Tuesday 27 August 2013

First past the post anarchists lack empathy

Anarchists do not want a government so it is more difficult for them to differentiate between different forms of tyranny and they will be less sensitive to pleas for a more lenient government... perhaps interpreting these as advocacy for the government. For example someone who wants democracy instead of dictatorship is clearly someone who dislikes the present government and can be thought of as a liberal. But the anarchist (unless they are sympathetic to the claims of the democrat) might be deaf to the desire for democracy over tyranny because they want neither. An empathetic anarchist might be sympathetic to the desires of the democrat and might even advocate democracy in these circumstances despite being an anarchist... since to get some freedom from the state now is better than none even if it is not full anarchy. To advocate (more) democracy is not to advocate the state and so anarchists might advocate (for example) proportional representation over first past the post. An unempathic anarchist might well be indifferent between pr and fptp merely because they cannot see things from the point of view of the democratic rebel. It is consistent for anarchists to prefer pr over fptp but it is perfectly possible for a genuine anarchist not to be able to see that pr is preferable (since they are not able to empathise with the reformers). If anarchists have no empathy it is possible that they will not be able to see how pr is better than fptp.

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