If there is less democracy then there is more poverty

It is clear that some policies carried out by the government are helpful for the poor, but if there is a two-party system in place then both might not offer those policies.

The common argument against the first-past-the-post voting system is that it results in tactical voting which means that voters must compromise their preferences to ensure their vote matters. If both of the main parties deny good policies to the poor then voters (who want to support the poor) at left choosing between two parties neither of which support the poor. They must merely choose the least bad of the main parties.

An example of a policy which might help the poor is a Universal Citizen's Dividend which would be a fixed amount of money given to everyone, regardless of their circumstances. This is something which would naturally be beneficial to the poor but in a fptp system (for whatever reason) it is rare that either of the main parties support this policy so even if (most) people want it, it will not happen.

Since democracy helps the poor in a positive sense then any oppression of democracy (such as first-past-the-post) is oppressive to the poor, naturally. To oppress democracy is to oppress the poor.

Government is not democratic

To be politically right-wing doesn't really mean anything because it doesn't express a political opinion. To be left-wing is well-defined because we know that it entails a big state and public property. We also know that liberalism is well-defined because that means to have significant private property and economic freedom, so a better axis would be liberal-communism than left-right.

It can be said that the (political) right is a subset of the left so then there is no such thing as the right, it is a myth and a cult. The right is a cult because they deny the reality of democracy, particularly in respect of the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation. The right is a cult because it denies the logic of true and direct (proportional) democratic representation.

First past the post is communism or treason

As far as the state and democracy is concerned we should ask ourselves whether the government is popular, if government is itself a good thing and if the people are discerning.

If government is a good thing and the people are discerning then people will want as much of it as possible and democracy will lead to communism but if government is (overall) bad then the discerning people will vote for liberalism. So when people defend a lack of democracy and advocate first-past-the-post (and if they are liberals) then either they do not trust the people (to be as liberally discerning as they are) or they want big government despite being liberals because they do not have the interests of the country at the front of their mind... they are either traitors (who know that liberalism is good but want to impose communism on the country) or they think the voters are less liberal than they are.

If we assume the voters aren't stupid and have the same opinion of government as the people deciding which voting system to use then liberals would choose a liberal system (pr) unless they want bad things for the country and communists would not want to give the voters as much choice because democracy is bad for the state. Only a loyal communist or a treasonous liberal would want less democracy than is possible (knowing that democracy weakens the state). If you do not want the state to be weakened by democracy then either you are a communist (who likes your country) or you are a liberal who wants bad things to happen to the country.

Democracy is bad and first-past-the-post is good for (loyal) communists and treasonous liberals (who know that communism is bad). A lack of democracy will result in communism so the people who support this must either be communists themselves or people who know that (state) communism doesn't work but want the nation to do badly.

People who oppose democracy (for their own country) are either communists or traitors. If first-past-the-post is not communist it is treasonous.

All democracy is proportional

The purpose of a democracy is to enable the people to protect themselves from the state by choosing their representatives. In a sense democracy is similar to anarchy in that there is no outright leader and people rule themselves by voting. If everyone is perfectly represented then this provides the most freedom. If people vote directly on laws (as in a referendum) then in effect there is no state because there is nothing between the people and the laws.

It is only if there is a body of people who stand in the way of the people that there is a state in the truest sense.

The government is not popular

Democracy is the mechanism by which we fix our political problems and by definition, we are not able to fix a democratic system that does't work.

The government that uses first-past-the-post claims that it is democratic and gives the state a mandate to rule. If the government doesn't use democracy then it is illegitimate and tyrannical but if some form of democracy is used then it is valid. So fptp serves as an alibi for the state to defend itself against accusations of non-democracy and tyranny. But it is not democratic and so the state is using a false alibi. The problem we have with this is that even if the state is guilty of not being democratic there is nothing anyone else can do about it because, by definition, punishment for illegality comes from the state, if not it is not the state.

The state will not punish itself for using only first-past-the-post if that is the system which it likes to use so then there is nothing anyone can do about it because the law is enforced by the state and the state will not act against itself if it chooses to retain fptp. There is nothing anyone can do about fptp (other than to express their outrage) because only the state can force a change in the law.

First past the post is not beneficial

One of the aspects of the first-past-the-post system is that, in response, voters tend to vote for the more established parties because they know votes for smaller parties will be wasted. Over time only two parties have any realistic chance of winning and we have a two-party system as described by Duverger's law. And the reason for this is that the interests of the voters are with themselves not the government, they favour themselves as voters over the state so they will vote 'tactically' to protect themselves from what they perceive to be the least bad of two imperfect options; they don't like either so they vote for the least bad, not wanting to waste their vote.

The emergence of tactical voting is to be welcomed (at least from the anti-state point of view) because it indicates that the people value self-ownership and are opposed to the state in general.

We can think of anarchy to be the truest and most extreme form of representative democracy, whereby each person votes for themselves. In a traditional referendum the electorate is asked to vote directly on laws without a parliamentary representative voting on their behalf. Anarchy is not inconsistent with democracy because people, overall, are opposed to the state, despite how things might appear.

Given the choice people will vote for freedom so any system which opposes voters (such as first-past-the-post) is unhelpful to freedom. Proportional representation enables people to vote for (their) freedom and so it provides more freedom than fptp. The opposite of freedom is statism so we can say that first-past-the-post is statist and that pr is aligned with freedom and anarchy.

If we accept that there is no left-wing without the state (that the left requires the state) then all things which are left-wing are also statist. An earlier blog has argued that first-past-the-post is left-wing and so if the left is always statist then fptp is not only left-wing but it is also statist.