The ruling coalition has adopted an interesting strategy of outsourcing both governance and PR to Wile E. Coyote in the last few months, so the current climate is as favorable to the Pirates as possible.
It'll certainly revert towards the mean, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them hold 7 or 8 seats in the next elections (out of 60-ish).
Their support was 5.10% in the last elections which were in the summer of 2013.
In the national elections Iceland is split up into six constituencies which hold certain amounts of seats in parliament. At the moment this (slightly) favours the four constituencies outside of the capital which also favours the 'old block' of parties which are more popular in the countryside/rural areas/small towns.
This survey is showing a big backlash agains those in charge after a string of controversial decisions and corruption allegations. The thing is though that I doubt this backlash will last for two more years. But I'm quite sure that the pirate party will at least double the amount of seats (they have 3 now).
> I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet.
No, they are actually quite decent people. Birgitta has been an advocate of term limits and intends to not run again (even if term limits are not imposed). She is an artist and has been a consistent defender of the average citizen. Jón Þór is in his first term and has decided to step down mid-term to allow his replacement time to acclimate to Parliament before the next election (which is in 2017, barring public uprising). Helgi Hrafn has indicated he intends not to run again. All of them are passionate about the outcome of the next election and intend to give support to the running candidates.
Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns.
Grassroots for the Pirates is very active and these public servants, truly are serving the public, not the party.
I think you aren't reading what I wrote. Let me rephrase: When the party is peaking and could be on the cusp of being one of the majority parties, the elected officials are turning the reins over to other people. This is as antithetical to institutional corruption as is possible.
If the good people turn the reins over to other people, then it's a cycle that goes on happily until the reins have been passed over to people who'll do anything to stay in power - it's nice but not sustainable in the long term.
> Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns.
Well, the funding that the parties in charge and their members of parliament got from the fisheries in the last elections can be considered a form of bribery. Especially when one of their first works in office was to make sure the fisheries make more money by paying less tax. (This issue is more complicated though).
No, the wouldn't. As an ex PP-er (HR), i can say that the major problem in the vast majority of the PPs are that they are literally "too liberal." The differences in how individual members perceive what PP is and should be, are so great that they tear the party apart. From what I've seen (and I've met them), PP-IS is one of the rare which has managed to achieve enough homogeneity of core members which is needed for practical work and progress.
tl;dr: You can't have an organisation where everyone wants to do things differently.
I think that diversity wouldn't be the problem, when liquid feedback would work. But communication in the PP is really slow relative to their tech based democratic goals. The process to get a clear statement is too slow.
I think this is interesting but I'm not sure I follow.
So by increasing communication speed, diversity is less of a problem ?
I guess my question is what is implied by communication speed ?
I think I'm missing something about the implications because it doesn't seem like communication speed would change anything, if the members are really stubborn.
Yes, but they would then know, that they are stubborn. Actually, there are so many individual people in the pirate party because they think the pirate party is doing what the individual does. Teaching them otherwise makes a difference. But this requires lots of communication and since we all have digital dementia and are quick to bore, we better do this quick and often.
Fast communication is actually just a feature for the outer world to tell them, what we work for, in time. Too often it isn't clear what we stand for to a fresh topic. The media is complaining and the reader starts to think badly about us.
Can there be a clear statement in a group whose members are different enough that it clearly doesn't have a common one?
Electronic democracy solves precisely nothing in practice because democracy is not about technology and mathematics, it's about the people.
What if you have a 50%+1 majority on your vote, and the other 50%-1 of the people are so actively against it and bitter that there is no way they will accept the result of the vote, let even cooperate? And by "50%+1" I don't mean 11 votes vs 10 votes in your library group, I mean like 100,000 votes for one side and 99,999 votes for the other. Can you seriously consider that the first side won the vote? Can you seriously do anything practical with 50%-1 members opposing you?
That is what was (and I think still is) happening in PP parties.
And on top of that there's all the usual issue of large-ish scale politics, with blocks forming, with small but screamingly loud minorities, etc. etc. which now, because of the digital medium each require attention. Do you wish to participate in a forum where you MUST, by the way of the forum's statutes, listen even to the most vitriolic, uneducated, screaming lunatic trolls, and be expected that you deal with those situations politely with "Thank you for your input. if 50% of the members agree with your idea to make tin-foil-hats mandatory, and declare war on Kazakhstan, we will."? Even if you are, a couple of years of that happening every single day will probably erode that attitude. Hence, no "sane" members, hence no votes.
Actually, to get something in german's pirate party program, there must be a 66% majority.
Hm. I never heard of blocks in the pirate party. Luckily, it seems that the core pirates are too liberal for that. Things could go wrong, but then we simply start a new party.
And yes, we must listen to everyone. Whatever troll it might be. You must listen them to tell them otherwise and to learn from them. It might be the only way a democracy can function well.
I blame the early influx from members of various other parties (though mostly Greens and the left-wing party "Die Linke").
I don't necessarily disagree with their views, but it helped water the identity of the party down to a level that made it indistinguishable from other liberal groups. Initially the PP also saw some influx from more conservative parties, which created an unstable equilibrium. Now it's just participating around in the usual left-wing infighting (vegans vs vegetarians, feminists vs egalitarians, and so on).
I think part of the reason is that Germans expect parties to cover more than "one issue" (even if that issue is as broad as the entire concept of "an open information infrastructure with a transparent government and strong personal privacy"), so there was an early effort to create a "full programme" covering virtually anything. We'd probably be better off if we had specialised interest groups instead of shrinkwrapped parties. But good luck making democracy more direct and modular when there is a centuries old legacy that portrays anything other than the existing faction-based system as unconstitutional and therefore evil.
well, this is great news, im not sure weve had a real government since jfk tho. i dont think afghans were insurgants anymore, i think we were killing residents, and im really sad.
This is very interesting. I hope they can implement some of their ideas in the areas of an online democracy, where voting becomes more informed, and decisions more transparent [1,2]
Iceland could be the first country with a "liquid democracy" [2]
This looks like an amazing tool to fight corruption and improve politics in general. Iceland seems to be a perfect place to test those ideas on a nation-wide basis, seeing how it's small, cohesive and tech-friendly.
With online democracy, would this make it extremely easy for NSA/GCHQ to manipulate the votes? GCHQ is already known to manipulate online voting and mass install malware.
I don't have the exact link, look through firstlook.org's documents. There was a leaked slideshow about it. As to avoid confusion, it's worth noting that it was social media vote manipulation, not general election manipulation.
I think it's in the same document as the "Mass propaganda" / "Discredit an company/individual" slides.
Meanwhile in Germany the pirate party is once again completely irrelevant. Thanks to the debate culture of mailing lists and twitter, fractionism, us-vs-them thinking and the refusal to throw trolls/idiots out of the party. And a hole lot of feminism drama helped.
The German pirate party is in the peculiar spot where communists, nazis, feminists, men's rights activists, liberals and conservatives are all convinced they're too radical.
Why doesn't men's rights activists call themselves masculinists? Easy way to use language to redefine feminism as a women-only thing. Easy points. And then conventional feminism could be redefined as equalism or whatever and the language pedantic in me would rest easy.
As you can see it seems even the Romans did not like to make derivations from the old, old word "vir" (also see etymology for "world").
Feminine is from 'femininus', not 'femina'.
Masculine is from 'mas' -> 'masculus' (diminutive of 'mas') -> 'masculinus', not 'vir'.
'Mas' was never used to mean "man", only "male".
If instead of "feminism", the movement were called "femininism", then the opposite would indeed be "masculinism" as you suggest. But the opposite of "feminism" must be "virilism".
No, it's the exact opposite. It's a place where all these are welcome. Denie the holocaust, fine you can stay in the party. On the left side, celebrate war crimes? Fine. Which does not leave any potential for voters either.
> No, it's the exact opposite. It's a place where all these are welcome.
Yeah, so left-wing voters avoid the party because of the right-wing extremists in it; right-wing voters avoid it because of its left-wing extremists; …
Yes. Stresses the point it was almost impossbile to get thrown out. IMO the failure of the pirate party was the result of the refusal to excude anybody. Absolutely no standard of decency or adherence to any kind of policy or political agenda was required. For Mailinglist or webforums that works quite well. But not for a political party, these require some kind of shared values. Not feeding the trolls is pointless if the newspapers are feeding them.
Well, in Germany you have die Linke, who are considerably better organised and generally on the right side of "internet" issues. So the pirate party is less necessary and more of a swamp of cranks.
Die Linke ist just the rebranded KPD (Communist Party), which was later transformed into the SED (Socialist Party of the former GDR) and is now Die Linke.
They might be on the right side of internet issues, but they are very much on the wrong side of much more important issues.
Die Linke is an amalgamation of a lot of parties, among them the former left wing of the SPD (shortly independent as WASG), and purged 95% of its former SED members during reunification.
Sure, they're communists. But they're not the same as the Stalinist, Soviet-controlled SED.
And yet to this very day they refuse to condemn the acts of the GDR. They're nothing but a bunch of populists who will tell you anything to get your vote. I found an election campaign some years ago where they were running two different posters especially amusing. One read: "Wealth for everyone" and the other read: "Tax wealth!". So, what they really want are more taxes for everyone?
Makes perfect sense to me. Tax the wealthy, use the extra income to fight poverty, creating a baseline of wealth for everyone. More or less the policy of every social democratic party ever.
Knowing when to shut up is the major difference that determines if your opinion will be treated by others as 'non-mainstream but interesting' or 'weird radical quack'.
It definitely does make you more fit for government.
If I support opinion X and want it to succeed, I should work hard to ensure that those who support X but don't know when to shut up get ignored, ostracised and removed from any public speaking positions in "my party"; so that in the public discourse the supporters of opinion X are represented by people who know when to shut up - because they will help X, but the cranks (with good motivation) will only hurt the cause.
Similarly, if two parties both support X but one doesn't know when to shut up, then you should vote and support only the other party and weaken the too-radical one.
Meh. Knowing people active in most bigger German political parties and the inside scoop they talk about, they pretty much all have the same amount of cranks. Just varying levels of PR budget to cover it up, plus better structures to prevent them from getting relevant.
I went to Berlin, and the Pirate Party had a bunch of stupid anti-housing-construction posters up (like you see from the NIMBYs in SF). Seems that they have drifted from their origins of internet freedom. Reminds me of Occupy SF- it started out as a group of motivated, charismatic people trying to get the thieves in the banks jailed, ended up with random crazies blathering about chemtrails in the general assembly for half an hour and shooting up in tents.
It was even worse. Occupy did never chant slogans in favour of banks. The Berlin pirate party had influential members that did advocate Internet censorship. (For non culture sensitive stuff)
So a little background, this looks like backlash from a few very controversial decisions the government has made recently and recent corruption allegations.
The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections.
This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change.
It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time!
*The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.
> *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.
I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.
It seems reasonably clear that the foreign minister had no legal authority to act on behalf of the parliament though. I live in Iceland, if I told the EU to bugger off, I don't expect they'd actually do it.
> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics'
It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.
Well I'm afraid that we will see a extreme right party in the next elections and I wouldn't be surprised if they got 1 seat in parliament. The progress party made some vague statements which were interpreted (and rightly so) as islamophobic in the last city council elections and that brought them two seats in the council. Before they made those statements they were looking at no seats so there definitely are people that will vote for extreme right ideals.
Well, but that result can be considered a good thing - okay, you have a block of voters with opinions that you despise; but now instead of being outside the estabilishment they now have a seat or two to voice their concerns, but everyone knows exactly how small that minority is and the mainstream parties can finally start ignoring that block of voters since they'll vote for that extreme right party anyways.
That's mainly because Iceland doesn't have the insane, self-destructive immigration policies a lot of other European countries are currently practicing. That and the constant stream of radical wannabe-communists, which usually come with left-wing politics, are the reason many people turn to the right and extreme right.
I don't understand this logic. Are you saying that if ethnic European people are exposed to Africans or Arabs they will by default become racists? Or that if people are exposed to communism they will by default become Nazis?
The poster is saying that, short term, social change (immigration or political upheaval) brings about a reaction in favor of what is seen as conservative or hardline traditionalists. In many European countries this is a shift to the right. For example Hitler's rise to power was probably aided by Communists attempting to seize power. I'm not sure this is a general rule.
That's mainly because Iceland doesn't have the insane, self-destructive immigration policies a lot of other European countries are currently practicing
Ah, so they have a much more open policy allowing free movement of labour? That is far saner!
It worked for the US and Europe for 100 years of peace after Napoleon - there were no passports and there was free movement of labor. Were they all insane? Were they less sane than we are now, x-raying people before they pass a virtual line on a map?
Could you elaborate on what's "extreme" about SYRIZA? Some of them have their roots in communist parties, but their actual politics today seem very close to the politics of most european social democratic parties 20-30 years ago.
They aren't talking about revolution, a dictatorship of the proletarians or anything like this, they just think that Greece should default rather than living on unsustainable credits forever, that the Greek tax code should be changed and that corruption should be reduced. What's "extreme" about that?
Right now Grease gets more new loans / year than they pay out in interest payments. So their debt keeps growing until their next default / restructuring. It’s a vicious cycle.
On the other hand if they defaulted and did not need to make interest payments, but could not make new loans their cash flow would be worse off. But, they would have a reasonable path to long term prosperity by simply keeping their books balanced.
Of course there is always the 3rd option of defaulting and then trying to make new loans and default again. But their already getting free money from the EU so there is little point in doing this now.
Basically the sovereign-country version of declaring bankruptcy, yes, except that it's messier because there is no bankruptcy court with jurisdiction to oversee it. You declare that you can't pay some or all of the outstanding debts, the creditors take a loss, your credit is ruined for the near-term future, some of it possibly ends up in various courts.
Alternately, you use the threat of that default to renegotiate the debt on more favorable terms. This also happens with personal bankruptcy, though the situations aren't quite analogous (some creditors will negotiate a more favorable repayment plan with debtors who seem like they might otherwise declare bankruptcy).
Unfortunately for Greece, afaict they have less leverage now than they did in 2010. At the time, much of their debt was held by German and French banks, so there was a mutually assured destruction angle. France/Germany would probably not sit by and let their large banks go down with the ship in the case of a Greek bankruptcy. So they would be forced to bail out the situation one way or the other, either bailing out Greece and thereby indirectly bailing out their banks by giving Greece money to pay them, or letting Greece default and then bailing out their banks directly. Now most of the debt has been moved to institutional holdings (the European Central Bank, IMF, etc.) as part of the bailout, which is less directly threatening. Probably Greece should've bargained harder at the time, but the previous government was a bit spineless.
SYRIZA is extreme in that it appears not to live in a proper economic reality. They can not keep the promises they made in the election by forcing the EU to loan them money on Greece's terms. Anytime the EU gets sick of demands from Greece, the EU will simply turn off the flow of money to Greece and then Greece will collapse.
That's a reasonable criticism, but I think quite different from ideological extremism. Their problem, at least at the level of the leadership, is more just populism: they are telling Greeks many things that Greeks want to hear, which are mutually inconsistent. If anything the leadership lacks much of a hard ideological conviction, mixing together an eclectic combination of leftish economic sentiment with rightish nationalist sentiment, and a kind of paradoxical pro-EU/pro-euro position fitting uncomfortably with both of those. Hence there is this weird mixture of demanding German war reparations on the one hand (a completely counterproductive negotiating tactic purely for domestic nationalist consumption), trying to renegotiate the debt in a fairly technocratic/moderate way (into GDP-linked bonds) on the 2nd hand, a weirdly brash personal style on the 3rd hand which works badly with #2, a "red line" of no exiting the Euro on the 4th hand which restricts options considerably but is popular in Greece, and a bunch of electoral promises of the usual bread-and-wages kind on the 5th hand, which the combination of positions 1-4 leaves them virtually no room to actually enact. This all works very well for domestic politics, and the Syriza–ANEL coalition, a coalition of a large left-wing populist and a smaller right-wing populist party, is actually considerably more popular now than when they were elected. But it's not clear it is a winning strategy.
The actual left of Syriza has become very critical internally over that line, which they see as incoherent and not in tune with reality: in their view, the line Tsipras/Varoufakis are attempting to take just won't work, because it wants to promise staying in the Euro and then also a bunch of things that are incompatible with staying in the Euro, but won't admit that you need to pick one. Here is one interview with a left-wing Syriza MP, criticizing them along those lines: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/lapavitsas-varoufakis-gre.... You can differ over whether this line would be better, but I think it's more grounded in reality; Lapavitsas (the interview subject) imo much more clearly understands the concrete situation and what can and can't be done, and doesn't promise glibly that everything is simultaneously possible.
The problem is that everything on the right is called extreme right at the moment. Saying "I love my country" makes you some kind of fascist.
Patriotism is seen as some kind of wrong thing as it could be taken offensive by immigrants. Unless you are in Asia - then its OK because it is accepted there that when you are a guest, you live by host rules. But for some reason both Europe and America is afraid to say that.
ANY kind of extreme left or right is wrong, but recently I see right parties going to the left slowly.
Saying "I don't like when people do XXX" or "I am unhappy that government pays for XXX" makes you extremist.
It's actually not so strange. The EU is just openly saying what everyone knows is true: This decision is not as formal as the minister of the Exterior would like everyone to believe. The Will of the Alþingi (congressional resolution) is still in force and the majority couldn't assemble votes to have it anulled.
Iceland is an interesting political community, which I feel is incomparable to any other country.
300,000 people
Everyone knows the other person, or a family member, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. It does not get any deeper than that.
New people and new parties were doing a great job of turning Iceland into a hedge fund, and did a pretty good job of that. A pretty successful hedge fund, until everyone in the words realised it was a pretty bad hedge fund.
Iceland is searching for a new bedrock. Going back to the old bedrock of fishing and... fishing, is unappealing to some. The political landscape is open to options becauseno one has any answers.
But I do see the last decade's rampant financial foolishness having unlocked a desire to cross borders and break out. Lords of fishing and having had a try at finance, why not dominate the finance of fishing across the oceans?
I think you are giving way to much credit to "Besti flokkurinn". Right after the financial collapse there was a cry for change in the political landscape in Icelend and an upsurge in new political parties, some of which where able to get some foothold. People blamed the "old block" for running the country to the ground and it kind of culminating in the people voting for a "joke-party" since most other politicians and parties could be regarded as jokes as well. IMO "Besti flokkurinn" was a symptom and not the cause. Recent events and allegations of corruption are giving new wind to the idea of switching things up and creating a new political scene in Iceland and the Pirate Party are indeed enjoying the benefits of that for the time being.
I wonder if a "transparency" or "anti-corruption" party would be successful in the U.S. I'm writing a thesis now that delves pretty heavily into the financial crisis of 2008 and the level of carelessness, corruption, and trickery on the part of the captains of finance and the leaders of this country is appalling and disheartening.
The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works. I wonder if we will be able to fix things.
No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level.
> is appalling and disheartening.
For the most part American voters have demonstrated a lack of care for the aftermath of the financial crisis, given how they brought back a Republican majority in congress only four years after realizing how well that worked in the decade prior.
Which is mostly disingenuous, given how politicians in America are all consistently cut from the same cloth and serving the same (private) interests.
> are inheriting the current system
You actually aren't inheriting anything. Youth unemployment at an all time high, average income of bachelors graduates being around 26k a year, the lowest rates of property ownership in half a century, wealth concentration as high as the roaring twenties. The aging with power and money are holding onto it to their grave, and then only their blessed decedents will inherit the means of production. There is no mechanism to disseminate concentrated wealth back into the masses, especially the youth, anymore. Economics used to promote that, and policy used to enable that, but as we approach post-scarcity both have been sabotaged by generations that want to maintain control and power perpetually.
> No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level.
It's interesting, the UK has a similar sort of system, but the vote share of the major two parties has been consistently declining for fifty years. After WWII, almost everybody voted Labour or Conservative, now their combined share is about 65%. Soon, FPTP is going to start delivering some extremely odd results.
The difference is that it's very, very simple to set up a political party and contest elections in the UK (it's a matter of a couple of hundred quid and some forms).
The hoops that parties (that aren't the Democrats or Republicans) have to jump through border on the insane in some states.
The progressive faction of the Democratic party is pretty close to what you're looking for. Check out Elizabeth Warren.
Young people could have a lot of say, but they don't vote. The national dialog would shift a lot (IMO) if young people educated themselves on issues, got their peers to engage in discussion, and participated in the political process especially by voting. Right now politicians that pander to the majority do so to the people that show up to vote, which is older people.
>"The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works."
If you will, try take that little spark, and reason it a little further. You'll find that the answer you eventually come up to is the following topic:
Perhaps, then, if you're like me. You'll conclude that it's a really poor answer, and one with a whole lot of holes. Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further, and my apologies in advance if you think I'm putting words in your mouth by making a few assumptions above.
I think the biggest catalyst for government reform in the internet era would be bringing voting online.
I'm 23 years old. My generation doesn't have the time or patience to wait in line to vote and fill out legal documents. We're used to apps that let us order delivery and message friends in a button tap.
The reason big money keeps winning is because our generation doesn't vote enough. If we make local and federal voting deadlines as simple as phone notifications, we're going to start seeing a a huge array of intelligent decisions injected into the political system.
The Pirate Party offers liquid democracy through online voting. I'm all for it, I hope Iceland sets an example for the rest of the world.
I think we need more power than voting. If we had more control over funding, gov wouldn't be able to be as brazen with some of its actions. We wouldn't have nearly as much war, for example. Not many would fund it. They would rather spend their money on a house downpayment or their children's education, rather than destroying people and property on the other side of the world.
Voting via internet is very dangerous - fortunately we can use the internet to for things better than just voting - like consensus building etc. It is much more difficult to disrupt broad channel communication that the extremely narrow channel of voting.
No, not really. Some forms of voting facilitate it, while others discourage it.
Voting that is done in person, in private (for instance: voting booths) is less susceptible to coercion than voting which is not done in person (for instance: mail-in). Systems that give out a receipt for the vote placed are also more susceptible to voter coercion, particularly if they are mathematically provable receipts that cannot be fabricated (nearly all "blockchain" proposals).
A voting system should not allow someone to vote twice, and should allow the voter to verify it afterward, but must not allow anyone else to prove what their vote was afterwards or even allow the voter to show it to someone else. Can your one-word system do that?
I think you have a very idealistic and naive opinion about your generation (I'm 30 years old, I don't know if that makes it my generation too). Liquid democracy might increase vote turnout, which is good anyway, but in my opinion that will have little impact on the rule of "big money". You have yourself as frame of reference, but try to think about the average 23 years old (and no, very likely your immediate circle of friends does not count very much as the average). But even if it does replace the "big money" rule, it might not be for the good. I cannot find a reference right now, but I seem to remember that young people place usually at the extreme right and left parts of the political spectrum.
Do you think President Obama is naive and idealistic as well? He's started to argue for the same. (http://www.infowars.com/obama-calls-for-mandatory-voting/) Since his term is nearing its end, he's becoming more fearless in talking about the influence of big money in politics and how making it easier to vote would greatly reduce its influence.
And yes, you are in my generation (Y). Please enlighten me in ways big money influences politics that cannot possibly be stopped by the democratic process.
I do not understand what is the mechanism that equates "more people voting" with "less money influence". You have done little to explain it, only using an argument from authority ("An important man said it, therefore it's true").
"Big money" isn't directly buying votes. Increasing the number of votes doesn't make an election "more expensive" to buy. If you have only three candidates, to buy out their loyalty you need the same amount of money, regardless if you have one million of people voting for them or ten.
Direct democracy renders the process even worse. People cannot be fully informed about all topics at all times - I hope you realize how uncontroversial this opinion is. So they'll just find the information that is easiest to find and digest and be influenced by it. If you have enough money, you can be the easiest source of information in the topic you care.
The idea of liquid democracy is appealing because the issues are all opt-in. If there is a particular topic you feel passionate about, say funding stem-cell research, you can choose to vote on it. That + more votes makes it harder for special interest groups to influence outcomes.
I think it is naive and idealist to think that a very accomplished career politician would not have ulterior motivations.
Politicians don't get behind "go vote" initiatives out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they think those extra voters will swing the vote in the favor of their particular party.
It's pretty naive to say that 'politicians' don't have goodness in their heart, period. Like most things in life, one can't group a large subset of people to think exactly the same way.
I never said that politicians have no goodness in their heart. I am criticizing your absurd wiliness to believe that politicians want more people to vote for purely selfless reasons.
I'm about your age and I live in Italy (not exactly the most advanced democracy ever). We still vote with pencil and paper. I see no issue with that: I go in with my voting document (that I received via mail), I vote, I go out. It takes 5 minutes of my time, and it happens every few years.
The reason why young people don't vote, I think, is mainly because indifference towards politics and/or the candidates, not because it's a hassle to vote.
The idea of liquid democracy is appealing because the issues are all opt-in. If there is a particular topic you feel passionate about, say funding stem-cell research, you can choose to vote on it. Maybe not everyone cares about who runs for X office, but I think giving people the option is always the better choice. Doesn't Italy have like the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe? I'd bet some young people have a lot to say on the matter.
Yes, liquid democracy is a cool concept and I'd love to see it applied in a reasonable way, but the OP was talking about local/federal elections, where - I think - online/offline voting wouldn't matter much. Hell, thanks to digital divide I think that making elections online only would actually decrease attendance in Italy!
By convincing people who aren't interested in politics to vote, all you would be doing is adding noise to a vote that is already 99% noise and 1% considered intelligent rational opinion.
That's something that surprises me a lot about the US: optional voting. Most (if not all) of the places I've live in during my lifetime had mandatory voting (in Argentina there's even a fine and you may be denied a passport if you have no justification for not-voting).
But what amazes me even more is how much people CHOOSE not to vote. Do they really not care at all?
I don't have a good knowledge about Iceland situation, but I'm a bit negatively biased against these "protest parties". I'm from Italy and I can see what kind of horrible effect Grillo's party is having on the political thinking of the average Italian. Maybe this is different, but I will need to see results in its fight against the traditional ruling class before changing my mind. In Italy, so far, there aren't.
Protest party? Under what definition are you labeling the Pirate Party as such? The core principles of the pirate party is Civil rights, with the implication from living in a information society.
The fight against the Bourgeoisie, while relevant for some, is not the focus of this party.
I got the idea from the top comment [1] (in a hindsight, I should actually have replied to it instead of starting the new comment thread).
Particularly this part:
> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
I am aware of the origin of the label at the international level, but it looked to me that in this particular case the origin dynamics were closer to Grillo's.
I have had the privilege of meeting many of the people in the Icelandic pirate party. They are great people, have very solid ideas for improving internet law in Iceland where there are still some big issues that need reform, and I congratulate them for their success in gaining support of their fellow viking brethren.
What I like about the PP is p2p power not vertical power structures. No more falsely heroic leaders acting as a CEO of the country or party whips to enforce the leader's decisions by threatening to backbench party dissenters and throwing away the entire idea of representative democracy by replacing it with a command structure.
One platform parties are pretty ineffective inside the USA. The only I could think of getting any significant legislation passed are the anti-abortion people. The anti-deficit people and anti-war people have large following, but little traction.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadI know very little about Iceland's political system but suspect some translation problems with the language in that article.
Biggest would really only apply to seats won, while this reads to me as being 'most popular'
Still, really interesting.
I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet.
5.1% in the last parliamentary elections (in 2013) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland)
The survey charts show a rather meteoric very recent rise: http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460
It'll certainly revert towards the mean, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them hold 7 or 8 seats in the next elections (out of 60-ish).
In the national elections Iceland is split up into six constituencies which hold certain amounts of seats in parliament. At the moment this (slightly) favours the four constituencies outside of the capital which also favours the 'old block' of parties which are more popular in the countryside/rural areas/small towns.
This survey is showing a big backlash agains those in charge after a string of controversial decisions and corruption allegations. The thing is though that I doubt this backlash will last for two more years. But I'm quite sure that the pirate party will at least double the amount of seats (they have 3 now).
No, they are actually quite decent people. Birgitta has been an advocate of term limits and intends to not run again (even if term limits are not imposed). She is an artist and has been a consistent defender of the average citizen. Jón Þór is in his first term and has decided to step down mid-term to allow his replacement time to acclimate to Parliament before the next election (which is in 2017, barring public uprising). Helgi Hrafn has indicated he intends not to run again. All of them are passionate about the outcome of the next election and intend to give support to the running candidates.
Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns.
Grassroots for the Pirates is very active and these public servants, truly are serving the public, not the party.
For now. They wouldn't be the first people to be corrupted by power.
Now they're as corrupt as the others.
Thankfully the pirate party advocates extreme transparency which should make "casual corruption" more difficult.
Well, the funding that the parties in charge and their members of parliament got from the fisheries in the last elections can be considered a form of bribery. Especially when one of their first works in office was to make sure the fisheries make more money by paying less tax. (This issue is more complicated though).
tl;dr: You can't have an organisation where everyone wants to do things differently.
So by increasing communication speed, diversity is less of a problem ? I guess my question is what is implied by communication speed ?
I think I'm missing something about the implications because it doesn't seem like communication speed would change anything, if the members are really stubborn.
Fast communication is actually just a feature for the outer world to tell them, what we work for, in time. Too often it isn't clear what we stand for to a fresh topic. The media is complaining and the reader starts to think badly about us.
Electronic democracy solves precisely nothing in practice because democracy is not about technology and mathematics, it's about the people.
What if you have a 50%+1 majority on your vote, and the other 50%-1 of the people are so actively against it and bitter that there is no way they will accept the result of the vote, let even cooperate? And by "50%+1" I don't mean 11 votes vs 10 votes in your library group, I mean like 100,000 votes for one side and 99,999 votes for the other. Can you seriously consider that the first side won the vote? Can you seriously do anything practical with 50%-1 members opposing you?
That is what was (and I think still is) happening in PP parties.
And on top of that there's all the usual issue of large-ish scale politics, with blocks forming, with small but screamingly loud minorities, etc. etc. which now, because of the digital medium each require attention. Do you wish to participate in a forum where you MUST, by the way of the forum's statutes, listen even to the most vitriolic, uneducated, screaming lunatic trolls, and be expected that you deal with those situations politely with "Thank you for your input. if 50% of the members agree with your idea to make tin-foil-hats mandatory, and declare war on Kazakhstan, we will."? Even if you are, a couple of years of that happening every single day will probably erode that attitude. Hence, no "sane" members, hence no votes.
Hm. I never heard of blocks in the pirate party. Luckily, it seems that the core pirates are too liberal for that. Things could go wrong, but then we simply start a new party.
And yes, we must listen to everyone. Whatever troll it might be. You must listen them to tell them otherwise and to learn from them. It might be the only way a democracy can function well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sh
I don't necessarily disagree with their views, but it helped water the identity of the party down to a level that made it indistinguishable from other liberal groups. Initially the PP also saw some influx from more conservative parties, which created an unstable equilibrium. Now it's just participating around in the usual left-wing infighting (vegans vs vegetarians, feminists vs egalitarians, and so on).
I think part of the reason is that Germans expect parties to cover more than "one issue" (even if that issue is as broad as the entire concept of "an open information infrastructure with a transparent government and strong personal privacy"), so there was an early effort to create a "full programme" covering virtually anything. We'd probably be better off if we had specialised interest groups instead of shrinkwrapped parties. But good luck making democracy more direct and modular when there is a centuries old legacy that portrays anything other than the existing faction-based system as unconstitutional and therefore evil.
Iceland could be the first country with a "liquid democracy" [2]
[1] http://liquidfeedback.org/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8
I think it's in the same document as the "Mass propaganda" / "Discredit an company/individual" slides.
That does not leave many potential voters.
pro-woman -> woman in Latin is femina -> feminism
pro-man -> man in Latin is vir -> virilism (sounds stupid).
That's why.
woman -> femina, related to women -> femininus
man -> vir, related to men -> mas
As you can see it seems even the Romans did not like to make derivations from the old, old word "vir" (also see etymology for "world").
Feminine is from 'femininus', not 'femina'.
Masculine is from 'mas' -> 'masculus' (diminutive of 'mas') -> 'masculinus', not 'vir'.
'Mas' was never used to mean "man", only "male".
If instead of "feminism", the movement were called "femininism", then the opposite would indeed be "masculinism" as you suggest. But the opposite of "feminism" must be "virilism".
Yeah, so left-wing voters avoid the party because of the right-wing extremists in it; right-wing voters avoid it because of its left-wing extremists; …
They might be on the right side of internet issues, but they are very much on the wrong side of much more important issues.
Sure, they're communists. But they're not the same as the Stalinist, Soviet-controlled SED.
If I support opinion X and want it to succeed, I should work hard to ensure that those who support X but don't know when to shut up get ignored, ostracised and removed from any public speaking positions in "my party"; so that in the public discourse the supporters of opinion X are represented by people who know when to shut up - because they will help X, but the cranks (with good motivation) will only hurt the cause.
Similarly, if two parties both support X but one doesn't know when to shut up, then you should vote and support only the other party and weaken the too-radical one.
The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections.
This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change. It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time!
*The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.
I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.
It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.
Ah, so they have a much more open policy allowing free movement of labour? That is far saner!
#Edit. It's just a question, people. I'm trying to figure out what default means in this whole Greece context.
Right now Grease gets more new loans / year than they pay out in interest payments. So their debt keeps growing until their next default / restructuring. It’s a vicious cycle.
On the other hand if they defaulted and did not need to make interest payments, but could not make new loans their cash flow would be worse off. But, they would have a reasonable path to long term prosperity by simply keeping their books balanced.
Of course there is always the 3rd option of defaulting and then trying to make new loans and default again. But their already getting free money from the EU so there is little point in doing this now.
Alternately, you use the threat of that default to renegotiate the debt on more favorable terms. This also happens with personal bankruptcy, though the situations aren't quite analogous (some creditors will negotiate a more favorable repayment plan with debtors who seem like they might otherwise declare bankruptcy).
Unfortunately for Greece, afaict they have less leverage now than they did in 2010. At the time, much of their debt was held by German and French banks, so there was a mutually assured destruction angle. France/Germany would probably not sit by and let their large banks go down with the ship in the case of a Greek bankruptcy. So they would be forced to bail out the situation one way or the other, either bailing out Greece and thereby indirectly bailing out their banks by giving Greece money to pay them, or letting Greece default and then bailing out their banks directly. Now most of the debt has been moved to institutional holdings (the European Central Bank, IMF, etc.) as part of the bailout, which is less directly threatening. Probably Greece should've bargained harder at the time, but the previous government was a bit spineless.
The actual left of Syriza has become very critical internally over that line, which they see as incoherent and not in tune with reality: in their view, the line Tsipras/Varoufakis are attempting to take just won't work, because it wants to promise staying in the Euro and then also a bunch of things that are incompatible with staying in the Euro, but won't admit that you need to pick one. Here is one interview with a left-wing Syriza MP, criticizing them along those lines: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/lapavitsas-varoufakis-gre.... You can differ over whether this line would be better, but I think it's more grounded in reality; Lapavitsas (the interview subject) imo much more clearly understands the concrete situation and what can and can't be done, and doesn't promise glibly that everything is simultaneously possible.
As distinct from the dominant political parties in the US ... how, again?
Patriotism is seen as some kind of wrong thing as it could be taken offensive by immigrants. Unless you are in Asia - then its OK because it is accepted there that when you are a guest, you live by host rules. But for some reason both Europe and America is afraid to say that.
ANY kind of extreme left or right is wrong, but recently I see right parties going to the left slowly.
Saying "I don't like when people do XXX" or "I am unhappy that government pays for XXX" makes you extremist.
Saying this as an immigrant.
300,000 people
Everyone knows the other person, or a family member, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. It does not get any deeper than that.
New people and new parties were doing a great job of turning Iceland into a hedge fund, and did a pretty good job of that. A pretty successful hedge fund, until everyone in the words realised it was a pretty bad hedge fund.
Iceland is searching for a new bedrock. Going back to the old bedrock of fishing and... fishing, is unappealing to some. The political landscape is open to options becauseno one has any answers.
But I do see the last decade's rampant financial foolishness having unlocked a desire to cross borders and break out. Lords of fishing and having had a try at finance, why not dominate the finance of fishing across the oceans?
The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works. I wonder if we will be able to fix things.
No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level.
> is appalling and disheartening.
For the most part American voters have demonstrated a lack of care for the aftermath of the financial crisis, given how they brought back a Republican majority in congress only four years after realizing how well that worked in the decade prior.
Which is mostly disingenuous, given how politicians in America are all consistently cut from the same cloth and serving the same (private) interests.
> are inheriting the current system
You actually aren't inheriting anything. Youth unemployment at an all time high, average income of bachelors graduates being around 26k a year, the lowest rates of property ownership in half a century, wealth concentration as high as the roaring twenties. The aging with power and money are holding onto it to their grave, and then only their blessed decedents will inherit the means of production. There is no mechanism to disseminate concentrated wealth back into the masses, especially the youth, anymore. Economics used to promote that, and policy used to enable that, but as we approach post-scarcity both have been sabotaged by generations that want to maintain control and power perpetually.
It's interesting, the UK has a similar sort of system, but the vote share of the major two parties has been consistently declining for fifty years. After WWII, almost everybody voted Labour or Conservative, now their combined share is about 65%. Soon, FPTP is going to start delivering some extremely odd results.
The hoops that parties (that aren't the Democrats or Republicans) have to jump through border on the insane in some states.
You've ran the experiment so many times that you know that it's "always"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
Young people could have a lot of say, but they don't vote. The national dialog would shift a lot (IMO) if young people educated themselves on issues, got their peers to engage in discussion, and participated in the political process especially by voting. Right now politicians that pander to the majority do so to the people that show up to vote, which is older people.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Voter_Tu...
If you will, try take that little spark, and reason it a little further. You'll find that the answer you eventually come up to is the following topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
Perhaps, then, if you're like me. You'll conclude that it's a really poor answer, and one with a whole lot of holes. Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further, and my apologies in advance if you think I'm putting words in your mouth by making a few assumptions above.
I'm 23 years old. My generation doesn't have the time or patience to wait in line to vote and fill out legal documents. We're used to apps that let us order delivery and message friends in a button tap.
The reason big money keeps winning is because our generation doesn't vote enough. If we make local and federal voting deadlines as simple as phone notifications, we're going to start seeing a a huge array of intelligent decisions injected into the political system.
The Pirate Party offers liquid democracy through online voting. I'm all for it, I hope Iceland sets an example for the rest of the world.
Imagine an employer who demands that an employee produce proof that they voted a certain way.
Voting that is done in person, in private (for instance: voting booths) is less susceptible to coercion than voting which is not done in person (for instance: mail-in). Systems that give out a receipt for the vote placed are also more susceptible to voter coercion, particularly if they are mathematically provable receipts that cannot be fabricated (nearly all "blockchain" proposals).
And yes, you are in my generation (Y). Please enlighten me in ways big money influences politics that cannot possibly be stopped by the democratic process.
"Big money" isn't directly buying votes. Increasing the number of votes doesn't make an election "more expensive" to buy. If you have only three candidates, to buy out their loyalty you need the same amount of money, regardless if you have one million of people voting for them or ten.
Direct democracy renders the process even worse. People cannot be fully informed about all topics at all times - I hope you realize how uncontroversial this opinion is. So they'll just find the information that is easiest to find and digest and be influenced by it. If you have enough money, you can be the easiest source of information in the topic you care.
Politicians don't get behind "go vote" initiatives out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they think those extra voters will swing the vote in the favor of their particular party.
The reason why young people don't vote, I think, is mainly because indifference towards politics and/or the candidates, not because it's a hassle to vote.
But what amazes me even more is how much people CHOOSE not to vote. Do they really not care at all?
The fight against the Bourgeoisie, while relevant for some, is not the focus of this party.
Particularly this part:
> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
I am aware of the origin of the label at the international level, but it looked to me that in this particular case the origin dynamics were closer to Grillo's.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9231591