Democracy
Hooray! I remembered one of the things.
The French elections have made me think once again about the inadequacy of democracy. I won't go into all the obvious stuff - tyranny of the majority, the average person being too stupid to be able to run a country, etc.
On the news, I saw a young French woman deliberating whom to vote for. "I want to case a useful vote, which would mean Ségolène Royal and the Socialist Party. But my heart is with the Revolutionary Communist League."
This highlights the flaw in almost any democracy, which is that people have to vote tactically for who they think will get the most votes. I have no doubt that the communist parties would be quite a bit stronger if people actually thought they had a chance of winning.
The best idea I've seen to combat this is multiple rounds of voting. Whoever gets the least votes is struck off, and everybody votes again. Then, again, the candidate with the least votes is struck off and everybody votes for the remainder. This continues until there is only one left, ensuring that this one candidate has the greatest possible following in the country.
Yes, it would be horribly long and horribly expensive, but that would be proper democracy. If democracy is your kinda thing that is... Can't say it's mine, except on a local level.
The French elections have made me think once again about the inadequacy of democracy. I won't go into all the obvious stuff - tyranny of the majority, the average person being too stupid to be able to run a country, etc.
On the news, I saw a young French woman deliberating whom to vote for. "I want to case a useful vote, which would mean Ségolène Royal and the Socialist Party. But my heart is with the Revolutionary Communist League."
This highlights the flaw in almost any democracy, which is that people have to vote tactically for who they think will get the most votes. I have no doubt that the communist parties would be quite a bit stronger if people actually thought they had a chance of winning.
The best idea I've seen to combat this is multiple rounds of voting. Whoever gets the least votes is struck off, and everybody votes again. Then, again, the candidate with the least votes is struck off and everybody votes for the remainder. This continues until there is only one left, ensuring that this one candidate has the greatest possible following in the country.
Yes, it would be horribly long and horribly expensive, but that would be proper democracy. If democracy is your kinda thing that is... Can't say it's mine, except on a local level.