner(sp), why you choose to vote this way.
My Dad is a long time member of the party. Even had official positions while being a trade union organiser. He even ran for Federal politics, increased the vote in his electorate, wanted to recontest but the party prefered another guy. That kinda soured his attitude but he would NEVER vote any other way. Same with me. The alternative, conservative parties don't represent my interests.
Like my Dad i would call myself centre left. He has instilled this position into me and my siblings.
Now what does this have to do with Dink lol?
Does it mean according to my political preference I will play differently? lol
These questions seems to assume that a person's political party would be indicative of their beliefs or voting habits. That's very unrealistic for people who have they misfortune to live in a country with only one or two parties of any significance.
