Friends are Electric

We hear a lot of talk about referendums these days, especially about how they are the most pure form of democracy which a society can have.  Direct democracy, it is argued, represents the true will of the people in creating consensus about how a society should move forward.

Now, anyone reading this after having read other posts I have written, will know that I am going to speak against direct democracy.  And naturally, one must question my stability upon attacking such a target.  Surely, everyone having an equal say in deciding the outcome of an important (or unimportant) question is the definition of a good democracy.  And obviously I am going to disagree, and hopefully, in the process of explaining why, bring you onto my side concerning this topic.

So let me begin.

The first reason why I disagree with the use of direct deomcracy is that it reduces political discourse to marketing.  And by this I mean the question posed to the public.  How do you pose the question? Which shall be the `yea’  side and which the `nay’.  This is an important consideration, as one has an obvious negative connotation.  Certianly, most people would not be affected by such a simple matter, but one cannot deny the complexity of the decision making process, perhaps such considerations should not be ignored.

Beyond which side shall be yes and which shall be no, the exact wording of the question becomes incredibly important.  If you can word the question correct you might be able to win people to your side.  Or just keep them from the opponents side.  If the question makes it sound treasonous to disagree, some might abstain rather than disagreeing.  Likely not many, but some.

All this highlights another important issue: oversimplification.  This works two ways.  First, the phrasing of the question can make  an answer seem obvious of gloss over the nuances of the actual situation.  The other, more dangerous, simplification is in the results.  55% in favour of a proposition is a majority.  The government can then go ahead and implement the proposition and disregard the detractors.  But 45% of people disagreed.  They have been silenced by the majority.  Thus, a false sense of agreement and support is created.

The final issue I shall discus for the time being is the public good.  This is a simple argument: direct democracy encourages selfishness, you are to vote how is best for you.  In a general election, since more than a single proposition is being voted on, you are more likely to vote along what is best for society as a whole.  Selfishness is the enemy of democracy, and referendums breed selfishness.

Those are some reasons why I dislike direct democracy and tremble when people call for greater use of it.  Tomorrow I shall discuss selfishness and its negative effect on democratic society.  Until then, think hard.

The courts got it wrong.  The people were selfish.  And now its all a mess.

Direct democracy is a wonderful thing.  People deciding what they want for themselves, not selecting someone who they hope will represent them.  A great thing indeed.  The voice of the people should be respected above almost everything else.

Why almost?  Because one of the most important principles of democracy is that the majority cannot remove the rights of the minority.  And this is what has happened.

You can bitch and whine and say that “NO! This was not a right they had and we can’t have taken it away for that reason!” And technically you would be correct.  But you have that right, and therefore everyone should have that right.  We are all equal, right?

That’s the theory.  But not today.

People: just because you think one thing does not make it right or wrong.  If you want a right or privilege, then everyone must have it.  Perhaps it is time to bring civics class back.  You do not have to agree on moral grounds but to pretend that actions such as this are democratic is shameful and disrespectful to democracy.

Do you want to live in a democracy or a dictatorship?  Ask yourself this and really thing.  A democracy means that everyone must be equal, even if granting such equality might be morally objectionable to you.  If you are not comfortable with this then stop lying to yourself and proclaim your beliefs for what they are: theocratic, authoritarian and foolish.  If you can accept that maybe, just maybe, people can be happy through lifestyles other than the one you have, then fight for democracy and fight for human rights.

The choice is yours, speak your mind.

I won’t necessarily agree with what you say but I will fight for your right to say it.

Just when I thought I was free I get dragged back into it.

So I keep hearing the arguments that people `did not vote for a coalition.’  This is true.  The fact is that they did not vote for the Conservative party either.

We vote for a person, not a party.  Now, most of us do vote based on the party of our choice, however we must realise that our perceptions will not change the reality of our electoral system.  You did not vote for a coalition.  You also did not vote for the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Marxist-Leninist or the Bloc Quebecois.  You vote for a single person who is theoretically supposed to represent your ideas.

Of course, not even I do this.  But I am mature and reasonable enough to realise what my vote actually means.  Please people, stop pretending that intention colours the meaning of the vote.  No individual belief or thought changes that you vote for a person, not a party.

Now we must understand this.  Anyone saying that they did not vote for a coalition is stating a fact, yes, but it does not carry the meaning they wish it to.  They are only revealing their ignorance to our electoral system or, perhaps, merely stating the obvious.  No one voted for a coalition, no one voted for the Conservative Party, no one voted for the Liberals, just as no one voted for any party.

Its just the way our government works.

Now that Parliament has been suspended for a month, it is time to examine the entire crisis as a whole.

Rick Mercer had a number of intelligent things to say on the subject.  He is essentially saying that Harper screwed up and is now clinging to power, while Dion is hell-bent on having his revenge on the Conservative Leader.

Werner Patels is saying that the NDP and its supporters are the biggest losers in the crisis, since as a member of the coalition, no one cares what Mr. Layton has to say.

I have seen people on both sides of the debate call the opposite fascists.

And I’ve seen Americans trying to explain the crisis.

On the whole, I am glad we now have a break.  Although I wish that all parties would stop spewing lies all over the place.  I can now sit back and digest exactly what happened, and perhaps muse on the best way to solve it all.  I’m still hoping that everyone can work together, but I somehow doubt that will happen.

Its time to talk politics again.  This whole ‘crisis’ is really trying my patience.  Especially the ignorance of those who seem to speak the loudest.  So, it is now time to set the record straight.

For some reason, the Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has been able to convince the masses that coalition governments are both immoral and illegal.  This is an utter fabrication.  Truthfully, Harper should have a coalition in Parliament at this very moment, since his party does not have a majority of the seats.  Furthermore, if a coalition wishes to form and have power, it is fully able to.  This is how our government is supposed to function.  Stephen Harper can behave as though he has a majority as much a he wishes, but in reality he has a minority government, and a weak one at that.

There has been talk that Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe were in collusion prior to the election, and perhaps even the Liberal Party was involved.  I do not know if this is the case, however, judging by seat distribution, I can guess that this is not the case.  One merely has to look to Italy since the mid 1990s to understand why this is the case.

In Italy, they have a multitude of parties but two ‘cartels,’ organisations of multiple parties which run elections in such a way that their power base is maximised.  It works like this: In riding A, there are up to 6 parties which wish to be elected.  This is far too many parties for any to gain a clear advantage.  Parties 1-3 are some variant socialists, parties 4-6 are some conservative variant.  They all differ on the Left-Right and GAL-TAN axis, but they share similar ideals.  For instance, you could have a Communist, Socialist and Social Democratic party in one group, a Conservative, Christian Democrat and Neofascist/Neoconservative party in the other.  Riding A has a traditional (TAN) bias and favours economic conservatism, but there are a large number of Catholics and the youth are somewhat radicalised.  Parties 1-3 know that alone they will not ever win, so they form a coalition and run one candidate between them.  Although the right-tan bias nets parties 4-6 60% of the vote, they divide it equally, leaving the coalition of parties 1-3 with the seat.  This behaviour obviously necessitates the same kind of behaviour on the TAN-right, which forms its own cartel and, by these numbers, would win the seat.  If any party leaves either of the cartels, the vote splitting would reduce both the leaving party and the cartel by a significant number of seats.

Because the NDP ran against Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois in the Federal Election this October, I can be fairly sure that they were not talking to each other beforehand.  And even if they were, so what.  If GAL values would be better promoted by a single party group instead of multiple parties then so be it.  The difference in votes in many riding would mean a vastly different result if the Liberals and NDP were really working together to form a coalition in the ways which Plurality requires.

Conclusion thus far: by the methods which our Plurality functions, the NDP, Bloc and Liberals were not in collusion prior to the election, although they perhaps should have.  Even if they were talking before hand, this is entirely legitimate.  I can recall a day when there were two conservative parties in Canada, they went through similar motions before unifying to the much stronger and more functional party they have today.

Anyone in Canada over the last week will know what this is about.  The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, issued an economic update to the budget he released last year.  The update’s purpose was to reflect the changing world economic situation and its effect on Canada.  Some information can be found here.

I am not going to say anything on the reaction to this, enough has been said.  However, I have not heard one particular argument as to why dropping the $1.95 per vote subsidy that each party gets to fund their operations.  The argument relates to our plurality system.

Like the United States and Great Briton, Canada runs on a plurality, rather than proportional, system.  This means that a candidate in a riding must only receive one more vote than the candidate with the second highest number of votes to be declared the winner in that riding and represent it in Parliament.  Even if 10 parties run and split the vote roughly equally, with one party receiving a few votes more than the others, that party gets the whole seat.  The other parties get nothing.  Except, of course, this subsidy.

It is a commonly known fact that in plurality based systems, votes are wasted.  What most people don’t realise is that they are wasted both ways.  Most people understand that if one party gets 40% of the vote, the second place one receives 35%, and a third party has 25%, then a full 60% of the people in that riding did not have their voices heard, since total popular vote doesn’t mean anything.  However, if there are three or more parties in a given riding, then every vote over the bare plurality of the second place parties vote count + 1 also counts to nothing, since the party already has been granted the seat.

Now, the person who’s vote was wasted on the winning side might not mind, since their vote might just as well have been one of the votes which allowed the candidate to win, but this still poses an interesting problem.  If the government is supposed to be democratically elected, yet in Canada’s roughly three party system up to 66% of the population could have no say in the formation of government.  (A truly frightening statistic is that, in such a three party system, a party can receive a majority if they get a bare plurality of about 34% in only 50% + 1 of the ridings, which works out to approximately 17% of the popular vote.)

So here is where the economic update comes in, specifically the fate of the $1.95.  So long as this subsidy exists then the otherwise wasted votes have meaning.  The Green Party may have gotten no seats, but they did receive a fairly large share of the popular vote, meaning they will receive a fair amount of money to keep their party alive to mount a campaign again another day.  By garnering roughly 7% of the national vote, they have proven that their platform has a level of support unheard of by most other niche issue parties.

I have seen a few comments around stating that the Conservative Party has the most to lose by this measure, and it is true that they will lose the largest dollar amount of all the parties.  However, they will be losing the lowest percentage amount compared to their total income intake in a given year.  Some have argued that the other parties should focus more on raising funds in other ways, especially donations.  My only thought on this is that a fiscally conservative party would likely have the wealthiest voter base.  There is nothing wrong with this.  Social Democratic parties like the NDP tend to focus more on those who would not be able to afford donations to political parties, while the Greens tend to be a party of the young, people who are using what money they have for schooling.  While these parties should probably focus more on fundraising, especially in light of this event, the fact remains that the Conservatives are better based to receive large amounts of funding from private persons.  We must remember that government must speak for everyone, not only those who can afford to keep their choice party afloat.

This issue, like so many others in Canadian democracy, should really not exist.  A diverse group of political parties ensures that all beliefs have the chance of being represented.   So long as a belief receives votes it is worthy of a continued existence, no matter if the people pushing it are willing or capable of funding it personally.  That is the true tragedy of this, Canada has a comparatively diverse political landscape when compared to other plurality countries.  This funding helps contribute to that, without it we would have fewer parties, fewer new ideas and a much more bland political culture.