Summations Only

I know what it refers to, but thank you for stating it so clearly.Regardless I still don't see how the Senate is somehow a bulwark against this kind of tyranny. For one thing, Congress has never found it particularly difficult to discriminate against minorities; DOMA passed both the House and the Senate. The Senate filibustered the Civil Rights Act. Rather than serving as a protection against the "tyranny of the majority", hasn't the Senate been an instrument of it? Well, ok, so it seems like that's a different kind of tyranny than what I'm thinking of. But did the Senate really ever accomplish that? I can't imagine either of us want to troll 220 years of Senate history (booooring) but I wonder if there's some obvious example I'm just not thinking of. Frankly I'm just not sold on this notion that the "large" states have some kind of natural interest against the "small" ones, even in 1790.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

There are several other ways that voting itself could be managed, for example by allowing weighted voting, where each voter is given a set number of votes that could be spread over one or multiple candidates; or where the voter selects a first, second and third choice for an office which is then totaled.

Look at any example where a law that was passed in the House failed in the Senate, where the Senate representatives in the "majority" represented a power percentage of the population. I'm sure we could find many instances.In each of those cases, we're looking at an instance where the interests of a minority as defined according to state lines were defended against the interests of the majority of US citizens as a whole.Whether that protection was a good thing or morally right or even Constitutional in the end is irrelevant. The mechanism is such that a few states, independent of the number of citizens they represent, can block laws passed by the populist House.

Peter Schiff, is a businessman and financial commentator. He's the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital Inc CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.[13]
Schiff went down to interview the Occupy Wall Streeters to represent the 1% pro-capitalist constituency.He did a good job of articulating much of what a few of us of the minority PoV have been saying in this thread.

Totaled how?

In the first example, the voter could spread his votes over one or more candidates, for example if the voter felt really strongly about one candidate he could give all 5 (or what ever number) for one person or one each for five people or two for one person and three for a second.Votes for a candidate would get totaled individually.In the later system, totally is done on a weighted scale, a candidate would get 3 points for a first choice vote, 2 points for each second choice vote and 1 point for each third choice vote.When there are two (or more) very strong candidates they would tend to cancel each other out but a candidate who ranks high as a second or third choice across the board would score well.

Are we? For instance, what "small state interest" was preserved by the Senate killing Obama's jobs bill two weeks ago?When Mitch McConnell takes steps to block legislation to avoid giving the president a legislative victory that could help him in the next election, how does that preserve or advance the interests of Kentucky? I'm not seeing it. Obviously the enormous disproportions of the Senate allow for a large number of situations where a very small percentage of Americans effectively exercise veto power over a very large number of other Americans. I just don't see that as a de facto instance of the Senate protecting the unique interests of small states.Let's say you're small state, in fact. Let's call you "Massachusetts." Can you explain how your interests are fundamentally different than New York's? Not just different, but actually in opposition?

Really quickly, Jar - could you explain what problem you feel this voting system solves?

To you, probably not.But it would open the way for multiple parties and increase the chance of changing representation.But the basic problem is still an uneducated electorate and as I have said, that cannot be solved quickly.

Under this system, I can't think of any circumstances under which it would not be rational to give all five points to some particular candidate. Under which system it's better to be everybody's second choice than to be the first choice of 65%. A middle-of the road candidate who no-one really wants could therefore beat out someone more radical, one way or the other, who under FPTP would be acclaimed as winning a landslide victory. Is that what you intend?

To get some of the text content into this topic, I quote from Buz's source:

quote:

---

The message that Schiff wants to extend is that what the protesters are complaining about isn’t capitalism, rather corporatism; big government and big business colluding together to distort the market and rob taxpayers. Some of the conversation is interesting, much of it is one-sided with OWS protesters railing against capitalism and for bigger government. The ignorance of economics you’ll hear from the protesters is astounding.

---

I (more or less) agree with the Schiff position - I don't know what portion of the OWS protesters also do.Corporatism = bad capitalism? The conservative push seems to favor big business and small government. Not so much collusion as a capture of government by big business.By the way, Buz - Do you consider it moral or immoral for an individual to be paid far more than he/she has earned?Moose

Surely there is a more compelling example than this. Or did I miss some sarcasm.

So, your opposition to direct democracy is that a) we tried it and it didn’t work and b) it can not work because people are self serving, ignorant, short-sighted and cruel. Is this accurate?It seems to be the consensus that direct democracy will always lead to some repression of minorities. Why does that have to be? We have laws that protect the rights of minorities. Why would we throw them out? If our representational democracies are even remotely representational then all of the good laws that we have now are a result of the will of the people. Why should that change with direct democracy? Do you honestly believe that our politicians are saving us from ourselves? How is a tyranny of the majority worse than a tyranny of the minority?Our gov’ts have been forced to evolve to more accurately reflect the will of the people. Pushing back against this evolutionary drive is the will of the minority of us who wish to maintain the power structure.It seems odd to me that so many participants here are so quick to dismiss the idea that people should actually have a say in the decisions of their gov’ts. Not a watered down and filtered opinion but an actual counted vote on any particular issue.

Schiff's position is not that corporatism = bad capitalism. Corporatism is an integral aspect of capitalism. Schiff repeatedly made the point that bad capitalism was government inter-meddling with corporate affairs, i.e. that big banks and any corporate entities should be allowed to stand or fail on their own merit, etc. Government subsidies/bailouts, just makes for more failure, having not fixed the reason for failure.One significant example of government inter-meddling with corporate affairs is the Community Investment Act.

quote:

---

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "sub-prime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

---

Yes, and I imagine that with the uneducated electorate in the US that many would think just like you. Except the more radical candidate is far more likely to be a second or third choice than the middle of the road candidate.The issue as I have mentioned before is the electorate.We have voters in the US today that vote as though they were under a Parliamentary system, they just pull the vote red or vote blue lever. We have voters that vote based on campaign ads. Mostly though, we have citizens that do not vote.My hope is that changing things which can be done without modification of the Constitution might, and I stress might, lead to a multi party state.