Saturday, 29 September 2012

First past the post is the worst possible system

First past the post is worse than anarchy

It is better to have no elections at all than to have elections organised using first past the post. (Nothing is worse than fptp.) To have no elections at all (and therefore no government) would be better than to have fptp.

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Anarchy is possible

Proportional r. is good because anarchy is impossible

First past the post elections tend to result in a two-party system because people respond to the actions of other people. People will end up voting only for those parties which they know have a realistic chance of success. The problem with fptp is that we end up with a two-party system. This is obviously bad because our own choice is restricted and so too is that of other people. Given that (due to Duverger's law) a two-party system will emerge from fptp it makes no sense to vote for parties which endorse this system. It is bad to live in a country with fptp so it is logical for voters to support parties which endorse pr. To vote for fptp is illogical.

First past the post is an elitist voting system

First past the post can only be altered by those who are in control of it. If an outsider such as myself objects to it then there is not much they can do about it. We do not control the voting system if we do not control the parliament... and we do not control the parliament because of the fptp voting system itself. Only people who endorse fptp could ever be in a position to change it... which means we have an insoluble problem. Even if the voters want pr it would mean that they are willing to abandon their ability to influence the outcome of a general election. And even then they very likely would not get what they want. They would risk losing their (tactical) vote in favour of pr but with only a very small likelihood of their sacrifice being worthwhile in achieving pr. They would very likely not get pr and have wasted their fptp vote. It is difficult for voters to get pr because if they abandon the mainstream parties it is unlikely they will get pr. In that sense fptp protects itself. We can think of the people that strongly endorse fptp as being similar to a kind of political elite... it is difficult to remove them once they have been established. Fptp is an elitist system. When we vote tactically we are pandering to the elites... in a sense the elites are holding the electorate to ransom in that if they do not want to vote tactically and support the elite system they will have no influence and effectively no vote. Your only (meaningful) vote can be one which supports the elite. Failure to vote for a party which supports pr is to support the elites.

First past the post is associated with nationalism

First past the post relies on the idea that if you like capitalism then you will vote for the centre-right party... otherwise you will vote for the party of the left. Given that there is a choice of only two parties it (kind of) assumes voters have a responsibility to vote for the centre-right party unless they are socialists. But it doesn't make sense to vote for what might be considered a default option. It would be strange to be enthusiastic about capitalism. We might accept it as the best and perhaps only means to ensure a country has wealth but that does not mean an enthusiastic endorsement. It would be stupid to be enthusiastic about capitalism... but the premise of voting requires that we are enthusiastic. To vote is a positive act so unless we are being irrational there is no objective reason to vote for the centre-right party in a fptp system... we are not changing the world in a positive way we are only protecting ourselves against something worse. But given that there might be something to do with the centre-right party about which we object then this is a bad system. We do not vote defensively with enthusiasm... to do so would be to be nationalist and to identify with the country as a whole. If we are not a nationalist and also at least sympathetic to capitalism then there is no reason to vote for the centre-right party in a fptp system. For fptp to 'work' and be able to prevent communism it requires that voters are both against socialism and also nationalistic. If people are not nationalistic fptp will not work in that sense.

Monday, 24 September 2012

Right-wing doesn't mean anything in and of itself

No one is right-wing it is a false ideology contrived in response to (the combination of) left-wing collectivists and the fptp voting system. Being opposed to something (or merely not being a part of it) is not an ideology in itself. Opposition is not an ideology. Without the fptp voting system there would be no concept of right-wing... there would be liberals and libertarians and other such ideologies but not right-wing in and of itself. Right-wing doesn't exist as an ideology outside the fptp paradigm.