Pavel Chichikov

It’s certainly an intriguing idea, but its not as good as the current system. It’s a hyperreality of voting that would simply exaggerate flaws of the current system.

First off, good luck keeping anything anonymous. And, even if you could, candidate anonymity is a horrible idea, because you’d have even less accountability and more campaign dishonesty than you have now. Without anonymity, politicians have to at least try to fulfill campaign promises if they want to get reelected. But with anonymity, I can get elected and not follow through on campaign promises because when I run for reelection nobody knows which candidate is me and I can just lie again.

You’d probably also seriously exacerbate political capture. In the interest of putting forth the best policy proposals, people like presidential candidates would certainly outsource writing to powerful lobbies that have the top policy analysists and writers. And these lobbies or other groups would almost certainly only offer services in exchange for certain favors once the candidate is in office. It would lead to massive corruption, more than we’re already seeing, because at least without anonymity we can put names to faces and prompt some honesty.

Plus, you’d cut out so many candidates. Not everyone excels at writing. Some candidates might articulate their plans best in real time and on a stage (like JFK, or Reagan, etc.). Demanding that everyone only write and publish policy proposals removes the ability to gauge how good they’d be in office, interacting with staff and other world leaders.

Combining anonymity with a bracketed system would also create an echo chamber, where candidates learn each other’s messages every round and the survivors shift to mimic the most popular message to bolster their odds of making it into office. In the end, all 3 people will sound the same in a desperate bid to copycat the clear winner and steal votes. Which obviously creates issues for voting again, like the aforementioned Condorcet’s paradox.

Also, voter engagement. We can barely get people to turnout when they are emotionally won-over by a given personality candidate, it would probably crater if voting were a purely rational process as @lifeinmultiplechoice suggests. If you take after John Adams or Rousseau, this isn’t entirely problematic because you don’t believe in carrying out the principle of “the will of the people” in a literal sense (not to say J.A. was Rousseauian, he obviously was not, but they overlap in this area of restricted voting). But if you are interested in accurately representing “the will of the people” in a non-gnostic sense, this is obviously an unsatisfactory system.

This isn’t meant to dismiss @lifeinmultiplechoice out of hand, I admire the imagination. I think they’re onto something when they point out that technology has sort of… swapped lenses on the camera of Democracy. We can seriously reinvent Democracy in ways that overcome previous hurdles due to all our technology now… we just don’t know how exactly yet.

the link you shared is paywalled, curious about it but can’t find it anywhere else. Could you link as pdf?

this is stupid too. Democracy is mathematically impossible. Condorcet’s paradox and all that.

I live to please.

this is stupid.

This man has unlimited IQ.

Yeah there is no single explanation for revolution. Looking strictly to wealth distribution is reductionistic at best. I mean, wealth distribution was arguably better in the U.S. in the 1860s than it was in the prelude to Revolutionary France and yet we had a Civil War lmfao. There are endless examples that disprove this rule. The reality is: popular unrest is extremely complicated, and the factors that lead up to it are varied with fluctuating levels of influence at different stages of development. Sure, perception of wealth is a key component… but its hardly an explainer.

The “wealth distribution” theory of unrest is so thoroughly debunked its insane to see people who still think in these terms. Smh.

cultural perspectives. anti-LGBTQ stuff.

CEOs and healthcare officials will tighten security for a few months, judges will be hard on anyone who gives off even a whiff of copycat, and then some other outrage will come along and people will forget and nothing will change. Insurance practices will stay the same. At most, people will make this a second amendment issue, the government will pass some legislation about 3D printed guns, and our lives will all continue to get progressively worse.

I could feel myself getting dumber reading this.

I like having guns, saying what I want, large roads, complimentary water, my own car, larger homes, and living in the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Having been to Scandinavia, I can say confidently that the U.S. is definitely better in these respects. I would rather have the things I have instead of get over half my income taken by the government in exchange for cheap mediocre healthcare.

That being said, their public health is quite impressive, I will grant them that.

this is not established economics. It’s labor theory of value derived by Marx that was never fully accepted, and was thoroughly debunked like 80 years ago at the latest.

people become billionaires through wage theft.>

Ok Karl Marx.

yeah this is like saying Elon Musk is a “good billionaire” because all his money is just stock and he doesn’t own any lavish mansions or whatever.

I disagree. the dude is obviously not a monarch.

There’s so much cope out there. Sure she “only” lost by 2 million-ish votes, but when you disaggregate the data and see these votes came from almost exclusively the most embattled counties in the country, 2 million suddenly becomes a much more meaningful number.

Although, I am worried about Republican strategies moving forward. Frankly, Trump’s policies will have some very strong negative consequences if he follows through on them. It will be interesting to see Republicans try to win using the “down with the system!” strategy of the past 8 years when Trump is gone and they have the incumbency advantage. If the Dems put someone good up, they’ll win handily again.

don’t get me started on bullets.