E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

And the same reasons for you not starting a revolution or forming a people's party apply to everyone. If you don't think it's impossible then it's at the very least dangerous and daunting, especially in the age of automated mass surveillance.

 

Absolutely nothing will change in this country until people realise that a voting system first introduced nearly 150 years ago is completely unfit for purpose.

 

I never said it's easy. And I also gave you (most of) the reasons why people don't grab their pitch forks and torches right now: we are lazy and way too comfortable.

 

It took starvation to kick off the French Revolution. I don't think it's laziness, I think it's fear. If you threaten the guillotine and fail, it's your head under the blade.

 

What stops the electorate of voting en masse for the Greens, say? Wouldn't that stir things up?

 

Proportional representation would give a fairer result, more representative of the actual votes but, the two major parties would lose out so, we will remain stuck with first past the post.

 

Yeah, what he said. It's a mathematical inevitability that we end up with a two-party system under FPTP

 

We do agree actually. Looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where would the push come from to revolt against the status quo when most of us are basically hovering above the pyramid (see below) and the worst thing that could happen to us hovering there is that we'd gently float down towards the layer of pillows and cushions we've positioned there over the last few decades? Starvation or incarceration or fiefdom are not a real danger for us anymore. Again, for most of us.

 

I mean I agree with Viper, he didn't say you can't blame the electorate, simply it's not just the electorate. Obviously there are plenty of people within the electorate who benefit from the current system so have no interest in changing it, add onto that a lot of people believing what they're told and it's no real surprise we are where we are.

 

I think it's little more than a feature first past the post, it generates a two party system and people get it in their heads that a vote for anyone else is wasted. You have to go back to George V to see anyone other than red or blue in power.

 

If near enough 100% of the electorate voted for (say) the Greens, then FPTP or not, they would get into power. But the population is too divided, because people are too tribal and self-centred.

 

I guess party politics and tribalism go hand in hand; under our current system that isn't going to change, so unless we get a major shake-up in our democratic process (like that proportional representation referendum) or people suddenly wake up with a vastly different mindset, we're stuck as we are.

I mean look at UKIP, they never got anywhere despite having an electorate that would vote in favour of leaving the EU.

 

Being a pedantic human being, yes, it's in the name of our elected governmental model: democracy, the rule of the people. If said people (the electorate) do not properly use their right to change/influence their leaders to fit their needs, who's to blame but them?

I don't want to fight you guys, but it's not always 'the system' screwing us over.

 

I mean it feels like a very obvious and easy question to answer, those who influenced their decisions.

The idea that 100% of the blame should be put at the feet of any single group is just stupid no? Seems like a pointless over simplification. Can't tell if you're being serious.

 

Democracy is not just about a right to vote and thus influence the political landscape, it's also about a duty to be informed enough to be able to use your right to vote correctly/to achieve the best possible results for yourself and others. Being manipulated is a critical aspect of how our modern democracy works (lobbying and bribing are common in politics) and thus, some blame can be placed upon the doorstep of our elected leaders. For being misleading and corrupt and, yes, manipulating the electorate to keep their power. But I don't agree that said blame is even close in severity to the blame that (IMHO) has to be directed at the willingly under-educated masses in modern democracies, who simply seem to refuse to build up a solid enough knowledge to not be manipulated that easily. When did asking the hard questions instead of accepting a leader's words for the God-given truth become a luxury and not a necessity (again)? Must've missed that memo.

TL;DR: the electorate is not educated enough (by choice) to use democracy as it's supposed to be used, thus the majority of blame has to be directed at them.

 

You are (correctly) seeing the dynamic as a reciprocal one between two actors: the electorate and the politicians. But politicians behave the way they do because they have learned that not only can they get away with it, but also that it is what the electorate wants.

Consider children: they are egocentric, driven by emotional impulse and they want what they want, when they want it. "Growing up" into an "adult" is almost totally just learning to consider other people's point of view (theory of mind), their wants and needs (learning to socially co-operate and share), to self-regulate and contain your own impulses, delay gratification, plan and work towards longer-term goals, and to cope with defeat and disappointment --that real life comes with constraints, failure, limits to your power and what is possible, and difficult compromises.*

These things are so complex that we evolved huge frontal lobes to deal with them; the parts of our brain that grow explosively for the first two decades of our lives, in two spurts: one as soon as we have squeezed out the narrow birth canal, and another one during puberty.

Research shows that not everybody grows up fully. Studies of attachment patterns (how people relate to themselves and others) show that a third of the population has, well, issues; studies of cognitive ability (e.g.reading, maths, abstract reasoning) show that the majority of people are, well, not that bright, and studies of moral reasoning (e.g. Kohlberg's stages of reasoning) show that the majority of people get stuck at the level of what is socially approved or disapproved of, and have little in terms of an examined internalised framework of moral principles.

As a people, we are not that 'adult' in the psychological sense of the word.**

Grifters will say that a good mark wants to be conned, and that you cannot con an honest man. This is true for politics also, which often is a long con of a Ponzi scheme of promises (complete with Build-Up, Convincer and the "Hurrah" around election time), stringing the electorate along for as long as possible while cashing in as much as possible, until the electorate gets fed up and votes them out of office (at which point the game is up, and they cash their innings and run). The reason it works is because the electorate wants to be conned; like children, egocentric and driven by impulse, it wants what it wants, and it wants it now, and it will vote for whoever channels their petulant rage and promises to assuage it (the most blatant example being Farage's serial grift of different parties, same outrage and promises). That is simply not an adult position to take; it is not an adult dialogue between adults. It is fundamentally dishonest on both sides, and both sides know it, really.


* Language development plays a huge part in that. The vocabulary we use determines the way we think and the way we communicate.

** Of course, YMMV: adulthood is on a continuum with childhood and not only can people be on different positions on this continuum, but also regress more or less depending on the stresses that they are subjected to. So our adulthood can "wobble", more or less at the worst or best of times.

 

I wasn't even keeping it that simple in an us vs them (electorate vs politicians), since to me the idea that the electorate can be looked at as a single body doesn't make any sense.

I feel there are plenty in the electorate who are doing the 'conning', and just generally don't think I agree with the concept a democracy ends up with those in power it 'deserves'.

As a side note I never said you can't blame the electorate, merely agreed in Viper's point that you can't solely blame them.

Edit:
And I think in general I just find it rather upsetting how many people actually like Boris.

 

We definitely agree on that last part about the man with the funny hair.

 

Sounds like Communist propaganda, but okay.

Sorry, I've always wanted to use that sentence in a real context, rather than as a meme. But seriously, I think this whole line of reasoning where we blame the people for not taking control, or whatever, is unfair. People are fscking busy, man. Raise kids, earn a living, maintain a household and vehicle, oh and also, when you've got a minute, become a political activist and pressure the powers that be into fixing the nation, or become a politician and do it yourself? Most people are just surviving day-to-day. To drop all that and start the glorious people's revolution would be to drastically lower one's quality of life and risk everything. And their motive to do so is meant to be that things are bad? Make things worse for yourself, because things are bad for you?

People revolt when things are so bad that revolting won't make them any worse, i.e. when it's life and death, famine, misery. Right now we have jobs, houses, cars and Netflix. Even assuming we all agree about what the big problems currently are (and we don't always), it's unfair to say that people should all be quitting their jobs and becoming protesters and if they don't it's their fault the nation sucks. We elect representatives to do that stuff for us. Holding the people accountable for the lousy job their elected representatives' chosen leaders (out of, as Vipers says, a grand total of 2 choices) are doing is like blaming a tenant for the shoddy workmanship when their landlord hires a builder and he messes it up. "Well, you chose the landlord!" "Get a better landlord!" "Stop sitting around working/parenting and go take the landlord to court, otherwise stop complaining!" "Make the landlord get a better builder!" "Move out if you don't like it!"

These are all unfair responses. We have a choice of 2 landlords. Both routinely fail us and lie. Both hire builders without involving us. Neither holds the builders accountable when they mess everything up. We can't move out. We can't be our own landlords. We can't do the building work ourselves. We can't get new landlords.

Basically the only thing we can do is keep writing angry letters and publicly complaining and shaming the landlords and builders online, which is what we are doing. Channels like Another Angry Voice and Jonathan Pie, columnists like Owen Jones, complain loudly and eloquently about the misbehaviour and failings of our leaders. What are we going to do that's more persuasive and effective than that? Pitch a tent on the pavement outside No.10?

The best us ordinary plebs can do is vote and, as Jonathan Pie puts it, talk to people who disagree with us and persuade them otherwise. But we don't, we talk to people who agree with us to feel cosy and agreed with, instead.

 

The problem with this proposal is that you have to pretend that game theory just isn't a thing. Parts of psychology too - Goodbye Expectancy theory & Interdependence theory. We will mourn ye.

What we're talking about here is a collective action problem, much like the Prisoner's Dilemma. While it's fine to sit on the sidelines and criticize, knowing that they can minimize their sentences and maximize the collective outcome through cooperation, the real world is more complicated than that. The electorate, like the prisoners, cannot be expected to act as a monolith. There are competing incentives - Remember Democracy is overlaid on top of dog-eat-dog Capitalism which encourages competition rather than coordination.

The problem is structural, and can only be solved by addressing that dysfunctional structure. It will not be solved by blaming individual actors for not being a monolith in the face of swathes of psychological, sociological, and mathematical knowledge.