Summations Only

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?

Oh, go fuck yourself, jar. Petulant as always. Would it? You may get a three-party system, but it's worth pointing out that what always happens in stable multiple-party equilibria is that the parties align into two major coalitions; usually liberal vs conservative.Breaking the American two-party system so that we can have a system of two coalitions instead seems like a solution in search of a problem. Or by changing the voting system, yes? So again, I'm left wondering what problem you think your voting system solves. Maybe you could try to be less petulant and dismissive and try to answer the question. Pretend you're talking to someone else, if it helps.

Well, right. And that's completely rational, because under a system that proceeds only by consensus-building, party affiliation matters a lot more than individual ideology. Voting for a candidate's party is a much more reliable guide to future outcomes than voting according to their expressed preference.I mean, look at the President. Obama campaigned on public option health care and against the mandate; once in office, the American Care Act had a private insurance mandate instead of a public option because the position of the Democratic party was for mandates and against the public option. The explanation for this is simple, and it isn't "Obama is a liar liar pants-on-fire"; it's that a President can only move legislation forward by consensus of Congress, and the consensus overwhelmingly preferred to handle American health care needs via private insurers.Regardless of what voting system is used, when parties strongly track ideological lines (as they do now) it makes more sense to vote for party than to vote for politicians. And, frankly, parties of strong competing ideology is a good thing. In an election where the choice is between some number of centrists, of arbitrary party affiliation, elections don't matter. It's Kang vs. Kodos and the only choice is what color tie. Elections shouldn't be the American people's chance to select personalities, it should be their chance to select from two competing ideologies about how American should be governed. Jar's stuck, deeply stuck, in a personality-based paradigm.

Maybe there's something I'm missing about your examples but they all appear to be examples of two-coalition governments. I'm not saying the coalitions don't ever change but there only ever seems to be two of them.You don't have an example, for instance, of a center-left-plus-center-right coalition defending itself against a major rightwing coalition plus a major leftwing coalition (that aren't themselves allied.) The coalitions seem to be right vs left, and the winner is whoever grabs the centrists.

That's a funny story, Coyote, but here's the real story of the United States:You can still tell your story about a class of moochers living off the wealth of others by diverting the results of their productivity. You just need to understand that, in the United States, the idle moochers are on Wall Street and the long-suffering producers are occupying the park.

Some men just want to watch the world burn. When you finally find the one person who nobody wants to earnestly oppose, after a long and laborious search as hundreds or perhaps thousands of perfectly adequate and qualified candidates have to be excluded because somebody thinks they're a crypto-Muslim or heard they once employed an undocumented worker, what are you going to do about the kid who vetoes that person just to be a 19-year-old jackass?Giving more unilateral vetoes than there are candidates is a pretty obvious bad idea. Obvious, I guess, to anybody who thinks about it for a second. Of course, you said it and you'll never admit error, so here you are, retrenching yourself.

Right, you're going to retrench yourself on the "read what I write" kick where you stand firm on your language but don't address its meaning or implications.The problem is, the system as you outlined it isn't based on "someone who everyone can live with", it's based on "someone who everyone agrees not to veto." That's what you said, after all, that everybody would be able to veto any candidate in an election in which they are voting. That's pretty substantially different, but you don't seem at all prepared to address this. I predict another round of accusations by you that you're being "misrepresented" when it just seems more likely that, once again, you haven't thought through what you actually mean.

That seems like a pretty effective way to extract concessions - since, you know, that's exactly what happens in the Senate where senators do effectively have an individual veto over legislation.Imagine the increasing series of bribes necessary to convince holdouts to abandon their across-the-board veto. (I'm mostly asking other people to imagine it, because I know you have no ability to think anything through, jar.) The reason that consensus works for the OWS movement, essentially, is because they have no money or assets to apportion. Potential hostage-takers know that they have nothing to gain because OWS doesn't have anything to give them.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Jar, you're not listening, as usual.Nobody's telling you that it won't work because people lack tools or education. People are telling you that it won't work because it sets up perverse incentives. What is required for this to work is for people to willingly pay an opportunity cost for the good of the whole. You don't need education; you need a massive re-engineering of human evolutionary psychology. And even then some nonzero number of people - sociopaths, perhaps, whom education simply cannot fix because they have an organic mental disorder - are going to veto every single candidate just to fuck with other people's shit:It has nothing to do with "tools" or "education", it has to do with the fact that there's a non-trivial number of human beings who will either place rational self-interest and the ability to extract concessions over the welfare of the whole; as well as a nonzero number of people whose behavior will never be rational or group-centered because they have a profound mental illness.Your system takes the dysfunction I've tried to explain exists in the Senate and expands it to every aspect of government. And you think that's a good thing. You must have to be from Texas, or something.

Some men just want to watch the world burn, and jar is one of them.

No, what they'll learn is that it's necessary (and easy) to hold the consensus hostage.

Right, no, we heard you. Are you hearing us? A consensus system can't be the goal because such a system is unworkable.Nobody's complaining about the workup to such a system; it's the end-state of a consensus system that we're telling you doesn't work. It's not a matter of "oh, there'll be some growing pains but then we'll get consensus and it'll all be fine", it's a matter of "the full expression of the system, as you've outlined it, leads to the collapse of democratic society."And you accuse me of misrepresenting people. Really, jar? Why do people even talk to you?

Well, yes. That's because of the ever-present threat of the Senate and its filibuster. You can't really blame House members for treating their votes as symbolic; it's a rational reaction to the fact that the Senate sits there making House votes nothing but symbolic. I think you need to re-examine your notion that "bipartisan" is synonymous with "compromise", because it is not. Whether a bill garners support from both parties isn't a function of whether or not it represents a compromise. It actually has nothing at all to do with the content of the bill, and everything to do with a party's ability to enforce discipline.Imagine you had two parties in Congress - the "Discipline" party, and the "Undiscipline" party. The Discipline party has, openly in its party bylaws, rules that say that members of the party who vote against the line the party determines on any legislation will be punished - they'll lose desired committee assignments, they'll receive less campaign funding from the national party, they'll be subject to primary challenge. The Undiscipline party has no such rules - it allows its members to vote as their consciences and constituents dictate.Now, imagine comparing two legislative sessions, one where the Discipline party is the majority and one where the Undisipline party is in the majority, and they both put forward the same centrist bill. (It doesn't matter what it's for, just assume that the bill is a perfect 50/50 compromise between the two parties' ideologies.) When the Undiscipline party puts forward legislation, some number of Discipline party representatives are tempermentally in favor of it but the Discipline party enforces vote discipline and the entire party stands shoulder to shoulder against it. When the Discipline party puts forward legislation, some number of Undiscipline legislators are tempermentally in favor of it and are allowed to vote for it because the Undiscipline party simply opts not to put itself in a position to stop them.The result is that bills put forward by the Discipline party look "bipartisan" and bills put forward by the Undiscipline party do not, despite the fact that they're the same bill and it's actually the Discipline party that is the most partisan and least likely to actually compromise with the other side."Bipartisan" means nothing. It's actually a terrible guide to the degree of compromise in Congress, because it's not related to the actual content of bills.

Yes, but so is your Cato cite. I don't see any links to Congressional records, contemporary news sources, or anything else.Citing someone else's assertions doesn't prove anything.