"left" and "right" are ill-posed words

[Charlls]

The axis viewpoint which separates world into left and right is a way to oversimplify the problem, reducing both to a given color, or side (this is a neo-con, this is right-wing, this is left-wing, this is a commie, etc). Thats bs. Thats an excellent example how relevant info is removed and cleansed, until we have a completely harmless, aseptic, politically correct, empty and useless statement.

The right side argues that the state (political power) should not try to limit or control the economicals powers (the corporative freedoms), but these can mess with the political power thru the lobbyist activity. The left side argues that the state should limit and control the corporate freedoms, and offer basic services.

Deciding if a society must be either Pol Pot's camboya or a Imperialist industrial complex is as relevant as deciding the color and texture of the rope that is going to hang me

So all viable societies must lie in "something" in between; the question is, ¿Who has the word to decide where the "in-between" point lies?

What most of the people wants is a equilibrium point between the political and economical power. However its currently impossible for a very simple reason: the 'dollar' travels effortlessly thru the free market economy. the capitalist system relates 'dolar' as the unit of economical power. the stock market rules establish clearly that 'dolars' should have equals rights to compete for buying and selling stocks, which means capital its dinamical in a capitalist society, However, the 'vote' isnt dynamic at all in current pseudo-democratic societies; the democratic systems assures 'vote' as the unit of political power. It says you can offer your 'vote' to the political stocks (politicians) that offer in exchange to satisfy your demands. However (here is the gotcha) its removed the ability of my 'vote' to be withdrawed when a politician doesnt satisfy my demands, and give it freely to other politician.

Until we not reach that equilibrium point, societies will strive between the 'ideal' pure forms, or between artificial equilibrium point defined up to the taste of barely movable politicians that cannot be well punished or awarded by the voters, meanwhile, big corporations continue to evolve at a day-to-day pace, and continue to predate the political enviroment (citizens freedoms)

A system with these features, would achieve political and economical equilibrium at the same time, so the maniqueist idea of "left" and "right" will become an ill-posed problem

Democracies in a capitalist society only can be assured thru a continuous election system.

I see a electoral system where people can go any time of the year, and change their vote from a candidate to another; let it be a congressman, let it be the president. When that vote update occurs, the previous supported candidate drops by one, and the new supported increases by one. Whoever candidate with the biggest mayority of voters supporting him is the one in charge.

People right now CANNOT WITHDRAW ITS VOTE, and since Politicians know this, they only focus in obtaining the charge, thru the help of the Media Machine and Campaign propaganda, and they leave completely aside the actual implementation of their proposals.

With a continuous election system, Campaign will become also continuous, but it will slowly sink in the ambient noise of the mainstream advertisement.

Politicians will know that there are no "coming" elections, that if they want electors to move their asses and change/update their electoral support, they must really convince them there is a good reason for doing that.

Politicians will stop giving for granted their jobs, since electors can go any time of the year and remove them their support.

the hegemony of the bipartidism would stop being rigid; small parties could grow their support slowly but progressively, given they manage to gain the simpathy of those disconform with bipartidism formulas.

Vote support will drift dinamically, just as currently does Nasdaq, but now politicians would know, that is not enough to get power.

The most important part will be to keep it

[Brucey]

1. Your proposal is cumbersome and expensive, let's just switch to

proportional representation through a parliamentary style system.

[Charlls]

2. its implementation would be as expensive...

and as secure as the current bank account updating; a national network whose nodes are electoral offices; when voters update their political support, that change is updated to a repository

I dont think is that expensive, and definitely the gains make it worth them

[Maple]

3. I agree

Left and right wing are terms from the Cold war era...when left wing implied socialism, and rightwing implied capitalism.

The terms are no longer either accurate or useful.

Many countries now use the Third Way...a combination of socialism and capitalism. Private enterprise when that works best...and public enterprise when THAT works best.

People want practical solutions to problems now...without ideology getting in the way. Especially outdated ideology.

Third Way, Radical centrism, Mainstream, common sense, pragmatism....call it what you will...but the world no longer has two economic camps fighting each other.

[Charlls]

4. indeed, however...

the problem now lies in "who" decides how the combination is arranged; right now, it doesnt lie up to the people to decide

Even if we accept that fine-tuning control of the democracy by the citizens is almost impossible to implement, we at least need a way to citizens to quickly fire a bad politician and keep a good one as long as its needed...

and to remove that ugly campaign system, that gives emphasis to the image, the sympathy of the candidates instead of their proposals

[Maple]

5. We already have a method

for removing a politician. It's called an election.

The last thing we need is 'overnight' ratings on everything a politican ever does or says...especially since not one citizen in a million understands the budget, or defence, or development plans....and some kind of continuous neverending election that could be easily rigged.

In an era when few people even vote in regular electons....they aren't likely to self-poll....and the ones that do bother will control everything.

[Charlls]

6. continuous election doesnt mean continuous 'voting'

the system would work as this: you go to the electoral office and select your supporting candidates. From that moment, you dont have to do anything else to "vote", because you are already accounted supporting that candidate. When that candidate doesnt please you anymore, you go again to the office and update it again.

In particular this means that no matter if you "really care" or you "dont care", your vote weights exactly one, and no matter how often you update, you vote doesnt weight more, just "oscillates".

The system can be as easily rigged as a bank account, but now with the added difficulty that its really easy to verify that votes states are correct; its enough to do a random sampling of voters are queried for their vote support status and that is compared against the national repository.

I really dont buy that argument that people will change their vote because the president had a bad haircut or said something stupid; remember that people will still have to do a bureocratic procedure to update their vote, and its still a pain in the ass, no matter how efficiently is done. Most people will have to feel a bit of a commitment to update the vote.

About the fact that people dont go to elections; thats totally true. But compare the amount of people that go to elections to the amount of people that have a driving license. Maybe the fact that a driving license can be done almost anytime along the year helps a bit, dont you think?

[Maple]

7. This is

"When that candidate doesnt please you anymore, you go again to the office and update it."...a continuous election.

And the only people that will bother to do it, are those with a vested interest in removing that politician.

[Charlls]

8. but they will have to support an alternate option...

in order to remove him. If candidate A has 30% of the voters support, and candidate B has 20%, the ones that are interested in removing candidate A from office are most likely the ones that support B.

They will have to convince at least a 5% that are supporting candidate A to move their vote to candidate B

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. it would make planning very difficult

Politicians do have some plans when they get elected; if they had to constantly worry about their current popularity, they'd be in election mode all the time - when they tend to get least done. I think they'd get sick of this, as well as the electorate.

It'd also be difficult for other bodies (countries, governors and assemblies, and so on) to work with them - they'd not know who's going to be in charge from one month to the next.

Maybe if there are any Italians here they could comment - they used to have the reputation of governments only lasting a year or so, due to their election system. Most other countries thought it chaotic, and I think they've changed their laws a bit to prevent it, because they thought it wasn't working either. But I could have the wrong impression about that.

[Charlls]

10. you have a point...

in Italy there were governments that lasted 4 months. Some even a year. This is a historical remanent of the post-WWII era. They implemented a parlamentarian system where the president/prime minister is elected by the congress. Now, when the president stopped serving the needs of a important faction in the parlament, that meaned someone was getting soon his job. This indeed weakened the executive branch, so, trying to avoid the possibility of an authoritarian executive government, they created an authoritarian legislative one.

However, the number of citizens is various orders of magnitude greater than the number of congressmans. This means that changes dont happen suddenly, but they occur as a progressive drift in the electoral opinion, a binding electoral opinion.

Now, you say that this will make politicians focus on their popularity instead of the government. Is that right?

Well, yes and no. Believe me, the strategy of focusing on "popularity" wouldnt last as rewarding for politicians after a while. If you think about it, focusing on "popularity" isnt itself a very "popular" strategy. That only can work for getting the job, but after a while, people like politicians that do their job. When a big part of America trusted Bush about the Saddam-massive destruction ammo relation, they supported because they thought Bush was actually doing his job (at a moment was almost 70%). Now they are slowly realizing the deceit and this means they want him out. Now, do you agree that no matter how much Bush is going to try to lift the impression of having mocked his whole country, he is going out on 2004?


With a continuous election system, the "winning" strategy wouldnt be anymore to do a big campaign, and then do whatever you want; the strategy would be to govern with the same policies that gained the electoral support to get the job in the first place