Wednesday 25 December 2013

First past the post is a form of anarchy

Most governments use democracy… that is to say that they derive their mandate from the electorate. A private club has no need to be accountable to the outside world and as such they are under no obligation to use democracy. But an anarchist would argue that a government has no authority above that of a private individual or club… that there is nothing special about a government. If governments are not special there is no reason for them to use democracy. If the state has a special obligation to the people then it is natural that it use democracy and furthermore we can argue that it should use a proportional system… but since governments are not special there is no such obligation. There is no reason to replace first-past-the-post with proportional representation because no government is valid whether elected or not and anarchy is true. The government is perfectly entitled to use first-past-the-post or whatever voting system it likes (including no voting system at all) because there is nothing special about the government. A private club may use fptp and so too the government can use fptp because there is nothing special about the government and it is not above the law even if it is popular and democratically elected.

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